Politics and Leadership (2011)

© 2012 Peter Free

 

The Problem with Unregulated Capitalism Is that It Explicitly Dumps the Moral Premises that Arguably Underlie Just Societal Behavior (15 December 2011)

 

 

Bashing the Democratic Party with Cause — Economist Ian Fletcher’s Thoughtful Take on Why the American “Left” Is Ineffectual, when it Comes to Making Sensible Economic Policy (12 December 2011)

 

 

A Strikingly Accurate Comment and an Implied Question from Dr. Boyce Watkins — Who Are We Now? — Using Presidential Candidate Newt Gingrich to Symbolize Mistaken Spiritual Directions (09 December 2011)

 

 

Do You Wonder Why the United States Is Struggling Economically? — Take this “Evaporating Brain Infrastructure” Tidbit (08 December 2011)

 

 

Regarding Columnist Richard Cohen’s Question — In a Nation of 313 Million, How Is it Statistically Possible that Almost All of Our 2012 Presidential Candidates Would Be Such Bad Choices — America’s Flirtation with Self-Destruction (06 December 2011)

 

 

Pretty Much What I Think — Business Consultant James Moore on Republican Presidential Candidate Jon Huntsman — and Reflections on How Moron-i-Tude Has Destroyed Abraham Lincoln’s Party (30 November 2011)

 

 

Pepper Spray at UC-Davis Goes Deeper than Just “Police Pigs” Doing Bad Things (24 November 2011)

 

 

Going Down Exactly the Wrong Road — Provoking China Militarily in the Pacific, while Simultaneously Doing Nothing to Challenge China’s Theft of the American Economy — a Policy that Only a Geopolitical Fool (and a Multi-National Corporate Plutocrat) Would Like (21 November 2011)

 

 

The Rats Are Back at Play — Representative Charlie Rangel Partied with Democratic Party Leaders at an (as much as) $5,000 per Plate Dinner — Columnist Dana Milbank’s Insightful Take on the Corruption that Is Congress (19 November 2011)

 

 

President Obama Is Good at Postponing anything that Is Not in His Immediate Political Interest — Conservative Charles Krauthammer Harpoons the President’s Lack of Leadership Courage and Liberal Dylan Ratigan Laments the President’s Lack of Robert Bly’s “Zeus Energy” (18 November 2011)

 

 

A Sharp Eye for Irony — Journalist Robert Scheer Castigates Billionaire New York Mayor Bloomberg’s Ruse to Cleanse Society of the Occupy Movement — a Lesson in How the American Plutocracy Uses Our Laws against Us (17 November 2011)

 

 

Vandana Shiva’s Thoughts on “Occupy Wall Street” Capture the Movement’s Meaning — an Overdue Gandhian Perspective on More Equitable Living (16 November 2011)

 

 

President Obama’s Perennially Cynical Hypocrisy Is Bad for the Nation — Perhaps One of the Republicans’ “Panel of Fools” Would Be a Better Choice in 2012 (15 November 2011)

 

 

Is Saying Incredibly Dumb Things, in Order to Get Elected, Good for the United States? — the Failure of Representative Government, as the Founders Had Probably Envisioned It (14 November 2011)

 

 

Federal Social Experiments with Human Behavior Don’t Always Work as Intended — Moving Previously Authorized Single-Occupant Hybrid Cars Out of Car Pool Lanes in the San Francisco Bay Area Slowed All Lanes of Traffic — and A Related Observation about Silliness in Government (05 November 2011)

 

 

U.S. Bigoted Foolishness on Global Display — American Statutes Forced the Administration to Halt UNESCO’s American Funding because the U.N. Agency Admitted Palestine as a Member — the Obama Administration Worsened this Ethically Unattractive Mess by Pretending It’s All the Palestinians’ Fault (02 November 2011)

 

 

Facts in the Congressional Budget Office’s Study of Incomes (1979 to 2007) Destroy Plutocratic Justifications for “Trickle Down” — Do Ordinary Americans Really Exist Just to Serve their Increasingly Greedy Plutocrat Masters? (28 October 2011)

 

 

Paul Rosenberg’s Interesting Application of the Psychological Concepts of Denial, Displacement, and Projection to the Politics of Recession — Do You Think His Analysis Makes Sense? (26 October 2011)

 

 

BP’s Coming Back and Going Deeper in the Gulf of Mexico — even before It’s Paid Trivial Fines for Its 2010 Deepwater Horizon Oil Disaster (26 October 2011)

 

 

A Small Chinese Study Demonstrates a Remarkable Elevation in the Risk for Neural Tube Defects, due to Environmental Pollutants’ Effects on Fetal Development — a Reminder of the General Case to Be Made for Government Regulation (20 October 2011)

 

 

“You’re gonna slam Mormons, when the only two demonstrably intelligent and reasonable candidates in the Republican presidential pack are both Mormons?” — Give Common Sense a Break (13 October 2011)

 

 

It Is Not that Wealth Is Undesirable — It’s that Our Economic System Is Rigged to Steal Wealth from Many of the People Who Create and Sustain It — a Definitional Difference that Parasitic Plutocrats Don’t Want Us to See (10 October 2011)

 

 

An Excellent Piece of Analytical Journalism — Scott Wilson’s Essay about “Obama, the Loner President” (08 October 2011)

 

 

Genetically Altered Canola Is Now Interbreeding with Non-Modified Types in the Environment at Large — the U.S. Department of Agriculture Once Pretended this Would Not Happen (07 October 2011)

 

 

Terrorist Access to Libyan Shoulder-Fired Missiles — a Predictable Consequence of President Obama’s Foolish Intervention — Bad for the Public and the American Deficit, but Really Good for the Military-Industrial Complex (28 September 2011)

 

 

Why a Diligent Press Matters — Solyndra’s Loan-Guaranteed Bankruptcy as an Example of Journalism’s Power to Discredit Politicians’ Harmful Untruths (27 September 2011)

 

 

So Much for Elitists Being Out of Touch — Massachusetts Senatorial Candidate Professor Elizabeth Warren Gutted Republican Arguments (which Solely Favor Plutocrats) in Two Simple and Logically Irrefutable Populist Paragraphs — at Last, Someone Who Actually Thinks (22 September 2011)

 

 

Governor Rick Perry’s Thoughtlessness Is Well Illustrated by His Unthinking Defense of Texas’ Death Penalty Executions (16 September 2011)

 

 

Things Are Often Not What They Seem — an Allegory from Science (Applicable to Politics) about Jumping to Conclusions Based on Too Little Information (16 September 2011)

 

 

An Extraordinary Juxtaposition of Concisely-Delivered Brain with Rambling Stupidity — Dr. Zbigniew Brezinski’s Strategic Vision Compared to the Air-Headedness of both Political Parties’ Presidential Candidates(15 September 2011)

 

 

Could There Be an Opening for Intellect on the Political Right? — After an Earful from Double-Dummies Governor Perry and Representative Bachmann, Neo-Conservative Columnist Jennifer Rubin Wants Smarter Candidates (14 September 2011)

 

Michael Brenner Sees America’s Flight from Truth as a Benefit to Quasi-Narcissists like President Obama — Do You Agree? (06 September 2011)

 

 

Just When We Thought American Politics Could Not Get Worse, President Obama Incomprehensibly Displays Hypocrisy, Indefensible Partisanship, and a Limp Backbone — All in One Trivial, but Telling, Incident (01 September 2011)

 

 

Another Lesson for the United States from Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi Radiation Release — Know and Do Nothing National Government Is Not the Way to Go (31 August 2011)

 

 

Increasingly Dilapidated San Francisco Represents a Microcosm of American Decline — Stephan Richter’s Non-Partisan Essay Is Worth Reading for the Causative Themes it Weaves (23 August 2011)

 

 

How a Responsible Political Grown-Up Talks — Former Treasury Official Bruce Bartlett Speaks about the Economy and the Federal Reserve Board, after Texas Governor Rick Perry Demagogically Spouts Off about the Fed Chairman’s Alleged Treason (19 August 2011)

 

 

A Radiation Exposure Health Disaster Is Apparently beginning to Play Out in Japan — a Lesson for the United States about Integrity in Government(18 August 2011)

 

 

An Example of Peruvian Peasant Democracy that Apparently Shames Our Own — Rodrigo Vazquez’ Short Documentary Captures the Early 21stCentury’s Most Important Themes — Poverty, Habitat Destruction, and Partial Solutions in the Form of Democracy and the Empowerment of Women (17 August 2011)

 

 

Jamie Doran’s Short Documentary, Africa Rising, Examines an Apparently Successful Ethiopian Self-Help Project that May Have Implications for Other Places, including the United States (11 August 2011)

 

 

Don’t Count on the Wealthy to Be Generous or Helpful, says a University of California Study — if True, the Findings Have Profound Political and Economic Implications (09 August 2011)

 

 

We Really Should Be Wondering about Our Society’s Sanity — Giving Standard & Poor’s, a Private Entity with Self-Interested Economic and Political Aims, an Unopposed Platform from which to Rate the United States’ Credit Worthiness (08 August 2011)

 

 

A Year after BP’s Deepwater Horizon Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill, the American Media Mostly No Longer Bothers to Report the Aftermath — butAl Jazeera Does, and Its News Is Not Good (05 August 2011)

 

 

The Republican Party Has become so Destructively Extreme, and the President so Strategically Inept, that One Wonders If Anyone in America Is Going to Wake Up Enough to Grip Reality —  the Irony of the Tea Party’s Partial Correctness (29 July 2011)

 

 

By the Language of Fools Shall Ye Know Them (27 July 2011)

 

 

Taking Responsibility Is Characteristic of Genuine Leaders — Last Night, President Obama and Speaker Boehner Tried to Avoid Responsibility by Blaming “Washington” for the Nation’s Woes (26 July 2011)

 

 

When None of Our Political Leaders Say Reliably True Things, How Is the Public Supposed to Have Reasonable Opinions about What to Do? — Raising the Debt Ceiling and Attacking the Deficit (25 July 2011)

 

 

Does a Gilt-Edged Education (and Newly Attained Privileges) Make It More Likely that a Politician Will Ultimately Prove to Be a Wimpy Sell-Out? — There May Be a Valid Gut Reason Why So Many Working Americans Detest Elitists (20 July 2011)

 

 

The Price of Habitual Political Lying Is that People Eventually Won’t Believe Anything You Say, even When You Resort to Telling the Truth — the President’s Lack of Credibility with Many Americans Has Hampered His Effort to Raise the Debt Ceiling (19 July 2011)

 

 

Columnist Dana Milbank Praises Republican Senator Rob Portman (Ohio), a Man Trying to Walk in Senator Robert Taft’s Admirable Shoes — a Story Illustrating that Who We Pick as Heroes Reflects Who We Are and (Sometimes) Who We Will Become (15 July 2011)

 

 

California’s New Oakland-San Francisco Bay Bridge Is Being Manufactured in China — How’s that for a Sign of Depressing American Times? (11 July 2011)

 

 

Courteous Competence and Genuine Helpfulness Can Become Successful Small Business Models in an Age of Deliberate Deception and Intentional Sub-Mediocrity (08 July 2011)

 

 

An Eloquently Brief Statement regarding the National Condition from Marian Wright Edelman, President of the Children’s Defense Fund — This Fourth of July, Nothing Need Be Added (02 July 2011)

 

 

I Do Not Think that President Kennedy Would Have Approved of Taking NASA Out with the Trash — the United States’ Lost Sense of Purpose Cuts Us Deeply (02 July 2011)

 

 

An Absolute “Must Read” — Phil Angelides’ Exposé of America’s Ruling Class’s Attempt to Lie about Its Causation of the Financial Disaster that Impoverished Ordinary Americans — Brilliantly Done (29 June 2011)

 

 

Fat Cats Successfully Fighting Big Daddy Banks for Compensation after the Mortgages They Bought for Investment Purposes Went Bad — but Still No Justice for People whose Homes Were Taken Away — Now Ain’t that Just Like the New American Plutocratic Way? (29 June 2011)

 

 

Maureen Dowd So Accurately Portrays our President’s Reluctance to become More than a Cowardly Conniver — Why Does President Obama Consider Himself Immune from Moving the Burden of Life Responsibly Forward? (27 June 2011)

 

 

A Clever Allegorical Essay from Henry Allen Regarding Our Society’s Unwillingness to Cope with the Facts that Underlie Our Decline — F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Perspective on Culture Revived (18 June 2011)

 

 

Hope for Meaningful Leadership Was Dashed in New Hampshire’s Republican Presidential “Debate” (15 June 2011)

 

 

Does the Shortage of Generic Cancer Drugs Suggest an Argument for Government Subsidies, Reworked Tax Policy, or Sponsored Manufacturing? (11 June 2011)

 

 

Ian Fletcher’s Perspective on the Need for Government-Funded Innovation — and Two Simple Principles He Suggests as Justification (31 May 2011)

 

 

Escaping Genetically Modified Organisms (GMO) — What the Industry and the USDA Disingenuously Deny (29 May 2011)

 

 

On Perceptions of Moral Conscience, a Tendency to Blame the Messenger for Giving Notice that We Have Gone Badly Astray — the Abuse Heaped on Professor Cornell West for Eloquently Illuminating President Obama’s Broken Promises and the Resulting Moral Failures of His Administration(25 May 2011)

 

 

When the Judiciary Has to Force the Other Two Branches of Government to Act Ethically, Are We Seeing Warning Signs of a Morally Failing Society? — The U.S. Supreme Court’s Decision in Brown v. Plata and the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals’ Opinion in Veterans for Common Sense v. Shinseki (24 May 2011)

 

 

An Example of How Worse-than-Stupid, Double-Dealing Hypocrisy Reigns in American Political Affairs — Texas, Its Wild Fires, and Demagogic Air-Head Governor Rick Perry (23 May 2011)

 

 

A Quiet American Greatness and the Power of Its Good Example — New York Police Arrested International Monetary Fund Director, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, on his Alleged Rape Victim’s Story Alone — Women’s Human Rights Attorney Cheryl Thomas Draws Our Attention to What’s Right with the United States (19 May 2011)

 

 

Plutocracy Is Back at Work in the U.S. Supreme Court — When Little Guys Agree to a “Take-It or Leave-It” Contract Arbitration Clause that Prohibits Class Actions, They Cannot Class Arbitrate to Recover Small Fees that Corporations Have Stolen from Them — even when State Contract Law Permits  (16 May 2011)

 

 

A Study in Pennsylvania and New York Found that Methane Concentrations Were 17 Times Higher (and Potentially Dangerous) in Water Wells Near Natural Gas Hydraulic Fracturing Sites than Concentrations in Wells More than 1 Kilometer Away — Another Demonstration of the Public’s Forced Subservience to Self-Interested Corporations and Lax Government (10 May 2011)

 

 

Avarice as a Deadly Sin — Brief Reflections on Corporate Corruption’s Grip on Us (09 May 2011)

 

 

Disparities in Law Enforcement Based on Race and Plutocracy’s Priorities — Going after Barry Bonds for Not Much of Anything and Giving the Financial Sector’s Numerous (Billions-of-Dollars-Stealing) Crooks a Pat on the Back (14 April 2011)

 

 

A Talented Synopsis Provides a Framework for Sound Political Thinking — Philosophical Counselor Andrew Taggart Summarized Columnist David Brooks’ View of Society in a Concise Fashion that Simultaneously Provides an Analytical Benchmark for Comparative Political Philosophy(12 April 2011)

 

 

President Obama May Finally Have Learned How to Communicate Meaningfully — the Art of the Loaded Synopsis (14 April 2011)

 

 

President Obama’s Casually Displayed Disregard for the Worth of His Words Makes Former President George W. Bush Look Good (05 April 2011)

 

 

Dealing with Multi-National Corporations’ Tax Avoidance — Robert Samuelson Has an Idea that Might Help (04 April 2011)

 

 

Until We Fix Ourselves, the Hope of Fixing Others Is a Delusion — the War-Making Impulse (30 March 2011)

 

 

A Good Question about the Failed Evolution of Political Culture — Katrina vanden Heuvel Asks Why Previously Disgraced Leaders Still Have their Opinions Prominently Aired by the Media during Challenging Times, when One Would Think Proven Capability Would Be at a Premium (30 March 2011)

 

 

President Obama’s Cynical Abdication of Leadership in Libya (25 March 2011)

 

 

If Ya Don’t Know Nuthin’, How Smart Ya Gonna Be? — The American Public’s Ignorance-Based Approach to almost Everything, Including the Libyan War (22 March 2011)

 

 

American Strategic Stupidity on Display Again — Short-Sighted U.S. Diplomacy in the United Nations Probably Commits Americans to another Probably Counterproductive Intervention — this Time in Libya (18 March 2011)

 

 

Ezra Klein Exposed Former Senator Evan Bayh as an Example of Congress’ Never-Ending Supply of Nation-Damaging Hypocrisy (17 March 2011)

 

 

Would a National Character Trait that Combined Immodesty with a Disregard for Facts Generate Dangerous Domestic and Foreign Policy?(15 March 2011)

 

 

Defense Secretary Gates’ Unenviable Position — Chewing Our NATO Allies Out under Circumstances in which their Afghanistan-Slighting Behavior Is Probably the Right Thing to Do (11 March 2011)

 

 

Senator John Kerry’s Washington Post Opinion Column, Calling for a No-Fly Zone in Libya, Does Not Address U.S. National Interests or the Reasons to Worry about a Subsequent Geopolitical Backlash (11 March 2011)

 

 

“Climate Change” Versus “Global Warming” — Opinion Study Says the American Partisan Divide Can Be Camouflaged by Using the Less Descriptive Phrase (10 March 2011)

 

 

U.S. Department of Agriculture Decided against Regulating the Planting of Genetically Modified Alfalfa — Possibly a Very Big Deal (09 March 2011)

 

 

Improving Education as It Now Exists Will Not Advance the Economic Interests of Middle and Low-Middle Income People— Plutocrats and Politicians Are Lying to Us (07 March 2011)

 

 

Pew Research Center Opinion Poll Regarding Demographics of Pro and Anti-Gun Control Is Detailed Enough to Be Illuminating (03 March 2011)

 

 

Coming Trend — Pharmaceutical Companies as Research Parasites (02 March 2011)

 

 

Surprising Details Expose Governor Walker’s Plutocratic Cronyism in Wisconsin — Economist Paul Krugman Found this Gem Hidden in the Legislative Bill that the Governor Proposed (25 February 2011)

 

 

Turning Cowardly Political Foolishness into Spineful Seriousness — Where Does One Start? (19 February 2011)

 

 

From Bahrain, a Two Sentence Description of Authoritarian Evil — In Memoriam, Mahmoud Abutaki and the Other Fallen (17 February 2011)

 

 

A Little Bit of Real Money in the “Waste, Fraud, and Abuse” Category — Says the Government Accountability Office (16 February 2011)

 

 

“Scumbag John” — Speaker of the House Boehner as the Face of American Government (14 February 2011)

 

 

Momentous Egypt — Hope for Humankind from a Place that Once Seemed Unlikely to Offer It (11 February 2011)

 

 

China’s Inevitable Rise to Eminence Means that the United States Needs to Prepare for the Challenge (06 February 2011)

 

 

Democracy Is Not a Panacea, but It Is a Start — Fear of Unrest and the Unknown in Egypt (03 February 2011)

 

 

Short-Term Thinking Is Killing the United States — Are None of Our Leaders Brave Enough to Slap Some Sense into Us? (27 January 2011)

 

 

Rebuilding Haiti with Stronger Concrete — an Intermediate-Technology Solution Offered by an American Company, Cart-Away Concrete Systems’ Concrete MD (26 January 2011)

 

 

While We Americans Lounge around the Illusory Free Market Pool, China Is Taking Authoritarian, Predatory Capitalism to High Strategic Ground(24 January 2011)

 

 

The Terror Industrial Complex, as “Frontline” Calls It, Is a Metastatic Cancer — Unproductive, Egregiously Costly, and a Threat to American Civil Liberties (20 January 2011)

 

 

California’s Governance Troubles Provide a Mirror for the Rest of Us — If We Are Willing to Recognize Systemic Dysfunction (17 January 2011)

 

 

Henry Kissinger’s Cold-War Avoiding Analysis of Conflicting American and Chinese Mindsets Is Well Done — His Prescription for Conflict’s Resolution Is Unlikely to Happen (14 January 2011)

 

 

Fighting over Imaginary Budget Numbers — the Anticipated Battle over ObamaCare Repeal — How Silliness Characterizes American Political Debate (07 January 2011)

 

 

Rhetorical Abstraction Is an Enemy of Sound Government (06 January 2011)

 

 

Former Florida Congressman Alan Grayson Was a Welcome Change from Wimpy Liberals (03 January 2011)