Sanctuary Cities

The idea of cities serving as sanctuaries actually goes back quite a ways.

Town Air makes you free is an old saying related to feudalism.

In feudal times, only people in the cities tended to be free and not serfs, able to live and die without obligation to a lord.

Of course further, the cities tended to be built around Cathedrals or churches which further provided sanctuary to fugitives.

Now in our current system, cities maintain a certain unique place.  They are in the State and the Country but in most cases have very different views politically than their surroundings.

Of course this varies city by city but we do generally see most cities being centers of progressive ideas since they are exposed to a wide range of ideas and situations.

This often puts them a bit our of step with the people who run the State Governments.

Now without going into details of how a lot of the political landscape has been manipulated to favor certain parties, the cities tend to remain much more accepting then the areas around them.

A certain number of cities have effectively said they will not enforce certain immigration laws arbitrarily.  Of course the laws become largely unenforceable without the assistance of local law enforcement so once again the cities are providing a relatively safe area for certain populations in danger of arrest and expulsion.

Power arises from the people and flows up, not the other way around.  Before our revolution there was a king who had a divine right to rule, but we didn't accept that here and threw him out.

Lets keep all those who think power is granted to the people.  The people have the power in the first place and can use it as they see fit.

If they are willing to let other people live in peace and be good neighbors, they can.

Its an American thing.

Where Our nose Begins

There is a quote about freedom that states the freedom to swing your arm stops where my nose begins.

I think most of us accept this as comon sense but of course lots of things impact others in a less clear way.

Consider agriculture.

With a few exceptions, modern agriculture is based on the use of ever more sophisticated seeds and weed killers to keep production high and cheap.

The image of the family farmer tending his modest acreage is iconic but generally not very realistic.

We have vast acres dedicated to single crops in wide swaths leading to a number of challenges, not at all related to most peoples image of farmers.

They need to plant modified seeds that are patented or copywrited by a company like Monsanto.  They then need to protect those plants by using sophisticated pesticides which in many cases are designed to be used on plants genetically modified to resist them.

This of course leads to a dependency where most farmers are becoming more and more dependent on science to raise crops.

Now I'm not one who opposes genetically modified crops in general, but I'm not sure this dependency is going to end well.

There is an issue this year in the soybean harvest based on a new pesticide resistant soybean and the pesticide it is resistant to.  The pesticide seems to have migrated to other fields.

Of course this devastates the other crops and trees.

Now the EPA is supposed to regulate these issues but it has always been pretty reliant on the industries it regulates for data.  As we see a new push to reduce regulations and get products to market we are likely to see more and more mistakes happen.

Of course the FDA is going the same way, and in that case the nose is one us, not the soybeans.

Water, Water Everywhere

Pretty much an apt description right now for Houston and likely for the future of a lot of low lying areas if we don't decide to do something about rising sea levels.

Let me ask a simple question.  Even if you don't believe that spewing trillions of tons of carbon into the atmosphere impacts the climate, can it be a good thing?

The only argument for it is that if we make companies clean up their emissions or require cars to reduce emission it will make us non-competitive with the rest of the world.

The fallacy there is that the rest of the world has agreed to do something about it and we have backed out of the deal.

Now, if you actually believe stuff the president says, I guess you are convinced that all the facts and data that are so widely available are fake and provided by someone with a desire to harm this country.

Of course that does require you to believe that all the American scientists are in fact traitors who serve some evil purpose, probably why they stayed in school in the first place.

There is a popular fantasy TV show that has as some of its main characters manipulative sinister characters who will do anything for power.

Now the only difference between that and real life is that we get to see the lying and manipulation so we know who they are.

In real life, they usually don't show us the behind the scenes look to help us.  Of course some of it is coming out in the current Russian investigations but where that leads is yet to be determined.

Its not really complex though, just follow the money.

If a business wants to make more money they donate to the right people, help them get elected and the regulations get lifted.

Simple enough?

Yes they have to breathe the same air as the rest of us and live on the same planet but being wealthy affords plenty of opportunity to keep your feet dry as the water rises.

Unless of course you are on the French Riviera at the time.

Dirty Little Secret

Disasters have been with us since we have existed, Of course in primitive time we generally were fully at the mercy of the elements, having no real ability to predict these events.

We now do get advance warnings on some disasters, but of course others aren't as considerate.

I've been in areas that have been hit by natural disasters and have had loss of power, shortages of gasoline and groceries, but I've never really been a victim, probably just due to luck.

My belongings have never been washed away, my houses have never suffered significant damage and no one close to me has been badly hurt or killed.

As much as I'd like to take credit for any of this, and maybe we did take some common sense precautions, it is clearly a matter of luck that I've been relatively unscathed.

Now we are watching the scenes from Houston and the human tragedy involved and have to wonder if there isn't some lesson to be learned from recent events.

A number of years ago I was in Galveston and took a tour of the hurricane preventive measures they took after a devastating hurricane in 1900. I was there around 1994 and they had not has a similar hurricane in the years between.

We've always had fairly big hurricanes every couple of years but it is pretty clear that we now seem to have bigger and bigger ones that do much more damage than previously, and those were pretty bad.

What you have stopped hearing is weathermen/women describing the latest hurricane as the storm of the century, because they know worse ones will be coming.

Its sort of a dirty little secret that everyone knows but some want to deny that climate change is raising water levels and water temperatures guaranteeing stronger storms and more damage.

Now any one weather event is not a trend but we have plenty of trend data and statistics demonstrating the facts.

It is dirty, but it isn't really a secret.

Simple Truths

Some of the things that our president s useful for is to see how much a lot of things are misunderstood.  Of course he continues to spread that misinformation which he generally picked up from fake news sites so it isn't all good.

Take clean coal.  He announced the other day that a new mine was opening up in Pennsylvania, that would produce clean coal a process he described as taking out the coal and cleaning it.

Well there you go, how simple it is and not sure why anyone opposes washing some coal.

Of course that's not what is meant by clean coal, what is meant is reducing the pollution created when you burn it and that is generally too expensive to happen and be competitive.  I'm not sure anyone would oppose burning coal if it wasn't one of the biggest polluters on the planet, but the cost to clean it is too high. The following link takes you to a discussion of the issue.

http://money.cnn.com/2017/06/01/investing/coal-mine-trump-paris-speech/index.html

Now take our trade deals.  The president condemns them pretty universally but the numbers show that a lot of people in America did quite well.  What did happen to some extent is as the biggest and wealthiest country in the world, we buy more than anyone else.

Now we are always going to attract imports, trade deal or not so what is more the issue is did the trade deal guarantee our ability to export products competitively.

Economic statistics are really boring and we are talking about a wide range of items but our agricultural and service areas generally benefited the most.

To some extent our manufacturing suffered some but the extent is not as clear since the cost of production in these countries with or without free trade is still generally lower.  So eliminating tariffs might reduce prices of imported components resulting in cheaper prices or larger profits but having those tariffs doesn't guarantee a boon in US manufacturing jobs unless the output is competitive.

The link below discusses NAFTA.

http://www.naftanow.org/myths/default_en.asp

Finally he dismisses climate change as some kind of hoax, started by the Chinese to keep us from staying ahead, I guess.  Of course all the statistics and data are part of the fake news although in this case even the fox news people have to acknowledge the changes, just arguing they are natural and not man induced.

Now it is a big planet and for those hunting and gathering in small tribes doubt they have much impact on the climate.  However we have a lot of people on this planet now and all of us use carbon to some extent releasing it back into the atmosphere.

Not really something you can argue about and since the stuff we are burning was captured carbon, unless we recapture it somehow it is going to have an impact.

Just simple truth.

Simple Thoughts

I'd like those fine people who like to march with Nazi emblems to explain that.

One of the things that seems fair is to say there are two sides to something.  Well when one side is based on hate and bigotry, it is there but its not equal.

I will say that when I think back on my experience with conservatives over my lifetime we have gone from people like the Buckley brothers who knew how to read and talk intelligently to people like Steve Banon who, well he made some money.

The President is at war with the leaders of the Republican party and of course all Democrats.  For those in favor of less Government you might get it.

Of course Democrats are fighting among themselves a bit with more discussion about strategies for the next election than actual policies.

The way to win is to spell out a better path forward.

The way to win is to represent the best of America, not the worst.

The way to win is to ensure freedom for all Americans to pursue life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

These are our founding principles and they are still valid.

If you ignore the current President, as ridiculous as he is, it will drive him crazy.

Promote a better future with clear and logical policies.

Those who are mired in hate or bigotry aren't going to come along and we don't want them.

Getting into the gutter with the current president brings you down to his level.

Stand up, be proud, be clear.

Trust the light to banish the dark.

Its how you act that matters in the end.

A Better America

The idea that America has been in some sort of decline is simply not true.  America has been changing and to some extent our post World War 2 privileged status is long since gone, but at no point has America been stronger or in fact more prosperous on the whole.

One thing has happened is that the growth in wealth has been uneven.

This has fueled a certain amount of anger among those who used to have a better share of the wealth, in general non college educated men.

They held a lot of good paying jobs in manufacturing particularly which actually required little more than showing up and doing fairly simple tasks.

Robots are cheaper, don't need benefits and don't show up or stay home because they got drunk.

Now the robots improve the bottom line and that wealth goes to the owners and executives.

So for that group of Americans things look worse, but the only solution is for them to get new skills that are needed, and since it wouldn't be in the same numbers as when unskilled workers were on an assembly line, most of them aren't going to do it.

Even worse, they've been led to believe that the people responsible for their problems aren't the factory owners and executives (although in fairness it is just business) but trade deals, immigrants, the Government, liberals and environmentalists.

So they don't like those people, although clearly none of them were actually responsible to any great extent, it was technology.

Now we aren't going to reverse technology, if we did our companies would be non-competitive but we can improve life for Americans in ways that keep making America better.

These are the progressive goals, a cleaner environment, health care for all, education for all, combat climate change, treat ALL people fairly, and allow individual freedom as long as it doesn't infringe on someone else's freedom.

What job you qualify for or can hold is up to you but whatever it is, you should have air to breathe.

Lets make America better and better.