Category — Connecticut

The electoral map this year, as in 2004, portrays something other than plain electoral potential.   See one here.   It’s absolutely true that these Red and Blue State distinctions today stand for something other than objective politics.  Anyone who’s lived in either of the colored enclaves knows that they’re insular social systems, with the natural tendency to grow more insular and self-reinforcing, especially during times of stress like an election season. 

Here in Connecticut, our company of the “coastal elites” has no real opposition, and has been especially liberal in its open contempt for that which is not itself.  Politics here is simply white noise, containing all the possible ideas about humankind, but with the same old fantastic historical narratives about how to create a good society. 

Nothing meaningful gets done, because what really matters is the perpetuation of the steely states-of-mind that come from social and cultural stratifications.  Unfortunately, as the ruling classes yammer and assert their worldview into empty space, the ”culture” around them grows more  noisy and chaotic and unstable.   Mass immigration and emigration, and  the blessed end of the ’60’s generation’s power are all happening at once, and the future is unknown. 

What can we expect in the next thirty years?  We don’t know.   America has, ’til now, managed the Hobbsean-Lockean problem - the rule of man versus the rule of law - although rule by courts is essentially rule by man, and rule by minoritarianism is just as wicked.  Still, we have no pockets of cultural entropy like Lebanon, yet, unless it’s Detroit.  We have no lethal tribal, sectarian or ideological wars. Not yet.  But do we have reason to believe that, in forty years,  New York City, or Baltimore won’t look like Beirut does today. 

Or Boston.  When the last restraining vines of the Yankee myth systems have been pruned away and burned, and the levelling blandishments of capitalism  and consumption no longer flatten the passions, will the coercive tools of progressive government  be enough to keep the peace?  I don’t think so.  And by the way, that Yankee myth system isn’t useful because it’s upheld by a Yankee bloodline - that began to disappear in the New England sterility of the 1840’s - but because it knits together a common culture.  Take it away with no replacement and you have third-century Rome, or the Middle East today.  

As for the Middle East, is it accurate to attribute the troubles there to irrational colonial borders,  or post-colonial pseudo-statehood, or poverty, or despotism or lack of economic mobility?  These all add to the poison, no doubt, but is there any category for the plain perversity of human self-assertion, and the moral malfunctions that cause it?  Not today. 

It’s unfashionable to fit Western Enlightenment modes of conduct to the “senseless” hate and murder in the Middle East because it’s culture specific, so we’re left with no disciminating capacities at all.   And for that reason, we can’t even evaluate the past, present and future for ourselves.   If  Hartford, with eleven shootings in a single afternoon, isn’t the land of the Droogs, what is?  In one week, these events have faded from memory.  Who are we today?

It’s a long way from The White Man’s Burden on the express train to moral nullity, but we’ve made the journey without a stop for the mail.  Today, in a multiculutural stupor, we’re close to accepting arranged marriage, female circumcision, polygamy, polyandry, polyamory, the oppression of women and children in general, exceptions to religion/state barriers for Muslims, and the vagaries of Shari’a Law in parts of America, and in many parts of Europe.   All of these adjustments will lead to more  more extreme adjustments to others, and they won’t necessarily be Muslims, but some other group with a claim to legitimacy and indulgence. 

45 years ago I read a dreary thesis on political legitimacy, written by some figure in international relations, and whose name I’ve completely forgotten.  He concluded that free-thinking, tolerant Britain was the most stable country in the world, where the totalitarian USSR and its constituent countries, were fragile pressure-cookers.  Britain’s social vigor then was attributed to the usual assortment of virtues assigned to free-societies. 

Completely ignored was Britain’s post-industrial torpor, Commonwealth immigration policies, declining aspirations, the stirrings of a ”New” Labor every bit as dogmatic and certain as the old hereditary ruling class,  and the burning, destructive fever known as the  1960’s.  Britain is in steep decline today, with a continuous current of emigres to other English-speaking lands.  We should pay attention. 

Last Saturday, following Hartford’s West Indian Festival, shooting broke out and, in separate incidents, seven youngster were shot.   Among them, a 21-year old was killed,  a 7-year old shot in the head, and a 15-month old toddler was shot in the leg.  Saturday was distinguished only by its concentration of the behaviors and pathologies that grind on more slowly, year after year, in Hartford, New Haven, Bridgeport and any other urban sinkhole of Progressive social policy.

This time, the city of Hartford has enacted a curfew, which naturally is under legal assault from the ACLU.   But that’s a natural coordinate on this map of misery, and also not the subject of this post.  There is no subject of this post, just desperation.  The ACLU is a freak liberal offspring of value-free rationalism.  It’s too late to kill it.  There could be dozens of other pests described here, too, all injecting their amoral poison into the bloodstream of the lost individuals and families snared in the web of the helping professions and that ludicrous system called “the schools”. 

Hartford spends between $11000 and $17000 per student depending upon your source, and has a graduation rate of 29%.  New Haven, as I recall, is higher by a few points.   The figures are always misleading, because the parasitic organisms that attach themselves to school funding today always consume a huge portion of the cash available for TEACHING.  On that subject, read this and this.  The City of Hartford carries only about 20% of the educational financing, while the State of Connecticut provides the rest.  

Among the moral absurdities of this distribution of responsibility is that the bureaucratic weight of the entire State of Connecticut is useless on the subject of school performance, and its reflection in pools of blood on asphalt.  The Devil has a sense of humor, however, in that he gave us the ludicrous Nanny-figure of Governor Jodi Rell as the bug-eyed, mocking gargoyle on the ethical rubble of  Connecticut’s capital city. 

Rell cares so much she’s regularly heard in PSA’s on the agony of 911 operators, or the use of child safety seats, or fuming about the tragedy of  pampered, upper-middle class kids killing themselves with the reckless use of high-performance automobiles.  Meanwhile, the walls of civilization are crumbling around her, and her smiles, bottle-blond coif and freckles console the already dead.

Hey, if she can concern herself with pet visitation rights and pet emergency plans, she can help these folks and their naked pets. And no, that is not a picture of Hotspur. It looks very much like Chris Dodd.

East Haddam - Stocking up on hats, horns, ticker tape and Bailey’s Irish Cream, Connecticut Senator Chris Dodd has MOVED TO IOWA to press the Iowa flesh.

Dodd, the Democratic Party’s dark horse and inevitable Presidential candidate was seen by this reporter at his home just yesterday, raising doubts about his sincerity to remain in Iowa and represent Connecticut.

It’s widely rumored that Dodd’s view of sincerity is the same as Groucho’s: “Once you can fake sincerity, you’ve got it made”.

 THE AMERICAN FRUIT BOOK

From the Title Page:  A Book For Every Body, The AMERICAN FRUIT BOOK; Containing Directions for Raising, Propagating and Managing Fruit Trees, Shrubs and Plants; With a Description of the Best Varieties of Fruit,  Including  New And Valuable Kinds; Embellished and Illustrated With Numerous Engravings of Fruits, Trees, Insects, Grafting, Budding, Training &c., &c. By S. W. Cole, Editor of the New England Farmer, Late Editor of the Boston Cultivator, Author of the American Veterinarian, And Formerly Editor of the Yankee Farmer, And Farmer’s Journal.

* * * * *

 36 million drivers would flunk drivers tests

 Is it just your imagination, or do many of your fellow motorists lack even a rudimentary grasp of traffic laws?

Well, if a test administered by GMAC Insurance is any indication, one in six people cruising our highways and byways — roughly 36 million licensed drivers — would flunk their driver’s test if they had to take it today. Not only that, but based on the 2007 GMAC Insurance National Drivers Test data the state with the most road-going dummies is New York, while the most knowledgeable ones are out West to Idaho. [snip]

Also of interest from the GMAC Insurance test:

• Drivers 35 and older were more likely to pass
• Illinois, Georgia, Washington, D.C., Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey, Rhode Island and Massachusetts were the least knowledgeable states overall, with average scores under 75 percent
• Fifty-five percent of the respondents didn’t know how many feet before making a left or right to signal. [snip]

The following state rankings were released for the 2007 GMAC Insurance National Drivers Test:

• 1. Idaho.
• 2. Alaska
• 21.Vermont
• 36. Maine
• 37. New Hampshire
• 40. Connecticut
• 46. Pennsylvania
• 47. Rhode Island
• 48. Massachusetts
• 48. New Jersey
• 51. New York

After analyzing the article, before glancing at the list, I thought population was the key. That would place Wyoming first and Vermont second. Not so.

Perhaps, I reflected, the political belief system of the states held a clue. That appears to work for the bottom states, but didn’t vindicate Wisconsin at 4, Washington at 6, Oregon at 9 or Iowa at 10.

Given that the 2007 failure rate doubled to 18% from 2006, a reason exists. Combining both posits advances one conclusion.

I’ll let the reader ponder the possibilities for others.

Here’s an interesting AP headline: “Income gap increases fastest in New England”. Surely the AP jests. The benighted Northeast socialists wouldn’t allow such a thing to happen. I’m sure they really meant Florida. With no state income tax, they couldn’t be doing much for the poor, right? But the article confirms it:

The University of New Hampshire study found that Vermont had the second greatest change in income disparity in the country after Connecticut between 1989 and 2004, although the state was not among those with the largest gaps.

“It surprised me,” said the study’s author, Ross Gittell, of the Vermont data. “I think there has been a takeoff at the top and a hollowing of the middle class,” said the professor at UNH’s Whittemore School of Business and Economics.

It must be the shrinking middle class’ fault because it couldn’t be liberal policies, right? The Northeast states just haven’t “helped” enough. Their next suggestion will be more taxes to even out the disparity. But Mr. Gittell missed an alternate cause that is far more compelling.

Perhaps the “hollowing out of the middle class” has more to do with the fact that they can no longer afford to live in the Northeast. Just maybe those liberal tax policies aren’t all that helpful, and their negative effect on economic growth and regional affordability drove the middle class to greener pastures. The 2000 Congressional reapportionment certainly adds credibility to my argument:

See any pattern for liberal and conservative states? The so called Blue states are losing Congressional seats and population as the middle class moves to economically vibrant and growing areas of the country. The states benefiting from the shift just happen to be the so called Red states. The New England middle class is voting with its feet as regressive New England tax policies make the region unaffordable and unattractive. Get used to it. It’s a trend that won’t be reversing itself anytime soon.

Boxer amendment would block immigration enforcement in order to count illegal aliens for 2010 Census, boost Democrat seats

(h) SENSE OF THE SENATE-It is the sense of the Senate that as part of the effort to count all persons physically in the United States during the 2010 Census, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Bureau of the Department of Homeland Security should limit aggressive enforcement of federal immigration laws to promote full participation by non-citizens in the census.

Boxer’s amendment, SA 3246, is attached to the current spending bill up on the Senate floor. So, why is Boxer so interested in blocking aggressive immigration enforcement leading up to the 2010 Census?

U.S. states with large numbers of undocumented immigrants could receive additional seats in Congress after the 2010 census is conducted.

A University of Connecticut study concluded Arizona, Texas and Florida could all see their House delegations increase due to rising populations that include sizable numbers of illegal immigrants.

Although they can’t vote, such aliens are included in the census. The San Jose (Calif.) Mercury News predicted Tuesday the pending 2010 headcount could be the subject of a political fight as Democrats and Republicans jockey for position before House seats are reallocated.

The Connecticut study also predicted California and New Jersey would likely keep their current number of seats while states with fewer immigrants, including New York, Illinois and Ohio, will lose a seat or two.

Another barefaced attempt to gain seats for Democrats in population growth areas where Republicans hold power but have a large illegal immigration problem.

Nothing good will come from this manipulation of the census count where citizens’ rights and concerns are abused to get the upper hand in gerrymandering new safe districts.

Getting Licensed to Death

The Reason Foundation just issued a state-by-state study on the number of occupations that require a government license.

The regulatory intrusion in the free market is evidenced by the lead paragraph of Reason’s press release:

Do you want to be a fortune teller in Maryland? Your future better include a license from the state. How about being a hair braider in Mississippi? You’ll need 300 to 1,500 hours of training and government permission. Want to sell flowers in Louisiana? Only licensed florists can do that. And almost every state requires certification if you want to move furniture and hang art while calling yourself an interior designer.

These are not licenses, they are fees (taxes) placed on various businesses. Those businesses that truly need certification have licensing boards set up composed of members of the specific profession or trade. Some require specific schooling (college is not specific schooling) such as Medical or Dental apprenticeship, while some require passing an exam. Most are arbitrary, bordering on state sanctioned scams.

Anecdotally, when I had my construction company in NY, the county instituted a licensing program to “protect” the public. What I could competently do on the 31^st of the month, I was unable to do by fiat on the 1^st of the next month. No test, no questions about acumen or duration of the business; pay the $100 and they mailed the license. The license covered banging nails, sheetrocking and taping, etc. Additionally,I held a Master Electrician license presented by a board of electrical inspectors. That required oral and written presentations.

Here are the top hostile states and the number of occupations requiring a license:

1. California (177)

2. Connecticut (155)

3. Maine (134)

4. New Hampshire (130)

5. Arkansas (128)

6. Michigan (116)

7. Rhode Island (116)

8. New Jersey (114)

9. Wisconsin (111)

10.Tennessee (110)

12.Massachusetts (107)

15. Vermont (107)

“Most of these licensing requirements are completely arbitrary,” said Adam B. Summers, a policy analyst at Reason Foundation and author of the report. “You see that clearly when examining neighboring states. California has 177 job categories licensed. But if you take one step across the state line into Arizona just 72 careers are licensed. In North Carolina you need a license to do 107 jobs. Next door in South Carolina, only 60 jobs require certification.”

Proponents claim these licensing requirements are needed to protect the public from unscrupulous, incompetent, or dangerous practitioners. However, numerous studies show these laws actually reduce consumer protection and public safety, according to the Reason Foundation report.

“These laws are created under the guise of ‘helping’ consumers,” Summers said. “In reality, the laws are helping existing businesses keep out competition, restricting consumer choice, destroying entrepreneurship, and driving up prices.”

Full Report Online
The full study, Occupational Licensing: Ranking the States and Exploring Alternatives, is available online at www.reason.org/ps361.pdf.

Illegal immigrants to get ID cards in Connecticut

NEW HAVEN, Connecticut (Reuters) - As many U.S. cities and states arrest illegal immigrants in raids and toughen laws against them, a Connecticut city is offering to validate them under a controversial, first-in-the-nation ID card program.Starting Tuesday, New Haven will offer illegal immigrants municipal identification cards that allow access to city services such as libraries and a chance to open bank accounts. [snip]

North Carolina-based Americans for Legal Immigration PAC has circulated a flier in 40 states urging illegal workers to move to New Haven, said its president William Gheen.

“Maybe New Haven needs to learn, if they want the illegals, then they’ll get the illegals,” he said.

His flier, in English and Spanish, says: “Come to New Haven CT for sanctuary. Bring your friends and family members quickly.” [snip]

Fatima, an illegal immigrant from Mexico, said she is eager to apply for the card. “The ID will help me because it’s a way to be in this country and get people to know who you are, especially for people who crossed the border and lost their papers,” she said. “I feel safe here in New Haven.”

I want one of these cards; imagine, opening a bank account without a Social Security number. All sorts of income can go into this “tax sheltered” register; gambling winnings, off the books earnings and other “gray” funds.

Every WOOP (without official papers) gets official baptism in the Church of Social Ecstasy.

It’s time to lose my papers.

Risky Business

Home Depot co-founder Bernie Marcus believes that the biggest competitors for capital that business has are America’s plaintiff trial lawyers. They siphon off billions of dollars that would be invested in R&D, growth, and jobs creation, or would be returned to shareholders. Trial lawyers also increase the cost of capital for those companies whose ratings are downgraded as a direct result of trial lawyer briefings to financial analysts or press conferences about their litigation portfolios—all part of the trial bar’s new business model. [snip]

State Rankings

NEW HAMPSHIRE-17

New Hampshire’s liability climate encourages growth and job creation. The state has enacted some reforms, including the elimination of punitive damages, medical malpractice reform, and modest joint liability reform. New Hampshire juries are not known for excessive, unwarranted verdicts. Having said this, the state’s insurance loss ratios are in the bottom 30 percent of all states, which explains the 24 ranking in the HWV Index. The Supreme Court majority is activist and the AJP partner that helped with this profile suggests the state’s liability climate could deteriorate as the New Hampshire Legislature considers a bill to reverse reform legislation.

CONNECTICUT-24

While Connecticut’s composite ranking is 24, there is a significant variance among the three indices. The HWV Index and the Harris Poll rank the state at 16 and 14 while the PRI Index ranks it at 44. Despite some liability reform legislation in the mid-1980s, including reasonable limits on punitive damages and elimination of joint liability, the AJP partner that helped prepare this profile rated the state’s liability climate as discouraging growth and job creation.

Supporting this assessment are insurance loss ratios (especially for product liability, medical malpractice and auto, and selfinsurance), which rank Connecticut in the bottom half of all states. The absence of reasonable limits on non-economic damages may help explain the poor ranking on insurance loss ratios. Another negative factor is activist Attorney General Richard Blumenthal, who, along with former New York Attorney General (now Governor) Eliot Spitzer, led the movement for regulation through litigation. Connecticut’s liability climate may be trending downward.

MAINE-26

There is a significant variance among the three national rankings with the two econometric studies ranking Maine at 36 and 34 and the Harris Poll ranking the state at 5. Insurance loss ratios in Maine rank 26th in the nation. The Supreme Court majority and Attorney General Steven Rowe are viewed as activists. The Maine Legislature has not enacted any significant liability reform legislation. The state’s liability climate is, at best, neutral to growth and job creation. Maine may well become a “red light” state in the next ranking.

MASSACHUSETTS-29

There is a significant variance in the PRI Index ranking of 41 and the Harris Poll ranking of 18 for the “Bay State.” Although total insurance loss ratios in the state are in the top 40 percent of all states, the product and general liability insurance loss ratios are in the bottom 20 percent. Instead of fairly balancing the interests of consumers and business, the Commonwealth’s liability climate is decidedly antibusiness. With the election of Governor Deval Patrick and an anti-reform legislature, the prospects for improving the liability laws of Massachusetts are dim.

VERMONT-43

With insurance loss ratios among the five worst in the nation, Vermont’s liability climate discourages growth and job creation. The Legislature has enacted some modest liability reforms, such as reasonable limits on punitive and non-economic damages in wrongful death cases. The Supreme Court majority and Attorney General William Sorrell are regarded as activists.

RHODE ISLAND-49

While Rhode Island juries are not known for excessive verdicts, and punitive damage awards are rare, the AJP partner that helped with this profile reports a noticeable upward trend in recent jury awards. The state’s lawsuit against four lead paint manufacturers under a public nuisance theory was the first attempt by a state to hold the industry responsible for the dangers of lead paint in old buildings. Three of the four companies were found liable by a Rhode Island jury—a verdict that could cost the companies billions of dollars unless it is reversed on appeal. The Supreme Court has an activist majority and Attorney General Patrick Lynch is regarded as an activist. Its liability climate is not conducive to growth and job creation.

Enacting tort reform is impossible as long as jurors believe large settlements are apple pie. Lawyers will not vote to slaughter this cash cow; many are in our state offices. The ablility to afford a run for these positions by self-funding makes change difficult. Neither party turns down fresh loot.

Corporations were complacent when years ago the impact of litigation was confined to paying legal fees and enduring the occasional adverse verdict. Corporations could survive this competitive disadvantage against the trial bar. That is no longer true. Today, verdicts reflect an anti-business sentiment and many juries have a lottery mentality when doling out awards. Now, a company’s share value, brand equity, and even its very solvency are at risk. That’s why successful companies must study the trial bar’s new business model, and develop sound, effective, and preemptive opposition strategies.

Outsourcing and foreign manufacturing costs companies less; foreign operations provide an extra shield against lawsuits too. Next, this country will see our major companies incorporating in corporate friendly tax and litigation havens. Halliburton didn’t move to the UAE because of the physical climate.

New England lost its manufacturing base, now we rely on service industries. With the Internet, they are even more mobile; they hire fewer employees.

In a conflict, a fixed position is a losing tactical situation. A legal confrontation is no different. Since there is always some state that sooner or later will alter it’s business laws, an ability to incorporate anywhere provides immunity from high tax addicted governments. Only a Marxist/Socialist believes otherwise. For their position to maintain, they must control all government. Capitalism, being the normal human condition, exists on its own.

I find it problematical in my personal life to leave a job uncompleted. There is a righteous obligation to see tasks to the end, disdaining a poorly finished job.

Personified by original New Englanders as well as the rest of the colonials, this work ethic built this state, this country into what it is yesterday. Hardy woodchucks created the farms and woodlots that became Vermont and New Hampshire. Seafarers from ports in Maine, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut generated trade and wealth.

From the French and Indian War to Korea, we remained stalwart with those that fought at our side. We terminated the first rapacious jihadists, when Jefferson subdued the Barbary pirates. Through the pains of war, we kept the faith and stayed the path

In the mid 1960’s, America changed when the first spoiled generation came of age. They coveted material items, bought with others’ labor, rather than strive for them as in previous times. Never tempered in the forge of maturation, they believe in birthright and have a concomitant deficiency in sense of community. They became the me generation.

Vietnam showed this absence in an obtrusive fashion. Whether we should have or not fought there is moot. This generation demanded the politicos cut and run from there, acquiescence sold the people who worked with us into re-education and labor camps. Those who fought with the Arvin now get nothing except slum housing and pedicab work…if they’re lucky. This precipitated the slaughter in Cambodia for no reason except to exterminate the educated class. Our esteemed officials cared less; those with us paid and are paying the price.

Today, the left is executing the same nefarious diligence with Iraq. The Democrats want to cut and run immediately. Sell out to the heathens; care nothing for the Iraqis working with us. Once more, the boomer generation shows a repellent indifference for our obligations to the Middle East.

The Iraqi citizens, who assumed we would keep our word, acquire death sentences. Al Qaeda avows beheadings as soon as they ensnare those who accepted our word. That is fine with our culture of sensitivity advocates; they extend nothing to anyone adjudged a friend of the US.

Is it to be a bloodbath in Iraq? Shall we allow the leftists to isolate us from any association with other countries save Israel? They wish them destroyed. The message is the same for us.

When the wolves start eating sheep, they save the judas goat for dessert. It isn’t an honor.

Two days ago I had my consciousness raised, again, by a radio Public Service Announcement by The Ad Council.  A Public Service Announcement is in the family of communications known as consciousness-raisers, or awareness-raisers.  For my purposes, they’re all CRs, or consciousness-raisers.  The Ad Council made me conscious of the fact that 900 children a year drown in swimming pools.  Not an average of 900 children.  Just 900 children every year.

It would be useful if The Ad Council computed the probability of drowning as the number of drowned kids advanced toward the 900 figure, but what’s the point of knowledge when you have information?  The Ad Council’s information was followed by Governor Jodi Rell’s information that Connecticut provides free swimming lessons for anyone who wants them.

Whatever The Ad Council is, it’s constantly providing these government-linked CRs over the airwaves.  Seat belts save lives.  Asthma kills.  Radon kills.  Dust mites eat babies.  A million kids a year develop painful knee carbuncles from playing Candyland.  Okay, I made up the last two, but The Ad Council is always announcing another scourge, without consideration of the true extent, probability or relative meaning of it.  They just want you to know what they want you to know.

Do we really care about the uncomprehending homo sapiens who don’t already know about water safety?  Common sense suggests that they’ve already been pushed nearly to extinction by water carelessness, and need neither The Ad Council nor The State of Connecticut to preserve the last numbers of their type.  Let them go.  Good ideas about water safety seem self-propagating to me anyway, like bad ideas about Richard Nixon.  The occasional tragic deviation from water knowledge, a drowned child, is unpredictable and has little or nothing to do with free swimming lessons or parental ignorance.

Still, CRs are like piranha nibbling at our brains.  They’re everywhere.  Somewhere in New Guinea, I’m sure, there’s an Oakley-wearing couple from Vermont, raising the consciousness of a mellow neolithic tribe about flatulence-free cooking.   One hopes that the couple will end as appetizers, entrees and desserts.  The postprandial air will be filled with the aroma of maple syrup, and the glass-flat consciousness of the tribe will be undisturbed.  That’s progress. 

Live Earth was a spectacular CR, with the current Consciousness-Raiser-in-Chief Albert Gore, offending the facts of light and sound by his presence and pledge demands.  Be honest, liberals.  CRs aren’t processes, they’re mobile assumptions.  Practitioners of CR assume that they possess the truth, and that falsehood is an information deficit and not a knowledge deficit.  The two are very different.

CRs don’t impart knowledge because they’re not meant to.  They impart information disguised as knowledge.  CR events happen at the nexus of vanity, dogma and convenient fact, where the liberal simply can’t contain himself any longer.   Everyone has to hear what he believes, or hear what many of them earn their livings by believing. 

The value or non-value of a topic subjected to CRs is that the imbedded information is not quite wrong, and not quite right.  It’s un-wrong and un-false, but not right and not true.  It’s like those cheap tools that don’t last.  You get a lot of them for very little.  Their hardness and engineering isn’t completely useless, but they’re still not up to the job.   They look good with their chrome strike and cushioned handles, and they appeal to the philistine who likes to see them on the pegboard.

But the news for conservatives about CRs isn’t very good.  They probably work very well, if you take the evidence gathered by Dan Gilbert in his 1991 article “How Mental Systems Work”.  It’s available in Adobe on Google, for anyone interested.  Once you hammer through the cement of academic jargon, you learn something useful about yourself (the doubter), and about those other people (the credulous).

Shave off the vaguely useful information about Des Cartes, Spinoza, Bertrand Russell and Henry James, and lots of others who’ve ruminated on “the mind” and you find studies which indicate that belief precedes doubt, and of the two, belief is the default state.   Belief, or acceptance, of a proposition or idea, is passive.  It occurs with comprehension and understanding.  Even a negation  statement like  ”the sky is not yellow” requres the mind to affirm the yellowness of the sky and then evaluate the validity of the proposition.  

Rejection or disbelief, if it comes at all, comes later when the idea is evaluated and tested against other mental representations and information.  This requires effort.  Consider the advancement from credulous childhood to skeptical adulthood.  Skepticism arrives late in the human mind, but under pressure it’s also the first thing to go.  Distraction, stress, psychological manipulation, all of them disable the evaluative process of the human mind, and allow the default position, belief,  to prevail.  

CR’s, in my opinion, exploit the pressures of induced fear, shock or tension to confirm their information in the minds of the listeners.  There’s much more to Gilbert’s article.  Thoughts on visual perception, the evolutionary value of immediate belief over doubt and more.  It will raise your consciousness about what skeptics are up against in this world.  It isn’t reassuring either.  The Ad Council knows much more than we do.

The first matter in this introduction is to thank my host at New England Republican for the opportunity to contribute to his blog.  He’s taking a risk.  I’ve commented here promiscuously for about four years under the foreshortened given name with the Celtic “H” (Rhod), and now NER is allowing me in the door without patting me down.

It’s been said here that I’m a knuckle-dragger.  My ear is pressed to the radio, pencil in hand, recording my talking points from Limbaugh.  I’m an “unpatriotic right-wing hooligan”, a “despicable winger”, and a drug-addled, baby-killing villain from the Vietnam War.  There’s more, but these are just a few of my favorites.  Still,  it hasn’t been all fun.

I plan to divorce that careless entity Rhod from the responsible contributor I plan to be, with the grand conceit of calling myself “Hotspur”.  Hotspur is one of Shakespeare’s most interesting characters.  He’s not a good guy in every way, but I like the ring of the name.  That other guy can live down to his reputation elsewhere.

I was born a long time ago, into a Scots-English New England family of carnival-mirror Republicans.   We had so many ideological distortions, I still don’t know if we were conservatives, liberals, or something else.  Furiously anti-FDR, derisively anti-Eisenhower, sniffily anti-JFK, vaguely pro-Stevenson, peace-loving, pro-military flag wavers, business owning foundrymen, clannish and skeptical civil rights supporters, church-going without piety; that kind of stuff.  It’s impossible to rebel in such a family.  You can’t ditch one set of parental values without projecting its approved opposite.

As a child I lived for long periods in the pre-integration South as well as in industrial Connecticut, and will never vilify either region for unenlightened racialism or smokestack landscapes.  America is wonderful in countless ways, with nothing that is permanently sullied by our mistakes.

An early 1950’s summer morning on Georgia’s Route 17 can’t be made vile by segregation.  And the smell of burning coke (vacuum-burned coal) and the tunes of a forge and train whistle at night in Connecticut, are evocative of strength, purpose and hard work.  This country is the sum of its parts, and the bad things are washed away by the dazzling light of the good.

Between 1962 and 1971, I obtained a college degree, served in Vietnam as a combat radio operator; worked at a series of white, blue and gray collar jobs, two of which called upon similar resources.  School teacher and clown.  I prospered more as a clown, and I’m still contemplating the intelligence I gained the very day I gave up that job.  A nasty little boy of about four years of age snarled at me and said “You’re not a REAL clown, you’re just a man in a clown suit!”

Barely past the simian stage of boyhood, that kid was on to something important.  Even if there’s no such thing as final truth, we need to assert the nearly real and spurn the fake, the fantastic and the imitative.  The greasepaints of self-deception, of untruth and prejudice coat and smear our insights.  Our first responsibility is to be REAL clowns.

 Today I’m self-employed.  I live in the lower Connecticut River Valley, am married and have three sons in the military, all of whom are combat veterans of the Afghanistan and Iraq Wars.  One is a paratrooper, an airborne combat engineer; another is a Cavalry Scout turned Ranger currently in Special Forces training, and the third is involved with security and judicial matters for figures like the very dead Saddam Hussein and the temporarily alive Chemical Ali.  We have all been fortunate beyond measure. 

Connecticut Governor Rell vetoed the medical marijuana law passed by the legislature. The “legalize the bud” people are up in arms because it’s like the most therapeutic drug of all time, Man! But isn’t this law a massive invitation to fraud? You and I both know that cancer patients won’t be the only people growing plants

And although it’s anecdotal evidence, I’ve never know a habitual marijuana user who was a brain surgeon by day. Most seem content living off my tax dollars.