Arming teachers...

... is one of the stupidest ideas. 

Without giving statistics here are some of the scenarios:

A teacher gets shot reaching for an eraser.

A criminal mugs the teacher on the way home and when the teacher reaches for his/her gun, the mugger shoots the teacher instead of just robbing him.

A student brings a gun to school because he's convinced the teacher doesn't like him.

A nervous teacher aims at a perceived threat and instead shoots one of his/her students.

Where does it end? Give teachers guns, then give guns to doctors who commit abortions so they can protect themselves from Pro-Life fanatics. All our elected representatives should also have guns - maybe fire them in to the air when they're speaking. People who go to the movies? Guns. Firemen answering a call? Guns. All that violence at sporting events? Think how much better it will be when all those drunk fans are packing heat.

Bang is the answer.

If more guns are the answer to safety, why do they screen you for them at the airport? Maybe more metal detectors is the answer, not more guns. Maybe smart guns, which can only be fired by the person they're registered to, should be on the table. Something has to be.

The gun lobby can find an excuse for everyone to own a gun, even to protect themselves from other protectors. What the NRA must do, in order to protect the individual with a gun is
to make sure less guns are out in the public, not more guns. A gun should be a deterrent, but it can't be if everybody has one. Regardless of the answer, the NRA needs to be on the side of the solution and not the problem. All they need is the will and sense to correct a bad situation.

Why I'm voting for Obama

In 2008, I originally wanted Hilary Clinton, and I still believe she would have done a great job.
But eventually I bought into Obama's cry for change. After President Bush I wanted
big changes. Unfortunately, Obama's changes weren't big enough.
I thought he failed in not fighting harder for a single pay health plan. He did not fight hard enough for Elizabeth Warren. He did not fight hard enough endorsing progressive Democrats and even supported the likes of Blue Dogs who supported most
Republican initiatives. He did not rebut the claims that the Tea Party made about him. He simply wanted the Republicans to negotiate with him, and they would not. They wanted him out, and did nothing in the way of bi-partisanship - then blamed him for being a divider.
So why am I voting for him?
We need someone who really has the middle class issues under consideration.
We need someone who is not another Hawk, who realizes we need to end our present wars.
We need someone who does not embrace the Tea party and its Anti-American policies.
We need someone who understands that trickle down economics does not work.
We need someone who knows that  outsourcing jobs is not wise and that outsourcing FEMA is crazy. 
The pro-choice president who saved the U.S auto industry, passed the Affordable Health Care Act, came around on gay marriage and responded to the Superstorm is the president I am voting for. He's not perfect, but in a choice of two, he's the far better choice.
By trying to block all of President Obama's initiatives during his first term, the Republicans did not give him the chance to fail. I hope they have learned their lesson and that a second Obama administration will lead to more cooperation and less obstruction. Our politicians are supposed to - encouraged to - argue over their differences. They are not supposed to make their No. 1 priority stopping all proposed legislation from a president a won a landslide victory in 2008. Here's hoping the next four years will be different.

Debate 3 ...And the Winner Is

The third and thankfully last debate is over and yadda, yadda, yadda. I guess it is
impossible to come up with a new idea after such a long process although Mitt Romney proved again that he could come up with new ideas for himself - the ideas opposite the ones he's had on the campaign trail.

Romney's best answer was to the hypothetical question Bob Schieffer threw out as to what he would do if Israel said its airplanes were on the way to Iran. He said it is not necessary to even discuss that.

As for Romney's plan, whatever the president has done on foreign policies I agree with, but I can do them better. Trust me. Trust me. Trust me. My medicine cures all ailments.

If he was looking for Independents he may have gotten some at the expense of extreme right wingers.

Obama on the other hand probably strengthened his hand with progressives and people concerned about Israel.

The Second Obama-Romney Debate

To hear the Pundits, the contributors, the paid hucksters, you would think that watching that debate was the epitome of brilliant oratory.

I wish to congratulate Candy Crowley for doing a remarkable job within the confines of the format. Each of them would give short shrift to an answer and then recite unrelated prepared speeches which we've all heard many times before. If you were looking for one new thought
you must have been sadly disappointed, as I was.

While Obama certainly won on substance he did not win on style because of the format.

I do not like the Town Hall format, because I do not know how the audience was chosen and how the questioners were chosen. Many years ago when I was President of the Riverdale Community Council we had a School Board election program. In order to make it fair
anyone  could come to the meeting. The questioners were given a  card and told to put their question on it. Then we put all the questions in a large drum. We had different people from the audience pick the questions out of the drum. This way the answerer never knew who was asking the question.

What happened to a real question on Medicare and Medicaid? What happened to a real question on reforming our education system?

The Debate Nobody Won

If I had to give points on Wednesday's presidential debate, I would say Obama 501/2 Romney 491/2.

In football terms Obama scored on a safety, got two points at the end of the first half and spent the rest of the game in prevent defense. He had a shot when Romney said he got the help of the Democrats in Massachusetts when they passed the Health Care law. Obama answered that if the Republican Congress had given him any help we would be
well on the way to recovery . He just threw that line out as if it did not matter.

Romney on the other hand could have made points if he just once explained how he could do what he said his plan was, with a Democratic Senate. What if the Republicans lost the House? This is a possibility.

Too much time was spent on the issue of the small business community and how they make jobs. Ever since I was a small kid, I have heard speeches as to how the small business community makes jobs, and how each and every president takes credit for it.


Actually they do almost nothing in that area. If Congress does not allocate funds for loans there is very little the government can do to help small businesses. When I was 24  I went into my first small business, and was a minimum success. I borrowed $10,000 dollars from the bank that my father guaranteed. When I went for more capital to the Small Business Administration, I was turned down. Many years later when I was president of the Record Dealers Association I wrote President Nixon about the small business problem and he said I should join SCORE or become an ACE counsellor. That was 42 years ago. 

At that time the SBA was in the loan business and indeed we helped small business. Congress then decided to go out of the small business loan business, saying the banks could do a better job. As it turned out, the banks were interested in the mortgage business
and did not do a better job when it came to small business loans. The situation was further aggravated by states and cities taxing small businesses with taxes like the Gross
Receipts Tax. The cities and states do very little to help small businesses.

The president had one other good point when he said he would fight for tax relief for small businesses if the businesses keep the jobs in this country. Except no one really defines what  a small business is. Some businesses would blackmail the government by claiming to take their entire business abroad unless the government gave them tax benefits. That is what big
corporations have done.

Pro-Life or Pro-Constitution

The Republican party proclaims itself the Pro-Life party, which would be fine if their candidates for office were running for jobs in their churches, synagogues or mosques. But they are running for offices in a multi-religious nation and their anti abortion and anti gay marriage positions come not from science and logic but from their interpretations of the Bible. And although the country was founded on Judeo-Christian principles, we are supposed to be a nation that welcomes all views and separates church and state. Either you are for the tenets of the Constitution or you are not. You can't have it both ways.

Besides, how does being Pro-Life or Pro-Choice create jobs, build roads, correct what ever needs to be corrected with  Health Care, Medicare, Social Security, Medicaid, the regulation of Wall Street, the banking and housing crisis and all the other problems that are holding America back from being as great as it can be.

Fund Social Security, not Congress's bad investments

Men and women work all their lives, buy government bonds, pay into Social Security, make good investments, and feel secure.

They then hire a financial adviser, who makes some poor investments. On their own
they buy things they really don't need, invest in housing and watch the stock market go bad. 

Then when they're finally ready to retire, they find that they are not as secure as they hoped.


To make matters worse, somewhere along the way Congress became their financial adviser. Congress invested in overpriced warplanes, bridges to nowhere, raises in pay for themselves and their staffs, wars, shoring up the banks etc., and then informs them that Social Security is going broke. 

A different approach to reining in guns

States should have the right to make the purchaser of guns buy insurance for each gun.
The insurance actuaries will devise a cost structure based on caliber, and how many shots the gun is capable of. You want a hunting rifle, that's one price. You want a semi-automatic that's another. The government could then make it against the law to own any new gun without insurance - and you buy the insurance from the legal gun sellers. (You have to have insurance to drive a car because of its potential to do damage, why not a gun?)
No insurance and your gun can be seized and both you and the seller could face fines or jail.
Of course this will be impossible to enforce if only one or two states comply but it should be the duty of the NRA and the "States Rights"enthusiasts to ram this legislation through as they do their own. With the NRA and the insurance lobby working together, any law can be passed.

The NRA's priorities

It has become clear that the NRA, with its massive treasury devoted to keeping itself strong, has been buying votes from our representatives in Congress. It also has a lot of help from the "States Rights" advocates.

The first duty of the NRA and the "States Rights" advocates, however, should be to protect its members and its residents.

All municipalities should have the right to protect their residents without interference from NRA lobbyists. Their argument is that we have enough laws and if enforcement of those laws is what we need to protect ourselves from criminals.

The only problem with that assertion is that many people become criminals when they get their first gun. How could the gun laws on the books protect the students of Columbine or Virginia Tech or Rep. Gabrielle Giffords. What's needed are better ways to keep guns out of the hands of people unable or unwilling to use them safely and wisely.

That's what the NRA and the "States Rights" folks should be concerned about.

The trouble with political talk shows

Host: What do you think we ought to do about global warming?

Republican Analyst: We have to get rid of Obama. I don't believe in global warming, but if I did it would be his fault. When we get a Republican president he will convene a panel of industrialist billionaires to prove global warming is a fraud once and for all.

Democratic Analyst: Jobs, jobs, jobs. Put people to work in the clean energy industry and we will solve our global warming problem and our employment problem. Unfortunately, my Republican colleague understands neither.

Insurance for all

Lets talk about Roberto, Alex and Marie.

Each has a contagious disease.

Roberto is an illegal immigrant and works as a bus boy in a restaurant. He has no health insurance. He goes to a doctor and fills out the form, and gives it to the clerk. She sees that he has no insurance and tells him the doctor is not seeing any more patients that day so he takes a bus to the emergency room. He fills out the form there and waits over two hours because he is not an emergency and goes home. He goes to work the next day even though he is sick.

Alex works at a supermarket, filling in the fruit bins, and occasionally works the cheese slicer. He goes to the doctor and
because he has no health insurance does not get to see the doctor. He takes the train to the emergency room and after a two hour wait gets a bed and gets looked at. They have him stay at emergency for six hours, take a lot of tests and send him home with antibiotics. You the taxpayer pick up the tab.

Marie is a nanny for a very wealthy family and takes care of their two-year-old daughter. She is afraid if she tells her employers she feels sick they will fire her so she does nothing.

Who knows how many people these people made sick?

The savings in health care costs come not from denying people treatment, but from preventing the spread of disease and early detection of disease.

GOP Halftime

With "Stupid Tuesday" having been done away with, it is now halftime in the ongoing saga of who will be the Republican candidate for president.

Right now, Mitt Romney seems to be the choice of the Republicans.

I looked at his business record and am very concerned. He has been successful at a great cost to the people who work for a living.

If elected I see him having success at the expense of the middle class. He is likely to make the 1% richer by his tactics, and the rest of us poorer. Just look at his past wins.

He also does not seem to think that the wealthy should pay their share of taxes.

To have a good economy at the expense of the 99% does not make for a good country.

Like Marie Antoinette, Romney tells the rest of us to eat cake and seems not to realize that there is no cake. The 1% have already eaten it.

Our democracy under attack

Our democracy can only be destroyed from within. Right now there are two factors working to do so. Citizens United and lobbyists who use their money to buy our law makers.

The Supreme Court, in its supposed wisdom, decreed that a Corporation is an individual and should have the same rights. This decision allows them to spend obscene amounts of money on political campaigns. Their enormous wealth together with the Chamber of Commerce make it almost impossible for the citizen voter to be heard. This in turn gives them the power to control elections.

While Conservatives at this time find the need to use that power, eventually it will destroy them. Too much power does that. Look at Libya, Egypt, Russia and all previous regimes who have succumbed.

Even more so when big money is used to propagate lies. Opposition money will also find a way to do so. You lie about me and I will lie about you. That has given us leaders few have faith in.

We have to have an amendment to bring sanity to the vote, by repealing this ludicrous idea or at least a reversal by the Supreme Court.

Thinking of Whitney: My Top 10 Black Female Vocalists

With the passing of Whitney Houston, whom I found to be a warm and gracious person, I decided to give my opinion of the top ten black female vocalists I have seen in person. Not one of these great singers needed a special wardrobe, dancers or an overproduced act to convey the meaning of a song.

They are listed alphabetically because at different times, depending on my mood, I feel differently about them.

Shirley Bassey, Ella Fitzgerald, Aretha Franklin, Whitney Houston, Mahalia Jackson, Etta James, Gladys Knight, Cleo Laine, Leontyne
Price and Dinah Washington.

There have been others who have enthralled me at times, but any top ten list always leaves out some.

Of course it should almost be demanded that Whitney's version of "The Star Spangled Banner" be sung at all sporting events.

Romney: Fighter for the middle class

Like the union man in "The Pajama Game," with a pencil and a pad, I figured it out.

Mitt Romney has stated that he will fight for the middle class, not the wealthy or the poor.

Before you call him a hypocrite or a liar let me explain. At no time did I hear him set the boundaries economically as to who is in the middle class.

When a guy makes $21 million a year, anyone who makes $1 million a year is, to him, middle class. So he will fight President Obama all the way on his proposal to tax those earning a million dollars a year.

As for those making less, they will have to resort to the safety nets that he proposes to wipe out. Now you figure it out.

Should the GOP win

So far the Republican debates have been a joke - a reality TV show void of reality. So let's carry the joke a little further. This is what I imagine would happen if any of them would be elected president.

Under Mitt Romney, America would have an immediate economic boom because he would sell the blue States to China.

Under Newt Gingrich we would have the "Contract for China" and he would be the Commissar of Human relations and bi-partisanship. He - and not Mitt the Mormon - would probably legalize polygamy, because every politician should have more than one wife. And definitely more than one mistress.

Under Ron Paul, all laws would be judged by a Constitution Committee (unpaid) because the Supreme Court cannot be trusted anymore.

Under Rick Santorum, you could go to public school when you got your voucher from your church. Freedom of choice would be about which church. Scratch Santorum, he's taken his sweater vests and gone home to do his taxes. He should probably call Romney's accountant.

A very unelectable "most electable"

I hate to break the news to South Carolina Republicans, but the winner of their primary was President Obama.

Newt Gingrich has much too much baggage. He probably is best suited to win the Conservative and Tea
Party crowd, but they will not elect anyone and many of them are disturbed by his high-paid consulting work for Freddie Mac. Even Democrats who are unhappy with President Obama would come out to vote against Newt.

Newt will bring out more Democrats who hate him for his hypocritical attack on President Clinton's affair when he was having one of his own. He will bring out more Independents who hate him because they feel he is mostly responsible for the deep divisions in our country. They point to his "Contract On America" which was erroneously called "The Contract for America," as
the turning point. There will probably be a vast number of Republican women who will probably sit on their hands rather than vote for this serial philanderer.

None of the GOP candidates have as many negatives or have built up as much animosity as Newt.

Even Glenn Beck has said he's the one Republican candidate he couldn't vote for.

Who are the "moderate" Republicans?

While watching the New Hampshire primary results a few weeks back, I saw a commentator with a district map show the purported breakdown of votes from conservative, moderate, and liberal Republicans.

Moderate Republicans? Liberal Republican?

I thought the moderates were an endangered species and the liberals were extinct.

So, if anyone who reads this blog can come up with the names of some moderate or liberal Republicans, please send them my way.

The Keystone Pipeline

I think I have a solution to the Keystone Pipeline problem.

President Obama should tell Congress he will approve of any bill that they pass with these provisos.

1. Five billion dollars must be left in escrow with FEMA to cover the costs of any illnesses to workers or people in the pipeline territory who get sick from the pipeline.

2. The oil cannot be sold outside of Canada and the United States.

3. All the members of the Board of Directors of Keystone must live in homes within 10 miles of the pipeline.

GOP Qualifications for Office

One of the most important thing that has come out of the Republican presidential debates is what the candidates see as their primary qualification for office.

What is it?

Vote for me because I'm the most conservative.

I have no program. I will learn on the job - and I I will learn to be even more conservative.

I will cut entitlement programs, because the rich do not want to pay for deadbeats.

I am also the most religious so I can be trusted.

If someone running for office told me I should vote for them because they are the most liberal and that was their main qualification they would not get my vote. I want to know what they stand for. What will they do to make my life better.

Besides cutting everything.

As they like to say in the business world, "You can't shrink your way to prosperity."

Candidates so keen on borrowing from the private sector may want to remember that.