Medium has the article Dear America: Meet Bernie Sanders. Properly, this time by Emil Mella. This one is too good for me to just post it on the Sturbridge For Bernie Sanders Facebook page.

In the race to decide the next President of your arguably great nation, there is one candidate who has been drawing the largest crowds of any candidate visiting the key primary state of Iowa (including the Republican primary candidates, who probably estimate about 1% of the American population at this point). A candidate who out-fundraised Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio and Rand Paul in any of their first 24 hours as candidates. A candidate whose policies align with the majority of Americans on everything from income inequality to money’s role in politics to the minimum wage to federally financed political campaigning to abortion to overturning Citizens United to global warming and government taking action to combat it to the affordability of a college degree to gun control to government surveillance to passing a law legalizing gay marriage in all 50 states. A candidate who was one of the thousands of Americans who marched with Martin Luther King, Jr. in his historic March on Washington in 1963. A candidate who has served as a mayor (being one of the earliest proponents of a lot of the policies that are nowadays commonplace in municipal government), a congressman and a senator, with deep knowledge of the American political system and equally deep, authentic convictions that he has held onto for his entire political career.

This explains that the media is doing a lousy job.

It is not the media’s job to decide what the American people can and cannot hear. That is dishonesty, that is lying. It is the media’s job to keep the American people informed. That’s what it’s there for, and doing anything else is simply abusing the trust millions and millions of Americans have for the current news media system.

Mella goes on to explain why the media is doing such a lousy job, but it’s not hard to figure it out for yourself.

Naked Capitalism has the article Ilargi: QE Breeds Instability.

This is the logic behind the actual “liquidity trap” presented by Keynes in his general theory. Specifically, Chapter 15 entitled “The Psychological and Business Incentives To Liquidity.” Here he argues that every fall in the interest rate relative to what is commonly believed to be a “safe” rate increases the “risk of illiquidity”. The the “risk of illiquidity” is the risk of holding an asset not easily convertible into money at “book” value (this also means an asset is more or less “liquid” based on the relative easiness to convert into money “book” value). Further, rather then seeing interest as a return to “waiting”, Keynes argues that it is “a sort of insurance premium to offset the risk of loss on capital account”.
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….if the interest rate rises too fast those “middle-class people” will take much larger losses on the value of many of their assets than they will get back in interest….That is without even taking into account the higher borrowing costs that many would most likely face. Remember also that at such low interests rates “too fast” is actually a very small increase. To go back to Keynes:

If, however, the rate of interest is already as low as 2 per cent., the running yield will only offset a rise in it of as little as 0.04 per cent. per annum. This, indeed, is perhaps the chief obstacle to a fall in the rate of interest to a very low level. Unless reasons are believed to exist why future experience will be very different from past experience, a long-term rate of interest of (say) 2 per cent. leaves more to fear than to hope, and offers, at the same time, a running yield which is only sufficient to offset a very small measure of fear.

If you own bonds for “safety”, you’d better understand what is being said here. I cannot understanding why one invests in a commodity that is at its absolute tippity top in price, has nowhere to go but down, and does not pay you enough interest to cover the risk. How anyone can think this is safe, just defies logic to me?

Remember that this investment advice is worth every penny you paid for it, and not a cent more. So ignore it if that is what you think best.

JamesZ emailed me about the Life Of The Law article and audio Life of the Law #26 – School Discipline program which he had heard on WGBH. I think this was originally aired on January 28, 2014

About ten days after Kyle’s arrest, there was a disciplinary hearing with the assistant superintendent.

”She just kept saying, ‘well, you know what Kyle?’” Lisa Thompson remembered, “‘You seem like a nice kid and your mom seems like she really cares’ and she kept saying, ‘You are exactly the kind of kid we want at Harrison. Your mom is exactly the kind of parent we want at this school.’

“She said that, I don’t know, five times,” Thompson continued. And she said, ‘unfortunately Mom, I’m going to have to tell you something you don’t want to hear…I’m going to have to, I’m going to have to expel him for 180 school days.’”

I try to always maintain the proper amount of skepticism. I know that the story is edited to make you come to one conclusion, so I have to remind myself that we don’t really know what happened. I can still be outraged at the fact that something like this could have happened even though we don’t know for sure whether or not it happened this way in this instance.

This story is relevant to Sturbridge residents because it was just a few years ago that Town Meeting struggled with the issue of funding a school resource officer for Tantasqua Regional High School. At the time, I was in favor of funding the officer, but that is not what the town decided to do. In my mind, I bought into the worry of the bad things that could happen that might be mitigated by the presence of the SRO. It never occurred to me that there could be negative consequences to having an SRO. The above radio program certainly makes it clear what those bad consequences are. The bad consequences of having an SRO aren’t nearly as rare as the consequences of not having one. Having the students get to know a police officer from daily interaction or at least his presence in the school might actually be overrated according to these statistics. Interestingly, the problem is not with the police officer, but it is with the teachers and administrators. Having an SRO and a school administration with zero tolerance policies are a toxic mix.

There are a number of my friends in Sturbridge who have disagreed with my thinking on the SRO. I just could not understand their issues. Now I have a much better grasp of what they may be thinking. For those friends, I used to agree with on this issue, sorry, I have now switched sides.

June 6, 2015

I have found the following in the platform on Jacob Ryan’s web site as a member of the Tantasqua School committee.

I am proud to stand with a bipartisan group of people in support of a School Resource Officer at Tantasqua. The Democratic controlled state legislature and the conservative NRA agree, having an officer in a school system is to the benefit of all involved, especially the students.

Burgess Elementary has proved that an officer not only acts as a safety mechanism if something were to occur, but is a resource for the students, staff, and parents that helps strengthen the relationship between the community and law enforcement. The debate is over however, the state now requires us to have an officer on campus. And because I believe strongly in this issue and want to work within state law, I will push for the institution of this officer as soon as possible.

If the Town is required by the state to have an SRO, I think the least we can do is to also have a funded defense lawyer to protect the civil rights of any student accused of a crime for which the SRO gets involved. This defense lawyer must be called in immediately to warn the student of her or his Miranda rights. I’d like to see the state law amended to require this along with the SRO. I’d also like the school to be required to keep statistics on how many arrests get made, and the outcomes of these arrests and also keep track of the race and the LGBT status of the accused.

When we get into criminal matters, it is a very very bad idea for an accused person to say anything to anybody, especially a police officer, without the accused’s having legal counsel present. Otherwise, the accused is being taken advantage of and is being denied her or his rights. This is one lesson that ought to be taught at Tantasqua. After all, it is part of our Constitution.

See my previous post Don’t Talk To The Police.

June 6, 2015

Jacob Ryan >responded on Facebook.

Intriguing post, one correction though. Sturbridge has always stood by the funding for the resource officer. Every attempt to strip the funding at town meeting has failed. We currently fund the position at Burgess and Tantasqua but the Tantasqua school committee has not adopted the position. Sturbridge is for the position.

Truth Out has the article Four Decades of the Wrong Dietary Advice Has Paved the Way for the Diabetes Epidemic: Time to Change Course.

Yes, fat is the problem. But it’s not the fat you eat that’s the problem. It’s the fat that your liver makes when overwhelmed with a huge sugar load!

I am thrilled to see this article. It explains exactly what I have wanted to know since we just switched from a low fat diet to a low carb diet. Sharon will be thrilled when she sees the article, too.

Ever since my heart attack in 1988, I have been on a low fat diet. After a heart bypass surgery in about 2007, the detailed reasons for a low fat diet were reinforced for us in the rehab course that I went through.

When we were living in Oregon before the bypass, I railed at the fact that a friend’s orthopedic surgeon wife was going on a low carb, all the fat you want diet. How could a doctor who should know better do this? Well, “Oops, my bad!”

For the last few years our doctors have been warning us that our blood sugar levels have been a little higher than they would like to see. While we were in a hospital gift shop waiting for an appointment that I had, we found a little book on low carb diets. It seemed to fit right in with our need to lower our blood sugar.

When you cut out carbs, fat, and salt, what the heck is there left to eat? Our typical cereal and toast breakfast added up to around 55 grams of carbs. This is after we had already eliminated orange juice because of the sugar. The only thing we could eat that satisfied us was bacon and eggs and one piece of lower carb bread. That’s about 10 grams of carbs instead of 55 grams. All these years we had been avoiding those two items like the plague. The book is what gave us the “permission” to make this change.

However, I wondered how this could fit in with what I had been prescribed for my heart health. The book gave a little indication of what had been wrong with that advice, but I still felt a tug from opposite directions.

One of the nurses that took care of me after a recent kidney stone removal operation told me that I should ask my primary care doctor for a nutrition consultation. That was on my todo list, when this article fell into my lap.

I may still get that consultation, but this article seems to reconcile what seemed to be two opposing recommendations.

The result of our being on this low-carb diet for about two weeks or so, is the loss of about 10 or more pounds for each of us, and a lowering of our blood-sugar down to within safe limits. In Oregon, Sharon had been diagnosed as a pre-diabetic, so she already had all the blood sugar monitoring equipment. Her fasting blood sugar level is now well below the level where doctors will take note of it anymore. I measured my blood sugar level only once since being on the diet, and I am now safely below the threshold, too.

Now remember, this medical advice is worth exactly what you paid for it, and not a penny more.

Campaign For America’s Future has the article Warren to SEC Chair: “Step Up” (Or Step Down).

Sen. Elizabeth Warren on Tuesday released a blistering 13-page letter to Securities and Exchange Commission chair Mary Jo White, calling out her “extremely disappointing” leadership of what should be the chief cop on the financial beat, accusing her of “broken promises” and telling her to “step up.”

The internet is full of stories about this letter, but I haven’t found a one of them that will print the letter or tell you where you can read it.

Link To The Letter

Not surprisingly, Elizabeth Warren has published a link to the letter. I am about to read it myself, but I didn’t want to hold you up in case you want to read it too.

Just got a letter from Bernie, Sanders that is.

It is amazing how quickly Bernie Sanders can take a good idea and come up with ways to try to put it into action. See my previous post Bernie Sanders pitches issues-focused debate changes.

Late Night with Seth Meyers has the interview Bernie Sanders Explains Why “Socialist” Isn’t a Dirty Word.

I have always felt that if the policies that seem out of favor to the public were properly explained, the public would come around. Having Bernie Sanders explain these things is a major contribution to our country and our future. That alone, would be worthy of a great place in history and possibly a Nobel prize.

However, I hope for even more for Bernie Sanders. I hope he is our next President.

Finally we have someone who can explain this rather than cower when faced with a challenge to his ideas. What really irked me about the Colbert Report was when he had a liberal/progressive on and he posed one of the standard right wing charges against them, they had no answer. If Bernie were on the show, he would have all the answers to make Colber’s character look like the fool he was.

The Washington Post has the article Watch out college professors, the robots are coming for your jobs.

The current thinking about the automation of the workplace is that the jobs that require the most creativity will be those that are safest from the robot overlords when they come for our jobs. That might be true, but the erudite university professor with the rumpled corduroy jacket and scholarly spectacles might soon be headed for extinction as well.

While the article concentrates on Professors, this video that is featured takes a broader view.

All the years I was working (since 1968) I have been telling my peers, “Don’t look down upon those whose jobs are being replaced by automation and outsourcing. This can and will happen to you some day.” Over the next 40 or so years, I watched as my prediction slowly came true.

Wait till the CEOs of major corporations find out that their jobs can be outsourced too. Won’t that be a laugh?

This insight into where the future may be heading is also one of my focuses in this blog. This is why I have been trying to get people to imagine a time when the robots can produce everything that human societies need. How will the wealth of such a society be distributed?

It may be a long time, if ever, before we reach that extreme. Thinking about that extreme will help us to figure out what to do as we continue on the slope of progress up to that extreme. We are already seeing the problems starting to arise. It is way beyond too early to worry about it.

You might also start to wonder what Presidential candidate understands the need to address these issues. I’d put Bernie Sanders at the top of the list. I would put Elizabeth Warren further down the list, but still perhaps close to the top. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, not so much. Barack Obama seems to believe that increased education alone is enough to solve the problem. Bernie Sanders knows and states that concentrating wealth in the hands of the few is a major roadblock to a bright future for humankind.

Many thanks to Randy Howard Katz for his Facebook post of this article.

I just love the quote by Scott Santense from my previous post What If Everybody Didn’t Have to Work to Get Paid?

If you give a man a fish, he eats for a day. If you teach a man to fish, he eats for life. If you build a robot to fish, do all men starve, or do all men eat?”

That post as well is thanks to Randy Katz.

The Rachel Maddow Show has this interview Bernie Sanders pitches issues-focused debate changes.

Senator Bernie Sanders, Democratic candidate for president, talks with Rachel Maddow about how he’s managing the logistics of a rapidly growing campaign and his ideas for holding bipartisan debates to keep campaigns focused on issues.

The greatest ideas since presidential debates have been broadcast, maybe since presidential debates have ever been held.

I think the Democratic party already has a rule that if a candidate participates in a debate outside their official schedule, then you cannot participate in one of their official debate.

This is an anti-democratic rule that does not support the needs of the middle-class. This is one of the many reasons I have stopped donating to the party. I will only donate to candidates of my choosing.

Robert Reich posted the video What’s the Big Deal About OVERTIME? on Facebook.

This is another great issue to discuss during the 2016 campaign for President