MORALITY AND THE LAW CLX
By Stephen Ellis
THE BRADLEY EFFECT
To all my dear readers: My last blog will be published for AOL on October 31, 2008. If you would like to continue to read it, it is now available at
http://www.moralityandthelawakanobodyaskedme.blogspot.com/.
To those of you (like myself) who have a fascination with the paranormal, my new blog can be read at http://www.explaininglifesmysteries.blogspot.com/.
Nobody asked me, but…
The polls all seems to have placed Barack Obama in the White House following the election scheduled for November 4, 2008. But polls do not elect our president. There is an expression: “There are lies…there are big lies…and there are polls.” Actually, I think the word “statistics” could be substituted for the word “polls”.
I will readily acknowledge that the polls taken today are much more accurate than they were fifty years ago when every poll in the country, without exception, said that, unquestionably, Thomas E. Dewey was going to be our next president…but they are still polls, and what may happen inside the voting booth can be far different than what people have said to the pollsters. Apparently, many voters have reached the point of being quasi-sophisticated: saying one thing to their friends and to the pollsters while still harboring deep prejudice in their minds.
Tom Bradley was the first Black Mayor of Los Angeles. In fact, the only other major U.S. City that had elected a Black Mayor was Cleveland, four years before Bradley was elected. Bradley was the son of a sharecropper and the grandson of a slave. He worked his way through college and law school and became an L.A. police officer before getting elected to the Los Angeles City Council. After winning two elections as a City Councilman, Bradley ran for Mayor of Los Angeles. The first time he lost to Sam Yorty, but the second time he tried, he was elected. He became an extremely popular Mayor and was re-elected for a total of twenty years as Mayor of Los Angeles.
Then, Bradley decided to run for Governor of California.
The polls showed Tom Bradley ahead almost 65% to 35% of his opponent going into Election Day…but his opponent, George Deukmejian, won. Bradley tried a second time and was again defeated by Deukmejian.
The questions naturally arose as to how the pollsters could have been so wrong.
As subsequent interviews with many of the people polled discovered, a lot of White voters had said, publicly, that they were going to vote for Bradley, but when they got into the confines of a voting booth, they did not want to vote for a Black man.
This is what has come to be called the “Bradley Effect”.
Obama is now clearly ahead in the polls…but will the Bradley Effect rear its ugly head again? Are the majority of voters across this country still unwilling to vote for a Black man? Sure, in public they announce their support for Obama, but what about in the confines of a voting booth?
I’d like to believe that in the twenty five years since Bradley lost to Deukmejian, the people of this country have matured. In our cities, Black and White couples are no longer stared at as they walk on the streets. The numbers of Black doctors and lawyers has more than tripled in those twenty five years. The numbers of children from mixed marriages (including Barack Obama) have reached the point where they are not thought of as uncommon.
Certainly prejudice against the Blacks still exists: The Ku Klux Klan still numbers about a hundred thousand in membership. White Supremist groups still abound throughout the rural areas of the Deep South and the Mid-West
The question, however, is not about how the red-neck Deep South and Midwest will vote…but about how the people who live in the cities will vote. Openly they support Obama…but will they support him in the privacy of the voting booth?
Let’s hope that the “Bradley Effect” will be relegated to the history books and that this nation has matured enough to recognize that skin color does not make the man.
As I said…nobody asked me
Saturday, October 25, 2008
Sunday, October 19, 2008
Government Controls
MORALITY AND THE LAW CLIX
By Stephen Ellis
GOVERNMENT CONTROLS
To all my dear readers: My last blog will be published for AOL on October 31, 2008. If you would like to continue to read it, it is now available at
http://www.moralityandthelawakanobodyaskedme.blogspot.com/.
To those of you (like myself) who have a fascination with the paranormal, my new blog can be read at http://www.explaininglifesmysteries.blogspot.com/.
Nobody asked me, but…
I’m a firm believer in the capitalistic system. It gives those of us who are willing to work the opportunity to raise our standard of living and become “successful”. In fact, I am strongly opposed to virtually anything that smacks of socialism.
Yet, to cure the ails of our present economic crisis, some very socialistic steps have to be taken: Government has to inject itself into some of our larger, more powerful businesses, and make the people who sit in positions of power accountable to the public and to their country:
McCain said it and Obama agreed: The key to bringing this nation (and many of the world’s nations) back onto a firm economic footing is to resolve the housing crisis. Almost every economist will acknowledge that if the housing crisis is solved there will be a sharp increase in the number of jobs created, there will be a return of confidence to the people who, in turn, will resume buying cars and other consumer items that will start to strengthen our economy. The roller-coaster stock market will stabilize.
Bush’s $700 billion bailout was designed to do just this by flooding our banks with cheap money. The theory is that if the banks are flooded with cheap money, they will be forced to lend it out at low interest rates (with certain minimum standards), and consumer spending will flourish. Granted, the bailout plan has more holes in it than Swiss cheese, but despite its weaknesses, it should work...except…
The Federal Reserve is offering money to the banks at record low rates…1¼%. But the ravenousness in our banks immediately reared its ugly head…and raised mortgage interest rates!
Is there any reason for mortgage interest rates to have been raised? Yes! Greed, corruption and opportunism! Nothing else.
The banks realize that during these tough economic times, a lot of good, highly qualified, people and companies will need to refinance their mortgages to tide them over these hard times. So instead of helping these people out and trying to work with our government to stabilize our nation’s economy, the bankers figure it is a good opportunity to reap greater, unreasonable, profits. It’s corporate gluttony and taking advantage of the public like this that makes me feel that it is necessary to put government regulators into every bank. Yes, it’s socialistic, but until the corrupt and the greedy are made to realize that they have an unshakable obligation to their country as well as to their stockholders, it’s going to be necessary to do this. Industries, such as banking, oil companies, automobile manufacturing, etc., must be regulated to stop the manipulations and private market controls that have seriously damaged our economy.
One problem is that giving government unlimited power over business will only create strong temptations for the government regulators themselves. So, rather than giving business over to government control, what I propose is this: That every major corporate Board of Directors have one or two ex-officio seats on their Board for government inspectors. The reason these seats on the Board should be ex-officio is that government should be allowed to have input, but not be allowed to “vote” on company matters. Ex-officio members should be representatives of the people who will expose to the media and senior government agencies any plans that smack of corporate deceitfulness within these companies. Having government representatives sit on their Boards would have completely avoided the melt-down of Fannie Mae , Freddie Mac, AIG, Lehman Brothers, Enron and other giants who have simply “folded” or sought a government bailout when their dishonesty was finally revealed.
It would also tend to stabilize the stock market because the published reports issued by these companies could then be believed by the public. The Securities Exchange Commission (SEC) has proven itself to be weak, inefficient and easily duped. Having government representatives sit on the Boards of these companies as ex-officio board members would go a long way towards ending the kinds of public deception that got us into this economic mess.
As I said, nobody asked me
By Stephen Ellis
GOVERNMENT CONTROLS
To all my dear readers: My last blog will be published for AOL on October 31, 2008. If you would like to continue to read it, it is now available at
http://www.moralityandthelawakanobodyaskedme.blogspot.com/.
To those of you (like myself) who have a fascination with the paranormal, my new blog can be read at http://www.explaininglifesmysteries.blogspot.com/.
Nobody asked me, but…
I’m a firm believer in the capitalistic system. It gives those of us who are willing to work the opportunity to raise our standard of living and become “successful”. In fact, I am strongly opposed to virtually anything that smacks of socialism.
Yet, to cure the ails of our present economic crisis, some very socialistic steps have to be taken: Government has to inject itself into some of our larger, more powerful businesses, and make the people who sit in positions of power accountable to the public and to their country:
McCain said it and Obama agreed: The key to bringing this nation (and many of the world’s nations) back onto a firm economic footing is to resolve the housing crisis. Almost every economist will acknowledge that if the housing crisis is solved there will be a sharp increase in the number of jobs created, there will be a return of confidence to the people who, in turn, will resume buying cars and other consumer items that will start to strengthen our economy. The roller-coaster stock market will stabilize.
Bush’s $700 billion bailout was designed to do just this by flooding our banks with cheap money. The theory is that if the banks are flooded with cheap money, they will be forced to lend it out at low interest rates (with certain minimum standards), and consumer spending will flourish. Granted, the bailout plan has more holes in it than Swiss cheese, but despite its weaknesses, it should work...except…
The Federal Reserve is offering money to the banks at record low rates…1¼%. But the ravenousness in our banks immediately reared its ugly head…and raised mortgage interest rates!
Is there any reason for mortgage interest rates to have been raised? Yes! Greed, corruption and opportunism! Nothing else.
The banks realize that during these tough economic times, a lot of good, highly qualified, people and companies will need to refinance their mortgages to tide them over these hard times. So instead of helping these people out and trying to work with our government to stabilize our nation’s economy, the bankers figure it is a good opportunity to reap greater, unreasonable, profits. It’s corporate gluttony and taking advantage of the public like this that makes me feel that it is necessary to put government regulators into every bank. Yes, it’s socialistic, but until the corrupt and the greedy are made to realize that they have an unshakable obligation to their country as well as to their stockholders, it’s going to be necessary to do this. Industries, such as banking, oil companies, automobile manufacturing, etc., must be regulated to stop the manipulations and private market controls that have seriously damaged our economy.
One problem is that giving government unlimited power over business will only create strong temptations for the government regulators themselves. So, rather than giving business over to government control, what I propose is this: That every major corporate Board of Directors have one or two ex-officio seats on their Board for government inspectors. The reason these seats on the Board should be ex-officio is that government should be allowed to have input, but not be allowed to “vote” on company matters. Ex-officio members should be representatives of the people who will expose to the media and senior government agencies any plans that smack of corporate deceitfulness within these companies. Having government representatives sit on their Boards would have completely avoided the melt-down of Fannie Mae , Freddie Mac, AIG, Lehman Brothers, Enron and other giants who have simply “folded” or sought a government bailout when their dishonesty was finally revealed.
It would also tend to stabilize the stock market because the published reports issued by these companies could then be believed by the public. The Securities Exchange Commission (SEC) has proven itself to be weak, inefficient and easily duped. Having government representatives sit on the Boards of these companies as ex-officio board members would go a long way towards ending the kinds of public deception that got us into this economic mess.
As I said, nobody asked me
Monday, October 13, 2008
PANIC ON WALL STREET
MORALITY AND THE LAW CLVIII
By Stephen Ellis
PANIC ON WALL STREET
To all my dear readers: I have been writing this blog every week for three years. Last week, AOL informed me that they are discontinuing the publication of blogs. If any of you want to read my blogs on Morality and the Law, they can be found at
http://www.moralityandthelawakanobodyaskedme.blogspot.com/.
More important: I’ve decided to use this change as an opportunity to write more about a subject dear to my heart: the paranormal. I’ve been researching paranormal phenomena and scientific “baloney” for more than thirty years and what I have discovered may amaze you, it may upset you or…it may awaken you to some things. It’s time I shared this information, and I hope you will read it. It can be found at http://www.explaininglifesmysteries.blogspot.com/.
Nobody asked me, but…
Back in 1933, then President Franklin Roosevelt made a speech in which he said “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself…” He made this famous speech because the USA economy was in a free-fall, the stock market was plunging and unemployment was rising.
Sound familiar?
The conditions now are quite different than they were then, but the advice is the same. The people who came out well from the great depression of the 1930s were the ones who did not panic, and managed to “stay the course” until things got better. The banks now are much stronger than they were then when Roosevelt called a bank-holiday to stop people from withdrawing their funds from the banks. Today’s banks are very strong. Banks like Chase, Citibank, Wells Fargo, Bank of America, Union Bank, etc., are not only strong, they are thousands of times stronger than the banks were in the 1930s. More important, deposits are now insured by the Federal Government up to $250,000 per depositor (that means that a joint account of a married couple is now insured up to $500,000).
So, why, when a bank fails, are people lining up on the street to take their money out of it? Fear!
Millions of people, who simply do not understand, are afraid that if a bank fails, they will lose their savings. This was true in 1933, but it’s not true now. But, inasmuch as most Americans have never taken the time to understand how banks work, they have allowed “fear” instead of “common sense” to control their actions.
The free-fall of the stock market is similar, but not identical: There is no Federal Insurance on stocks and bonds…for an excellent reason: People invest in stocks and bonds because they want to gamble that the rise of stock prices will offer a better return than the interest given by banks. But if you place your money on a table in Las Vegas, you know there is a chance that you will lose. The stock market is no different. Stock brokerage houses are some of the most conservatively-dressed gambling casinos in the world…but, again, there is a difference: If you lose your money in Vegas, it is gone…completely gone.
But when you gamble on stocks and bonds, you have the strength of an industry or a company covering your downside. Most companies listed on the New York Stock Exchange or the NASDEQ may have gone down slightly, but they are still strong and still making money or making the kinds of adjustments for losses that will help them to recover from losses. But when people see the Dow Jones or the NASDEQ plunging, they start “panic selling”. Again, fear! People are afraid their investments (which may make up a substantial part of their retirement funds) are going to “vanish” like money on a Las Vegas table.
That’s the surest way to lose all your money!
The Wall Street “insiders” foresaw what was coming and sold their stock holdings a month ago. They’re just waiting for the panic-selling to stop so they can go in and buy back the same stocks at pennies on the dollar. For those with enough foresight and courage to “stick-it-out”, the stock market will recover…it has to because most of the companies whose stock is traded on the market are still making money. Sure, there will be some losses until the market makes a full recovery in a year or two, but instead of losing everything, those people will only have lost a little. Those who panicked may well lose everything.
One extremely important factor is that the government has now stepped in and joined hands with a lot of other governments. The “bailout” may not be the best way to handle the situation, but it is a good way. When the Fed starts flooding the banks and other lending institutions with money, the credit-crunch will ease up. With credit more readily available, cars will again start to sell, real estate will again start to sell, etc. The symptoms of the economic problems will disappear.
The bailout, however, will do much more: It will ease the credit crunch, but it will also put and end to the stupid deregulation that caused it all. While the participation of government in banks and other financial companies may smack of Socialism and be anti free-enterprise, right now it’s needed to stop the abuse of the “insiders” who have devastated our economy while putting billions of dollars in their own pockets. Maybe…just maybe…a new President will convene a Grand Jury and bring some charges for grand theft and corruption against some of the “insiders”. It would be good for this country and the entire world.
As I said…nobody asked me.
By Stephen Ellis
PANIC ON WALL STREET
To all my dear readers: I have been writing this blog every week for three years. Last week, AOL informed me that they are discontinuing the publication of blogs. If any of you want to read my blogs on Morality and the Law, they can be found at
http://www.moralityandthelawakanobodyaskedme.blogspot.com/.
More important: I’ve decided to use this change as an opportunity to write more about a subject dear to my heart: the paranormal. I’ve been researching paranormal phenomena and scientific “baloney” for more than thirty years and what I have discovered may amaze you, it may upset you or…it may awaken you to some things. It’s time I shared this information, and I hope you will read it. It can be found at http://www.explaininglifesmysteries.blogspot.com/.
Nobody asked me, but…
Back in 1933, then President Franklin Roosevelt made a speech in which he said “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself…” He made this famous speech because the USA economy was in a free-fall, the stock market was plunging and unemployment was rising.
Sound familiar?
The conditions now are quite different than they were then, but the advice is the same. The people who came out well from the great depression of the 1930s were the ones who did not panic, and managed to “stay the course” until things got better. The banks now are much stronger than they were then when Roosevelt called a bank-holiday to stop people from withdrawing their funds from the banks. Today’s banks are very strong. Banks like Chase, Citibank, Wells Fargo, Bank of America, Union Bank, etc., are not only strong, they are thousands of times stronger than the banks were in the 1930s. More important, deposits are now insured by the Federal Government up to $250,000 per depositor (that means that a joint account of a married couple is now insured up to $500,000).
So, why, when a bank fails, are people lining up on the street to take their money out of it? Fear!
Millions of people, who simply do not understand, are afraid that if a bank fails, they will lose their savings. This was true in 1933, but it’s not true now. But, inasmuch as most Americans have never taken the time to understand how banks work, they have allowed “fear” instead of “common sense” to control their actions.
The free-fall of the stock market is similar, but not identical: There is no Federal Insurance on stocks and bonds…for an excellent reason: People invest in stocks and bonds because they want to gamble that the rise of stock prices will offer a better return than the interest given by banks. But if you place your money on a table in Las Vegas, you know there is a chance that you will lose. The stock market is no different. Stock brokerage houses are some of the most conservatively-dressed gambling casinos in the world…but, again, there is a difference: If you lose your money in Vegas, it is gone…completely gone.
But when you gamble on stocks and bonds, you have the strength of an industry or a company covering your downside. Most companies listed on the New York Stock Exchange or the NASDEQ may have gone down slightly, but they are still strong and still making money or making the kinds of adjustments for losses that will help them to recover from losses. But when people see the Dow Jones or the NASDEQ plunging, they start “panic selling”. Again, fear! People are afraid their investments (which may make up a substantial part of their retirement funds) are going to “vanish” like money on a Las Vegas table.
That’s the surest way to lose all your money!
The Wall Street “insiders” foresaw what was coming and sold their stock holdings a month ago. They’re just waiting for the panic-selling to stop so they can go in and buy back the same stocks at pennies on the dollar. For those with enough foresight and courage to “stick-it-out”, the stock market will recover…it has to because most of the companies whose stock is traded on the market are still making money. Sure, there will be some losses until the market makes a full recovery in a year or two, but instead of losing everything, those people will only have lost a little. Those who panicked may well lose everything.
One extremely important factor is that the government has now stepped in and joined hands with a lot of other governments. The “bailout” may not be the best way to handle the situation, but it is a good way. When the Fed starts flooding the banks and other lending institutions with money, the credit-crunch will ease up. With credit more readily available, cars will again start to sell, real estate will again start to sell, etc. The symptoms of the economic problems will disappear.
The bailout, however, will do much more: It will ease the credit crunch, but it will also put and end to the stupid deregulation that caused it all. While the participation of government in banks and other financial companies may smack of Socialism and be anti free-enterprise, right now it’s needed to stop the abuse of the “insiders” who have devastated our economy while putting billions of dollars in their own pockets. Maybe…just maybe…a new President will convene a Grand Jury and bring some charges for grand theft and corruption against some of the “insiders”. It would be good for this country and the entire world.
As I said…nobody asked me.
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