Conrad Theodore Seitz

I’m calling this the “conservative spin” on labor force participation rates because New York Times columnist David Brooks, an admitted conservative, has produced an op-ed column in today’s paper that interprets the drop in men’s rates as a consequence of their inability to behave rather than the Great Recession.

Brooks claims that “male labor force participation has been in steady decline for generations.”  In fact, rates peaked at over 97% in the early 50’s, and gradually declined to 90.5% in 2005.  Then, in a couple of years, rates dropped by 10%.  So, while there has been a gradual, “steady” decline in male labor force participation since the fifties, there was also a sudden, precipitous drop in the year 2008.

Concurrently, the number of people employed dropped from a high of 146.6 million in November 2007 to 138.0 million in December 2008.  That number now stands at 144.0 million, or 2.6 million fewer than six years ago.  The total number of people employed usually increases by 1 or 2 million a year, depending on economic conditions.   Thus one would expect that, without the recession, the total number of people employed would have increased to at least 152 or 154 millions by now.  This means that there is a deficit of eight to ten million jobs right now.

Brooks constructs a narrative about men’s inability to adjust to changing working conditions based on his misperception of a “steady decline” in working men.  He claims that “Some of the problem clearly has to do with changes in family structure.”  He blames “men raised in fatherless homes” as well as “some ineffable shift in the definition of dignity.”  He goes on to include the assertion that “many men simply do not want to put themselves in positions they find humiliating” as a partial explanation of why men don’t participate in the labor force.

Brooks claims that the explanations for the drops in men’s work rates are not complete, but he introduces his essay with a long discussion of the John Wayne film “The Searchers.”  He describes Wayne’s character in the movie as having the ability to work and survive on the “lawless frontier” but being unable to fit in to the civilized world.  He ignores Mr. Wayne’s portrayal of Ethan Evans as a bitter, violent, and ruthless man who really couldn’t fit in anywhere.

Mr. Brook’s explanation for the drops in men’s participation in the workforce is inadequate to explain the actual data, which he misrepresents; one wonders if he really looked at the data or just the American Enterprise Institute’s summaries.

The primary (first on the list) explanation is “changes in family structure” which is code for single-parent (mother only) households.  The rise in single parent families is legendary and dramatic, too dramatic to explain the small, gradual decrease in men’s workforce participation rates over the last sixty years.  It also greatly precedes the sudden, precipitous drop in participation rates in the last eight years.

The reason Mr. Brooks uses this “reason” is that conservatives love to complain about single parent households and blame them on “welfare.”  The real reasons for the dramatic rise in unmarried parenthood among African-Americans over the last sixty years are not completely clear.  Rules limiting Aid to Families with Depend Children to households absent a father were eliminated but the rates of unmarried parenthood continue to rise.  Rates among Hispanic-Americans are relatively low, although one would expect them to be affected by the same welfare pressures.

The real reason for the sudden drop in male participation in the workforce is the Great Recession.  Approximately eight million jobs disappeared in 2008 and have still not been restored to the workplace.  Although the official unemployment rate has dropped from ten percent to under eight percent, many people have not gone back to work and have given up looking for work.

These people are not lounging around enjoying the beneficence of their long-term unemployment compensation.  They are eking out a marginal existence, unable to afford many of the things that they had enjoyed when they had work; some have become homeless.  Worst of all, much worse than their straitened circumstances, is the time spent doing nothing because there is no work available.  Time on your hands eats into your sense of confidence and self-assurance, destroying your image of yourself as a productive person.

The destruction of one’s self-image was much worse during the Great Depression, when men were considered the sole bread-winners of the family and one’s social status depended on one’s ability to support a family.  Nowadays, there is more social acceptability to the idea that women can support a family, even though a single paycheck can’t feed four people anymore.

As usual, Mr. Brooks buys in to the conservative world view and supports the attitude that single-parent families are to blame for male unemployment, rather than the economy as a whole.  It is convenient to blame the victim, but it ignores the reality that the Great Recession is still with us and that eight million jobs are still missing.

Here’s a nice quote that summarizes the situation in Egypt today:

“We are moving from the bearded, chauvinistic right to the clean-shaven, chauvinistic right,” said Rabab el-Mahdi, a left-leaning scholar at the American University in Cairo.

We have seen the enormous demonstrations and the arrests of leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood– that is the face of the continuing Egyptian revolution.  But we have not seen the people behind it.  It is not just the Army and the millions of protesters in the street.  There are also many organizations and wealthy individuals who supported the coup in myriad ways, preparing Morsi’s downfall.

For example, despite President Morsi’s controversial and disputed claim to be above all other branches of the government, he was never able to control the Interior Ministry or the security apparatus, much less the local police.  Heads of departments that he installed, Islamists all, were unable to persuade rank and file government workers who had been there since Mubarak’s day to follow their orders.  At the end, the Army was constrained to use force because their was no constitutional mechanism available to remove Morsi from power such as an impeachment– there was no legislature seated in any case.

Residents of Cairo said that, the day after the coup, the police reappeared on the streets in full uniform, acting as if they had never left.  Many other departments of government suddenly started functioning efficiently again.  Lines of people waiting for gas disappeared as the shortages were relieved instantly.  This realignment of the social system appears to have been deliberate; many workers who disliked the Islamists simply stopped working of their own accord as long as Morsi was in power.

Despite the fundamentally retrogressive mechanisms of the coup, a large segment of the Egyptian population supports it after the fact.  Whether this enthusiasm is manufactured will take time to discern; if it is genuine, there will be a steady improvement in the security situation and tourists will return.

Whether the poorest people of Egypt benefit from the coup remains to be seen, but the status quo was untenable.

The people who really benefit are the “clean-shaven chauvinistic” party, that is, the government of the USA and its allies, and especially Israel and Jordan.  We should keep in mind that we are, unwillingly, drawn into war against the Islamists, because they will not leave us alone.  If we do not fight, they will oppress us, and that will be worse than the oppression of our own government.

Islamists have made their complaints fairly clear over the years. Mostly our transgressions involve usurping Islamic governments and being present on holy ground (i.e. Mecca and Saudi Arabia in general). These transgressions could probably be negotiated away.
However, their final aim or ideal is a global “Islamic caliphate” which most resembles the early Ottoman government of Istanbul. By “global” they mean that the United States as well is to be subject to this type of government. This is in complete abnegation of what the United States stands for and represents overthrow of our government by violent means.
It is also considered acceptable under Islamic law to lie if your purpose is advancing the “global Islamic caliphate.” This is precisely what happened in Egypt: the Moslem Brotherhood claimed to observe democratic principles but in fact, once they obtained power they used it to entirely undemocratic ends.
By the way, under the caliphate you may not be forced to convert to Islam, but once you have accepted it, the death penalty applies if you change your mind. This is true in Afghanistan, and in one recent case the Islamic Court was forced to declare the defendant mentally ill in order to avoid an impolitic penalty.

To sum up the really shocking news of today:

Those who have grasped the above will not be surprised to learn that Dzhokar Tsarnaev’s deceased older brother is a suspect in a triple murder that was committed on approximately September 11, 2011.  They will be even less surprised to learn that at least two of the victims were identified as Jewish and the third was probably perceived to be.  What will be surprising is the fact that local investigators missed the connection to the tenth anniversary of “9/11” and Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s involvement.  This will be especially surprising to the friends of the victims, who thought the fact that Tamerlan was the main victim’s only Muslim friend was unusual given his association with Jewish people.  There is much more, and of course you can read it best in the New York Times online.

Of the approximately 83 million people alive in Egypt today, over 50% are under 20 and almost 70% are under 30.  The average age is 24; for comparison, in the USA it is 36.8.  The unemployment rate among young people is about 30%.  According to the Peterson Institute for International Economics and other experts, Egypt’s main problem is unemployment driven by a bulge of young people entering the work force.  A striking feature is that unemployment among college graduates is almost ten times as high as for elementary school graduates, meaning that there are many more menial jobs available than skilled jobs.  (Source: Wikipedia.)

When the revolution started, many observers noticed that the streets were full of educated urban youth.  These people have been able to obtain an education and are open to new developments all over the world.  They are overwhelmingly urbane, sophisticated, articulate, and peaceful if they are not provoked.  They know about democracy and the Internet, and they have cell phones with WiFi.  They use Facebook and Twitter to organize their demonstrations.

President Morsi was elected with 13 million votes exactly a year ago.  Now the protesters say they have 17 million signatures on a petition calling on him to step down.  So there is clearly overwhelming opposition to what Morsi has been doing.  There is also no constitutional way to impeach him, leaving the military no choice but to step in to express the will of the people.

There is still a large Islamist faction in Egypt, particularly among the rural poor.  The Muslim Brotherhood has an estimated 600,000 members or supporters in Egypt, and there are many more radical Islamist groups.  In last year’s parliamentary elections, the Islamist bloc received 7.5 million votes (27.8 percent of the total.)  The al-Nour party is the most prominent, and derives much of its support from its charitable activities.

Therefore, one can separate Egyptian political parties into three: the young, urban population with thirty percent, the Salafis with almost thirty percent, and the other forty percent with tendencies in between, most of whom voted for Muslim Brotherhood candidates.  The Brotherhood was extremely popular as recently as the parliamentary elections, but has fallen out of favor due to Morsi’s autocratic behavior.

Egyptians who wanted democracy with protection of individual rights voted heavily for Morsi in the presidential elections because they believed the moderate propaganda put out by the Muslim Brotherhood.  After the election, however, Morsi quickly began to display autocratic tendencies.  He tried to place himself above all other Egyptian political institutions, including the judiciary, after the parliamentary elections were invalidated by the courts.  He packed his administration with hard-line Islamists.  He supported the Islamic take-over of the constitutional convention, which resulted in a constitution without any protections for religious minorities or civil liberties.  Most important, he failed to do anything about the continuing deterioration of the economy.

The Islamist agenda, starting with the Muslim Brotherhood and extending to al-Nour and its fundamentalist offshoots, is fundamentally illiberal.  Salafists are not willing to live in a society in which people have individual rights to practice, or not practice, religion as they wish.  Their goal is a society in which the sexes are segregated, women are forced to wear the veil, and alcohol is not available.  The do not believe in majority rule– they say that God is the only rule.

Therefore, it will be very difficult for Egypt to peacefully implement the type of political system and society with which we are familiar.  There will be a tendency on the part of a significant segment of the population to try to infringe on the rights of others, and this will create conflict.  This is most apparent with the young people, who, after their exposure via Internet to a completely open society, will have difficulty with the Salafist approach.

Paradoxically, the Salafists have reasonable political relationships with the West; this is clear with the most Salafi-dominated country, Saudi Arabia.  President Morsi, as a democratically elected member of the Muslim Brotherhood, was supported by the United States.  It is the Shia who are in open conflict with Western society, and the Palestinians are caught somewhere in the middle.

One reason why Salafi-dominated governments are able to get along diplomatically with Western countries is that, according to Islamic law, it is permissible to lie in order to advance the Islamic cause.  This reason should promote extreme caution.

There is no question that, despite protestations, there is a military coup underway in Egypt.  It will undoubtedly be successful, although the soldiers have been forced to use birdshot on pro-Morsi demonstrators attacking the compound where Morsi is being held and have killed a few.

Fortunately for the USA, this coup is a “moderate” coup and the military have insisted on immediate elections.  Most important is that many of the most important institutions from the Mubarak era were nearly intact and have now re-asserted their authority.  What is important to us is that everyone from the Mubarak era was dependably anti-Islamist.  The Army has also been thoroughly trained to avoid Islamist thoughts.

What makes this coup a positive development is the fact that it was prompted by a demonstration last Sunday in Tahrir Square that attracted an eyewitness estimate of seventeen million people.  The petition that led to the demonstration was said to have gotten twenty two million signatures in a few days, all asking President Morsi to step down.  There is overwhelming popular disgust with the president.

What makes this necessary is the fact that there is no constitutional mechanism for impeachment and removal of the president in Egypt, and even if there was, there is no functioning legislature because their election was tainted and was thrown out by the court.

Mohamed el-Baradei, a Nobel prize winner whose opinion I respect, has promised that due process will prevail and that being a member of the Muslim Brotherhood will not be considered a crime.  The Brotherhood has issued statements refusing to deal at all with any of the “usurpers.”  If they refuse to participate in elections, they will lose out on a legitimate and powerful voice in the government.

There will be elections, and soon.  The character of this coup guarantees that the Army has no desire to hold power longer than absolutely necessary.  Any delay would lead to more demonstrations in Tahrir Square.

The Muslim Brotherhood and some other Islamists will claim that this is just another incident in a long line of outrages in which democratically elected Islamists have been ousted by military or foreign intervention.  They will say that this further undermines their trust in democracy.

This is a shame but Islamists never liked democracy in the first place.  They have only been using it as a strategy to attain power, after which they can impose their theocratic system and violate the civil liberties of the rest of the people.  Morsi himself followed this same strategy, and his allies crafted an Islamist constitution that ignored civil liberties.   The people saw through his strategy in a year, and that is why they demonstrated in Tahrir Square.

We must remember, as democrats, that Hitler came to power through the democratic process, although he never had a majority of the popular vote.  Demagogues with propaganda machines can fool voters, at least long enough to get elected.  After that, if there is not a mechanism for impeachment and removal of the president, it is too late.

As we all know, there has been much unrest afoot in Egypt these days; President Morsi has been removed from office, arrested, and is being held incommunicado by the military.  There is jubilation on one side of Cairo, at Tahrir square, and on the other side, there is mourning at a square near the presidential palace.  On both sides, there are probably millions of fervent supporters.

What has been done is necessary to the progress of the Egyptian revolution for the following reason: the action that would have been taken in the United States, impeachment (which can occur if you lie and claim you never got a blow job from an intern) is impossible because the Egyptian Constitution is inadequate to the purpose.  There is no sitting Legislature to impeach him.

It was necessary to impeach President Morsi for the following reason: he campaigned on a platform of moderation, but, once elected, he embarked on a course that satisfied his most hard-line Salafist/Wahhabi supporters by depriving the rest of the Egyptian people a voice and the protection of Constitutional rights.  President Obama was shocked, but there was nothing he could do besides oral protestations of dismay through diplomatic channels.  There was no way to suspend the 1.3 billion dollar US subsidy because the economy was already collapsing and pulling the subsidy would probably have caused all the banks in Egypt to fail.

The Egyptian revolution is a curious thing.  It started about two years ago and has gone through a bumpy course.  The people, once again, have spoken in their disapproval of the sitting government, this time in a crowd estimated at 17 millions on Sunday.  The army has intervened to enforce their will because they disapprove of Morsi’s hard-line Islamist policies.

The Muslim Brotherhood has shown themselves to be playing false with the people.  At first, they claimed they wouldn’t put up a candidate for President.   Then they put up Morsi.  Then they fixed things so there was only one other well-funded and well-organized candidate on the ballot, and that one was tainted by connections to the deposed military dictator, Mubarak.  The result of the rigged election was that Morsi, being the only well-known candidate who had no obligations to Mubarak, naturally won a plurality of votes.

The Parliamentary elections were much easier to stage, and Islamist candidates got about 75% of the seats.  But for some funny reason that the news in the United States has not bothered to explain, the courts have ruled the election laws are invalid and must be changed so the election is null and void.  The reason always given, supplied by the Muslim Brotherhood, is that the courts are packed with Mubarak-era judges and are prejudiced against the current state of affairs in the body politic.  This is never supported with real evidence, such as direct quotes from the rulings of the court, for example.

However, the BBC has reported in some detail on the arguments involved, and it appears that, first, the amendment barring any former members of the Mubarak administration from running for office was invalidated, and second, the composition of the Assembly was unfairly tilted towards candidates affiliated with major parties like the Muslim Brotherhood, as opposed to independents–so the entire election was invalidated.

Most importantly, the popularity of the Muslim Brotherhood has plummeted since the Dec 2011-Jan 2012 parliamentary elections and the May 2012 presidential election.  It is unlikely now that the Muslim Brotherhood and Salafists would be able to sustain a simple majority in Parliament.  The court has indefinitely delayed the scheduled 2013 parliamentary elections pending revisions to the election law in the Constitution.

Therefore, for President Morsi, holding on to his seat as President is a matter of life and death.  Fortunately, it is unlikely that the military will kill him now.  In fact, only seven deaths on the street were reported overnight since the coup.

The best thing now, and a very likely thing, is that the military will declare a new constitutional committee and hold presidential elections in the next three months.  The principles of democracy in Egypt are being violently tested, and the military intervention by the Egyptian Armed Forces may actually avert further violence in the streets.  Ironically, the fact that there is universal conscription in Egypt may explain the democratic character of some of its top officers.

In about 1965, we in the basketball team were offered a group discount by the local Converse representative: at $10 a pair, he would outfit us with white or black Converse All-Stars all at once.  All he had to do was call the factory, put in his order, and in two weeks or less, he would have shoes for all of us.  He was rumored to offer up to size eighteen.

On July  4, 2013, I received by email a bulletin from a specialty shoe company that shall remain un-named.  This bulletin, when perused, had on offer Converse All-Stars in eleven colors, up to size seventeen, for $57.  Shipping and taxes were extra.

By using my handy Inflation Calculator, described to you in a previous post, I determined that $10 in 1965 would have bought me $73.95 today.  The difference would surely be enough to cover taxes and shipping.

Therefore, we are buying Converse All-Stars, quality probably equivalent, for about as much or less in inflation adjusted dollars as we did almost 50 years ago.  The Asians have been able to duplicate, and add variety, to a product once proudly Made In the USA.   The only thing missing is size eighteen, and I’m guessing that kids with that size feet are used to that problem already.

I’m making no conclusions, I’m just offering this tiny fact as food for discussion and thought.  Think first, then discuss.

Here in the USA we face at least a trio of excessive costs that hold us back from a better life.  The first cost, the one I’m most familiar with, is medical care.  The cost of medical care is grossly excessive.  There is an article in Sunday’s New York Times about the cost of obstetrical care, that is, delivering babies., that illustrates this problem.

According to the NYT, the cost of obstetrical care has approximately tripled since 1996, an increase of 300%.  The rate of inflation over that period has been about 50%.  (Inflation rates can be easily calculated with the Inflation Rate Calculator web site.)  Although obstetrics is a tiny part of medical care (50 billion dollars a year) it is the same with all branches of medicine.  The system is bad, and there are many examples of better medical systems in other countries.

The system is so bad that despite costs that are double those of European countries, infant mortality and life span are worse here because so many people are uninsured and unable to obtain adequate medical care.  There are perhaps forty to fifty million people who are either uninsured or inadequately insured in this country and they are all at risk for inadequate medical care because of costs.  The majority of bankruptcies in this country mention medical debts as a primary factor in the declaration. This is a national disgrace, and you know that someone is profiting exorbitantly at the expense of the uninsured and the insurance companies (who can afford it because of enormous premiums.)

The second excessive cost to society is our prison system.  According to Wikipedia, we are the country with the most prisoners in jail by population, 716 per hundred thousand… some familiar countries with sharply  lower rates include India, with 30 per hundred thousand (216th out of 223 countries) and Japan, with 54.  England and Wales have 148.

The costs of putting and keeping someone in jail are high, and the effect on the prisoner is especially expensive because when he or she is released, there is little prospect of honest employment for an ex-con.  Therefore, recidivism rates are fifty to seventy percent, and income is reduced by over 50%, reducing tax revenues as well (Wikipedia.)  In addition, if the prisoner has dependents, their source of support will be cut off by imprisonment, possibly permanently.  It is likely that many dependents will be forced to look to government for their support, an additional cost to society.

When you look at our rate of imprisonment and compare it to some other perfectly reasonable countries with low crime rates, you can see that there is considerable room for improvement.  Reduction in imprisonment is unlikely to lead to more crime, and the money saved can be used to hire more policemen if you are concerned.

A particularly pernicious gambit that is tempting to government because of “saving money” is the growth of the private prison industry.  You can be sure that once a private company has control of a prison, that prison will show a profit regardless of any unpleasant effects on the prisoners due to cost saving measures, and, according to logical industry thinking, will lobby to get more prisoners.  That is the reverse of what should be happening.  A prison system controlled by private enterprise will always increase the number of prisoners and is susceptible to corruption and malfeasance; only government can reduce the prison population and enforce oversight of venality.

There is, possibly, a significant correlation between the US imprisonment rate and the fact that there are enough firearms in private hands to arm virtually every man, woman, and child.  This is an issue that should be evaluated further.

The third excessive cost is military.  Reasonable people can feel dread while contemplating the fact that we possess about 2,000 active nuclear weapons, virtually the same number as the Russians.  If by some terrible chance we detonated all 2,000 of our bombs and the Russians did the same, that would be the end of all multicellular life on Earth( there is a bacterium that is resistant to radiation that would probably flourish after such an incident.)

So why are we still maintaining so many bombs, at such enormous cost?  Who in his right mind would ever order even one to be used, under any circumstances?  Oh, wait, there’s always the “Seven Days in May” scenario (watch the movie to see how this works.)

The same concerns apply to much of our military spending.  The costs of supporting our armed forces (including veterans) are not reducible because of the commitments soldiers have made, but the costs of producing warplanes, battleships, tanks, and so on are fair game.  Surely some of the factories devoted to arms production could be repurposed to making cranes, caterpillar tractors, and other heavy machinery for the construction industry.

These three types of excessive cost are the most egregious, unfair, and iniquitous aspects of the American system but there are others.  I invite you to make suggestions as to other areas of gross and excessive costs that are built in to our system… our use of  coal and petroleum products is one.

These excessive costs are directly reflected in our tax rates.  Although our total tax rates are low compared to other countries (partly because medical care is not included) we spend too much money on the wrong things.  For example, a poor child goes to an underfunded school (because he lives in a poor district which can’t raise enough money to have good schools), fails to graduate high school, can’t get a job, turns to crime, is incarcerated, has children out of wedlock, and can’t support them.  (Ideally, every school in the country should get the same funding through federal intervention, and, in fairness, all schools should be raised to the level of the highest-funded school no matter how much it costs.  The benefits to society, though perhaps delayed by up to ten years, would be dramatic.)

If he does get a job, it is at without benefits, not full-time, and at minimum wage, which is not enough to keep body and soul together– especially when regressive taxes like the payroll tax eat up the paycheck.  His children will face the same problems plus inadequate housing and food due to the parent’s poverty, and psychological problems due to inadequate parenting.  (If we fed, housed, and educated a child in his own home, we could produce a functioning member of society who pays taxes and raises children who have some prospect of exceeding their parent’s status.  In the US the minimum wage is less than $10 an hour, but in some other countries like Australia it is $16, enough to support a family of three in a pinch.

Given all these costs and regressive taxes like sales tax and payroll tax, it is not surprising that income inequality has reached levels not seen since the beginning of the Depression and that average income has actually gone down over the last ten years.  The gross greed, brutality, and venality of the American system is hidden by fair promises from bought and paid for politicians; people are distracted by watching Fox News and reality television while their pensions are gradually disappearing and infrastructure is silently decaying around them.  We are on our way to Hell in a handbasket if we don’t make some changes soon.

By now everyone who reads a newspaper, watches TV, or consults cnn.com, knows that the United States Supreme Court has invalidated a portion of the Voting Rights Act (which was re-authorized for 25 years in Congress in 2006) making it possible for previously supervised voting districts (mostly in the South) to write their own voting rules for the first time since 1965.

Affected jurisdictions responded by immediately passing laws that had previously been interdicted by the federal government as discriminatory.  The response was almost gleeful in its egregiousness.

When you read the text of the Supreme Court decision, you see that the Court has substituted its judgement for that of the Congress by claiming that the portion of the Act in question is outdated and obsolete.  This substitution of judgement allowed the Court to effectively suspend operation of the Voting Rights Act until the Congress acts to modernize this section– the one that names specific districts subject to prior review of any changes in voting law.

The Court knows perfectly well that Congress will not act, or at least it is counting on it.  The chances for the United States Senate to pass a non-filibustered bill that the House will then approve are small.  For the past three years, since the 2010 elections, we have seen complete paralysis of legislation.  There was only a Democratic supermajority in the Senate for three months, between the seating (delayed for months by Republican tricks) of Al Franken, the freshman senator from Minnesota, and the death of Senator Kennedy.

The Republican legislative strategy has been one of all-out obstruction in the Senate and repeated attempts in the House to pass bills that have no chance of Senate approval.   For example, the House has voted to repeal “Obamacare” almost three dozen times, and has recently passed an anti-abortion bill that is unconstitutional on its face.

So, the Court (a majority of them) has seen a chance to effectively repeal the Voting Rights Act despite that fact that it is clearly constitutional in all respects, being authorized by the Amendment that prohibits racial discrimination in voting and empowers the Congress to make laws that enforce anti-discrimination.  The reasoning that they use to do this is entirely specious, and they are probably aware of that.  If they do know, they don’t care, because they intend to enable discrimination in voting again by whatever means available.  It is an acknowledgement that the Republican Party understands that the only way that they can win is by cheating.

Discrimination in voting has changed its focus since 1965.  Now discrimination is accomplished by gerrymandering districts, to break apart minority voting blocs, and imposing onerous identification requirements.  New federal legislation is urgently needed to make drawing voting districts an objective practice performed by an independent authority, instead of leaving the biased local and state legislators to allocate districts based on their best chances for re-election.  Legislation is also needed to standardize voting hours, the distribution of voting machines, and identification requirements.  All these issues are subject to racially motivated interference with voting rights.

Please read the following with extreme caution.  It has not in any way been verified.

“Let’s consider the near-religious belief among physicists in unobservable hypothetical entities called “quarks”. They simply HAVE TO exist, right? Well, read on.

“No human in the entire history of this planet has ever observed a “quark”. The so-called evidence for “quarks” is based entirely on secondary or tertiary normal decay products and it is INFERRED that they decayed from “quarks”.

“Likewise the scattering experiments that are interpreted as scattering by unobservable “quarks” have other interpretations, but theoretical physicists desperately wanted “quarks” so they ignored other models.

“After Gellman-Mann introduced the “quark” model as a fictional accounting device for particle family numerology, physicists looked everywhere from the deep ocean, to the Moon, to outer space and everywhere in between for free “quarks” with fractional charges. They found not a single one. That was a big problem. So they INVENTED confinement, which is a completely ad hoc way of hiding “quarks” inside hadrons where we can never observe them.

“Regarding the “quark-gluon” plasma “evidence”, they predicted that it would behave like a weakly interacting gas. The RHIC observational evidence says this prediction was WRONG. The plasma, much to the surprise of theoretical physicists behaved like a strongly interacting fluid, which is much more like what Discrete Scale Relativity anticipates. Of course, given time the theoretical physicists “adjusted” their model to fit the new data, and now they see it as more confirmation of the “quark” fiction. Another epicycle in their Ptolemaic models.

“That’s particle physics for you: they do not study nature; they tell nature how it should be according to their Platonic fictions.

“Quarks are ad hoc, fractional charges are ad hoc, “confinement” is ad hoc and “asymptotic freedom” is ad hoc.”

“Robert L. Oldershaw
Discrete Scale Relativity/Fractal Cosmology knecht Jun. 22, 2013 at 2:42pm”

The above is a comment received on a well known, usually staid website related to science news… The news was preliminary signs of a particle with four quarks… That news is reasonable… The comment, however, is unlikely to be verified in the near future.