Thoughts – Page 5 – Dennis C Merritt

Center – Affordable Care Act

This is the start of what I hope to be a series of blogs looking for the center. Not a rant from the left or the right, but a view from the center.

The Affordable Care Act — I feel it should be called by it’s official name, because ObamaCare it definitely is not. Obama made it clear at the beginning that it was Congress’ job to come up with an appropriate health care plan. Obama said he really didn’t care, he was happy with nationalized health as an answer, or, get this, he was happy with a complete free market approach to health care. Either would be better than the then current state of health insurance.

Congress did neither. The Affordable Care Act (ACA) is a compromise that not everyone is happy with. (All though the insurance companies seemed just fine with it, more customers guaranteed.)

What do the Liberals love about it? It provided health care for many of those people locked out of the previous health care system. Health care they couldn’t have afforded otherwise.

What to the Conservatives hate about it? Well, if you are going to provide health care at a discount, cheaper than the insurance companies feel they need to charge for it, somebody has to pay.

Who pays for the ACA? Two parties. One is individuals who are required to buy health insurance, even if they don’t want to. Penalties otherwise. The other is companies with more than 50 employees.

Here is where we begin to see the incredible chasm between the Democrats and Republicans.

The Democrats sing the praises of all the people who now have health care who couldn’t before. This is great! (Can you see the gratitude that comes from this?)

The Republicans decry the injustice of who has to pay for it. Some healthy 20-something, doing say construction work, taking care of his family, now has to buy health insurance he still can’t really afford. Why? Because some poor person can afford it? (Can you see the resentment that might be built up here?)

And small companies, suddenly faced with a huge expense if they go over 50 employees. They’re all refusing to hire, instead using contractors and part-time employees to avoid incurring this expense that will definitely impact their ability to do business. (And the resentment that builds up here? And the impact on jobs?)

This is a classic case of the government redistributing wealth. It’s a case of robbing Peter to pay Paul. Which is not a bad thing, it’s what government does. As always, Paul is really excited about it. Peter is pissed. And there you have the Republican – Democrat divide over the AHCA.

So what’s the answer?

Clearly as a civilized nation we want to provide basic health care to all our citizens.

Clearly as a fair nation, we need to figure out some way to pay for that. Fairly.

We need the Democrats and the Republicans to sit down at the negotiating table. We need the Democrats to say, our constituents are hurting, they can’t afford health care, they can’t take care of their basic needs. We need the Republicans to say, our constituents are having a hard time making ends meet, the self-employed can’t be forced to pay for it, the small companies can’t be forced to pay for it as they are our best hope for new jobs.

So look across the table, Ds and Rs, talk about exactly how much health care to provide, talk about who is going to pay for it. Work together for your constituents. Understand each other.

Personally, I agree with Obama. Either nationalize health insurance, Medicare for all, or take it out of corporations, make it an individual decision, pure free market, different products for different budgets, with regulation ensuring that pre-existing conditions, etc., can not be used as a criteria in the price of insurance.

Judicial Philosophy and the Immigration Ban

This isn’t really an opinion, but more like a report on what I just learned.

In reading about Gorsuch I learned he was a ‘literalist’, which is a conservative way of being a judge. It means a judge interprets the law based on the words in the law and nothing else. That is as opposed to a judge who might try to understand the lawmaker’s intent behind a law.

Backing up, what does the Supreme Court, and other Federal courts do? They hear cases that challenge laws, difficult situations that require the court to interpret whether or not a particular law applies or not.

So how does a judge decide? Well this gets down to whether you believe a judge should enforce the letter of the law or the spirit of the law.

A literalist judge will simply look at the words and reason from there. The other approach is to look for evidence of what the lawmakers intended with the law, or maybe what the law, de facto, accomplishes, and use that to shape an opinion.

I’m sure this issue leads to some very deep intellectual discussions of the best way to judge. Clearly there are many problems with trying to reason the intent of, say the Founding Fathers when writing the Second Ammendment.

A literalist judiciary puts the onus on the lawmakers to write laws that clearly express their intent. This seems like a good thing. Maybe.

NOTE WELL that in either case, the judge’s own personal opinion on the matter should have no bearing whatsoever. The personal opinions of the lawmakers, yes, definitely, should be encoded in the law. But the judges can only interpret that law.

So how does this apply to the immigration ban?

Well it appears there are two legal challenges to it. One is based on, I believe, a 1968 law that prohibits discrimintation based on national origins. On the surface, it seems clearly in play here, but there are difficulties with it’s interpretation that I don’t want to discuss here, because I don’t understand them.

And my point is more about literalist judges and what that means for us as a people. And that gets to the second challenge.

The second legal challenge is a constitutional one. The Constitution bans any discrimination based on religion.

A ban against Muslim immigrants is clearly unconstitutional.

So what about this law? Do you see where this is going?

If you take the law solely by it’s wording, if you make a judgement based on the words alone, well the law does not discriminate against Muslims, only on people from certain countries.

What if a judge considers the intent behind the law? Well in that case Trump has many many instances of campaign rhetoric where he promised to ban Muslims from entering the country once he was elected. Clearly his intent is to ban Muslims.

How can lawmakers use this to weasel around? I’ve read that Trump’s team met with legal advisors to try to figure out how to ban Muslims legally.

The country of origin ban is what they came up with.

Whether it gets by the Supreme Court depends on whether the courts look at the words of the immigration ban, or the intent behind it. Literalist judges, or not. People are forecasting a 4-4 split if it goes to the Supreme Court.

(NOTE WELL AGAIN — in either case, for any of the 8 justices, it doesn’t matter what their personal opinion on immigration is. They are simply deciding if the law violates the Constitution or not. If it is a ban against a religious group, or not. (And I believe the Supreme Court justices are all very honorable in this regard, they do do their jobs as they see it should be done.))

Gorsuch is a literalist judge. If confirmed, it will be easier for Congress and the President to draft laws and directives that are legally worded but whose intent might be very different from those words.

In other words, it might encourage Congress and the President to pass laws, issue directives that, rather than clearly stating their intent, are crafted to obfuscate it.

–Dennis

Miracle of Diminshed 7th Chords

Jazz Chords for Baritone Ukulele — Now part of the full book!

I’ve been working on learning jazz chords, and how to derive them myself, rather than try to memorize lots of dots on frets diagrams. I’m using the baritone ukelele for this because it only has four strings, which line up nicely with the four notes in most jazz chords. This simplifies things somewhat.

So, I started with 7th chords and made an amazing discovery! The diminshed 7ths are at the root of all 7th chords! Here’s the big picture:

(Note on diagrams — these are the four strings and the fingerings, but instead of dots, the position in chord is written so you can see how it’s constructed. These fret all the strings, so the fingerings can be moved. The chord being played is based on whatever note is under the circled 1.)

Backing up, the idea is to come up with moveable chord fingerings with the root on any one of the four strings. So for each chord, such as minor 7th, there are four different fingerings, allowing it to be played multiple ways at multiple positions on the fret board.

I had been working from regular 7th fingerings, and then started to add others, and was moving towards the diminshed 7ths when… They were all the same fingerings. No matter which string was the root, the fingering of a diminshed 7th chord was the same. Just the role played by each note was different.

How cool is that!

Why is that? A diminshed 7th is made up 1 3b 5b 7bb. All the intervals are minor thirds. Even 7bb – 1 is a minor third, so it just keeps going and going.

The various inversions for the different root strings are:

1 5b 7bb 3b
5b 1 3b 7bb
3b 7bb 1 5b
7bb 3b 5b 1

Note how well those inversions line up with the 4th 3rd 4th tuning of the baritone uke (and four high strings of a guitar)(and regular uke as well). 1 – 5b, and 7bb – 3b are augmented fourths (two minor thirds) and bridge neatly across the 4th tuned strings. But so are 5b – 1 and 3b – 7bb, because the augmented fourth is the only symmetric interval.

Those pairs are then joined by, say, 5b – 7bb, a minor third, which falls nicely across the center third tuning. As do all the other inversions.

Anyway, starting with these inversions you can make single fret changes to gradually create any of the 7th chords. That is, understanding these inversions, and then removing the required flats lets you derive, in your head, any of these jazzy 7th chords.

Just pick a root, say you want a G7 around the middle of the keyboard. So take the 4th string 5th fret, a G, make the diminished 7th chord, and then move each of the other fingers up a fret, 5b -> 5, 7bb -> 7b, 3b -> 3b, and you’ve got G7 on the fifth fret!

Want to slide from there into a Cmaj7? Well C is on the third string 5th fret. Leave that finger be, take all the others up a fret, and then take the 7b up one more and you’ve got Cmaj7.

ii – V – I is a classic jazz progression. To add the minor 7th to the two chords above, I like the D on third string 7th fret. Start with the diminished 7th with the root on there. Move the 7bb and 5b each up one, leaving the 3b alone.

Now you can play Dm7 – G7 – Cmaj7, classic ii V I. Isn’t it sweet?

Jazz Chords for Baritone Ukulele — Now part of the full book!

29% Interest

In the 1990s credit card companies came up with an extremely efficient way to transfer money from the poor to the rich. 29% interest on credit card debit.

Elizabeth Warren thought this was just plain wrong. She tried to get Congress to stop it. She lost. Congress thought it was just fine.

This was during the Clinton years.

My point again, there is plenty to be angry about in the way Washington DC has been running for decades, with any combination of Democrat or Republican President or Congress.

Bush making it illegal for us to buy cheaper drugs from Canada. Another good way to transfer money from the middle class to the rich. Pharmaceuticals had poured more money into politics in those years than even the oil companies.

It doesn’t matter which major party is in charge. It’s the money behind the politicians that matters.

If we’d had a Sanders or Johnson win, they would have been beholden to tens of thousands of people making small donations. They would have been beholden to us.

If Clinton won, she’d be beholden to that dark money that’s behind our politics.

And if Trump won, well he did, at least we know who he’s beholden to. Himself.

If Hillary Won

There is tremendous outrage against Trump, and I am as outraged as the next person. But let’s consider what might have been.

If Gary Johnson had won… sigh, nevermind, not going there.

If Hillary had won, we would have a President who respects women. We would have a President who claims to respect the rights of all people, regardless of race, creed, color… We would have a President who is not a bully, an ego-maniac, paranoid, or crazy. We would have a President that views Putin as a threat to the free World.

We would have a President with more experience in Washington DC politics than just about anyone, active First Lady, Senator, Secretary of State…

And we would have a President who raised more than twice as much money as Trump. A President who a lot of people with a lot of money wanted to see elected.

And this is where I have a problem. Before this election cycle Congress was at record low approval ratings. And this goes back through multiple Presidents.

Consider the Affordable Care Act. Obama wanted to fix health care. He left it up to Congress, and said he didn’t care if it went totally free market, or single payer. Either was better than what we got.

So Congress came up with this kludge. And I know, it provided health care for many who couldn’t afford it. But how did it pay for it? By forcing healthy people who didn’t need health insurance to buy insurance. Did you follow that? By forcing more people to purchase health insurance from insurance companies.

Could it be the insurance company lobbies were somehow involved in Congress’ plan? To sell more insurance?

Bernie is right, the whole system is corrupt, and has lowered the standard of living of everyone except for the very rich. This has been going on since the 1990s.

So who were those people giving all that money to Hillary? People who wanted to make sure our President respected women? Who wanted to make sure illegal immigrants were treated fairly? Who wanted to protect the rights of muslims in this country? Is that why they gave millions and millions of dollars to help get her elected?

Or did they expect something else from their investment?

Was Hillary speaking the truth when she told those wealthy donors there were two governments. A public one for the people and a shadow one for those pulling the strings.

If Hillary had won, we would have more of what we had already. And we would all be smiling at her and she smiling at us as we continued to get screwed.

And I love Obama as much as anyone, what a class act. But the same crap went on on his watch. He supported Mary Jo White, head of the SEC, who says Elizabeth Warren is naive for wanting corporations to list their political contributions. Warren wanted corporations to have to tell which campaigns they support. White said you can’t do that because if people knew who corporations were supporting, people might not do business with them. And that would hurt the investors, and we wouldn’t want that.

That’s Obama! That’s the good guy! It sucks under him as well.

Do you see where I’m going? We’ve been getting fucked by Washington for going on 30 years now. Hillary would have been more of that.

Trump is a disaster, no question. But instead of being angry at all the things Bernie Sanders says we should be angry at, http://www.cnn.com/2017/01/09/opinions/serious-questions-bernie-sanders-opinion/index.html we’re angry at offensive tweets. We’re angry at this insane man. We’re distracted from that which we should be really angry about. A Congress that serves only the wealthy, and has been doing so for decades.

One of Trump’s idea, that I used to agree with, is term limits for Congress, to stop career policticians. But as far as I can tell Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren are the only two who are actually fighting for the rest of us. So now I don’t even agree with his idea of term limits.

The 1%

The latest data on wealth distribution leaves me with questions. The 8 wealthiest families are worth as much as the bottom 50% of the World’s population.

My first thought is that really reflects more on the extreme poverty of so many people. Billions of people with net worths of zero. This is a serious problem, but, not it seems, one related to the concentration of wealth in the wealthiest. Whether the wealth is in my middle class bank account or Bill Gate’s, doesn’t really matter much to the people living in Africa’s Rift Valley.

My second thought is our government. We all know that the wealthy have bought our government, and that money is pulling the strings from behind the curtain. Right?

But look at the 8 wealthiest. These don’t seem like evil smoke-filled room schemers. Gates? with all his charities, and Buffett? who says it’s not right that he makes so much more than his secretary, Bezos? who owns the Washington Post, Zuckerberg? bringing Internet to the Third World, Bloomberg? Democrat mayor of New York?

These aren’t people using their money to buy government to increase their wealth. In fact, they’re giving it away. Or using it to explore space.

So where is the money behind bought Congress people coming from? Why haven’t these people, who are the most wealthy, standing in the way? Why aren’t the wealthy on the side of good more effective at off-setting the wealthy on the side of evil?

–Dennis

Change

It’s change people yearn for.

Do you remember 8 years ago? In the Democratic primaries, Hillary Clinton was the front runner, but she was upset by, get this, a black man. A black man (in this so called racist country) beat out the establishment politician. And why? He promised change.

This year, a crazy billionaire beat out the establishment politician again. Why? Because he promised change.

The country doesn’t care — well educated black man, racist billionaire — that part is not important. People are sick of a disfunctional government controlled by corporate money.

Saying the country embraced a misogynistic, xenophobic narcissist is simply not correct. 70% of the population didn’t like him. That is not who we are. Yet, he was the candidate promising change.

For those who think the votes for Gary Johnson put Trump in office, well pay attention. Those were votes from people who wanted change.

And if everyone who voted for Clinton because it was the “smart” thing to do, had voted their conscience, we would most likely have both Libertarian and Green party candidates as part of the process next time.

Baritone Ukulele, not Guitar, not Small Ukulele

Jazz Chords for Baritone Ukulele — Now part of the full book!

Well finally this election is coming to a close, and I can focus on my new hobby. That’s learning about jazz chords and how to use them on the baritone ukelele.

Why not a regular uke? Well it’s got too tinny a sound and too small to finger chords up the neck.

Anyway, back to the point, I’m learning how to …

What? A guitar, well yes, it’s a fuller richer instrument, but more difficult to play.

So I’ve started to work out the chords..

I know, I know, if I want to be a real jazz musician I should work with the guitar, but I’m trying to get a start with baritone uke.

So…

Use a small uke? I just explained that a small uke is too small. It’s too tinny. It does not really let me experiment with jazz chords like I want.

No, I’m not going to use the guitar. It’s too big for me. Maybe not for everyone, but for me, I’m more comfortable with the smaller 4-stringed instrument.

NO, guitar vs. small uke are not my only choices. I don’t care that nobody cares about a baritone uke. It works for me.

Sorry all, I couldn’t help myself. Smiling when I wrote this….

Really, I’m working on jazz chords for the baritone uke. It’s fun. There will be posts about it for real.

Monsanto, Cable Companies, Government

This is the real business of government that affects our everyday lives. Vermont (Bernie Sander’s state) has GMO labelling laws. Food producers are currently adding GMO labeling so they can sell in Vermont. But they don’t like it. So they invested a lot of money and influence on a federal bill that will override the Vermont one.

It says, OK, so we have to label, but it’s too onerous to put it in writing on the label (as Vermont required, and many European countries do), so we’ll just encode it in a QR or bar code on the label. Anyone with a cell phone can look it up.

Here is big business, buying it’s way into the laws of our land. Maybe GMO is fine, that’s not the issue. The issue is we have a right to know, and the government supports big agribusiness in making it difficult to know.

This is the crap that happens all the time.

Here’s my point — We have no idea how either Clinton or Trump will behave in this area. We have no idea what sorts of decisions they’ll make for us day to day. Will they support this type of business sponsored legislation? Or not?

All we hear about is email servers and pussy grabbing. Neither of those issues will have the impact on our lives as, for example, this latest GMO labeling act.

We DO know how Gary Johnson would govern. His campaign information addresses this sort of topic. He explains that the executive does NOT make the laws. The legislature does. So the president cannot create laws. But, he can veto them.

And so he did. He gives as an example a bill that crossed his desk when he was governor. It was labeled something like The Fair Cable Act. It was written and sponsored by the cable company to protect their monopoly. Gary Johnson vetoed it. And all others like it.

(He was disliked by his state legislature, and loved by his constituents.)

American Nihilistic Jihad

Nihilism appeared in two articles in this weeks Economist. I had to look it up. The first definition is about a rejection of all religious and moral guidelines because life is meaningless.

But what struck me more was the third definition, from the Russian Revolution. It was the belief that there was nothing of value in the established Tsarist order worth saving, so all could be destroyed. And so they did, the downtrodden rose up and destroyed the existing order.

A while back peace was reached in Ireland. The bloody revolutionaries of the IRA came to terms with the British. Why? Well it seems the under lying reason was that the economy of Northern Ireland was beginning to improve. The people were no longer desperate, and didn’t want to be bombing stuff that would hurt their growing businesses. Economic well being.

We read about the Sunnis and the Shiites, and, I suspect most of us don’t get it. They’re both Islam. What’s up? Well, the Sunnis used to be in charge in Iraq and suppressed the Shiites. The Sunnis, comfortable, weren’t really into the whole jihad thing.

The Shiites, on the other hand, were economically depressed, and they are the ones who believed in nilisitic jihad. That’s right, nothing is worth saving in the current ruling order, destroy it all.

Well times are changing. After we invaded Iraq and threw out the Sunnis, the Shiites took over. And suppressed the Sunnis. And guess what, the Shiites beliefs are softening on jihad, and the Sunnis are starting to embrace it.

Time and again, the economically downtrodden feel they have nothing to lose, and see nothing worth saving in current ruling order. Destroy it all. Nihilistic jihad.

And in America? Well the economy is no longer working for a large segment of our country. There are frustrated, desperate people out there. They see nothing in the current ruling order worth saving.

The 1% have grown at their expense, the 1% have created them. About 30% of the 99% left over have reached the state of embracing nihilistic jihad. The destruction of the current ruling order.

They have a leader. A visionary speaking to them (exploiting them?). His name is Trump.

Who stands in his way? A well-funded woman on very good terms with the 1%. Hillary.

Isn’t it obvious what’s going on here?