WhackyNation

Whenever the issue of caring for children comes up— and that’s quite often — I’m reminded of my dear Mom, who died in 1990 after a long struggle with Alzheimer’s. She was a very talented woman, who should have had a career as an actress or an operatic performer. She was that good.

However, the dictates in the society in which she grew up in Italy and in the U.S. forced her to forgo any thoughts of a career other than motherhood and housekeeping. In the more understanding, progressive world that came later, she could also have enjoyed a professional career in music or the stage.

In the social revolution that has since developed, the family role has changed considerably, but none more than that of the modern mother. She will always play the principal role as child bearer, but she should also have a right to a life of her own, and, if she wants it, a career away from the kitchen, the laundry room, and the home.

Despite the advances in our society, I think most leaders of American industry, business, education, and the professions still haven’t yet understood that they must take on a much greater role in the care of children. Corporate America has a bigger stake in day care than it has yet realized. It should be gearing up to provide day care for the children of all employees and executives that need it — and ON THE PREMISES!

In the long run, it would more than pay for itself in employee productivity and loyalty. Furthermore, it would solidify a notion that needs wider acceptance: Not only should fathers take more responsibility for tomorrow’s child; so should the industries, professions, and governments that employ the father or mother, or both.

Congress and the 50 legislatures should also play a most important role in supporting the “day care at work” idea. Lawmakers should devise an incentive program to help the industries, professions, and government pay for the expenses of creating and supporting day-care facilities at the workplace.

I recall making the proposal to the C.E.O. of KIRO-TV and Radio when I worked there in the 1980s and 1990s. Ken Hatch was his name, and he thought my idea was a great one. However, a few days later he had to tell me the station could not adopt the idea of workplace day care because it could not sustain the expense of the plan.

That’s why I say Congress and the legislatures should come to the rescue of a great proposal that needs government help through an incentive program. For example, companies establishing a day care should be given a tax writeoff to help make it happen.

It’s been a while since my last post, but we professors tend to dial it back in the summer. I was jolted out of my slumber by this artilce in the NY Times announcing Bush will step in to “stabilize” the home mortgage market. Bad idea. Markets work because when companies make good decisions, they are rewarded, but when they make BAD decisions, they are “punished.” If the US taxpayer is required to step in and fund some $60 billion of bad loans, what message does that send to Countrywide, Liberty Financial, and all the other companies that chose to make risky loans in the hopes of higher profits? It tells them to go ahead and engage in very risky behavior–if they win, they keep their money–if they lose, the taxpayer will cover their losses. That is a sure-fire way to distort the market system.

Imagine if Las Vegas casinos told gamblers the same thing. If you win at the blackjack table, you keep your winnings. If you lose at the blackjack table, the house will cover your losses. Would you still gamble the same? No way. Everyone would take many more risks knowing their would be no consequences if their risky behavior caused them to lose.

The media and Democrats have been spinning this story as a bailout for the homeowner. That is only partly the truth. By bailing out the homeowner, the US taxpayer would also be bailing out the mortgage companies that these homeowners owe money to. It’s kind of like the old saying, “If you owe the bank a million dollars and you can’t pay…you’re in trouble. But, if you owe the bank a billion dollars and can’t pay…the BANK is in trouble.”

When it comes to markets, politicians should not always do what is popular. They need to adopt policy that does not distort market incentives. Countywide and other companies made some very bad, very risky decisions to offer lots of no-down, interest-only loans to people with shaky credit. For a while the gamble paid off and they made lots of money. Now the gamble is not paying off and they deserve to LOSE lots of money. They do not deserve to have me, you, and all the other taxpayers of America bail them out for their bad decisions.

I apoligize in turning off comments until I can strategize better against the spammers.  During the past week, WhackyNation has been inundated with more than 20,000 pieces of spam.  I have been spending all my time dealing with the issue.

I have some ideas to combat the spammers, but due to my schedule it will take me a few days to execute.

I appreciate your patience.  These spammers are a nuisance.

Way back in the mid-1960s, I was attending a national newspaper conference in the nation’s capital — and found myself in a bull session with four other editors of major newspapers like mine. All four were older than I and all had once covered White House and capital politics and campaigns.

They took turns telling stories about the sex escapades, drinking bouts, and carousing of men and women in public life, including presidents and senators who were very well known to the news media and the public at large. Curious as to why they hadn’t reported the incidents so the public might better know the candidates and have all the information they needed for decisions at the polls, I asked them to explain.

The editors laughed heartily and called me naïve, wondering why I had even dared to pose such a question Their common reaction was generally along this line: “Why, Mr. Guzzo, you just don’t do things like that, especially with Presidents and prominent members of the Senate and House.”

The gist of their argument was that “there were some things the public and the press in general didn’t have a right to know.” I know they didn’t care for my bluntness, but I had to tell them that I didn’t think much of their double standard about reporting the news. They scoffed at my attitude, adding that their job as editors and news reporters was to report the news, not make decisions for the public.

Well, all that transpired just before Watergate, and, as everyone now knows, Watergate changed the rules of the “ball game,” as it were. And as a lifelong newsman — and a teacher of journalism besides — I wasn’t about to gamble with my strict principles, and I was pleased that Watergate, distasteful as it was to the American people, at least brought those four editors and other American newsmen down to earth with the rest of us.

I also recall the case of Senator Gary Hart, who had presidential ambitions until his chicanery was exposed and he was tumbled off his high pedestal. It was rough on Hart, of course, but, then, it was also rough on the persistent reporters who had to dig hard and work long hours to drag out the dirty linen.

With the advent of Watergate, the Hart expose, and a few other incidents involving people in high places, the revolution that took place in American journalism was one of the most important and necessary developments in a free republic, the greatest democracy the world has ever known.

I am deeply grateful to those reporters who brought about that revolution. Thanks to them and those elements of the news media that wanted no part of the onetime hypocritical double standard, honest newspaper editors and broadcast journalists no longer have that “secrecy” albatross to bear.

Now, I have only one more deep concern I wish the news media would “expose” and banish: Print and broadcast journalists and their superiors must return to the early days of objective journalism and divest themselves of prejudices on the Left and the Right in reporting the news.

An honest, unprejudiced press should be one of the hallmarks of our freedom — and it must adhere constantly to the objectivity that made it the envy of the world.

More than a century ago, a touring Baptist minister, Russell Conwell, captivated millions of believers with a sparkling and unforgettable sermon he called “Acres of Diamonds.” Frankly, I’m surprised that today’s new generations haven’t rediscovered him and his sermon.

The reverend preached the American success story, and he urged the accumulation of wealth for good purpose. I was a believer early on and remembered particularly his references to travel. One didn’t have to travel throughout the world looking for diamonds, he said, because they were right there in your own backyard and mine.

I was impressed at a young age and believed the reverend — until the day I started traveling to foreign countries as a newsman. Wanta know something? With all reverence for the reverend and his great sermon, I learned to believe that the advice he gave in “Acres of Diamonds” was all wet.

Many of the fondest memories of my life grew out of the travels I made in search of beauty, news, important people, and experience, in general. Most of my trips were to cover news events or very important personalities, but the leisurely trips were probably even more memorable and more enjoyable.

Traveling to foreign lands taught me what I couldn’t have learned in a million books or magazine articles — or even travel and adventure films.

It’s great to get a close-up look at the Notre Dames, Taj Mahals, Coliseums, Buckingham Palaces, and other historic edifices, but the real gems to me were the people I met and my observation of the way they lived.

In travels around the world, one sees beauty and misery and wealth and cruel poverty hand in hand, side by side. For the first time, you understand history and current events, plus the differences between people of all nations. And when you return, you are bound to be more understanding and more tolerant of all peoples.

But, best of all, traveling to other nations will permit you to rediscover America! Things you took for granted have new meaning. You gain a new appreciation of the forests, the cities, the rivers, the wide open spaces, the beauty of the American people themselves — and, most of all, the brightness of real freedom.

Suddenly, the once trite term, “democratic republic,” has more meaning, a profound and beautiful meaning. Lord knows we have our problems, but as long as we hew to the dream first made a reality by our forefathers, who wrote our Constitution and detailed our rights and liberties as individuals, the Republic of the United States of America will always be the only home for us.

If the Reverend Conwell’s spirit will permit me, I would like to revise his sermon this way: You find diamonds in your backyard only after you’ve seen what the rest of the world has to offer. Amen.

I’ve got to admit it.  I am impressed by the NutRoots’ fundraising success for Darcy Burner.  Over 3,000 people contributed more than $127,000 during the past few days in response to President Bush visiting Bellevue to attend a Dave Reichert fundraiser.

That’s considerable money for Burner and a testament to the strength of the Bush Derangement Syndrome infecting the American Left.

One thing is certain: the Left can successfully fundraise via the net because Leftist activists have reached a critical mass online.  That’s missing on the Right.  And it’s a disadvantage going into the next election cycle.

Conservative activists remain unhip to the net and are losing out on the net’s tactical and strategic capabilities.

Whenever another criminal trial comes up in which the defense attorney has already announced he or she will enter an insanity plea, I cringe because I know it will be another case of confused judgment, no matter how the jury rules.

I say to myself, well, here we go again.

In American courts, we continue to rely on a cumbersome system that confuses decisions of guilt with the issue of insanity. For some reason that escapes me, we invest jurors with no background or experience in psychiatry with the responsibility of making decisions only a reputable psychiatrist is capable of making.

Many criminals who are truly insane or who feign insanity are given lenient sentences or are adjudged innocent and freed solely because a jury decides the criminal “didn’t know what he was doing” or “was not in his right mind” when he fired the gun or wielded the dagger or hatchet in a slaying.

In Washington State, as in most other states, the legal definition of insanity has been boiled down to finding out whether a defendant knows the difference between right and wrong. It’s an unfair and an inefficient and dangerous oversimplification. Analysis of the ailing mind requires a much more profound examination.

In many cases, judges, who also lack the expertise to make a judgment that should be left to psychiatrists, are as confused as the jurors and, in some of the trials I’ve covered, advise the jurors to consult each other to determine whether a defendant is sane or insane. Ridiculous!

In those cases, the judges have then asked jurors to come up with a unanimous decision — after they have “consulted each other,” of course. I don’t believe the law in any state permits criminal convictions by consensus. If it did, it would mark an extraordinary revision in the judicial code.

For years I have been appealing for a new approach in our courts to all cases in which insanity becomes an issue or is used by a defendant as a defense. That approach is already at work in a few European countries, most notably Holland and Denmark. In those nations, a person pleading insanity must first submit to a trial in which psychiatrists determine whether he or she is truly mentally ill.

If he or she is adjudged insane, he or she is then committed to an asylum for treatment until cured or for a lifetime, if that is the case. If the defendant is adjudged to be sane, he or she is then tried on the criminal charge and no mention of insanity is permitted in the subsequent trial.

Finally, and most important of all, I believe we must devise better methods of discovering and treating ailing minds — BEFORE they erupt into tragic behavior. That means we should teach families, employers, school teachers, all law-enforcement officers, and probably all of society how to detect the first danger signs of mental illness.

And then we should do something about the ailing members of society to try bringing them back to sanity before they become desperate and dangerous.

In the recent King County primary elections, it was reported that only 24 percent — less than one fourth of the eligible voters — turned up at the polling places or sent in absentee ballots by mail, which amounts to a disgrace for people who pride themselves on their freedoms in a democratic republic.

Worse yet, election officials are already predicting — based on past performances — that the vote total will fall short of 50 percent in the November elections this year, and, perhaps, even in 2008, a presidential-election year. These sorry figures have become a disturbing regular occurrence in recent years.

It’s not an embarrassment for local voters alone. The same regrettably low vote totals have plagued communities across the U.S., and no one seems to know exactly why people who value their precious freedoms so highly fail to chalk up 100 percent voting numbers in primaries and final elections.

Even the Iraqi people, just rescued from the grasp and greed of a totalitarian dictator and his undemocratic regime, registered a remarkable vote total of more than 75 percent in their most recent national elections, despite the terrorism threatening their lives. Similar huge votes have been recorded in many other nations.

Where have we dropped the ball on the issue of taking advantage of the most precious right we have as Americans — the right to vote? Does the fault lie with the schools and education in general? Or can it be blamed on the print and broadcast news media? Or is it some other psychological reason that is not apparent?

Whatever the reason, I must recall a proposal I made many years ago and have repeated many times. It’s a proposal I believe could guarantee a huge or even a 100 percent turnout at every primary and final election, as well as special elections along the way. Hear me out and see if you don’t agree.

I proposed that an important incentive should be added to the voting process to get all the people to the polls again and again. Those persons voting would receive a reduction in their taxes each time they voted, whether it be in their property tax or their income tax. Property owners would receive the reduction in their annual property tax, and renters or leasors would receive theirs in their federal or state income tax.

Thus, those failing to vote would be denied the reduction. If such a program could not be adopted, then I challenge someone to come up with a better incentive. Whatever the plan, it is imperative that the lazy non-voter be shocked into doing his duty as an American.

We are indebted to the Townhall website on the Internet for relaying a strong message from Health Care America that supports — with facts — my recent commentary lambasting Michael Moore and his movie, “Sicko,” for a steady stream of lies about health-care programs in foreign nations.

The message, delivered by Sarah Berk, Health Care America’s executive director, offers numerous factual statements and statistics to prove, as she put it, that “Michael Moore ends the movie, ‘Sicko,’ with a lie” by saying that “every European country offers ‘free’ health coverage to its citizens and that every European country provides such coverage through a ‘single payer’ system.”

It’s too bad that American newspapers and television and radio stations have ignored Miss Berk’s telling expose of Moore’s Socialist blarney and chronicle of lies and misrepresentations on the health-care issue, both as to the programs in European and other nations and our own health-care system.

Here’s how she put it: “So what makes Moore’s statements untrue? Reality. Most European countries directly charge their citizens for their health coverage. It is not ‘free’ anywhere. Some nations require people to buy coverage from health-insurance companies that look very much like American health-insurance companies.

In these countries, each citizen pays a portion of his or her weekly paycheck for health insurance — just like our Social Security payroll deduction. In Germany, each employee pays 2 percent of each paycheck for health care and each employer matches that 2 percent. People also can spend additional money to buy better coverage.

The government of the Netherlands takes 9 percent of a worker’s paycheck every week to purchase health coverage. It’s hard to figure out how Michael Moore can legitimately call such a payroll deduction ‘free.’”

As if echoing my commentary, Miss Berk deplores Moore’s praise of Canada’s health-care system, completely ignoring the fact that the Socialist program north of the border is so confused and has made health care so difficult to obtain that a great many Canadians come to the U.S. for treatments.

So much for Michael Sicko Moore, who seems to hate the U.S. so much that he has to fabricate material for his radical, lying movies. If he detests living so much in America, why doesn’t he move to another country? I’d be among millions who would gladly contribute air fare to promote his move!

The worst has happened in the Far East, where the Japanese are running out of chopsticks made of wood, and their principal supplier, China, also a chopstick-using population, is raising the prices on the supply they send to Japan and threatening to cut off the supply altogether.

What to do? Japan, a nation the Associated Press reported had been using 25 billion sets of wooden chopsticks a year (!), is now turning to ersatz chopsticks made of plastic. The plastic sticks work OK, provided one doesn’t apply too much pressure on them and winds up with a mouth full of plastic splinters. At any rate, as one can imagine, the environmental extremists are jumping for joy at the thought that China, Japan, and other supplying countries will have to stop cutting down the trees that supply the raw material for the chopsticks. They may have a very long wait, because I doubt that the Chinese and Japanese will ever give up their prized chopsticks.

I’ve watched my Chinese and Japanese friends here in the Seattle area as they skillfully maneuver the two sticks, piled with food, into their waiting mouths — all without dropping a single morsel. I’ve been to Japan and China, too, and watched the same thing, marveling all the time at the dexterity and remarkable eating skill of the natives.

Then, with my Asian friends looking on, I have tried to copy their eating style with the two sticks and failed miserably each time — eliciting roars of laughter from my friends. I guess I just wasn’t cut out to feed my appetite with a pair of sticks less than a quarter inch thick, about 10 or 11 inches long, and coming to a point at the “eating end.”

I wondered about my dear old, beloved Italian father, who deeply enjoyed all his meals that were cooked by my old and equally beloved Italian mother. And, I thought, how in the world would my Papa have managed to put away all the spaghetti and meat balls with chopsticks! No way! He would have starved first, I’ll betcha.

I’m convinced that Asians are born with the extraordinary ability to handle chopsticks and never miss a bite. Otherwise, I believe they would have switched to metal forks, knives, and spoons a long time ago. Is it any wonder that they can boast so many stellar acrobats and balancing acts that are astounding to behold?

I have another pregnant thought on the subject. Just suppose the use of chopsticks at meals has provided another superb factor to the health and culture of Japanese and Chinese alike. For example, isn’t it just possible that being required to use chopsticks from birth has taught the Asians how to eat slowly and how to chew their food well — something we Westerners apparently have never learned to do?

Remember this fact in that regard: For many years, the Japanese have led the world in longevity records. Japanese people regularly live much longer than do Americans, Britons, Germans, Italians, French, Russians, Arabs, and everyone else. Only the Chinese are right behind them on the longevity scale!

In the meantime, I would hope that the American and Canadian timber industries, blessed with an over-abundance of forests, will adopt a benevolent attitude and start supplying the Japanese and Chinese with an overflowing supply of those neat little twigs the Asians call chopsticks. Never mind trying to persuade them to switch to metal. They’re too talented to switch!

In this day of soaring gasoline prices and increases in everything that requires transportation powered by gasoline engines, I am compelled to recall an idea I floated some time ago for reasons other than a gasoline price gouging. In fact, the idea makes even more sense now than it did several years ago, when I first broached it.

At the time I wrote about it back then, the Seattle area and its county, King, were embroiled in a hot dispute over escalating Metro bus fares, which were causing the working men and women of the area pains in the pocketbook. Because of it, I said in a television commentary that I had to revitalize an old idea if for no other reason than to shake things up a bit and try to employ reason to solve a heated issue.

The idea? Try this transportation tune out on your old geetar, please: Make all Metro bus and trolley rides FREE for everyone, everywhere! Yes, you read right. I said make all rides free for all persons, regardless of age. Of course, a few persons called in and said that Guzzo guy is daft and has lost all reason.

Really? Hear me out, please. Of course, under my plan the rides would not really be free under the revolutionary idea because the taxpayer would have to pick up the tab. Doesn’t he always? But he would save a great deal more cash than it would cost him for very good reason. And think of the advantages that could come from such a system.

A free-ride system would encourage thousands more to take a bus or trolley to work or to make visits to shopping centers — and thus get a lot of cars off the road, as well as saving lives that are lost in traffic accidents. That alone would be incentive enough to give the idea a chance to succeed.

That leads me to the big reason in this day of petroleum shortages around the world and the fact that so many oil reserves are in countries controlled by Islamic governments. My idea would save millions — no, billions — of dollars in gasoline costs for everyone — and we could thumb our noses at the OPEC nations and the militant Muslims who are trying to deny the Western nations oil.

OK. Moving on. The free-ride idea would eliminate many traffic jams in cities that have become like parking lots because of the unending stream of autos. It would get rid of fares and quickly solve our school transportation problems. It would remove a major cause of bus robberies and assaults.

It would encourage judges to issue rulings taking cars away permanently from chronic drunks and other marauders. It would undoubtedly give us a much better bus and trolley system. And it would solve those pesky parking problems in downtown areas and in or near those major shopping centers in suburbs.

Finally, the idea would bring relief to expense-weary families that have had to buy and supply all the expenses for that extra car for Junior in high school and for Vanessa, who simply must have a car of her own as she begins her freshman year at the local university.

I have a lot more pluses to offer, but these should be enough to whet your appetite for now. Businesses and industries would pick up the largest share of the tab because they would stand to gain the most. A free bus and trolley system. Just try it on for size. The idea will grow on you, I promise.

When will the world’s major powers finally recognize that the United Nations — which I have renamed the Useless Nations — has been an absolute failure and resolve to substitute for it a totally new organization made up only of the half dozen or so major powers themselves?In my view, we had better make that drastic change before it’s too late. Thanks to the U.N.’s ineptness and lack of direction and authority, the Middle East is in a mess, mainly because the U.N. refused to take positive action to get rid of Saddam Hussein — and left that chore to the U.S., with the help of some 30 nations in a coalition.

Thanks also to the U.N.’s inability or refusal to take positive action, nuclear-prone nations like North Korea and Iran are threatening the stability of the world and contributing to the vicious emergence of the Muslim extremists, who have embarked upon what must be called the Third World War.

The errant U.N. officials can’t even control uprisings like the one in the Sudan’s Darfur region, where a million or more people have already been slain by terrorist forces and at least a million more have been forced to flee their homes — and like similar genocidal assaults in several African nations.

Way back in the 1940s, soon after the Second World War, the nations of the world gathered in San Francisco to form what would be called the United Nations. It was the sincere hope of the delegates to that conference that an amalgamation of all the world’s nations would bring peace to the planet at last. Well, that noble experiment failed — primarily because the U.N. became a debate society, and the major powers ceded too much authority to a smattering of small, undemocratic, poverty-stricken nations.

Worse yet, the present war against international terrorists has assumed a religious theme, making it even more difficult to resolve. Islamic nations make a pretense of saying they are peaceful countries and do not approve of the horrific slaughters perpetrated by the Muslim radicals. But those nations do little or nothing to control the radicals.

Therefore, it will be up to the world’s non-Islamic nations — and particularly the major powers among them — to join in a campaign to rid the world of the radical element. That task cannot be performed by the helpless — and useless — power-less countries that have transformed the U.N. into nothing more than a debate society.

The major powers that should scrap the U.N. and form a truly effective “world police force” should include the U.S., England, France, Germany, Russia, Japan, China, and India. Thus, it would also be an organization uniting all the non-Islamic religions — the Buddhists, the Hindus, the Judeo-Christian nations, and a few others — all of them adjudged to be enemies that should be slain by the Muslim radicals.

In earlier commentaries, I have suggested that the U.S. should lead the way in creating an international volunteer military force that would do the work of such a “world police force.” I still believe it to be a worthy suggestion — after we abolish the U.N.

Is this a harsh analysis of what needs to be done to bring lasting peace to the world? Of course it is. But nothing less will resolve the religious struggle we have now inherited and the ongoing Third World War. Amen.

The political wordsmiths are at it again. A short time ago, the Liberal wordsmiths decided to mask their idiocies by referring to the global-warming hoax as “climate change,” as if that changed their fantasies. The latest word game the Liberals have indulged in revolves around disguising political chicanery in the legislature as “earmarking” funds for special projects, something that always was known as “pork.”

The Republicans have done it when they have controlled the legislature or Congress. But the Democrats excel at the practice, and, in the present session of the legislature in Olympia, they are demonstrating their skill at creating pork for their home districts — and calling each special fund an “earmark.”

The Seattle Times, of all news entities, forgot its usual Liberal leaning long enough to detail the piles of pork in the latest state budget and simultaneously reveal that districts controlled by Democratic members of the legislature have amassed twice as much of the taxpayers’ cash for their pet projects as have the other districts.

Now, that doesn’t excuse the Republican politicos for their similar transgressions, but it should alert the voting public to the foul practice of inserting so much pork — er…pardon me, earmarked funds — into the budget, all of which will have to come out of the taxpayers’ hide.

In one instance cited prominently by the Times, it was reported that the Everett School District will receive a monetary gift from the legislature of $433,000 to “spruce up” Everett’s already costly sports-stadium complex. The political oddity of it all is that the school district didn’t ask for the pork!

What can the voting public do about these unnecessary extravagances in pork for the home folks? Well, for one thing, voters can start demanding that local cities and towns pick up the tab for their own projects and stop looking for the state or the federal government to advance the funds.

Why, for example, didn’t the legislature inform the Everett School District and the citizens of Everett that, if they needed to “spruce up” their sports-stadium complex, they should pay for it out of their own pockets. The same should be done by the legislature and Congress for those hundreds of pork measures that find their way into state and federal budgets.

I suppose that what I am really saying is that the taxpayers of America should inform both major political parties that it’s time to chop the pork, as it were, and put all districts across the U.S. on notice that, from now on, they will have to come up with the cash for their pork and not expect the rest of the citizens of the U.S. to pay the bill.

Is a constitutional amendment needed at both the state and federal levels to “de-pork” America? If so, let’s get to it — and the sooner the better.

Okay, greeners, eat this:  The journal Science is reporting:

that the continued burning of oil-related energy products combined with the planting of additional forests is better for the environment than the manufacture and use of biofuels such as ethanol.

In fact, the authors suggested that governments across the globe move away from biofuels as a global warming solution completely, and instead focus moneys and energies on reforestation and increasing the efficiencies involved with the burning of fossil fuels.

Not only is the Gore crowd wrong about their facts and conclusions, but also their solutions.  Triple losers.