MOUNT RUSHMORE - REVISED

This morning on Morning Joe (June 6, 2012) there was a discussion of what presidents belong at Mount Rushmore.  Much to my surprise, several historians were will to replace the whole lot!  As for me, I would definitely keep Washington and Lincoln. In fact, Washington looks better all the time in that on top of everything else his views on slavery evolved and he planned to have his slaves released upon the death of his wife Martha (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Washington_and_slavery).  To do this, you had to compile funds for them so that they would not be a drag on society, and he had to do this in secret or he might have been assassinated. Of course, American history, and maybe global history, would be a lot different if it wasn't for Lincoln.

I do think Teddy Roosevelt could be replaced and possibly Jefferson.  Teddy could easily be replaced by his 5th cousin Franklin D. Roosevelt (FDR) who ended up being the father of modern America.

Thomas Jefferson is noted as writing the Declaration of Independence and buying the Louisiana Purchase though constitutionally there was no provision to do this.  I find it interesting that he is a hero to Democrats who have annual Jefferson-Jackson Day celebrations and to conservatives who say they are Jeffersonian conservatives.  Jefferson did believe in states rights.  Jefferson's record on slavery is mixed at best (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Jefferson_and_slavery).  He did allow two of his four children by Sally Heming to "escape" and freed the other two upon his death along with a few others, but, oddly did not free Sally Heming (though essentially his daughter did, i.e. gave Sally her "time.").  On the other hand he would not recognize Haiti.  But if you were going to replace Jefferson, who would you replace him with?

Surprisingly to me there are those historians who would say Ronald Reagan.  As I have written elsewhere, I have never experienced the Reagan mystique.*  He is credited with being an advocate of small government though he increased the size the government curing his presidential tenure.  For example he is the only president to increase the number of Federal employees between Johnson and Obama.  He is credited with being a budget balancer though he never came close to balancing the budget.  But his spiritual appeal has captured many, but I would not choose him for Mount Rushmore.  I guess I would leave Thomas Jefferson there, but there is a part of me that is attracted to Lyndon Johnson.  To do this you have to forgive him for the Vietnam war, but Johnson's domestic accomplishments are so great that he could be deserving.  If one is going to forgive Jefferson's record on slavery then one might be able to forgive Johnson's record on Viet Nam.

* http://stopcontinentaldrift.blogspot.com/2011/02/ronald-reagan.html,
http://stopcontinentaldrift.blogspot.com/2011/10/ronald-reagan-further-comments.html,
http://stopcontinentaldrift.blogspot.com/2012/05/land-mines-in-way-of-becoming-great.html

Note added July 11, 2012:  After thinking this over, I have decided that we shouldn't replace any of those already on Mount Rushmore, but we could add a couple.  After all in more than a hundred years one would hope we have had a couple of outstanding presidents.  So I would add FDR and maybe Lyndon Johnson.  On Morning Joe, Doris Kearns Godwin suggested Johnson's face be in profile to honor his domestic achievements, but not his foreign policy debacle.

WORST AMERICAN POLITICS EVER?

Over the last 20 years we have seen the evolution of the worst American politcs ever which is not to say that there have been previous intervals of bad politics. Consider: President Clinton was impeached in December of 1998 for trivial, if disgusting, sexual indiscretions in the Oval Office. The only other president to be impeached was Andrew Johnson in 1868, but at least he was impeached for violating the Tenure of Office Act, passed over Johnson's veto the previous year, that said certain office holders could not be removed by the president without approval by the Senate. The group involved were called the Radical Republicans: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radical_Republican.

I find it interesting that the group to impeach President Clinton was a group of radical Republicans led by Rep Gingrich some 130 years later. In a loose way the Radical Republicans of the 1860s were the equivalent of the "tea party" now. Both were groups within the Republican Party that controlled the Republican Party.

Nearly 14 years later with Republicans controlling the House of Representatives, we have for the first time ever the Attorney General of the United States has been held in contempt of Congress, allegedly for failure to turn over certain documents regarding an operation called Fast and Furious (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ATF_gunwalking_scandal), a program started in late 2006 under the George W. Bush administration and discontinued in 2011 under the Obama. This program is difficult summarize, and you should read the articles cited. Apparently ATF officials monitored the sale of guns by middle men who transported or passed them on to others on their way to Mexican cartels and other outlaws. The AFT officials were told not to interdict this passage of firearms because of second amendment issues and difficulties in prosecution. About 7,000 documents were turned over to the oversight committee, but another 1,600 were requested that were refused because of "Executive Privilege," the first such claim by the Obama administration.

So the two presidential impeachments and a congressional contempt of Congress for an Attorney General have all been conducted by the Republican Party, two of these in the last 20 years. If the Republican Party cannot impeach a president, then they go after one of his appointees. I believe we are living in a sad era of politics in the United States in which the Republican Party does everything in its power to destroy a Democratic Presidency, should they be elected. The efforts are not restricted to impeachments and contempts of Congress. See Clinton in: http://stopcontinentaldrift.blogspot.com/2012/05/land-mines-in-way-of-becoming-great.html. Mitch McConnell even has said in 2010, "The most import thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president." Please note that he didn't say to reduce unemployment, or reduce taxes on business, or increase manufacturing in the U.S., etc., but that he wants to defeat the president (http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2010/10/25/126242/mcconnell-obama-one-term/?mobile=nc). He has also said that to provide health care for 30 million Americans that don't have it is not the issue (http://www.politicususa.com/mitch-mcconnell-tells-millions-americans-healthcare-you-arent-issue.html).

OBAMACARE LARGELY UPHELD

The Supreme Court largely upheld the Affordable Care Act, the most important legislation since the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The individual mandate is now ruled to be a tax and is constitutional.

Frankly, I would have preferred a single payer provision over the individual mandate, but compromises had to be made to pass the legislation.

It was a surprise to me that Chief Justice John Roberts cast the deciding vote for Obamacare rather than Associate Justice Anthony Kennedy; however, some pundits before the decision had suggested that Roberts might vote for the Act. I'm rather surprised that Kennedy didn't go along.

The part of Obamacare ruled unconstitutional by a 7 to 2 vote was a provision on the expansion of Medicaid where, if state voted to not participate in the expansion, they would lose all or part of the regular Federal contribution to Medicaid which was judged to be coercive. In the first few years, the Federal government will cover all the cost of the Medicaid expansion, but the Federal governments contribution will eventually drop to 90% leaving states to pick up the remaining 10%. This could cost a state like Texas to pick up $500 million/year by 2019. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/jun/29/supreme-court-medicaid-expansion-states?newsfeed=true. If states opt out of the expanded Medicaid, this will add thousands to millions of poor people to the uninsured role and make them use the emergency room for their primary care, as is the situation now, adding costs to the insurance bills of those who have health insurance thus defeating an important part of Obamacare.

Roberts' ruling makes up a bit, perhaps, for the worst ruling the Supreme Court has ever made that corporations are people, the Citizens United decision, which they not only ruled constitutionally initially but reaffirmed recently. Maintaining this ruling perhaps led Roberts to his vote on Obamacare to preserve the reputation of the Court.

PRIVATE INDUSTRY IS DOING JUST FINE

President Obama has been highly criticized for making this statement, though it seems to me to be quite correct. After all the business of private industry is not to employ people, but to make profits, hopefully increasing profits; yet the mass media and opposing politicians seem to believe otherwise. In fact, a part of the business of business is to minimize the number of employees. If they could get by with no employees to minimize costs, they they would. This is at the heart of our current problems in that American industry is able to make very good profits with minimum of hiring new employees.

I have written on the jobs disconnect between business and government before at:

http://stopcontinentaldrift.blogspot.com/2010/09/jobs-disconnect-between-business-and.html

One thing that is different in this recovery is that business is having to take the full load of increasing employment because state and local governments are decreasing employment of teachers, firemen, police and other public employees plus decreases by the Post Office. Thus the increased employment we are seeing today is business increases minus state and local government plus Post Office decreases.

INCOME DROP FOR 2007-2010 VERSUS 1978-1983

(The following is from post #394963 on Motley Fool Investment Analysis Clubs/Macro Economic Trends and Risks, June 13, 2012)

If anyone wants to look at the source of all this recent media activity, it is at: http://www.federalreserve.gov/pubs/bulletin/2012/pdf/scf12.pdf

Median family income, which was already edging down in the years before the recession, continued to decline, dropping from $49,600 in 2007 to $45,800 in 2010, about where it was in the mid-1990s.

As to the 1982 recession (the worst since the Great Depression, by the way), household income (note the change from family to household) began to drop in 1979 in inflation adjusted dollars and continued to 1983 when it began to rise again. See Fig. 1 in http://www.federalreserve.gov/pubs/bulletin/2012/pdf/scf12.pdf

It is interesting that women's median incomes were actually rising by 1982 for full-time workers (Fig. 2). It was the male full-time workers who made the decline.

Peak household income peaked in 1978 at $46,202 with a bottom of $43,453 in 1983, a drop of $2,749 or 5.95% (inflation adjusted). Household income peaked $52,823 in 2007 and dropped to $49,445 in 2010 or 6.39% (inflation adjusted). Thus the drop in 2007-2010 was bigger by 0.44% than in 1978-1983. http://www.davemanuel.com/median-household-income.php

NOTE: Median household income in nominal dollars actually grew during the 1978-1983 period from $13,121 to $18,859 so the drop in inflation corrected dollars depends on how you count inflation. Whereas even nominal dollars dropped from 2007 to 2010 from $47,752 to $47,022 or 1.53%. Also note that the difference between 1978 and 2010 in nominal dollars is huge but the difference in inflation corrected dollars is small. Also note that the all-time high in inflation adjusted dollars came in 1999 at $53,252.http://www.davemanuel.com/median-household-income.php so the decline has been going on for a long time though the total to 2007 is not huge, just a bit over $429 or a decline of 0.8%, but to 2010 the decline is much larger $3,807 for a decline 7.15%.

FACE BOOK IPO

I thought that IPOs were supposed to raise money for a company going public. If this is so, then the IPO was a great success because it ended up making the most money for Face Book. Unfortunately for gamblers who are used to making a killing on IPOs, it didn't happen this time. Some of them are taking out law suits. I think judges should throw such suits out. I don't care if institutions knew something more about Face Book than the rest of us. I knew enough to stay out of the IPO. First the IPO price for the stock had a P/E of 100 which is huge. a P/E of 40 would have been generous. Second it was known that Face Book is having a hard time getting advertisements onto cell phones and more and more people are looking at Face Book on their phones. This has been said to be a big challenge for Face Book in the future. It seems to me that when you gamble, you have to accept the results.

There may be big investors in the underwriters that say they will switch accounts unless the underwriter makes them whole. Well, this is something between the underwriter and the gambler, but it is not something for the courts.

AWAYS SOMEONE AT THE BOTTOM

(The following was posted in part on Motley Fool)

An Internet colleague has recently been to Finland which brought back reminiscences. Long ago when I was a geology student in 1953 I lived in a Finnish boarding house called Jukala's for a part of summer in Virginia, MN, in what is called the Iron Range which at one time was the biggest iron mining district in the world. By the time I got there, however, it was pretty well shut down. There was a Finnish immigrant there who had been in this country for two years that wanted to improve his English and befriended me. I heard a couple of old Finns talking and asked him what they were saying. He replied "Don't you understand? They are speaking English." I said "They are?" He said that they were putting Finnish endings on the words. I think he said that Finnish has 21 case endings for nouns.

I had the overpowering urge to ask him how he liked America, but I resisted it until we were in a bar one night having a brew. OK, maybe it was the second one when I turned to him and said, "How do you like America?" He replied,"If you are rich, any country is good, but, if you are a worker, America is the best place."

The Finns were the poor laborers of northern Minnesota, sort of the Hispanics of today. Always somebody on the bottom. Some of my Swedish friends warned me not to walk around at night because I was in a bad neighborhood. I did so, however, and never saw any trouble. Actually not many people were walking around at night. I figured that when the Swedes and Norwegians came in looking for trouble they found it. Sunday mornings, I would wake to the sound of people signing hymns at the Lutheran Church next door. When I went out for lunch, they were out on the lawn taking a break, but when I returned they were back in singing again. I had the feeling they spent the whole day there as the singing lasted until into the evening.

I took out a Finnish girl once, and my Swedish friends told me I shouldn't do that. I didn't have a car, otherwise I would have gone out with her more. It reminded me of back home when my parents got nervous if I dated a Roman Catholic or Jewish girl back in High School. "They are nice people, but I wouldn't want my son to marry one."

The following summer I was to work further north in Ely, MN, about 40 mil; north of Duluth, The Gateway To The Wilderness Area, prospecting for magnetic iron ore for the now defunct Jones & Laughlin Steel Co. This was still Finnish country and there was a billboard on the outskirts of town that said "Vote For Saari" (Finns love the double "a" in names) for something or other. I've forgotten what. On Friday nights, the local bars had polka bands. On some songs they changed the name to a Finnish name, e.g. when You and I were Young Maaki and Who's Saari Now.

In 1969, I actually visited Finland for a few days as the guest of the Finnish government and spent a day in their copper-nickel mine - Otukumpu. My impression was that Finland is a pretty flat country with lots of trees, much like northern Minnesota and with a climate to match so I can understand why they found northern Minnesota attractive (along with northern Wisconsin and Michigan). I was on an extended trip of 17 days through northern Europe (Belgium, England, Scotland, Norway, Sweden, and Finland). I had the impression that my organization was going to pay for this, wrong as it turned out. I had to pick up the whole bill, but I'm glad I took the trip because I doubt if I ever would have taken it had I known I was going to pay for the whole thing. Seeing the fjords of Norway was worth it by themselves.

I think it was back before WW-II and the Soviets invaded Finland. The Finns planted Christmas trees out on a frozen lake and lured the Soviet army onto it and blew it up. Mighty clever. Of course, the Finns eventually settled the war on Soviet terms but remained independent. Finland is also known as the only country to repay their WW-II reparations.