The Gas Pump

A Gathering of Old Men

A GATHERING OF OLD MEN

Ernest Gaines

Books for Bigots

In my quest for appropriate BOOKS FOR BIGOTS, I have read A GATHERING OF OLD MEN.  It's a simple book really and one which most any bigot will understand.  Unfortunately, for the BIGOTS within the book, they were not allowed to lynch anyone for killing Beau who in the minds of many, deserved killing but was a white guy and hence, not killable by a black person. 

Taking place in the heart of Louisiana Cajun country a black guy kills a white guy.  This would normally result in a lynching which in this case was certainly a possibility.  What saved the situation was that the brother of the deceased played football for LSU, was up for all-american and his partner in the backfield was a black guy who was as talented as Gil.  Gil and Cal were known as Salt and Pepper by the adoring fans of Louisiana football.  Obviously. a new phenomena in the Southeast Conference.  Gil, the white guy and brother of Beau, would not agree to lynching the black guy claiming to have killed Beau.  The question of whether or not it was based on some idea of proper behavior or on the fact that he would not be selected as all-american if it were to occur, especially if he were involved, was not answered.

I remember very well my years at SMU in Dallas in the 1960s with Hayden Frye the football coach.  Hayden recruited the first black player in the Southwest Conference, Jerry Levias, who went on to have a successful professional career.  Interestingly enough, Hayden was shortly thereafter fired.  It is not often that a successful, very successful, football coach is fired. Makes you wonder, doesn't it.

Being from Iowa, having attended the University of Iowa on a couple of occasions both while Hayden was the football coach there, I am fully aware that Hayden was hired at Iowa and became one of the better football coaches in the history of that University.  Hayden was known nationally and many of his assistants went on to become successful coaches themselves. So when I read A GATHERING OF OLD MEN and a major factor in the non-lynching of any of the old men gathered with their worn out old shotguns as old as themselves, was the fact that the brother of the deceased, told his family that if they lynched the black man responsible, he would not become all-american, the lynching did not occur.  And besides the black football player  who he relied on to block for him might not be so willing if he just came from a lynching a black guy the day before.  It might not work out so well.  They needed to beat Ole Miss.

The book acknowledged that things had changed; violence was no longer a requirement for BIGOTS; you could be a BIGOT without it.  But the racial thing was still there and not to disappear.  Any BIGOT reading this book, acknowledging the fact that most BIGOTS don't read, would find it disconcerting how BIGOTRY was somewhat ameliorated; it wasn't to disappear, but unfortunately black people were no longer being lynched.  

The BIGOTS in the book were clearly nasty people.  I think the author, Mr. Gaines, was somewhat too kind and has mischaracterized the human race by suggesting only nasty people are BIGOTS.  It has been a fixture of American life that otherwise nice, well-behaved, and loving people are often BIGOTS and  are not nice, well-behaved, and loving when it comes to people of different color.  It is not always the Luke Wills of the world that are the BIGOTS and the author tends to be a little too forgiving; hopefully not simply for commercial reasons to make us white people feel better about ourselves and to buy the book.

So, in my quest for BOOKS FOR BIGOTS, A Gathering of Old Men, is a questionable choice.  It is an easy read, but the old black guys gathering with their shotguns to confront a lynching party of white, drunk BIGOTS would lead one to believe that the typical BIGOT would find the book less than satisfactory.

Richard E H Phelps II

Mingo 

It's the Debt

 IT'S THE DEBT

We speak of debt as something we don't want.  It can cause problems; one's life can be seriously disrupted by debt; it controls our life; we have to make money to pay money for the money we borrow to buy things.  All very simple really.

But if you put it into a larger context such as the debt existing in the United States which according to those in the know is multiple trillions, the effects can be rather startling.  If you look at debt as an economic concept rather than a personal matter, one may gain some clarity as to its effect  on our personal lives.

When the bank loans you $50,000 to buy a new car, the bank has created $50,000 in money that did not exist before they loaned that money to you.  The bank has created $50,000.  If the household debt in the United States is $18,400,000,000,000 which has been suggested, there has been $18,400,000,000,000 money created by lending institutions that did not exist prior to the lending transactions.  

That $18,400,000,000,000 exists as money.  Somebody has it.  You borrowed the money to buy something and paid someone $18,400,000,000,000 for the items you purchased.  That amount of money exists somewhere and is controlled by somebody.  That money was simply created by us, the borrowers.  Those who now have that $18,400,000,000,000 are indeed rich.  We, the borrowers, have made many people very rich indeed.

If all this money were to be repaid tomorrow, the country would have $18,400,000,000,000 less than it did before.  That money would simply disappear; it would be gone; poof!  Could our society, our country, continue to operate if suddenly $18,400,000,000,000 disappeared.  Would you be able to buy anything?  Would the companies and people that make these things be able to sell anything?  Would it be 1929 again?

Why doesn't the national debt get reduced?  Every generation of politician says their goal is to reduce the national debt.  It never gets reduced; it always increases.  The greater the national debt the greater the amount of money in the economy.  With less debt, with less money, people will complain, people will go broke, people will not be able to buy stuff.  Our politicians do not want this; they will be blamed and rightly so.  They would be responsible for less money rattling around in the economy available to you and me to buy stuff that we don't need and could easily do without.

So you will have to make up your mind that even if debt affects you adversely personally, its effect on us as a people and our country may be entirely something different.

Richard E H Phelps II

Mingo

SNAP

SNAP

As a followup on our household debt discussion, it would be worthwhile to take a look at SNAP officially known as "Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program".  The article to which I refer indicates that 42,000,000 Americans use SNAP to provide food for themselves and their families.  

The same article refers to the United States as the richest of nations.  There seems to be a disconnect here somewhere.  If household debt is 18,400,000,000,000 and 42,000,000 Americans are relying on government assistance for food, how does it translate into being rich?  Just saying!

We are told we are rich; we are the greatest, wealthiest, most prosperous nation ever seen.  We all believe this because the statements confirming this are continuous and have been given us our entire lives.  At the same time we spend almost a trillion dollars in the defense budget - - you know, building another aircraft carrier that can get blown out of the water by any sort of missile at any time.  We have to be rich, don't we, if we are the greatest and have the most aircraft carriers?  But what about food?

Now don't call me unduly pessimistic or of simply trying to ruin your day, but once in a while we ought to look around and make an effort to comprehend our world and what it means for us and our descendents.  It just might be that things are not what others say they are and the people in charge are not who we think they are. 

Maybe we should pay attention once in a while!  Maybe we should ask a question once in a while!  I do pose one possibility, and it does often seem more than a possibility, that our elected representatives really don't represent the people who elect them, they represent the people who give them money.  This seems to be the case here in Iowa:  our national representatives appear to represent Trump, not us,  and our state representatives appear to represent Reynolds, not us.  When our elected representatives come back home for the purpose of justifying what they have done rather than asking us what they can do to make our lives a little better, it should be clear who they are actually representing - - not us.

I'm not saying that this matter of representation is the reason that we have $18,400,000,000,000 in household debt and 42,000,000 receiving food stamps, but it is certainly something that should be considered and be given some thought.  It wouldn't seem to me that we, as a nation, are particularly rich.  There are certainly many people here that are rich and there are many who have an income that qualifies them in the minds of many as being rich, but that doesn't necessarily mean we are a rich nation.  The facts seem to be contrary.

Richard E H Phelps II

Mingo

 

 

$18,400,000,000,000

 $18,400,000,000,000

This is the number that an article this past week used to describe the household debt in the United States.  Presuming that it could be off a dollar or two, it remains a rather significant number.  Our household debt has reached trillions, not millions, not billions.  So what you say is the significance of that?

This is a significant number; it has meaning.  We are a society that operates on debt.  Corporate America a long time ago learned that it can sell only so much stuff if people spend only what they have; hence it has created a method by which people can buy stuff without the money to buy it, with only the promise to pay over time. 

The method corporate America developed was to create companies that provide the money to buy stuff you can't afford to buy outright.  This too is a profit making enterprise - - the profit is called interest which in turn becomes investment income and this generation of money without production has created a whole new field of study - - "finance capitalism".  

In order to buy something without the money to do so, one eventually must pay additional money for the same product which often, as one can quickly realize, may double the amount of the cost of the product purchased.  A whole lot of money is going to companies that don't produce anything.  They are siphoning off billions of dollars from our national income by creating a way to allow us to have stuff we can't afford and probably don't need and to go into debt, and for many of us, for the remainder of our lives.

The organizations that provide the money to buy stuff do not produce anything of value.  They don't make shovels or stoves, they simply are formed for the purpose of providing a way for you to buy more stuff.  This has become necessary for the reason that millions of people are involved in making the stuff that you can not afford to buy, and without debt most of the stuff made would not be sold and the people who make the stuff would not have a job or an income and would be unable to buy the stuff they make or other stuff made by other people.  Money would, in effect, disappear.  

The question becomes:  Can we as a country or a society survive without debt?  Is it required that you and I buy stuff we can't afford for our country to remain intact and what we think of as being prosperous?  Is buying stuff we can't afford a necessary element of living in a modern society, ours in particular?  Are we really prosperous if we owe a lot of money and have to spend our days making money to pay for all the stuff that we have the use of?

The answer, of course, is yes; it is necessary.  We are judged by what we have; this is a requirement and one that is made clear to us continually.  We are not only judged by what we own, but what we have the use of.  We have the use of the car we don't own.  The car can be repo'ed.  We don't own the car until we don't owe money for it and by that time it will have little value.  We don't own the house we live in: it can be taken from us by the company that loaned us the money to buy it.  Not everyone is in debt, very true!  But if we owe, in total, $18,400,000,000,000, someone surely is.

The debt we have personally and collectively is significant; it defines us; it determines our lives; it makes us who we are. The church, the government, the organizations we belong to do not control our lives, our debt does. 

Richard E H Phelps II

Mingo

Good for Business

 GOOD FOR BUSINESS

As you know,  me being a criminal defense lawyer, I'm always looking for ways to make my particular profession more profitable.  This being the major reason why I'm always rooting for our state legislature to make more crimes and more severe punishments every time they are in session.  Usually, they are quite active in doing so and I am thankful for that.

What we now have is a great example of another method of increasing our business, hence the earning power of the criminal defense bar.  President Trump is leading the way and must be given credit for this new effort - - prosecuting our political rivals or people who displease us.  Comey and Bolton are great examples.  This effort must be studied and emulated by our own governor, Reynolds, and our own attorney general, Brenna Bird.

When you think about it, it will be a whole new era in America - - prosecuting political opponents and people who don't please.  We have the framework now of a police state that will be able to assist in this effort.  We've always had secret police, but now they are even more secret - - wearing masks and such.  I can only applaud the efforts that are being made to increase the business of people in my particular profession, the criminal defense bar.

I know that I am in the minority here in that most of my colleagues think this effort to prosecute political rivals and people who don't please as unamerican and fascist.  But what the Hey!  It's good for business:  I'm all for it.  We've got thousands of crimes on the books both federal, state, county, city, etc.  We should be using them to good purpose by putting more people in jail and otherwise making their lives miserable.  They will need my services.   I can see my business mushrooming.  Congress and our state legislatures have been making more crimes every session for several centuries now.  It's time we begin using them.

You ask, how is this possible?  It's easy.  Trump has shown the way.  You call up your attorney general or local county attorney and say "Hey Ms. Attorney General, so-and-so  said nasty things about me and I want him prosecuted.  Find some crime you can charge him with and do so promptly."  As I said, with all the crimes that are on the books, it should be easy to find something to charge him with.  

In Iowa, you don't even need a grand jury to indict, you merely need to file a trial information and you can do this without having to convince a group of citizens to be accomplices in your efforts to use the criminal law for your own benefit.  It is even easier than in the federal system where you need a grand jury, so let's get with it shall we.  Inflation is with us, it costs more money than ever to survive in a decent manner, and the more money we have, the better it is.  I know this is a little self-serving, but oh well.

Richard E H Phelps II

Mingo

Climate Radicalism

CLIMATE RADICALISM

Well, we have a whole new radicalism to concern ourselves with.  This coming from our own attorney general, Brenna Bird; and it must be so if she says so.  After all, she is attorney general and therefore a person who knows of what she speaks.  

The particular offender in this instance is the European Union, a group of 27 countries.  The offense of which our attorney general speaks is a recent enactment concerning not only ESG, environmental, social, and governance practices, but also diversity, equity, and inclusion.  This enactment is known, apparently, as the "Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive" and includes "sweeping" requirements.  No wonder Brenda is beside herself.

This radical green agenda most assuredly will adversely affect just about everything we hold near and dear here in Iowa.  And if directly affecting American companies, farmers, and such with "unconstitutional and immoral requirements", it is not tolerable.    It clearly is not tolerable according to the attorney generals of Florida, West Virginia, Alaska, Arkansas, Georgia, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, and Wyoming.

You would think with all this firepower, the European Union would simply take note and rectify the situation immediately.  Surely with such distinguished disgruntlement, the effort to address adverse human rights and environmental impacts would be acknowledged to be the hocus pocus that it is and discarded quickly.  What a ludicrous notion that the European Union can enact its own rules  which affect us Americans requiring American companies to comply if doing business in the European Union.

We don't have these silly DEI and ESG rules here to make things complicated for foreign companies and a simple immigration raid now and then shouldn't count.  So we need to applaud our attorney general in turning her attention to European matters where things are really out of control.

   There is nothing very pressing going on in Iowa that needs her attention anyway.  She's got plenty of people working for her to take care of anything that pops up needing immediate attention.  Maybe it would be a good idea if all these attorney generals have a pow wow and decide on some decisive action to counteract this environmental radicalism that seems to be current on the other side of the Atlantic.  Maybe they could send a delegation to Brussels for a week of talks and while there have a decent meal or two and do a little sightseeing - - you know, get a little culture.

I'm sure that the presence of such dignitaries in Brussels would get their attention and they could effectively explain their objections to any diversity, equity, inclusion, climate change, environmental concerns or other radical notions which we in the States are in the process of doing away with altogether.  And maybe, just maybe, convince these radicals the errors of their ways and come to their senses.

Richard E H Phelps II

Mingo