Note From Washington County, Maine by Helen Longest Saccone

Today is a sad day for me. I have read that the Maine State Republican Party announced that my straw poll preference vote in the Washington County Super Caucus which was rescheduled by them for next week is not going to be counted. While this is only a straw poll preference vote and is not an actual assignment of delegates to the Republican National Convention, I would still like to have my straw poll preference votes counted. Here is what has happened since Friday afternoon. The Super Caucus here in Washington County, Maine, scheduled for yesterday was rescheduled until next Saturday, the 18th by the Republican party on Friday due to the possibility of a snow storm. This is Maine where it snows and where life goes on in and around the snow. We have great snow plow crews who keep our roads clear and passable. Washington County is an area which is a Ron Paul stronghold. Let me add that there was a Girl Scout event in Washington County yesterday that went on as scheduled. And, Marty and I drove 20 miles in the snow to the caucus site at the time of the scheduled caucus—the roads were totally passable. Other Ron Paul supporters drove to the caucus site, some from as far away as 60 miles. And, the County Chairman of the Republican Party drove to the site, too. So, it is clear that our caucus could have gone on as scheduled. There are 47 towns, 2 Indian reservations, and numerous unorganized townships involved in the Washington County caucus. Even though the Republican Party canceled our caucus and even though approximately 25 other towns had previously scheduled their caucuses between February 11 and the March 4 deadline which was set by the State of Maine Republican Party as the final date for the towns to caucus, the Republican Party still chose to announce to the media the winner of the straw poll preference votes of the caucuses on February 11. At the time of the announcement 84% of the State of Maine had not yet voted in their caucuses. Ron Paul lost by only 194 votes. And, Webster, the chairman of the Republican Party, announced that the straw poll preference votes from our Washington County caucus, which is rescheduled for Jan 18, as well as the votes from the other 25 caucuses that are scheduled between now and the Maine State Republican Party deadline of March 4 for caucusing will not be counted in the State of Maine total for the straw poll preference of this state. Here in Washington County we have approximately 5,600 registered Republican voters. This is a violation of every person's right to have our votes counted, even though they are simply straw poll preference votes. We are working hard in this corner of the world to make sure that our votes are counted and are factored into this straw vote preference poll. Please keep us in your thoughts.

A Catholic Question? Why, yes, in fact, it is!

The firestorm of controversy over HHS head, Kathleen Sebelius’, requirement that Roman Catholic health care institutions be required to offer contraception because of Obamacare should be a CATHOLIC CONCERN to anyone advocating for the civil liberties of individuals, and the First Amendment rights to conduct one’s affairs in accordance with one’s beliefs.  I say CATHOLIC because I recall checking a dictionary and it means UNIVERSAL.  Every individual that values his/her rights to think and act freely in society, as long as no harm is done to others, should be joining with the Roman Catholic Church against this edict.  I see this no differently than I do calling out the utter disregard of our US Constitution by the executive branch of our federal government when it ordered the assassination on 9/30/11 of a US citizen and his teenaged son via drone while the two were residing in Yemen .  Whatever one may think of the citizen based on his having been tried by our media for ‘crimes’ that ought to have carried the term ‘alleged,’ he did not receive due process and there is NOTHING to prevent the executive branch from making the same decision to take out any others of its citizens based on the deliberations of a ‘death squad committee’ that is clearly unconstitutional.  Now, with NDAA – and the indefinite detention clauses were drafted by the White House and delivered to Carl Levin, in Levin’s own words – all of this has been codified.

This issue for Roman Catholic-led health care institutions has nothing to do with contraceptives, but everything to do with a federal government that seeks to control through manacling every organization within its grasp to its ideology of collectivism/statism, whether that individual or group shares its ideology or not.

Back before Goldman Sachs and its ilk rejiggered bond indentures for health care institutions such that there is no pledge of any real revenues to bondholders under a ‘corporate style’ indenture, the Catholic health care institutions had a very nice ace they could play in such a circumstance.  We used to refer to it as the “abortion call.”  If forced to perform a service or procedure that was in direct opposition to the mission of those organizations, the health care institution could accelerate payment on its bonds.  Bondholders, for the most part, do not like to get accelerated.  Now, did the ‘abortion call’ survive these massive no-clothes-on-the-emperor alterations when they replaced the old indentures with the new?  I am not sure, since my primary concern at the time was the replacement of a true revenue pledge from a revenue-producing entity with that of a  moral pledge to ask the subsidiaries that had the money to pony up when needed.  That said, if abortion calls remain in place, perhaps it is time for the Roman Catholic health care institutions to threaten en masse to play the ace.

Musings on Trantor: A Technological Rant

I recall a comment by Hari Seldon, the principal protagonist of Asimov's Foundation Trilogy, to the effect that Trantor appeared to be less efficient than it had been, that things were not working as well as in the past.  That thought has resonated with me over the years when I review the successes and failures of the post-historic world to make broad-based advancements.

For the most part, the self-appointed futurists of the 1960s and 1970s really got the twenty-first century so incredibly wrong and, personally, I am sincerely disappointed in what actually got accomplished.  I was prepared for this century to be a little more fun, for heaven’s sake!  The futurists had us riding in programmed cars on computerized superhighways, working or playing while the computer got us to our destination.  Rudi Gernriech was the designer of choice, with androgynous uniforms and shaved heads the rule, with little insulated toupees for when the elements required it.  But we were going to be able to spend a weekend at the bottom of the sea, or take a shuttle to the Moon.  We were only going to work three-four days per week.  It makes one wonder if these people of vision simply watched too many episodes of the Jetsons!

Surely, there are socio-cultural differences that have made some economic systems a little more adept at making large-scale advances.  For example, refuse to energy projects have been a standard approach for more than fifty years in Europe.  Here, because of a confluence of events, primarily overreaching and conflicting regulatory bodies designed by the titans of industry to constrain innovation and shore up existing technology, to powerful landfill lobbies, to violations of interstate commerce laws, many of the municipally-financed refuse-to-energy projects mandated by States and the federal government, have been on the brink of default and are hardly viable entities.  Nuclear energy has played an important role in fueling the European economy, yet the United States has poured billions into projects that were ultimately deemed unnecessary or mothballed indefinitely.

I am certain by now almost everyone with access to the internet has seen that much-forwarded phunny ‘what it would be like if Microsoft made cars.’  Well, if Microsoft or even (dare I say it?) Apple made cars, cars could be coming down in price, rather than going up!  People would be paying less attention to the road, and getting work done or even taking time for personal enjoyment  – and think of the decline in road rage!  Texting while driving might not be the perilous folly it is today.  Of course, this all presupposes that our nation is up to retooling the highways to permit computerization.  What were our tax dollars doing in the mid 1960s, when we had a Big Government Congress?  Oh, yes, that’s right – we were buying bullets for an unconstitutional foreign conflict we steadfastly refused to call a war, and we started a little pilot project called Medicare.  Based on what the US dollar bought in that era, had some vision presided, our highways might have been upgraded so that we were ready for the Jetson age.  Rail was atrophying, adding long-haul trucking to the load on the roads.  Is it any wonder that our infrastructure is crumbling and why did I not take out stock in the company that makes those ubiquitous safety-orange cones that are litter most interstates, as they are all in some semblance of repair?

Nevertheless, personal technology has made quantum leaps for quite some time now.  Cell phones are the size of hearing aids, and some think they are smarter than their owners.  As someone that refuses to give up on the SLR, I cannot begin to bring myself to take my phone out and upload an image!  Andy Warhol’s fifteen minutes of fame has come of age.  Buy a computer and in about six weeks’ time, you could buy the next generation so exactly what is the point of upgrading?   E-books exist, and I daresay it won’t be long before there will be procedures by which readers will be attached to our retinas so we can bypass the computers.  One can be as wired as he/she desires. Gosh, there are hot boites in EU nations that you can avoid the velvet ropes and buy drinks without money, just because you are sporting an RFID chip! All hail the coming Singularity!  On the other hand, televisions have gotten bigger, so that we can be treated to life-sized images of aging quarterbacks hawking diets that will bring back one’s sex life!  We have on-demand programming to go with pizza delivery, ensuring we never have to leave home.  In effect, the local cineplex is going the way of the drive-in movie in no time flat.

As a student of economics, I do believe that self-interest is an important driving force and underpinning to the health of our economic system.  Small businesses only come about by dint of hard work and a desire for self-reliance, balanced with a personal vision, and small business formation is at the very core of our capitalist economic survival.  Yet I remain concerned about the focus of our limited economic resources on the betterment of a self-obsessed subculture to the detriment of large-scale advances that would improve an entire generation’s economic wherewithal.  No generation before ours has done so much for so little.