A ROSE BY ANOTHER NAME

We admit it. We hate our name, Billy DeWayne Wheeler. The name conjures up visions of trailer parks, long neck beers, and women with tattoos. OK, in deference to our mother, we do have a certain populist pride in the name, a lifetime of admonishing smirking teachers, government clerks, and CEO receptionists, “It’s not William. It’s Billy. It’s Southern.” Why do parents do this to their children? Is it the drug hangover from childbirth, revenge for the discomfort of pregnancy, or a parental statement that their child is special?

We are, after all, the most staunch defenders of parental rights, but when does the exercise of the first amendment cross over into child abuse? Here we have a the sad story of a New Jersey child who almost didn’t have a birthday cake because the local bakery refused to adorn his cake with the greeting “ Happy Birthday, Adolph Hitler”. That’s right little Adolph’s jerk of a father, whose own parents lovingly gave him the very proper Scottish name of Heath Campbell, decided to sentence his own child to a lifetime of abuse and derision, while creating a living, breathing hate crime. And as if dooming one child to 20 years of therapy wasn’t enough, white supremacist wannabe Campbell also named his two other children, JoyceLynn Aryan Nation and Honszlynn Hinler. (It‘s Himmler, you dufus) In a happy ending,frosted in delicious political satire, three year old Adolph’s mom got his cake at the same place she did the previous two years….Wal-Mart.

And to remind you that we are in the middle on almost all issues, here’s a piece on unique Africa-American children’s names. Our own children’s names? That would be Winston Wycliffe Wheeler (Wink) and Wellesley Windover Wheeler (Windy). Today, we have grown accustomed to our name and now tell people, “It’s Barack, not Barry, and it’s Billy, not William.”

IS THE MONROE DOCTRINE DEAD?

We realize it’s the holiday season and, like Auntie Mame, we need a little Christmas right now, but could we get our press to focus for just one moment on things that matter. We are like the man dying of thirst in the desert, as we channel surf through the news looking for reports of real news. While we can find plenty of reports on little Caylee Anthony, Madonna’s divorce settlement, and a shoe throwing Iraqi newsman, we have not been able to find anyone interested on the fact that the Monroe Doctrine has been abandoned by our President and President-Elect.

For those of your deprived of an elementary school education, the Monroe Doctrine is a nearly 200 year old US foreign policy position that the US will not allow any interference in this hemisphere by foreign powers from outside this hemisphere. For the past few months, Russia has been thumbing it’s nose at our lame duck President and his appeasement minded successor. A glimpse at our sidebar reveals a link to the very under reported story that Russia intends to send warships to visit Cuba, a mere 90 miles off our shores. We realize that the world is shrinking and that we can’t hide from the rest of the world, but just because we live in a zero lot line home, we don’t have to let the neighbors pee through our window (and, no, we didn’t forget the “r”).

While we appreciate the attention being given the current financial crisis, we still believe that the defense of our shores is a major function of the federal government. So would one of you guys who is lucky enough to have a job as our elected official, do something about the thugs in out backyard?

WHERE DO WE GO FOR UNBIASED REPORTING?

We find ourselves surprisingly repetitive in manners concerning the press in this country. We are possibly obsessed, overly focused, or justified, possibly all three, in bemoaning the lack of unbiased reporting by those employed as journalists True there are exceptions, CNN’s Wolf Blitzer and NBC’s Tom Brokaw, come quickly to mind. We are certain that other names would surface if we thought longer, much longer.

So with apologies for the required redundancy, we report that former Hillary Clinton campaign advisor, Hilary Rosen is now hosting CNN’s After Party. Rosen is the Washington Political Director for the Huffington Post and one of the Democratic Party’s most vociferous advocates. Now all three major cable “news” outlets have in their employ, political operatives of the most insidious type. By that we mean, likable. MSNBC’s Chris Matthews, Fox News’ Mike Huckabee, and Rosen are all charming, entertaining people and, even worse, they have experience in American politics that makes their point of view eminently credible. It isn’t their credentials than we question, it is their ethics.

We were stuck by something Secretary of Defense, Robert M. Gates said about his political affiliation. As a professional intelligence officer, he never registered his political affiliation, so he could serve any administration in a professional and unbiased manner. As an aspiring journalist we took a college course in journalistic ethics, but that was long ago. Funny we thought ethics would never go out of vogue. We are comforted that our Secretary of Defense shares our view and dismayed that the press does not. However, we feel confident the American people will recognize the former and reject the latter. Otherwise we are lost.

SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE

Years ago, a coworker visiting in my home saw a photo of me and my wife at my daughter’s baptism, he said to me, “I didn’t know you were Catholic. I thought you were an atheist.” I was raised to believe that it was inappropriate to discuss one‘s religion, finances, or sex life in public. I am not ashamed of my religion, finances, or sex life, but they are personal matters and to be shared only with my intimates. Like most social conventions, such a practice is rooted in pragmatism. A couple of recent events illustrate why our founding fathers sought to keep public life and religion separate.

California’s Proposition 8, the so-called “Defense of Marriage” proposal to amend that state‘s constitution, was passed by a slim majority of voters. Fueled by money from the Mormon Church and other churches, the supporters of Proposition 8 would have us believe that marriage is solely a religious institution. When I worked for the Department of Justice, I remember reading a legal definition of a marriage that said, in part, that marriage was a contract among three parties, the spouses and the state. As I recall, the standard ending to a marriage ceremony includes something like, …by the authority vested in me by the state…” not “by the Mormon Church” or any other church. It is clearly unAmerican to allow any church to force our citizens to follow their religious beliefs. So why are we trying to deny gay and lesbian people the rights conferred to straight citizens, the right to inherit property, the right to make medical decisions as next of kin, the right to Social Security and IRS benefits? Because the Bible says so? Find me two people that read and interpret the Bible the exactly the same way. Besides, I thought our laws were exempt from that religious test.

Lest we malign the Mormon Church too much, I have special disdain for the African American community on this one. On the same day when African Americans were celebrating the watershed moment of electing the first Black US President, …with the overwhelming support of gay and lesbian community, 70 percent of them were voting for the legal discrimination of this very vulnerable minority. I don’t want to hear that it’s not the same thing. I was at both Martin Luther King’s memorial service in Memphis in 1968 and Harvey Milk’s memorial service in San Francisco in 1978. While there are important differences in the two movements, it is the same fundamental principle. The hypocrisy is staggering, 70 percent of African American children are born out of wedlock, but they want to “Defend Marriage”. Please.

Even more tragic is the carnage going on in Mubai, India, and in Nigeria, all in the name of religion. I’m no religious expert, but I’m pretty certain that, “Thou Shall Not Kill” is pretty universal. When did hatred of others become the standard fare of our religious communities? Every church community I’ve been exposed to has demonstrated concern for our fellow man and peace fostered by an all powerful being. I’m not your typical sheltered boy from the Bible Belt. I spent ten years of my life working with refugees from every religious group on the planet. This hate, whether it is perpetrated by the pulling of the trigger of an automatic weapon or the pulling of the lever in a voting booth is not the exercise of religion, but it is what Thomas Jefferson was hoping to avoid by the doctrine of separation of church and state.

So the next time you act to persecute a minority, you remember on which side of the religious argument you fall, and on which side your maker sits.

MILITARY WE CAN AFFORD

We spent a good part of our career advising the US Navy and other military organizations on how better to manage their operations. We came away with the firm belief that we have the most dedicated, the most well trained, and the most well equipped military in the world. We also have one of the worst managed military in the world. In simple terms we pay way too much for our military. The Department of Defense gets around 43 percent of the national budget, $711B in 2008. We are so conditioned to accept these large numbers that to suggest that they are too high is considered anti-American and suicidal. Well, it is just the opposite. We are in a death spiral of spending that will soon accomplish what no other enemy has been able to do, bring our great country to defeat. Simply look at the numbers (remember, we love numbers) We spend nearly as much on our military as the whole rest of the world combined. That’s right, our military costs are an amazing 48 percent of the world total military expenditures. Now remember that includes our allies. All of Europe spends $289B, about 40 Percent of what we spend. More importantly our adversaries spend a fraction of what we do. China spends $122B, Russia spends $70B. However, any way you want to look at it, there is no rational reason for us to be spending the kind of money we do to sustain our military.

So how do we figure out what is the right amount to spend? Well, first let’s decide what it is we want to accomplish. Are we out to be Ming The Merciless and dominate the entire universe or do we simply want to protect our shores? In all seriousness, there is a legitimate debate. Recent administrations have perpetuated the belief that the only legitimate form of government is democracy and it is God’s choice that the United States install such a government in all non-believing countries. We are unsure that the former is true and certain that the latter is lunacy. There is, perhaps, some legitimacy in protecting democracy where it exists and where we have treaties and self interest. However, we feel that it should be a pay as you go proposition. We have always marveled that Germany and Japan should have been allowed to develop into global economic powers while we provided their security. Maybe it‘s because we lived in a Sicilian neighborhood in Brooklyn, but we believe you pay for security. How did we allow the rest of the world develop industries to rival our own while we paid for the military services? Along the way we had the opportunity to investigate how other governments run their military.

Once we decide on what it is we want to accomplish, then we can go about deciding how we accomplish it. Our military expenditures are focused five areas: weapons systems, non-weapons equipment, facilities, manpower, and logistics. There are substantial economies to be had in all areas. An exhaustive discussion is beyond the intent of these pages, but here are few items.

• We own too many military installations, here and overseas. The US military is one of the largest, if not the largest landlords in the world, with over 30,000,000 acres of land around the world. This does not include bases in the UK, Israel, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and Afghanistan which were built with US tax dollars, but are technically belong to the host countries.
• We have too much non-weapons equipment. A good chunk of the military’s real estate is used to warehouse giant machine tools, huge trucks, personnel carriers, and other pieces of no-ordnance equipment.
• We have too many non-combatant military personnel. Because other countries rely on global social services to support their military, they do not need separate medical services, social services, housing services to support their military.
• We have too many of the wrong kind of weapons. Our nuclear arsenal is beyond what is needed to maintain a deterrent. Discussion is futile.
  

Ronald Regan oversaw an military expansion designed to destroy the world’s second greatest superpower, the Soviet Union. The design worked, perhaps too well. Will it bring down the world’s greatest superpower as well?

LEARNING FROM OUR ELDERS

One of the more stupid things that was said by Republican supporters during the recent Presidential campaign (and there were many stupid things said by both sides) was, “We don’t want European style democracy.” As much as we love the USA and wouldn’t want to live anywhere else, there are many things European we admire. We’ve always been fans of English furniture, German cars, French food, and Italian shoes, but we also think that the Europeans do a lot of things better than we do. However, since one of things they do better is reading, we are going to address this in a series of posts so not to strain the attention span of the average American reader.

First, and most frequently mentioned is universal health care. Frankly, we are weary of the debate. The facts are irrefutable. In Europe life expectancies are higher. Infant mortality is lower. Every citizen has access to health care. Every type of illness is less common…cancers, heart disease, stroke, diabetes. Finally costs are lower. Isn’t it simply a matter of putting a group of experts in a room and asking them to design a US health care system based on European best practices? There is really no reason why we can’t have a European type health care system implemented within a couple of years. That is, there isn’t any reason other than the lobbies of the AMA, pharmaceutical labs, medical equipment manufacturers, and insurance companies. In the end we will do it for the same reason the Europeans did it. We can no longer afford the way we’re doing it now.

Second is mass transit. Rail transportation in Europe is convenient, safe, clean, and fast, very fast. Eurostar trains transport passengers from London to Paris at speeds of 186 mph in just over two hours. Try getting through an airport, board a plane, and leave the ground in less than two hours here in the US, much less arrive at your destination. All major cities in Europe can conveniently be reached by train. Furthermore, once you arrive in the city central, you can transfer to the city’s light rail system/subway and be taken to a convenient distance, often walking distance of your destination. This one is a little harder to accomplish. We have to make a major infrastructure investment and a major cultural change.

This could easily be a series of essays on its own. Virtually nothing is uniquely American as the cult of private ownership of an automobile. Only New Yorkers actually have the opportunity to mature unencumbered by the forced reliance on private transportation. There is no other aspect of the American way of life in which we are so uniformly inculcated. An adult without a drivers license in the US is more of a minority than a black Lesbian with a Hispanic surname. In all seriousness, we have been codependent with the oil companies, the auto industry, and the insurance companies in an unholy addiction to the automobile. Try this exercise, add up your car note, your insurance premium, the cost of gas, the cost of parking, and your annual maintenance costs. When I talked to my dad about buying my first car, he told me, “Son, I started to work as a welder when I was 14 years old. I was making so much money I didn’t know how to spend it all. Then I bought my first car and I’ve been broke every since.” It’s time for America to grow up and get a real transportation system.

Next: Managing our military.

BY THE NUMBERS

We love numbers. We remember a science fiction film where Pi, the constant used to calculate the circumference of a circle or the volume of a sphere, was used to create a universal language with which to communicate with extraterrestrials. Well, we want to use numbers to communicate with just the American electorate. Your elected representatives have just committed to giving $700B (that’s shorthand for $700,000,000,000.00) to the people who have made a living loaning you money. Think about that. Your elected representatives, the people you have chosen to look after your interests, have just given $700B of your money to people to loan to you WITH interest. Now that doesn’t make much sense to us. How about we loan $700B to these incompetent, greedy, lazy leeches on the American people, AND they pay us interest?

Here’s the good news, most of us won’t have to pay the $700B. According to the National Taxpayers Union 25 percent of the American population pays 86.27 percent of what our government spends. (We were going to round up, but when dealing with numbers this large, a fraction of a point is a whole lot of money) That means 75 percent of us will only have to pay for $175B. What’s that you say? $175B is still a big number? Well, let’s see if we can make you feel better. Fifty percent of the American households will only have to pay for 2.99 percent (No, we don’t want to round up to three percent) Fifty percent of the American households will only have to pay for 2.99 percent of the tab or $20.93B. That’s only $214.77 per family. That doesn’t sound too bad, does it? Americans are generous people. We are always willing to help a starving child in Africa or a Harvard MBA who just had his Christmas bonus cut from $100K to $50K.

Now what is your individual liability? Well, like we just said if your household income is $32,000 or less, you only pay $214.77 of the cost of the bailout. What? You and your wife no longer work at MacDonald’s since you got out of high school? Well, if you make more it’s not too bad. If you and your better half make $65,000 or more your share will be $24,787.12. Don’t worry. It seems worse than it is. Little Johnny can probably get a student loan. Now, suppose you worked your way through college and you and your spouse are living the American dream…paying a mortgage, two car notes, and private school tuition (you went to public school and you wish your kids could too, but the schools were safe then) OK, if you make $110,000 or more your share of the biggest sucker bet in history is a whopping $50,848.40. That’s right, nearly half of your income has been given to a group of losers, in fact the biggest losers in history. We’re right there with you. We have an income of about $150,000 a year, pay a mortgage on a $250,000 home, own three cars (we have a daughter in college), and help our mothers with their rent. Our share of the debt will be $82,545.10, 55 percent of our income. We, too, were panicked until we remembered that we can pass this bill to our children, and their children, and their children…Isn’t American a great country? Isn’t it???