There can be no other reforms before this one

So there I was trolling for something to write about this morning and I saw this:

That is Lawrence "Larry Lessig". I follow him on Facebook and it seems that he's released a new video with a very powerful message:

There can be no reform of government of any kind until the money and corruption in government are removed from government. 

Lessig is one of the greatest men in politics, but most of us have never heard of him. I've been following him in politics for years. You can find his Google+ profile here. He's a law professor and activist. In the context of politics, there is no other person I admire more as he is one of the few who have found an issue central to all others: there is no place for corruption in government, and until big money is removed from elections, there can be no other reform. It's that simple.

He is the only person in politics I see across the spectrum that is making corruption and money in government a central issue in his campaigns. He has pointed out that none of the major candidates have taken up this cause as central to their campaigns.

Until we can have a national anti-corruption act that has real teeth and can add meaning to the idea that all citizens are equal, no other reform is possible. It doesn't matter if you're conservative, liberal or just a moderate. Zero reform is possible until all votes count equally. Zero reform is possible until all citizens reclaim the right of nomination. Zero reform is possible until we can be sure that laws are passed based on their merits rather than the money behind the bills.

I love what all of what Bernie Sanders is doing and promoting. I see that he is working with Black Lives Matters and I see that Black Lives Matters wants to see reform. Bernie has added new planks to his platform to address their concerns. But even for BLM, as powerful as their message is, it won't mean squat to the men and women who will use their billions to block the reforms needed to make Black Lives Matter to the police.

The same is true for all the other reform ideas that Bernie is promoting. The ideas are just ideas until we can root out corruption in government and restore democracy. Bernie is well aware of this, so it would be nice to see him make corruption a central issue to his campaign. I already see that he wants to make election day a national holiday. That's a great start, but we are just spitting against the wind until we remove big money from elections. Nevertheless, I see Bernie as our best hope for restoring our democracy so far.

I love what Elizabeth Warren is doing with her campaigns against the big banks. I'm not happy about the bailouts, too. She has great ideas for reform and I especially like the idea of of a nice strong wall between commercial banks and regular banks. In other words, let the wealthy gamble without government insurance. That would be real reform. But again, that idea doesn't mean squat to the men and women who want to rule this country with money rather than respect, diligence and courage.

I was a big Obama fan in 2008 (I still like him, but I'm tempered by experience). I saw him as an agent of change and hope. Then I saw how big money turned him around. I see how he is campaigning for trade agreements that are simply too noxious for Americans to bear the burden of, the TTIP and the TPP, to name a few. Perhaps Obama knows all too well, that until big money in politics is removed, until we have fundamental reform of campaign finance, NO OTHER REFORM IS EVEN POSSIBLE.

Lessig understands and communicates well that simple concept. He quotes Jefferson's wisdom that all men and women are created equal. But he reminds us that Orwell noted a corollary: that some are more equal than others, even in a seemingly capitalist country.

I urge you to consider Lessig's work in the context of the 2016 presidential election. Review Mayday.us to learn the facts about money in politics so that you can understand the government reforms so dear to your heart in the context of the corruption that would prevent those reforms from ever becoming law.

Our Constitution promises citizen equality. It’s time to make that equality a reality. The only way to make all votes equal is to change the way campaigns for elective office are funded.

mayday.us

https://lessigforpresident.com/

We live in a new age of limits and that has nothing to do with Jimmy Carter

I remember the Age of Limits under President Jimmy Carter. I remember how unhappy I was that he was giving away the Panama Canal. But I also remember the debates between Carter and that retired actor, Ronald Reagan. I remember how Reagan sold us the prospect of unlimited optimism if he were elected president.

So I decided to have a look at the debates again to see if I was right. There is a great video from the Ronald Reagan Library with the full length debate on hand on YouTube. This is just one of the great things about YouTube. YouTube has become a worldwide repository of culture. It's incredible that we have such a service at all a service that is free.

Reagan and Carter both seemed to agree that Carter's presidency was an age of limits. Carter was intent on promoting conservation and self-reliance. Reagan? Well, I'm not so sure. He seemed more sure of his economics fixing the problem rather than having specific solutions to the problems that Carter was trying to solve.

In 1980, our country was in the midst of very high inflation relative to the low inflation that we seem to enjoy now. Inflation was running about 14%, mostly due to the increases in oil prices in 1974 and 1979. These increases were due to events beyond Carter's control, but Reagan did his best to make Carter look the fool. Nevermind that Carter was at the time promoting drilling and coal mining to help alleviate the pain at the pump.

In the same debate, Reagan pumped his tax cuts as a way out. Reagan also responded to Carter's criticism of the tax cut plans as inflationary. Reagan said, "Why is it inflationary to let the people keep more of their money and spend it the way they'd like, and it isn't inflationary to let him (Carter) take that money and spend it the way he wants?"

34 years later, we're back in a new age of limits. Reagan got elected, enacted his tax cut plan and the rest is history. We live in an age of limits, but that's just for ordinary people. For the wealthy, there are, apparently, no limits to the aggregation of wealth into the hands of the few, the privileged, the anointed. When Reagan used the term "people", he probably wasn't thinking of the 99%.

Wages have stagnated for about 34 years. In fact, last quarter, wages rose at the lowest rate in about 34 years, 0.2%. That would take us back in the recession of 1983. We have a belligerent majority in Congress intent on cutting government spending despite the fact that only people who have any extra money to spend are hoarding it rather than spending it. This is the age of limits I'm talking about.

Inflation is what you get when too many dollars are chasing too few services. The low inflation we've seen in the last 8 years is a result of too few dollars chasing too much supply. Oh. I guess that's what Reagan meant by supply side economics. So where did all that money go? Well, there's about $2 trillion parked offshore by the richest, largest corporations. In the last 5 years, 95% of all the new growth in the economy went to the top 1%. Where did that money go? It's parked in assets like stocks, bonds and property. That money is not circulating. That would explain the low inflation we have now.

This siphon on our economy has been going on for a long, long time and only accelerated to the point of near collapse in 2008 and it continues today. Without the bailouts, the economy would have corrected itself. With the bailouts, the wealthiest people get the bailouts and everyone else pays the taxes to cover for them. Life is great if you have a really good tax attorney.

It's time to rephrase and reframe the question that Reagan posed. The question that Reagan asked in the debates in 1980 should be rephrased and reframed as follows:

Why is it inflationary for the people to keep more of their money and spend it as they would like, and it isn't inflationary for the wealthiest corporations and people to keep it and spend it the way they'd like?

Because that money isn't circulating when it's parked in assets. This is the reason why our economy is still weak today. This is also the reason why wages are stagnating. The only way we can support the enormous grow in executive compensation is by suppressing wage growth. how is that done?

Through public policy. Who writes public policy? The 1%.

How legacy incumbent ISPs fight the economic benefits of community broadband

I'm a big fan of community broadband. Community broadband is, simply stated, a network built by the community for internet access to serve the local community and public interest. There are numerous examples in America of community broadband. In fact more than 450 communities have built their own networks.

The most famous is Chattanooga, TN, a city that built a fiber to the premises (residential and business) network so that everyone in that city could have fast, reliable access to the internet. Their network arose out of a sincere desire by the Electric Power Board to serve the community. When Comcast became aware of EPB, they began a campaign to stop EPBs plans. They launched lawsuits and political campaigns designed to malign a government owned network as unfair. But the locals didn't believe Comcast:

Comcast claimed that a publicly owned fiber optic network was unnecessary because the company could “meet the telecom needs of Chattanooga.” In Comcast’s vision, Chattanooga’s telecom needs did not include building the first citywide 1Gbps network in the U.S., even though that network ultimately drew national media attention and attracted new businesses and entrepreneurs to Chattanooga.

I live in a city that could have built fiber to the premise for every address. Utopia, the Utah Open Infrastructure Agency was the agency to build that network, but the local and incumbent ISPs, Vivint, Centurylink and Comcast, have waged a very successful war against Utopia to prevent further adoption of community broadband in this city. Their lawsuits, foot-dragging and political machinations have stalled Utopia by at least a decade. Here in West Valley City, instead of providing everyone with fiber to the premises, Utopia only serves about 16% of the addresses.

When we hear the legacy incumbent ISPs talking about "what is fair", their talking point is that it is not fair when government provides a service that directly competes against a private provider of the same service. What private providers don't say is that they are not willing to provide the service that the city rolls out instead for the community it serves.

In a 2012 report by the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, the economic benefits of community broadband are described in detail. The report describes in detail, the plight of three communities seeking better broadband from absentee corporations that are only focused on the bottom line rather than the interests of the communities they serve, if at all. Community Broadband Networks (a part of ILSR) has compiled many examples of the economic benefits of community owned networks here.

As EPB competition prevailed in Chattanooga, ATT and Comcast both dropped their rates and increased speeds in their offerings. This is an indirect benefit as lower rates for everyone means that they have more money to spend locally. The EPB network provides gigabit access to the internet and that has attracted entrepreneurs and jobs to the region, just like Kansas City, Missouri, a town where Google Fiber has sprouted.

The ILSR report also describes the ferocious opposition of legacy incumbent service providers to community broadband. The lawsuits, the politics and attacks in the press were all designed to prevent, malign or prohibit community broadband just to ensure that incumbents could take their own sweet time about providing a better service. All in the name of "fairness".

Fairness, in the words of the legacy incumbent service providers, doesn't include raising rates when there is little to no competition. Fairness doesn't include unreliable or slow service. Fairness doesn't include using political contributions from corporate treasuries to defeat community interests.

So when you hear about a legacy incumbent ISP fighting to keep government out of the internet access business, remember that they are fighting against fairness. They are fighting against economic development. They are betraying the public trust.

A free trade agreement prescription for doctors and their crocodile tears

Everyone sees the doctor once in awhile. They wear nice white smocks with suits and ties. They work in clean offices with secretaries, nurses and expensive equipment. They enjoy their work with patients, watching them improve or maintain their health over time. At least that was what they signed up for. Not so much anymore.

In March, Geneia released a career satisfaction survey with the following results:

Today, Geneia released the results of our nationwide career satisfaction survey of practicing physicians. The findings are alarming. For starters: 84% of physicians believe quality patient time may be a thing of the past, and 67% of those surveyed know a physician who is likely to stop practicing medicine in the next five years as the result of burnout.

Uh-oh. These findings are indeed alarming. They're getting burned out. They're working too hard. They're not having very much fun. How did this happen? From the same report:

In our survey, we asked physicians to describe in their own words the obstacles that detract from their “joy” in practicing medicine. We received comments from 416 physicians, and while 14 of them told us that they’re still experiencing joy in medicine, the rest—402 physicians—told us, in very clear terms, that they are not. Most often cited as the top complaint? The corporatization of medicine, and the resulting recordkeeping and patient quotas demanded.

That is not a pretty picture. Only 3% report joy in their jobs? This is what we're walking into when we see a primary care physician? Can physicians give us the best possible care when they're not happy with their jobs?

Geneia is asking one of the right questions: how did we get here? They point to a long term trend of doctors selling their practice to get out of the business side so that they could enjoy the patient side. Seems like a reasonable thing to do. They've outsourced much of the administration of their work so that they could focus on the patient. They've stopped minding their own business and now the corporations that run their business are seeking to externalize their costs onto those same doctors.

This is reflected in the complaints of some doctors as seeing more paperwork and fewer patients. Doctors are doing more menial tasks rather than seeing more patients. They are also seeing a reduction in compensation. Well, that might be expected when they stop minding their own business.

This is yet another example of public policy written by the 1%. A report released in 2014 by the American Association of Medical Colleges lays the blame squarely on Congress. Their report debunks some of the myths surrounding the doctor shortage we're seeing in America. It's not exactly a scathing indictment, but it does point out that Congress needs to increase the number of people that can get residency positions so that they can graduate and practice medicine, to wit:

MYTH: Simply increasing the number of medical school graduates will fix the physician shortage.

FACT: Increasing the number of medical students is a necessary first step to addressing the doctor shortage, but a doctor cannot practice independently without residency training (GME). Unless Congress increases Medicare support for GME, the number of physicians per capita will actually decrease.

On a national level, it's really up to Congress to increase the number of practicing physicians by increasing Medicare support. Unfortunately, we have a Congress with a majority of men and women dead set on reducing or eliminating the Medicare program. They sincerely believe that the free market can prevail once it is freed form the burdens of the government.

Who has been setting public policy for at least the last 20 years? The 1%. Who makes up a significant fraction of the 1%? Medical specialists earning at least $323,000 a year (that's where the 1% start).

Crocodile tears I say. The doctors made their own bed, let them sleep in it.

There is an interesting solution beyond just increasing Medicare residency. We have a shortage of doctors worldwide, especially in developing countries. Why not globalize health care? If Obama wants a trade deal to sign before he leaves office, I found a great idea that could do the trick.

The idea comes from economist Dean Baker director of the Center for Economic Policy Research. Here's the idea: create a worldwide standard for the practice of medicine. Then we bring medical students from abroad to train and study here. Then when they are licensed, they work here as doctors for a much smaller fraction of what domestic doctors earn, thereby driving down prices and meeting the demands for service.

Foreign residents would then pay a tax on their earnings which would be sent back home to finance the training of more doctors so that there is not a complete brain drain from the originating country. Foreign doctors living here and practicing medicine would be happy to work for say, $80,000 a year since their education is financed by the government anyway.

The last leg of this proposal would be to let the government finance medical tourism:

For example, heart surgery in a US hospital can easily cost more than $200,000. Hospitals in India and Thailand can offer comparable quality care for $25,000. This cost difference can easily cover the travel expenses of the patient and immediate family and still allow for enormous savings. 

That would be a trade deal worth working for, Mr. Obama. Forget TPP and TTIP. Let's globalize health care so that doctors can get back to the joys of practicing medicine again.

A natural experiment between doctors and dentists

When most people think of health insurance, they automatically assume that dental care is excluded. In fact, most people don't really think of dental insurance much at all, at least until the next visit. Relative to health insurance, dental insurance has a tiny premium deducted from the paycheck of most people. But when people go to the dentist, though most routine procedures are covered, anything beyond that packs a wallop for the customer.

As Paul Krugman notes, this "skin in the game" should provide adequate cost containment for dentists, but that's not what is happening. In fact, dental care is one of the components of health care that has been rising much faster than inflation. I think a clear sign of this is what I see at my local dentists office.

My local dentist office is very nice, with all new construction, built to custom specification for this dental group. They just moved there a few months ago and the office is a jaw dropper. Big screen TVs are in every room. There is state of the art equipment and facilities. The reception area is beautiful with open ceilings, nice furniture and a nice view of the mountains to the west.

They are also running a contest, with a range of prizes including free dental care for life for one very lucky individual. Perhaps that prize is a tacit acknowledgement that dental care is a very high out of pocket expense. With all that is happening at my dentists office, the move, the new digs and all the new gadgets and technology, they must be rolling in the dough.

Research suggests that because of the lack of involvement by insurance companies and government insurance, dentists have the freedom to raise prices faster than inflation. For most of us, dental insurance covers just the basics and anything beyond that? We're lucky if we get half covered by the insurance we do have. It should be noted that Medicare doesn't cover dental costs, which more than a bit ironic since we tend to lose more teeth with age.

An article at the Huffington Post notes some very interesting, if a bit dated statistics on how much money dentists earn:

According to the American Dental Association, the average net income in 2009 for general dentists in private practice was $192,680. The average for specialists, including orthodontists and dental surgeons, was $305,820. By comparison, the average income for pediatricians and family practice physicians in 2012, according to WebMD's Medscape, which tracks physician compensation, was $173,000 and $175,000, respectively. To be sure, many dentists make significantly less than the average, and their prices reflect that. And dentists who don't own their own practices or who work in public health settings typically make less than general dentists in private practice, and considerably less than specialists.

$300k for a dental specialist? That's close to what a heart transplant specialist makes. According to Medscape, in 2014, cardiologists earned an average income of $351,000, slightly down from the previous year. Cardiologists have seen their income decline slightly between 2013 and 2014. Judging by my local dentist's office, that's the opposite of what has been happening for his profession.

BenefitsPro, a website dedicated to tracking employee benefits has noted that dentists are working hard to stay out of public health care to ensure they can charge "market prices" for their services. Dentists have also largely escaped the new regulations under Obamacare. What really makes this interesting is that economists and the Congressional Budget Office have noticed a major slowdown of health care spending as a result of Obamacare. Not so much with dental care.

So the conservatives have got it wrong. When people have more skin in the game, the dentists have shown us that costs rise because there is less insurance or government oversight to contain costs. Expert knowledge of an industry is what is required to contain costs. Fortunately for dentists, most people are not experts on dental care costs.

Perhaps it's time for an Obamacare just for dental care.

The thinking behind the LIBOR scandal

In recent years, we have been treated to many scandals, but what is surprising is that the mother of all financial scandals came and went with hardly a mention in US politics: The LIBOR Scandal. As I read the articles on that scandal, I still find myself asking the same question: When you're making 2 or 3 million a year, how is it that you need to cheat to gain even more money? This is the question I would ask of a man named Tom Hayes, the ringleader of a massive collusion between banks and their traders.

What was the LIBOR scandal about? Here is a quick synopsis from Wikipedia:

The Libor scandal was a series of fraudulent actions connected to the Libor (London Interbank Offered Rate) and also the resulting investigation and reaction. The Libor is an average interest rate calculated through submissions of interest rates by major banks in London. The scandal arose when it was discovered that banks were falsely inflating or deflating their rates so as to profit from trades, or to give the impression that they were more creditworthy than they were. Libor underpins approximately $350 trillion in derivatives. It is currently administered by NYSE Euronext, which took over running the Libor in January 2014.

The details of this series of crimes are easy to find and have been well documented. The banks involved included UBS, Royal Bank of Scotland and Barclays, to name a few. Internationally, 20 big banks in all were involved.

But what I find interesting in this whole affairs is that a group of men decided, upon their own volition, to collude together to manipulate an interest rate that is used to benchmark around $800 trillion in loans. These are men who still wanted more even though they were making millions every year.

These same men like to talk about free markets, too. Oh, sure, they will wax on and on about how important it is for the market to decide how to allocate resources, openly and transparently. But now we see that if they had their way, their idea of work would be tweaking the market for an hour or two a day at their computers, and then go home thinking that a good job had been done.

The Independent of the UK reports that Tom Hayes earned 1.8 million GBP at UBS to 3.5 million GBP at Citigroup. Yet the man still felt compelled to cheat the system that the rest of us depend on for financing, costing the rest of us billions. He still wanted more, more, more. From what I can see so far, it's all about the numbers with nary a scent of compassion for the people he was hurting with his scheme. Given his talents and incentives, it should be no surprise that Goldman Sachs wanted to hire him, too.

It is also interesting to note how open and casual traders had been about the practice of rate rigging, a practice that has been documented as early as 2005. It is very likely that the rigged rates made a significant contribution to the collapse of the banks in 2008.

So when Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren talk of a rigged system, this is just a part of what they're talking about. Privileged men more concerned about driving up the numbers of their personal net worth than about being of service to others. If wealthy people want to use "socialist" as a pejorative in America, those same people need to look at high finance a bit more closely to see what socialism is intended to fight.

This is what progressive taxation is about. It's not about punishing people for earning more with their talents and skills. It's about curbing greed and preventing people from amassing so much money that they're "untouchable". Hayes made more money in day that most people make in a year, yet wanted more and was willing to cheat to get it. Many of his peers were the same way. They don't see the use of their power to fleece other people as a problem. It's just business.

Police brutality is a public policy written by the 1%

Just about every day now, I see some article talking about the miniscule numbers of people killed by police in other industrialized countries. For example, a study done on police in Norway found that Norwegian police have not killed anyone in a decade. Last year, they drew their guns twice and fired without fatality.

In April, 4 Swedish policemen were on vacation while traveling on a subway to see Les Miserables. While on the train, the driver called for help to deal with two homeless men who were fighting near the drivers cabin. The Swedes went to assist by breaking up the fight and restraining the aggressor without the use of deadly force. Even when they are here, Swedish police are not packing heat and prefer to use restraint rather than force to calm things down.

In the UK, The Guardian has compiled an amazing set of data on police shootings called The Counted, In this study, The Counted compares the US to the rest of the industrialized world, giving us a picture in clear relief of American police with the rest of the world as a backdrop. The pictures are not pretty and here is one of them:

That is a staggering comparison, but the numbers don't lie. American police tend to be more than a bit trigger happy. If there needs to be better gun control, it needs to be exercised upon and by the police.

But there is more to the story here than just killings. This is a result of public policy that has been in place for decades. What is also interesting to note is that as birth rates decline and our population ages, we'd expect the crime rate to go down. And it has, as documented by FBI statistics. Yet the rate of police shootings has failed to decline with it. This means, in so many ways, that public policy is not working when it comes to the safety of Americans at the hands of police.

Who writes public policy? In nearly every study conducted on the subject of the responsiveness of American leadership to the people they serve, the answer is plain to see: The 1%. They are the people writing the policy. They are the people driving the policy. Everyone else? They are powerless to do anything but watch, if they want to work within the system.

Howard Zinn once noted that “Protest beyond the law is not a departure from democracy; it is absolutely essential to it.” If the courts, the legislature and the various administrations at state and federal levels are unresponsive to the needs of the people, then we can expect to see protests en masse. This is what we have seen in Ferguson, Missouri where voter turnout is so low, that the police are composed of a white majority in a town that is mostly black.

The horrendous number of police shootings in America is supported by public policy, not public opinion. To turn this around, we need to increase voter turnout, or the trend will continue and very likely get worse. It might be easy to blame the problem on the 1%, but we're fooling ourselves if we blame the 1% without getting out of the house to vote. In order for democracy to work for all of us, all of us must participate in government.

If we just vote, we decide who will cut the checks and write the laws. We must do more. Every legislature publishes their proceedings online. We can show up or follow their work. Every city council has meetings and we can show up or follow their work online, too. For Congress, there is C-SPAN and congress.gov.

Every agency writes regulations that implement the laws. We can participate in the rule making process to change how the laws are implemented. We participate by following the agencies and writing comments when new rules are proposed to implement the law. We participate in and/or follow administrative proceedings when we can.

In the courts, I learned long ago that if more than 1% were to fight their traffic tickets, the system would grind to a halt. We must be willing to follow the courts and fight in the courts if the need arises.

The numbers clearly show that the 1% is not capable of or willing to writing laws that benefit everyone. It's up to us to the rest of us to make the changes we want. We must be the change we want to see.

Why build a stadium when you could roll out fiber for a fraction of the cost?

In recent months, I've seen news about new proposals for sports stadiums. Governor Scott Walker in Wisconsin recently signed a bill to finance a sports stadium by cutting education funding. Seems consistent with the fact that in most states, the highest paid public official is the football coach.

In the previous decade, most states could skate by on $300-400 million for a new stadium. Not so anymore as noted by Athletic Business News:

The three newest pro football stadiums have cost $720 million (Lucas Oil Stadium, 2008), $1.15 billion (Cowboys Stadium, 2009) and $1.6 billion (MetLife Stadium, 2010). Major League Baseball hasn't seen quite that level of inflation, but it has produced the three most expensive ballparks in history in 2008 (Nationals Park, $611 million) and 2009 (Citi Field, $900 million; Yankee Stadium, $1.5 billion). Perhaps it's worth noting that MLB's newest venue, four-month-old Marlins Park - the league's sixth to feature a retractable roof, and its smallest in total seating capacity - cost a mere $515 million. On the other hand, the stadium's complicated financing plan (currently being investigated by the Securities and Exchange Commission), will lead to a final public cost to repay debt incurred by the stadium's construction of $2.4 billion over the next 40 years.

An article in USA a couple years ago provides some interesting analysis on the subject of sports stadium funding:

In 2010, 121 professional sports facilities in use for all five major sports leagues required $43 billion in investments in new construction or major renovations. About half of that investment came from the public, according to research by Harvard urban planning professor Judith Grant Long.

But over the life of these stadiums, taxpayers will have to pay an additional $10 billion of what Long calls "obscured costs" that were not initially factored into the public's share, Long said. That means instead of taking on about half the cost of stadium construction and improvements, the public is now taking on about 75% of the cost, she said.

The public ends up paying 75% of the costs for a new sports stadium? Do they even get a return on their investment? The article goes on to say, not really, or at least, not a widespread return on the investment. I find it especially telling that much of the long term costs are "obscured" from the public. Besides, not everyone attends sporting events.

To make matters worse, a team from Stanford University has done a study to show that sports stadiums do not generate any significant economic growth. As public scrutiny grows, resistance to financing what are essentially private ventures is growing. The public is getting a clue to how they're being screwed by professional sports stadiums.

If the cost of a sports stadium can run into the billions, and is largely financed by the taxpayer and doesn't generate the revenue or economic growth that was advertised, perhaps we might consider an alternative use for that money: community broadband.

Muninetworks.org, a part of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, has compiled the data on community broadband. The benefits are numerous. With community broadband, you get a better faster connection at lower cost than the private ISPs are willing to provide. The money stays in the community. Everyone gets a connection and that's good because more people are going to use broadband than will use a sports stadium.

Community broadband adds value to the home and increases the sales price on average by about 2-3%. Community broadband attracts jobs like no other facility does. And finally, community broadband gives businesses a fast, stable connection to the internet so that they can stop worrying about their connection and serve customers.

For a fraction of the cost of a stadium everyone in a city, and I mean everyone, could be hooked up with a fast and reliable broadband connection. For example, here in Utah, local governments are looking at financing a fiber buildout for 6 cities with 111,000 addresses for about $232 million (you can find the number on page 34 of that report in the link).

In Chattanooga, TN, they built a fiber network through their local electric power cooperative, the Electric Power Board (EPB). They spent $330 million to build the network and charge $70 a month for a gigabit connection to the internet. That monthly fee is actually down from $300 a month they used to charge for a gig.

Muninetworks.org has documented numerous examples of how municipal fiber adds value to the communities that deploy fiber. From job creation to property values, there is a lot to like about community broadband.

If community broadband is so great, why aren't more cities and states considering fiber instead of stadiums? It's possible that state governments are not fully aware of the benefits of municipal fiber and they just need greater awareness. On the other hand, it's possible that they are aware and their leaders would prefer not to spread the wealth around. It's hard to say for sure.

But we can be sure that municipal broadband is a much better deal than a stadium.

The hypocrisy of unpaid overtime

Go to any store, any business and most will tell you the price of what is on the shelf or the menu. Everything has a price. While there are sure to be promotions, even freebies, management decides what is promoted and what must be paid for. When we go shopping, there is an implicit agreement not to haggle in most establishments. We accept the asking price when we get to the checkout stand.

By the same token, most of us negotiate in good faith for our compensation when applying for a job. We assume that we're getting a fair wage when we sign the contract. We assume from the beginning that we're going to be paid for every hour we work. Unfortunately, there are unscrupulous employers who manage to setup their employees to do work that somehow requires unpaid overtime. There are also employers who will outright steal wages by not paying them. Thousands of employers are prosecuted for wage theft every year.

The focus of this post is about unpaid overtime. This is usually in a setting where the corporate culture makes an implicit demand on employees to do extra work, or they could face reduced opportunities for advancement or worse, unemployment. This is to be expected when the job market is weak, just like this one, where even when strong hiring is the trend, wages are not going up. In fact, wages have crept up at just 0.2% this last quarter, the lowest rate in 33 years.

There is reason to believe that unpaid overtime is recognized, but how is it accounted and is there a balance in compensation to the effort exerted by the employee? Some employers may attempt to mollify their employees by reminding them of what Lincoln said, "Don't worry when you are not recognized, but strive to be worthy of recognition." In a good economy, that might make sense.

Recognition comes at the employer's or manager's whim. Recognition doesn't always come with a raise. It usually comes with a perk. A day off with pay. A special parking place. A trophy that rotates every month. Maybe, if the employee is lucky, they get a raise, especially in this labor market.

Now consider the plight of the lowly C-class executive. He knows exactly what he's getting into. He has a compensation consultant that has studied the market inside and out. He has friends in high places that can "put in a good word". He has an attorney that can vet the contract to make sure nothing is "missing". He can assert his rights in the contract and if terminated, he is likely to get a golden parachute. The best part? He has friends on the board of directors who can assist in setting his salary.

The typical C-class executive will demand compliance with the contract that he and his employer signed. The average worker is not empowered to do so for fear of losing his job. The typical C-class executive will put in extra hours because his compensation is based on his performance. But as economist Dean Baker has pointed out, executives often get and retain high pay even when their performance is not so great. Just ask Home Depot.

There is another part of the unpaid overtime story that is often missed: vagueness. Unpaid overtime is like borrowing and that leads to vagueness for both parties. The employee doesn't know what the same service will fetch elsewhere and lives in fear because it's not easy to figure out. The employer doesn't know the true cost of what he's receiving as a gift or stealing from his employee.

If the employer chooses to assign a cost, he is free to do so arbitrarily and the employee may have little recourse other than to find a new job. In this economy, large employers know the market and they know that most employees would rather stay than risk having to find a new job. Oh, the joys of management.

Remember, this sort of implicit policy is made by the "job creators". Besides, who would notice or even point out that unpaid overtime contributes to unemployment? When people work more hours, there are fewer jobs for others to work. These same job creators lobby Congress for public policy that leads to a poor economy. A strong dollar. A low minimum wage. A weak and emaciated union culture.

These job creators, after receiving so much assistance from the government, will then have the gall to tell us that if we just cut their taxes one more time, they will hire more people. We have tried that before and every time, the money went to shareholders, not to labor.

So remember, the next time you hear a "job creator" spouting off about how cutting taxes would help him hire more people, consider the amount of unpaid overtime he's being gifted today.

How large telecom monopolies can dictate where we live

Over the past year or so, I've found a few stories where people have had to move because their options for internet access were so poor, that they could not function at their job when they needed to work from home. For example, here's a story about a man who went two years without internet access at the hands of ATT.

That poor guy had been strung along for many months as he tried in vain to secure a decent connection so that he could work from home. In the end, the man decided to move his family somewhere else so that he could work from home if need be. The lack of internet service was a primary driver in his decision to move.

Then there is another man who spent months securing guarantees from Comcast and Centurylink that he'd have adequate service from his home before he bought the home and moved in. Even after moving in, he could not secure service. He had to sell his house and move to another location in order to secure the service he needed for his job.

And here is yet another man tortured by ATT when he was told that his neighbors could get access, but he could not. He was also told that they were at maximum capacity and that if someone else would cancel their service, then he could get service. But until then, he had to get in line and wait.

In all of these cases and many more, the homeowner needed to work from home and depended upon the internet for his livelihood. For these people, the internet is no longer a luxury, it is a requirement. For anyone still living in 1992, the internet is now a utility, not a luxury.

All of these incidents concern a local monopoly run by an absentee corporation that is completely focused on short-term profits rather than long term investments in the communities they serve. This is why community broadband is so important. When residents cannot get the service they require for their jobs, it is incumbent upon them to create their own solution. We call this solution "community broadband" or "municipal broadband".

Unfortunately, companies like ATT, Centurylink and Comcast have the upper hand when it comes to public policy. In order to maintain their obscene customer service and high profits (two things that should never be seen together in a capitalist economy), they must exert enormous influence in public policy to ensure that they can maintain their private monopolies.

This means writing bills under the guise of "legislator education" at forums and retreats sponsor and paid for by corporations that benefit from said laws. We might call this a bill mill. This also means making significant political contributions through "SuperPACs" to ensure that candidates that are sympathetic to the corporate agenda remain in power.

This usurpation of the power of the people is not always successful. In more than 450 cities and towns nationwide, the people have recognized the antipathy pointed at them by very large and powerful corporations. In response, they have built their own networks, a community broadband network to provide them with the internet access they need to grow their local economies and attract jobs to their respective towns.

So when a state passes a law limiting or prohibiting community broadband, they are not just serving the interests of incumbent legacy carriers like ATT and Comcast. They are also denying communities across the nation the right of self-determination, prohibiting them from building the networks that the big telecoms refuse to build.

This is the problem we are faced with in thousands of communities across our great nation. Unable to get internet access. Unable to build and roll out our own. We are being forced to submit to legacy incumbent players who really do not want to serve. They only want to profit.

This is why I applauded the FCC for stepping up and working to make it easier for communities to build their own networks when incumbent legacy carriers fail to uphold the public trust placed in them. This is why I applauded President Obama when he highlighted the work citizens have done in Cedar Falls, Iowa, to create their own network.

If the incumbent carriers are so focused on short-term profits that they cannot meet the needs of the communities they serve, it's up to us to build our own networks. If our representatives in our statehouses and Congress are so beholden to the incumbent carriers that they pass legislation hobbing our efforts, then we need to look more closely at that behavior and call them on it.

This quid pro quo is what the next election will be about. The biggest question for the next election, at least in my mind, will be this: Mr. legislator, who do you work for? The people or the corporations?

An updated review of Chromecast

In months past, I've had some kind and not so kind words for Chromecast. But that was before I had a OnePlus phone with the latest operating system update that I got a few months ago. Oddly, the OnePlus works better than the Nexus 4 I had before.

For the readers who are not familiar with Chromecast, let me give you a quick summary. Chromecast is an HDMI dongle that you connect to your TV. It looks like just another jump drive, but bigger. And it doesn't fit in any USB drive. It fits in any HDMI video port on your TV. It literally turns any TV into a very smart TV. It is, now that I think about it, a smart TV killer.

There is a lot to like about Chromecast when it works. It's portable, but it does need a power supply to work. It comes with a USB cable that you can plug it into the TV for power, but then it only has power when you turn the TV on. I like to plug it into a nearby wall socket for power to ensure that it's always on. I found that it works better with wall power as it seems to have more power to work with for network access.

There is a huge ecosystem for Chromecast and the applications are there to prove it. With the right application, you can cast just about anything to your TV. From pictures you took with your phone, to YouTube to Netflix. Most content applications nowadays will cast to your Chromecast.

If you're not in the mood for video or pictures, you can cast audio to your Chromecast, too. Google Play, TuneIn, Pandora, Spotify and even SoundCloud will cast to your Chromecast and put the sound to your TV. It is amazing what can be done with Chromecast and it's still early days.

But the best part is this. When I travel, I can take the Chromecast with me. Then instead of watching the hotel cable system, I can watch Netflix or YouTube on the TV there. I can play the music I want to play there. All over the wifi system provided by the hotel.

When I'm visiting family and friends and want to catch up on pictures, I can plug the Chromecast into the TV in the living room. Then I can play videos or show pictures without a slide projector. Oh, wait. I'm showing my years. Does anyone even know what a slide projector is, anymore? Of course, Chromecast only works if there is wifi router in the house.

Back at home, I still use the Chromecast. My wife plays Netflix and YouTube on the TV for the kids by casting straight from a computer to the TV. I like to use my phone to cast the same content to the TV. Sometimes I show pictures to friends and family when visiting.

Things are so much better now with the Chromecast. In the past, I had to constantly fiddle with everything just to get it going. I'd reboot the router, reboot my phone, reboot the Chromecast. Back then it might take 15-20 minutes just to get the Chromecast going. By then, everyone else has moved on. I did notice that streaming from the computer worked better than streaming from my phone, so it must have been the phone that was causing all the problems with the Chromecast.

I'm pretty sure there was an update on my phone that did the trick. I'm not exactly sure when it happened, but it was probably when I got the update to CyanogenMod 12. Perhaps there was an update on the Chromecast, too. All I know is that now it works and it works great.

Chromecast has totally changed my perspective on content whether it be audio, video or pictures. Chromecast has mobilized my content so that I can take it with me, anywhere. It might just be a paradigm shift for content, since Apple is trying to do the same thing. I'm just glad I'm around to enjoy it with my family and friends.

The case for worldwide matriarchy

What you see below is a screenshot of a mortifying statistic: better than 92% of all homicides worldwide are committed by men.

The reason that statistic is so mortifying is not just that men commit the most homicides and murders worldwide, it's that men rule the world. Now I'm a man and I'm making this post about the case for a matriarchy, worldwide. Do I have an interest in doing this? Absolutely. As a man dedicated to erring on the side of peace, I believe that matriarchy is worth a try, I'm even willing to submit to permanent matriarchy if that is what it takes to ensure the survival of our species for another 100,000 years.

The reason that men commit the vast majority of crimes including homicide should be reason enough alone to ban men from the highest offices of government. But there is another reason: Testosterone.

Scientists at Duke University compared skulls from 80,000, 38,000 and modern skulls of today and found evidence that around 50,000 years ago, the level of testosterone in humans suffered a serious decline. Maybe that's because the most aggressive males had killed each other off, leaving the less aggressive males to procreate a kinder, gentler progeny.

This change in human physiology correlates well with a blossoming of culture and technology around the same time. From the article at Science Daily:

"The modern human behaviors of technological innovation, making art and rapid cultural exchange probably came at the same time that we developed a more cooperative temperament," said lead author Robert Cieri, a biology graduate student at the University of Utah who began this work as a senior at Duke University.

Cooperative temperament? That is what we will need going forward as we've grown from the tiny villages of prehistory to 7 billion people living in a modern world. Cooperation is how technology and culture are made. Humans do not create great things in a vacuum. They work together and cooperate to get to their goals.

Technology is something that men seem obsessed with. I'm reminded of a great meme I saw not too long ago:

Behind every great man is a woman rolling her eyes.

No doubt there are many great men who walk this earth in peace, erring on the side of peace as they walk. They often do great things, but before they got to that great thing, there was a woman behind him, rolling her eyes.

Though we men may aspire to greatness, we have testosterone. Higher levels of testosterone lends a tendency towards aggression. That tendency in a crowded world is a disability. Wars are started by men. They are ended by men, too, usually after enough of the most aggressive men have been killed off.

I have had the opportunity to read about and observe the behavior of women. A woman who is pregnant is gifted with a strong predisposition to cooperate, to find peace. A woman with small children finds that the gift grows and that she will need that gift when dealing with unreasonable breadwinners, aggressive males who see her children as a threat, and in working with her small children. A strong woman knows how to find safety for her children through cooperation.

Remember, small children are only thinking about getting their needs met. They will do whatever it takes to get their needs met. A mother who understands this makes better decisions about what to teach her children when her thinking is not clouded by testosterone.

This post is not to say that men should not participate in politics at all, but there needs to be a balance. Considering that men have heaped so much abuse upon women for all of history, perhaps the men in this world need to take a back seat to power and let the women drive. I'm thinking that women should have exclusive access to the highest offices of power worldwide for something like the next 50 years, maybe 100, just to set us on the right course to worldwide peace.

To solve the great problems of the day, from global warming to terrorism (something that men played a big part in), we're going to need to cooperate. Women are masters at cooperation. Why not let them rule the world to see if we can finally advance to the next phase of our development? Perhaps women as leaders can teach the world that cooperation is the greatest survival skill of all.

The Super Delegate problem and Bernie Sanders

I've been busy with Twitter lately and I've noticed quite a bit of support for Bernie Sanders on Twitter. I've added many Bernie supporters to my Twitter following list - that is, I'm following them for the news about Bernie.

I got a tip from one of my friends on Twitter about a website called Bull Moose Nation. This Bull Moose Nation models itself upon the original Bull Moose Party of 1912. That party was the party of Teddy Roosevelt, a populist who had the same goal in this country then as Bernie Sanders does now:

“To dissolve the unholy alliance between corrupt business and corrupt politics is the first task of the statesmanship of the day”

— Bull Moose Party Platform, 1912

This is what I know of Teddy Roosevelt, a man dedicated to preserving our natural resources, cutting the ties of private control from government and serving the public interest. The irony is that he was a Republican then.

Let me give you an idea of how much things have changed. While Roosevelt would have fought to preserve the national parks, the Republican clowns in Congress have passed a bill to make it easier for energy companies that burn coal to dump coal ash directly into water sources. They want to return the regulation of the coal energy companies back to the states, as if that would make things better. Somehow, I have my doubts.

Bull Moose Nation has brought to light a very interesting and compelling problem: getting the Super Delegates in the Democrat Party to support Bernie Sanders (I would use the term "Democratic Party", but Super Delegates are anything but democratic). Much like the Electoral College, the Democrat Party has Super Delegates that can vote for whomever they please rather than who the people want. This is all explained very nicely in this Bull Moose Nation video and in their website at this location. 

The summary is this:

In the 2016 primary 747 of the 5,083 total delegates are superdelegates.  What this means is that in a worst case scenario where Bernie Sanders cannot get any of the superdelegate votes he will need almost 59% of primary voters to vote for him.

And they explain the problem with an observation from the past election with Hilary Clinton in the fray:

The irony is that no one knows about this problem better than Hillary Clinton.  When she ran against President Obama in 2008 she won the popular vote counting the ballots in Michigan - it was the superdelegates who ended up making the decision. She was unable, however, to secure the needed superdelegate votes and lost the nomination as a result. The Bernie Sanders campaign is vulnerable to falling into a similar trap since the majority of Democratic Party leaders having been falling in behind Hillary Clinton. If we as a public truly believe that Bernie Sanders is the man who will best represent us, the first step that we need to take is making sure that he gets the nomination.

The solution? Double Down for Bernie! Bull Moose Nation estimates that we will need at least 8 million additional primary voters nationwide to ensure that Bernie is nominated. If we're going to elect Bernie, we will need to gather our forces and bring them to bear against an enormous establishment opposed to such a possibility. That means getting people registered to vote and getting them to the polls for the primaries. Bernie needs to win in the primaries to get a shot at the nomination at the Democrat Convention next year.

I know, it seems daunting, but somehow, this country managed to elect a black man with a Muslim sounding name, apparently against the odds. 

We need to also remember that the right of nomination has already been stolen from us by the 1%. The 1% believe they are exercising the right of nomination with Hilary. Through a grass roots effort, we can call up the votes we need to restore the right of nomination back to us, the people. This is just (a big) part of what we need to do to get Bernie elected as President. Together, we can make it happen.

Punishment, reward and addiction

I'm still thinking about what I've learned from Dr. Ross Greene, Ph.D at Lives in the Balance. Dr. Greene has made some very interesting observations about kids that I've applied to my own life. I can tell you that in the short time that I've watched videos and read the tour there, my attitude has changed completely and I've developed new habits as a result. To summarize, I'm making a shift from punishment and reward for my kids to helping them solve problems.

I had this experience last night with my daughter Emily, who is two years old. She takes a bath every night and with that bath she has discovered the magic of a cup. She can fill the cup with water by submerging it and then pouring it out. In the past few nights, she has found a problem she wanted to solve: Can she empty the bath tub with the cup by filling it with water and pouring it out into the bigger tub surrounding the little tub she was in over and over until the tub is empty?

In the past, I would have interrupted her with the excuse that her quest would take too much time and we really need to get her to bed to sleep. I've done that and have had drama instead. Last night, however, I let her run her course. I let her see that when the water gets too low, it's harder to fill up the cup and at that point she lost interest, handed me the cup, stepped outside the little tub and dumped the water out. Problem solved.

Better yet, she had the satisfaction of learning the solution to the problem that she wanted to solve and can more easily move on to something else. I suspect she will want to try it one or two more times again before she gets bored and finally moves on. But I found that letting her have that experience demonstrates something very important: she can find her own motivation from the inside. I don't have to do anything to motivate her.

I only need to present a quiet, safe and nurturing environment for her to learn from it. She is already motivated and she only engages in drama when the environment presents demands that are beyond her ability to adapt to. This is not a question of motivation, it is a question of skills. As parents, our job is to teach kids the skills to adapt to the environment, not to punish them for failing to adapt.

In my move away from punishment and reward I have realized profound and lasting benefits from that experience, one being an almost complete absence of drama with my daughter.

There is another aspect of the punishment/reward philosophy that has become apparent to me in the past few days: punishment/reward leads to addiction. The punishment/reward philosophy leads to a dependence on external stimulus for motivation. In other words, if I engage in punishment and reward with my kids, I'm saying that they will find their motivation from me, not from inside their own heads and hearts.

A person raised on punishment and reward will spend the rest of their life going from stimulus to stimulus to find that reward instead of finding his own motivation to act from the inside. This also includes the motivation to manage and control impulses. Addicts cannot control their own impulses. Healthy people can.

Addicts can be addicted to many different stimuli for the reward, sex, drugs, money and people, to name a few. Here's the rub: we have no control over people, places and things. It is far easier to find peace and contentment from inside through our own motivation to do so than to depend on anything else outside. You know, like making a choice to be happy with what we have now rather than to be constantly seeking a hit from people, places and things.

Making a decision to be happy is a sign of maturity. Being grateful for what we have now is actually a skill. It's something we learn from our parents, mentors, friends, family, spouse and if we're lucky, our children. No matter what our disposition, it is still up to us to make a decision to be happy.

I know this because I've seen very wealthy people flit from thing to thing seeking that hit and just making a miserable time of their lives. I've also seen people of very meager means find happiness. Finding happiness is not just a decision, its a skill that we must learn in life so that we're not so dependent on people, places and things for it.

As a member of this culture, the one we call America, I see that so much of our culture promotes dependence on people places and things for our happiness. Buy this and be happy. Drink this and be happy. Wear this and be happy. Watch this and be happy. Send brave young men and women to war and be happy. Send those other people to prison and make them change so we can be happy. See where I'm going with this?

Our culture is all about addiction to people, places and things, and the only way we're going to get our next fix is by keeping all that stuff ready for our next hit. But if we learn the skill of finding happiness we can wean ourselves off the dependence of those people, places and things.

It seems to me that every form of therapy, from 12-Steps to Jung, is designed to teach us the skill to find happiness without dependence on other people, places and things to change or stay the same. Every addict requires someone else to change or stay the same. Every addict requires something to change or stay the same. Every addict requires some place to change or stay the same.

In the broader context, when I read about people doing really nasty stuff to other people, including war, I see that event in the context that one group of people want anther group of people to change. I also see war never ends because you can't change people.

People decide to change on their own without any help from anyone else - change is automatic. People change when they learn a new skill, like how to be happy. The diversion of our country's great resources from teaching and learning skills to war is evident in the shape of our economy.

That diversion is the great tragedy of our country. We went to war when we could have rebuilt our crumbling bridges and highways. We could have built more schools and hired more teachers. We could have built more hospitals and trained more nurses and doctors. We could have built a pervasive fiber network sea to sea, an internet for everyone here. We could pay tuition for everyone who wants to go to college. All for the cost of two wars.

As a people, a nation and a culture, we must learn to find happiness from the inside or we shall surely perish. Finding that happiness is a skill that we must learn and teach our kids. When we can move away from punishment and reward and focus on the skill of finding our own happiness, then and only then shall we know everlasting peace. That is the problem we must all solve. Together.

States' rights vs the DARK Act

How interesting. In Utah, we have 4 representatives in the House and all except one voted yes on The Safe and Accurate Food Labeling Act, aka, The DARK Act, an act that would preclude state and local governments from requiring food with genetically modified organisms to be labeled. All of them are staunch supporters of "states' rights", yet 3 of them voted yes on a bill to consolidate the power to require such labeling into the hands of bureaucrats in the far away land of Washington, D.C.

They are likely to be joined soon by Senator Mike Lee and Orrin Hatch of Utah, two Senators who claim to be staunch supporters of states' rights. But when it comes to this vote, states' rights go out the window. And it's not just with Utah, without question, a Red State. The vast majority of Republicans in the House voted yes on HR 1599. Here is a screenshot I found floating around the social media networks to show the final tally:

Of 246 Republicans, only 12 voted no and 4 didn't vote. The Republican rhetoric and voting behavior is about supporting states' rights and how the federal government should let the states alone. Not with this vote.

It is sad to see so many Democrats vote in favor of this bill. Maybe they have been swayed by campaign contributions from the people who deign to write public policy in spite of everyone else, the 0.1%. If you want to know how your representative voted, you can get the full list of of the vote here, at eatlocalgrown.com.

This vote shows in very clear relief the hypocrisy of the states' rights advocates in the House because HR 1599 would reserve the right to require labeling of GMO foods to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), an agency of the federal government. Compare this vote to their animosity pointed at the FCC when it comes to broadband. When it comes to broadband, their attitude is states' rights or bust.

What is the motivation for this kind of public policy? GMOs are patented and the royalties accruing from those patents are the result of an enormous government intervention in the market. This is not the free market at work. This is the government essentially handing over our money to companies like Monsanto, DuPont and Bayer. Those companies make money from crops that are modified to withstand their pest and weed controlling chemicals. They also tell us that those foods are safe, but when asked about food safety, they point to the FDA for answers.

Patents are offered as an incentive to inventors to share their inventions so that others may license the patent and propagate the benefits of the patented invention. In most cases, inventions are proudly labeled as patented by their inventors. They are righteously defended when copycats fail to pay their royalties on the use of a patent without license.

Yet, the people who modify genes in seeds for profit strenuously object to and vigorously fight any effort to require labeling. Why? They fear that people won't buy their food if they are labeled as "GMO". States and municipalities that wanted GMO labeling passed their own laws to get what they couldn't get from the federal government. The intent of this bill is to preempt state and local laws that require GMO labeling, concentrating that power into the hands of a few well placed former employees working at the FDA.

Groups like The Non-GMO Project and Just-Label-It oppose HR 1599 for the reason that the bill was written for the food manufacturing industry, not for the consumers. To get an idea of the advocates for the bill, here is a letter from the Coalition for Safe and Affordable Food (PDF), urging Congress to pass HR 1599. Read the letter then check out who signed it - nothing but corporations and associations of food manufacturers who see nothing but money in this bill.

Now who is this Coalition for Safe and Affordable Food? Those same business organizations, none of which are grassroots organizations of consumers that want strict labeling of GMOs.

So for Congressional conservatives, states' rights are only important if business interests are served. As far as they're concerned, consumers can take a hike. Why? It's OK to deceive consumers by withholding information about the food on the shelf as long as there's a check in the mail.

If you want GMOs labeled, now is the time to act

I am an advocate of GMO labeling. "GMO" stands for "Genetically Modified Organism". A genetically modified organism is an animal or plant with genes that have been altered in some way other than breeding. Breeding is what man has been doing for thousands of years to encourage desirable traits in plants and animals for agriculture. Genetic modification is a direct change of the genes in a plant or animal through some other means.

GMOs have been around since the late 80s. I read a book about them in high school and was fascinated that these molecules could do work without anyone telling them what to do. Molecules such as DNA and proteins give us life. DNA codes for proteins, and the proteins do the rest of the work. The entire process of life has one central, overarching purpose: to keep reproducing DNA. That's it. We are a product of that process.

Even though I read about GMOs in high school, I didn't really form an opinion about them in food until a few years ago. GMO food has been around since the early 90s. GMO corn and soy were quietly introduced into our food supply without consent from the majority of the world's population. No labels were provided.

In the last decade, particularly within the last few years, there has been a fast growing awareness of GMOs and their impact on our environment and our health. It is becoming very apparent that we cannot assess the positive impact of GMOs with any particular accuracy. On the other hand, we do know for sure that glyphosphate resistant crops have encouraged farmers to use much more glyphosphate to kill weeds in their crops. Glyphosphate is now pretty much everywhere, and that is just one example of how GMOs are used.

Glyphosphate is the active ingredient in the Monsanto product known as Round-Up. We generally refer to glyphosphate resistant crops as "Round-Up Ready", a phrase coined by Monsanto. Here is the irony. Monsanto is happy to label their GMO seeds for farmers to use. But they don't want food to be labeled at the grocery store as GMO. Happy to have the patents and all the royalties that accrue, but they really don't want consumers to know what they're eating.

As awareness has grown about the harmful effects of GMO agriculture, various counties, cities and states have passed laws restricting GMO use and cultivation. This of course has upset executives at companies like Monsanto, Bayer, and DuPont.

The biggest names in GMO seeds don't want us to know what we're eating. They claim that any attempt to label the food as "GMO" will disadvantage their position in the market. People will unfairly discriminate against their products even though, as food manufacturers claim, "it's safe". When the Food and Drug Administration is stacked with former employees of Monsanto, it's hard to trust GMO food as safe. There is so much money at stake that judgment in the eyes of the regulator becomes clouded.

The debate over GMOs has now reached Congress and the House has passed a bill forbidding state and local laws requiring the labeling of GMO food. It's called the "Safe and Accurate Food Labeling Act" but critics call it the "Deny Americans the Right to Know (DARK) Act" for the very simple reason that the bill is designed to preclude our right to know what is in our food:

• The bill allows the developer of GMOs to determine the safety of said food rather than requiring the FDA to make that determination. That is a conflict of interest.
• The bill pre-empts all state and local authority for labeling requirements.
• A food can be labeled as non-GMO even if it is produced with a GMO processing aid or enzyme or derived from animals fed GMO feed or given GMO drugs.

It is interesting to see how strenuously seed and food producers are resisting any requirements to label their food as GMO when it contains GMO products. The message we're getting from them is this: We want protection from the government in the market and we want to reserve the right to deceive our customers with impunity.

We can do something about it and we must do it today because the DARK Act has been passed by the House and is now heading to the Senate. Tell your Senator to vote no on the DARK Act if you want to retain the right to know what is in your food. Follow The Non-GMO Project on Facebook, and Twitter, and Just-Label-It on Facebook and Twitter for the latest news.

The facade of a free market in fossil fuels

In school, we are led to believe that America has a free market where people can apply their talents and skills to earn a good living, perhaps even become independently wealthy as a result. While it is true that people can prosper from their efforts, it would seem that the subsidies provided by government aren't really discussed.

For example, despite the taxes we pay in order to inhibit the use of fossil fuels, the fossil industry received an estimated $4.9 trillion subsidy worldwide in 2013, according to a recent IMF report. Subsidies for fossil fuels are projected to grow to $5.3 trillion in 2015. This very large sum is expected to exceed the total cost of health care, worldwide.

To put it differently, for the cost of all of the fossil fuel subsidies alone, we could provide universal free health care for everyone on the planet. But we don't do that because that would be "socialism".

What is also unstated is that these subsidies contribute to enormous profits captured by the fossil fuel industries. Those profits can be used in turn to influence public policy in a way that neutralizes the influence of all others when it comes to the regulation and taxation of fossil fuels.

This is not a free market in action, as any economist will tell you. Worse, the subsidies flow to those at the top of the chain, not the bottom. The subsidies support inflated compensation for fossil fuel executives and do not trickle down.

The environmental and health damage from fossil fuels is almost beyond comprehension. Spills from oil and coal ash, and damage to the water supply from fracking impose enormous costs on ordinary citizens, yet the fossil fuel industry is rarely held to full account. At most, they get a slap on the wrist. No one goes to jail (unless except for China - then execution might be in the wings).

So when conservative American politicians work tirelessly to gut Medicare, or to repeal Obamacare, while at the same time, writing a blank check for fossil fuels, I'm not amused. I see the hypocrisy of our so-called leaders when they encounter a conflict of interest. It's time to use full cost accounting when calculating the costs of the fuels we choose to help run our daily lives.

For a market to be free, there must be transparency and accountability. The current political environment provides very little transparency or accountability when it comes to fossil fuels. Full cost accounting is just a start, but at least then we can start to bring all of the costs of our energy choices into view in any debate on the subject.

Perhaps then, we will see that investments in solar, wind and nuclear power are far less expensive and taxing on the environment compared to fossil fuels. Perhaps then, we can see what it will take to avert total decimation of the world's resources and leave a habitable planet for the next generation.

Let Trump feed the GOP these words, "money is speech"

Donald Trump is an icon that represents money, money, money. He's a billionaire that inherited money from his family and used that money to make more money. Of course, few of us are aware that he's also declared corporate bankruptcy 4 times - corporations are people too, right? Few of us know this because Trump can use money to control the message from the press.

Since Trump has made incendiary and insult remarks about certain Mexican immigrants and calling a a sitting Senator and Vietnam POW a loser, it would seem that many Republicans are upset with Trump as a GOP presidential candidate. Some are worried that Trump is killing the GOP. Some are calling for him to quit the race.

But Trump says otherwise. He says that he is leading in the polls and that he finds ample support in many states for his candidacy. Trump swears he's not running as a Democrat plant.

There is no stopping Trump. Why not? He has money and he's going to use it to push his message. If the GOP truly believes that money is speech, then Trump is going to force feed those words to the GOP, although I'm not sure that's what he had in mind.

With his money, Trump can buy all the airtime he wants. With 90% of media ownership concentrated in the hands of 6 parent corporations, most of which are sympathetic to neoliberalism, Trump will also get plenty of free air time, too.

When the decision of Citizens United was handed down, the leaders of the GOP rubbed their hands together with glee. Will they still feel the same if Trump wins the GOP nomination?

On the other hand, we have Bernie Sanders. Bernie is not a billionaire and probably not a millionaire. He's not using much of his own money to finance his campaign and he's campaigning on the promise of refusing corporate contributions to his campaign. He's received his campaign contributions from hundreds of thousands of supporters in small denominations. $20 here, $45 there, and it all adds up.

Bernie doesn't have to pay people to show up and cheer for him, because he's packing stadiums and auditoriums. Best of all, Bernie understands that this election is not just about getting him elected, that this election is bigger than that. It's about a social movement to end inequality fomented by public policy, to end The Conservative Nanny State.

Trump is all about inequality. His name, his casinos and his words underline his cause. He could be the best thing that ever happened to the Democratic Party if Democrats are willing to take advantage of it. All they have to do is nominate and support Bernie Sanders for president.

Bait and switch with the Fed

Readers familiar with me know me to be a progressive. I wasn't always that way. I grew up in a conservative Republican family. I loved Reagan, but felt he wasn't enough to really change the system. By chance I went to an event sponsored by the Libertarian party as a young adult.

It was there that I was introduced to the "Patriot Movement", the entrance to a long lost weekend that I will never forget. I learned more about how government functions during that time than I ever did in school. Not because of the Libertarian Party or the Patriot Movement. It was because I took the time to write more than 300 requests for documents pursuant to freedom of information acts at state and federal levels (see FOIA).

As a member of the Patriot Movement in good standing, I learned about the history of the Federal Reserve. I read The Secrets of the Federal Reserve, by Eustace Mullins. I found websites parroting the same lines about how Congress passed the Federal Reserve Act in 1913, two days before Christmas while no one noticed. I believed the line that the Fed is a private bank and that the money making power was given to private hands that year. I also believed that the Fed loaned money to our government at interest.

What I didn't know at the time, that is, what I know now, is that the Fed actually pays more than $80 billion a year to the US Treasury in interest each year. The Fed is making money for the US government. And while it is true that the money making power has been given to the Fed, that money making power has been delegated to private banks.

Banks in the United States and around the world have the privilege of creating money with every loan that they make. They are allowed to engage in fractional reserve banking. Investopedia's definition of fractional reserve banking is as follows:

A banking system in which only a fraction of bank deposits are backed by actual cash-on-hand and are available for withdrawal. This is done to expand the economy by freeing up capital that can be loaned out to other parties. Most countries operate under this type of system.

When we hear in the news that the Fed is raising the reserve requirements for banks, they are trying to ensure that the banks don't fail when the loans go bad. The financial crisis we saw in 2008 was a result of many more loans going bad than going well. Investors who put up the capital to make those loans possible were at risk of losing their money. The banks were still on the hook for investor money, but they could pass the buck to the person who took out the loan in the first place. Fortunately for the biggest investors, the government bailed them out.

Here's the kicker: most of the loans that failed in 2008 were created using fractional reserve banking. In general, banks only need to maintain about 10% reserves to outstanding loans. Thus, banks are collecting interest on money they didn't really have - they just created it.

This is why I rolled my eyes when Congress passed yet another law that made it nearly impossible to discharge a student loan in bankruptcy. The bank enjoys numerous protections for those loans. The loans are guaranteed by the government, so even if students default, they're still backed by the government's guarantee.

Second, the bank is loaning money it created out nothing. Once that money goes into circulation, there's not getting it back. It becomes real and goes from the school that received the funds to the employees who work for the school and then back out into the general economy.

When conservatives complain about inflation, they usually point to the Fed and to the Federal government. They complain that the Fed is creating too much money and that creates inflation. What I find interesting is that the finger is being pointed at the wrong banks. The Fed doesn't create all that much money compared to the private banks. Every home loan, every car loan, every student loan, even commercial loans - they are all created by private banks using their own reserves as a basis.

That is what I mean by bait and switch. While most of us are looking at the Fed, we're missing most of the action with the private banks. The private banks get to decide if the economy should grow or not with their lending power. The private banks are not accountable to voters. They are corporations and act as if they are people, with political contributions that promote self-dealing rather than the public interest.

This is why I'm a proponent of public banking. Public banking is where the bank is owned by the government. The bank makes loans to citizens for the public interest, not the private interest. Public banks are boring. They invest in things like infrastructure, education and farms. We have one in the United States that has been around for more than 90 years: The Bank of North Dakota (BND).

The Bank of North Dakota was created for the purpose of insulating local farmers from predatory lending practices outside of the state, particularly, New York. The BND receives money from the state as deposits for the reserves. The deposits are from taxes and fees collected by the state that are in turn used to finance the operations of the state. The BND pays the interest earned back to the the treasury.

During the financial crisis, the state of North Dakota was the only state reporting a budget surplus. The BND did not contribute to inflation despite its work. In fact, the BND kept the local economy humming along despite misery in the rest of the country.

Now contrast this with the ridiculous fees earned by investment banks for CALPERS for terrible performance. Public retirement funds go to the private banks for investment guidance so that their funds can keep up with or surpass inflation. What they get is poor performance relative to a public bank.

Public banks are risk averse where private banks are not. Public banks are accountable to the public where private banks are not. Private banks serve private interests. Public banks serve the public interest. All of these characteristics are well documented at the Public Banking Institute.

If you've ever wondered why we're thrust through a boom and bust cycle every generation, ask your private bank. If you would like to see and end to the boom and bust cycle, consider agitating for a public bank. You might just get one.