A nail in the coffin for the U.S. in the future is the ubiquitous use of offshore bank accounts by the 1%.  It’s not just banking for the rich elites either, as many companies like General Electric incorporate overseas.  The common goal is to avoid paying U.S. taxes.  It’s a similar goal for European companies that want to avoid paying taxes to the E.U. (GE avoids them both).  Whether companies or individuals, the effect is the same: to keep a country’s infrastructure running and the worker bees moderately happy as good and healthy consumers, taxes are paid by the 99%, not the 1%.  While governments struggle to keep their heads above water in these lean times for the 99%, more money is hidden beyond their tax horizons by the 1%.  The problem is not big government—the problem is the rich elites who socialize costs and privatize profits.

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The recent vote on censure against Syria torpedoed by China and Russia only emphasizes how ineffective the U.N. has become.  The last U.S. president to ask the U.N. to get behind him when going to war was Papa Bush (the Gulf War).  For Iraq, Baby Bush even changed a long standing U.S. tradition and launched a preemptive strike without allies’ or U.N. permission.  For Libya, Obama turned to NATO, not the U.N.

What’s happening in Syria is similar to but not the same as what happened in Libya before NATA intervened.  Gadhafi’s record as a brutal dictator had few equals.  Certainly Syria’s present ruler is not yet in his league, although father and son together come close.  Of course, this will all change if Assad makes good on his promise to use WMDs, mostly stockpiled biological and chemical weapons (his fledgling nuclear efforts were taken out by Israel—with help from the CIA?).  So far his threat is only directed towards “foreign invaders.”

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Trekkies know that there were two starship Enterprises, the first named after the aircraft carrier and the second after the first.  I claim there are three.  In a few days, the true first starship Enterprise will end its life as a museum on the decks of the old aircraft carrier Intrepid berthed in New York City’s harbor.

The demise of NASA’s shuttle program ranks as one of the most asinine decisions the government has ever made in its mismanagement of science funding.  Another, of course, was the cancellation of the SSC (short for “Superconducting Super Collider”).  The first killed America’s capability to put an astronaut in space, thus all but ending an all too brief era of space exploration.  The second ended U.S. dominance in experimental particle physics.  The Higgs particle, if it exists, won’t be discovered by American scientists, at least not by those working in this country.

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I read that teachers in Idaho are pushing back on requirements that they become computer savvy (NY Times, Jan. 3).  While the Idaho Statesman, a local newspaper, writes this off as politics (there are always at least two sides in these matters), blaming it on legislators pandering to high-tech companies (apparently they contributed to some school superintendent’s election campaign), it reminds me that I’ve heard about teachers resisting technology even in high tech areas like the Northeast and the West Coast.  (I apologize for my bias, but I can’t think of Idaho as another Californian Silicon Valley or Bostonian 128 Loop.  It’s the land of down-to-earth good people—the exception being Aryan supremacy groups—and beautiful, rustic scenery.)

In defense of teachers in general, it’s not like school districts make it easy for them to get any kind of additional training, let alone computer literacy.  Legislatures and governors everywhere are slashing budgets for education, so teacher training goes down the toilet with many other programs.  This is certainly happening here in NJ where, in spite of appearances, our governor performs well in the role of the anti-Santa Claus.  I’m at a lost to come up with a way for a teacher, who has been twenty years on the job and wants to update his or her knowledge and skill sets, to actually do so.  I give education a high priority.  I also know things are wrong with the system.  But slash and burn tactics on the part of governors and legislators is not the answer for our kids.

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It’s Saturday, December 31, 2011, and Mr. Obama has just given a New Year’s gift to terrorists.  Barack, the Avenger, just became Barack, the Santa Claus, with respect to Mr. Karzai and his entire corrupt government.  And Mrs. Clinton, his head elf, just goes along with it.  The Afghan leader, who knows he sits on a powder keg, is trying to make peace with the Taliban—our foreign policy gurus just helped him along the way.

Come on, Barack!  The friends of my enemies are my enemies—the Taliban showed their true nature many years ago.  They gave safe haven to al Qaeda members and terrorized and killed their own people.  They have killed our soldiers and civilian contractors whose only crime in that God-forsaken land was to work for the betterment of the Afghan people.  They have falsely accused men under their strict Sharia law and beheaded them.  They have stoned women who have been raped after accusing them of adultery.  They have killed girls whose only sin was wanting to study.  In brief, the Taliban are a blight on humanity, a pestilence that Pandora could have never imagined.

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On Tuesday, I received an “urgent alert to the APS membership:  funding cuts to NSF, NIST.”  Let me translate the acronymese.  APS is the American Physical Society.  I’m a member.  Although I am now a full-time writer, I used to be a physicist, among other things (people have called me many things, in fact).  NSF, of course, is the National Science Foundation.  NIST is the lesser known National Institute of Standards and Technology (the name is a late addition, probably to get more funding—it used to be called National Bureau of Standards).  The issue is that the Senate Appropriations Committee, that august body of mostly senile and small-minded thinkers who often sit in the Senate for a lifetime, has proposed cuts to both NSF and NIST in its FY 2012 budget for Commerce, Justice and Science agencies.  (Since NIH, the National Institutes of Health, does research for the drug companies, I’m not sure whether they’re a commerce or science agency, but they weren’t mentioned by APS.)

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Some news about three of my favorite duplicitous countries:  (1) The Pakistani spy agency has been implicated in the murder of journalist Syed Saleem Shahzad.  Yes, these are the same guys that arrested the people who helped us send OBL to hell where he belongs.  They’re also the same guys who knew where he was all the time.  (2)  It turns out the Afghan police (army?  it’s hard to tell in a Third World country) were incapable of putting down the attackers at that hotel in Kabul.  They needed the help of NATO attack helicopters.  (3) The Saudis have purchased some special tanks from German companies.  These tanks are equipped with special crowd-control features.  Is Angela Merkel and her government embarrassed?

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A second edition of the FBI’s “Domestic Investigations and Operations Guide” is currently under revision and will be out on October 1.  Is this a new and improved version?  Hardly.  While emotional rants from organizations like the ACLU are expected in this and all similar cases, a saner review tells you that it’s just more of the same—and that’s the problem.  What are reasonable limits on our privacy?  How much of our privacy are we willing to lose in order to protect ourselves from criminal elements and terrorism?

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Many people view AARP as a relatively harmless special interest group.  Now this view might become more cemented in the national conscience since Betty White is doing some irreverent and risqué commercials for them.  However, I’m not particularly a fan of AARP.  During the debate about drug coverage for seniors, they sold out to Mr. Bush and Big Pharma.  The result was Medicare Part D with the famous donut hole, that extension to Medicare that confuses many seniors and allows insurance companies to play fast and loose with their drug needs.

In addition, I always have resented the idea that 50+ meant “retired,” which is absurd and probably why the original name was changed to the acronym.  Of course, the threshold was put in place in order to latch on to more members.  While the cost of membership is minimal, it all adds up to a tidy sum, I’m sure, but not to nearly as much as what they make selling insurance to elders.  In many ways, they are part of the medical insurance problem.

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It always has been, of course. However, events recently have transpired so fast that not even the Warner Brothers’ roadrunner could keep up with them.  I will only comment here on two things that really bother me, but it’s obvious from previous blog posts that many things concern me about how the West is handling problems in that region of the world.  Today my two concerns are American duplicity and Muslim immaturity.

Duplicity is SOP in our State Department.  You have to wonder if that’s what foreign policy reduces to these days.  When the Egyptian revolution started, the diplomatic corps, led by Mrs. Clinton, struggled to figure out which side to support, the rebels or Mr. Mubarak.  It was clear that it’s time to change our foreign policy and people.  The duplicity resides in supporting some clearly tyrannical and oppressive governments and trying to topple some others.

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