The Unjust Steward

  

President Joe Biden has been a public servant for practically all of his adult life. He served the people of Delaware as a senator for more than 40 years. Now, as President of the USA he is the servant of all the people.  Even though he is our chief executive, he is our servant, and we the people are his employer or master. 

So, when he issues an executive order to forgive student loans, it  may seem magnanimous and merciful to some, but he is not forgiving payments due to him but to us. He is giving away our money, not his own. It is very easy to spend or give away someone else’s money. Moreover, he is not even consulting with our representatives in Congress on this matter despite the fact that his Democratic party has majorities in both houses. This is just a clandestine form of taxation without representation.

President Biden admits to being a practicing Catholic so he must have heard the parable of the Unjust Steward many times while in attendance at Mass. Actually, he will hear it again on September 18 when it is the gospel for the 25^thSunday in Ordinary Time. 

The parable is about a servant or steward who is a crook. He was cheating his own master or employer to feather his own nest. Realizing that his fraud is about to be disclosed, and that he will be out of a job, it never occurs to him to ask for forgiveness or repent.  Instead, he goes to his master’s debtors and reduces what they owe. He hopes that they will reward him when he is out of a job. What else could he do in the face of impending doom? As he says, "to dig, I am not able, to beg, I am ashamed.” 

 

Commentators have wondered why the master seems to “commend” the unjust steward for his criminal behavior. “And the master commended that dishonest steward for acting prudently.” Personally, I detect sarcasm here. Why would any of those debtors ever trust the steward when they know that he has cheated on his own master? Interestingly, the gospel relates that the wealthy Pharisees listening to the parable laughed at Jesus.

 

Even today, it is funny to hear people like Joe Biden called public servants. It appears that in all those years that he “served” the people of Delaware, he mainly served the interests of himself and the Biden family. Somehow, on a congressman’s salary, he became one of the richest, if not the richest man, in the tiny state of Delaware, where, by the way, most of the largest companies in America are domiciled because of favorable corporate laws. Years from now, when the FBI concludes its investigation of the Hunter Biden laptop, we may finally learn the identity of the “big guy” who would get 10% of the profits of Hunter’s business dealings in China.

 

As far as college loan debt forgiveness is concerned, it is just not fair to shift the burden to others. During the Obama/Biden administration, the government took over the whole student loan operation, and promised that by taking it out of the hands of private banks, billions would be saved. Ten years later, the program is a disaster. The Biden administration plan appears to be not only a cover-up of another progressive failure, but also, a ploy to revive the sagging reputation of the Biden administration as the mid-term elections draw near. 

 

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Income Inequality: 1950-2022

                                           

William F. Buckley, Jr.

Last year marked the seventieth anniversary of the publication of William F. Buckley's God and Man at Yale, a book which some believe to have launched the conservative movement in America. Below find a brief review. 

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 William F. Buckley Jr., the famed Conservative commentator, first came to nation’s attention with the publication of God and Man at Yale back in 1951. The book, a review of Buckley's years at Yale was subtitled, “The Superstitions of ‘Academic Freedom’”. 

Buckley must have had an outstanding college career before graduating in 1950. For example, one year he held the prestigious position of editor of the Yale Daily News.  He  loved his Alma Mater but found some disturbing trends. 

Here I would just like to concentrate on his lengthy chapter devoted to the teaching of economics at Yale, a chapter primarily analyzing the textbooks chosen for the basic introductory course that was taken by a large number of students. All four of the textbooks believed that the biggest problem facing America in 1950 was “income inequality”. That’s right! Income Inequality or, as he titled it, THE UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION OF INCOME. Why was income inequality such a big issue back in 1950?

I believe the answer can be found in the background of the economists who had written the textbooks. If Buckley was about 25 in 1950, then I would guess the authors of the textbooks were born before the First World War and grew up in the era marked by the subsequent Communist Revolution in Russia and the worldwide Great Depression of the 1930s. Paul Samuelson, for example, was born in 1915 and his textbook, Economics, an Introductory Analysis, was first published in 1948 and soon became one of the best-selling textbooks of all time. Samuelson’s book was one of the four reviewed by Buckley.

Samuelson and the others all believed that the experiment begun in Russia in 1917 was the wave of the future, and that the Great Depression in American had shown the inadequacies of the traditional system of free or private enterprise in dealing with modern economic issues. In the chapter on economics Buckley cited a comparison between the Soviet and American systems from one of these textbooks. The italics are Buckley’s.

compare “ the situation in our economy with that in a socialist economy, such as the Russian or Czechoslovakian. In the Russian economy the decision to produce, let us say 20 million tons of pig iron, is made by the Central Planning board, which presumably takes into account the needs and resources of the Russian economy before it comes to a decision. The same board determines how many automobiles to produce, how many pairs of socks to manufacture, and how many acres to put into wheat. In our economy, no such institution exists. No one group or person determines how much steel to produce, how many tractors to make, or how much land to plant in cotton…. In a socialist economy, important questions of output, price, employment, and so on are planned collectively. In a capitalistic economy, these decisions are made separately by individual firms…. How does the business firm determine how much it will produce? The answer to this question is to be found in the fact that the business firm in this country is privately owned…. The determination of how much to produce, or of the price to be charged for the product, is made with one interest in mind—that of the owner. The owner’s interest is to secure as large a profit as possible. [Pp. 65-66]

Just as today, it was believed that the profit motive that was the root of all evil. In the words of one text, “the state, being free from the profit motive and having the power of compulsion, is able to make its revenue fit its expenditures (within limits) rather than the reverse.” [p. 67] Of course, profit motive brings up the image of the greedy businessman as often portrayed in popular movies of the 1930s or in the figure of Mr. Monopoly from the very popular board game.

Samuelson’s text disclaimed the image but still used it.

In this connection, it is important to understand just what a monopolist is. He is not indeed,“…a fat, greedy man with a big moustache and cigar who goes around violating the law. If he were, we could put him in jail. He is anyone important enough to affect the prices of the things that he sells and buys. To some degree that means almost every businessman”… [75]

In 1950 all four textbook authors were convinced that the experiment going on in Russia was the wave of the future and that the private enterprises system was a thing of the past that had been forever discredited by the Great Depression. The textbooks, and the professors who chose them, were all advocates of central planning, a large central government, extremely high progressive income tax rates, and confiscatory inheritance tax rates. 

Writing in 1950 I don’t suppose that the young Buckley or the textbook authors could have foreseen the great economic boom that would take place in the USA in the next few decades, a boom that not only raised millions out of poverty, but also created the wealthiest country in the history of the world. Neither could they imagine that during the same period the Soviet economy would finally be exposed as a rotten failure. At the same time as we were beginning to learn about Stalin’s brutal oppression, we were learning of people lining up at Russian markets for hours to buy inferior or even non-existent necessities. 

The Soviet Union had eliminated income inequality by making everyone poor. Years later, we would learn that they had actually created a new aristocracy of Communist party members and their friends who lorded it over their subjects. As in most socialist countries members of the ruling party made up only about 10% of the population. So much for central planning and the elimination of the profit motive.

In one of history’s ironies Paul Samuelson made a fortune with his economics textbook, In true capitalist fashion he contrived to bring out a new edition every couple of years so that students could not buy older used texts. No central board or agency prevented him or his publisher from printing and selling as many copies as the market would bear. He lived a long life and received practically every award a scholar could get. In 1996, he was awarded the National Medal of Science by President Bill Clinton, another Yale graduate who now makes millions by giving speeches to fat cats all over the world while he, his wife, and "democratic socialists" or so-called progressives complain of income inequality.

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The Guns of August

 

                                             

In all my long life I have never been as concerned at the prospect of a devastating nuclear war than I am now that war is raging in Ukraine. Russia, one of the participants, has the world's largest nuclear arsenal. NATO, backed by the USA, has taken steps to increase its forces  and prepare its armaments. I fear that an accident or mistake could be catastrophic. I am reminded of events that occurred in August over a hundred years ago. Below is a post I wrote on the events of August 1914 that led to the outbreak of the First World War, as well as to the even more devastating Second World War. 

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This summer media sources are remembering the start of the First World War 100 years ago in August 1914. Somewhat overshadowed has been the events of August, 1945 that brought the Second World War to an end. On August 5, 1945 a U.S. Air Force bomber dropped the first Atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima. Four days later a second Atomic bomb was dropped on the port city of Nagasaki. Five days later on August 15 Japanese Emperor Hirohito and the Japanese government agreed to accede to Allied demands and surrender unconditionally. 

Earlier that year, on May 8, 1945, the European Allies had accepted the surrender of Germany after Hitler’s suicide. VE Day marked the end of the war in Europe and the Allies could now turn their full attention to the defeat of Japan. Joseph Stalin, the brutal Communist dictator in Russia, had refused to open an Asian front against Japan until the defeat of Germany. 

After VE Day Stalin agreed to launch an attack on the Japanese puppet state in Mongolia within three months. On July 26, 1945 the Allied leaders met at Potsdam and issued a demand to Japan to surrender unconditionally or face utter destruction. While the Russians built up their forces in the East, the United States launched a series of devastating firebomb attacks on Japanese cities from their recently taken islands in the Pacific.

When these attacks failed to bring the Japanese to their knees, the Allies made preparations for a full-scale attack on the Japanese mainland. Massive casualties were projected on both sides.  Finally, by the beginning of August scientists had successfully tested the Atom bomb. President Truman then made the decision to use the bomb.

I was six years old at the time and have only the slightest recollection of that world-shattering event. I don’t think anyone at the time could have imagined the awful destruction caused by those two bombs. A few years later, after the Soviet Union had managed to steal the technology and build their own bomb, I remember participating in air raid drills in school. Teachers told us to crouch under our desks or just put our heads on the desks with our hands over them. I guess that this exercise was to protect against shattered windows but even we children realized its futility.

As  I got older I became somewhat aware of the debate that had gone on within the Truman administration about the decision to drop the bomb, as well as the debate that still goes on among scholars and other commentators about the necessity and morality of the action. I’m sure that this question is one in which there are strong arguments on both sides. For myself, I still wonder why it was necessary to drop the second bomb on Nagasaki only four days after Hiroshima. 

Coincidentally, at the time Nagasaki was the most Christian city in Japan. The day the Japanese government agreed to surrender was August 15, the feast day of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary into Heaven. Although Catholics had celebrated the feast of the Assumption on August 15 for centuries, the doctrine had never been officially defined by the Church. 

Maybe it was the awful destruction of the Second World War, maybe it was the horror of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and maybe it was the prospect of an atomic arms race, but only five years after the surrender of Japan on August 15, Pope Pius XII, in a rare exercise of Papal infallibility, declared that belief in the Assumption of Mary was a binding doctrine of the Catholic church.

So far, despite the Cold War and the continued development of nuclear weapons, the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki remain unique.  Although warfare has continued, there has thankfully been no worldwide conflagration to match either WWI  or WWII. It might not seem so, but since August 15, 1945 we have witnessed an unprecedented era of peace. 

Note; Now in 2022 it seems to me that the preservation of this peace is the most important issue of the day. It is far far more important than any other issue facing us today. The consequences of a nuclear exchange would be far more devastating than climate change or any other popular issue. Our government has just decided to spend an incredible amount of money on a myriad of these issues but a spark in the Ukraine could start a fire that would make it all meaningless. 

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Ukraine: a Civil War?

My guess is that Russia’s Vladimir Putin regards the conflict in Ukraine as a Civil war, and not as an invasion of a neighboring country. Unlike others who guess at his motives, I don’t think he is a madman, or a Hitler out to conquer the world. In other words, I believe that for Putin Ukraine has been an integral part of Russia for over 500 years, and that the separation after the recent collapse of the Soviet empire was a dangerous mistake, politically, economically, and militarily.

Looking through an atlas of European history, I noticed that only about the time that Christopher Columbus discovered a New World does the name  Russia appear on the map. Before that it was called Muscovy since in the later Middle Ages, a people from the area of what is now Moscow began to travel, explore, and trade down the great Russian rivers that emanated from the nearby Valdai hills, and that eventually brought them to the Baltic, the Black, and Caspian seas.

The history of Russia under the Czars (Emperors) is a history of conflict with the tribes and peoples they encountered along these rivers, all of whom they eventually brought under subjugation. Eventually, they came up against more powerful opponents like the vast Kingdoms of Lithuania and Poland, as well as the mighty Ottoman or Turkish empire. Thumbing through the atlas I could see that by the nineteenth century  Lithuania and Poland had largely been absorbed by the Russian empire, and that the Ottoman empire was shrinking. 

On none of these maps does the word Ukraine appear. It and its people were always considered a part of the Russian empire. Although the Communist revolution of 1917 did not alter the imperial policy of the Czars, the Soviet leaders did create the fiction of an independent collection of popular republics, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). Only then does Ukraine, the land of the Ukrainian people, appear on the map. Nevertheless, like all these Soviet republics, it was ruled with an iron hand by the Communist party leadership in Moscow.  The despotism of Joseph Stalin led to the starvation of millions of Ukrainians before WWII. After the war,  Ukraine became a member of the UN but still remained subject to Russian laws and control.

In 1991 after the collapse of the Soviet Empire, Ukraine shook off its legal ties with Russia, but its government still had close ties with Russia. It agreed, to return the nuclear missiles placed there by the Soviet Union back to Russia in exchange for guarantees of its security. It established close economic ties with Russia and became a major importer of Russian oil and natural gas. 

I am not able to describe what happened in Ukraine after 1991 that led to the present conflict. I do know that there was graft and corruption as wealthy oligarchs profited from the breakup of Communist industries in both Russia and Ukraine. I also know that during the Obama administration, Vice-President Joe Biden was put in charge of US relations with Ukraine. Not only did his son land a lucrative position with a Ukrainian energy company, but also, Biden bragged about holding up a huge aid package to Ukraine until its government removed a prosecutor investigating corruption, an interference in another country’s affairs that seems far more impeachable than President Trump’s famous call to President Zelensky. *

In any event, during the Obama administration Vladimir Putin took the opportunity to reclaim some territory given up in the 1991 agreement. He was quiet during the Trump administration but shortly after President Biden declared last November that he would welcome Ukraine’s admission in NATO, he launched the current military invasion. It seems obvious today that Ukrainian independence had become a more and more bitter pill for Putin to swallow. 

As noted above I believe that Putin regards the current conflict as a Civil war, and , as such, it is no one else’s business. I am reminded of our own Civil War. In 1860 the election of Abraham Lincoln led the Southern states to secede from the Union almost immediately upon his inauguration. Lincoln raised a large army, not to abolish slavery, but to quell a rebellion and bring the seceding states back into the Union. He and his advisors must have thought it would be a brief conflict, but the war turned out to be a long, drawn out affair with over 650000  casualties. 

I wonder whether Lincoln, if he  could have foreseen the death and destruction, might have allowed The South to secede. Looking back, we can see that time and technology would have put an end to slavery in a few years. Rather than creating a more perfect union, the war only inflamed and prolonged sectional animosities.

I believe that Vladimir Putin has made a great mistake in attempting to regain the Ukraine for Russia. Even if he wins the war, the death and devastation will be enormous. He may conquer the country, but he will never gain the friendship and loyalty of the conquered people.  Time and technology could eventually have created a working relationship between Russia and Ukraine. Ukraine was Russia’s best customer. Why bomb your best customer?

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* I am still waiting for the book that will examine the role of Vice-President Biden in the affairs of Ukraine during the administration of President Obama. 

No Country for Old Men

“A lowered mental or physical vigor leads men to avoid an examination of complicated and changed conditions. Little by little, new facts become blurred through old glasses fitted, as it were, for the needs of another generation.” 

President Franklyn D. Roosevelt uttered the above words at a press conference shortly after he was re-elected to serve a second term in 1936.  Roosevelt offered these remarks on the incapacity of old age in order to justify his plan to pack the Supreme Court with new justices.  During his first term parts of his New Deal agenda had been declared unconstitutional by the Court.  Since Roosevelt could not fire or replace the existing judges, he proposed to add one new judge for every judge on the Court over the age of 70. His remarks, ironic as they were coming from a man crippled with paralysis conveniently hidden by a favorable press, did not go over well and he had to scrap the plan.

Although his remarks on the problems of old age were just a bald-faced attempt to justify his court packing scheme, I can say, at the age of 83, that there is truth in them.  Even when I retired 15 years ago, I was finding it difficult to do the ordinary tasks of my financial planning practice, as well as keep up with new developments in the field. At the time, I realized that it was time to hand over my clients to younger planners. It was time to retire.

Two years ago, when Joe Biden ran for President, it was obvious to me that he was suffering from old age. After a long, undistinguished career, the Democratic party should have put him out to pasture but since none of the other Democratic candidates had any popular appeal, Biden seemed to be the only one with a chance to defeat President Trump. His run for the Presidency was sad to watch as his advisors prevailed upon him to campaign from his basement, and make as few public appearances as possible. 

Now, after 18 months as President, his incapacity is even more obvious. He stumbles and falls. He holds few press conferences and only speaks in public using a teleprompter, and even then, he fumbles for words. At my age, I can understand. I gave up lecturing at my local senior center three years ago because it took too much out of me. But Biden is President of the United States. He carries the nuclear codes around with him. 

I do not want to make a list of mistakes President Biden has made since taking office. But I would like to point out what he hasn’t done and is obviously incapable of doing. He is not capable of being the leader of the free world. Russia invades Ukraine and where is the impassioned appeal for peace from the President of the United States.? Where is the appearance at the U.N. calling for a cease-fire and a peace conference? Two members of that organization are launching missiles at each other. Soldiers and civilians are dying every day. Where is the outrage on the part of our President? What has happened to the summit meeting with Vladimir Putin?

Rather than become a world-class leader the President has become a world-class denier. He takes responsibility for nothing, and just blames others. He denied that the retreat from Afghanistan was a fiasco. He blamed President Trump for 250,000 Covid deaths during his term in office and claimed that alone made him unfit for the office. Now that over 700,000 Covid deaths have occurred since he took office, he expresses no regret and assumes no responsibility. He and his advisors claimed that inflation was only transitory but now that gasoline prices are at an all-time high, his party re-names a multi-billion spending bill, the Inflation Reduction act. 

From the day of his election, I have believed that President Biden would not be able to complete his term of office, much less run again in 2024 at the age of 82. Old age will continue to take its toll, but there is also the possibility that circumstances might lead Democratic party leaders to force him to step down, especially if the upcoming mid-term elections turn out to be a disaster. 

Eight years after Franklyn D. Roosevelt uttered the words cited above, he was running for an unprecedented fourth term in the midst of WWII. His party pushed his nomination even though leaders knew he was a dying man. James Farley, an astute politician, and one of FDR’s long-time supporters resigned from his leadership position in protest over the impending nomination. He thought the Democratic party would be unfaithful to its principles if it nominated Roosevelt for another term that would likely kill him.

 “anyone with a grain of common sense would surely realize  from the appearance of the President that he is not a well man and there is not a chance in the world for him to carry on four years more and face the problems that a President will have before him; he just can’t survive another presidential term.”

The above quotes are from Bret Baier’s 2019 book on Roosevelt, Three Days at the Brink, FDR’s Daring Gamble to Win World War II.  According to Baier, Farley thought that “Democratic politicians were taking the easy way out, protecting their own hides at the expense of the national good.” 

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