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Everything makes a difference – sometimes imperceptively on the sub atomic level, sometimes with broad global ramifications.  The decision to take anti-oxidants last year may have stopped a tiny cancer process in one cell in your stomach. The decision to appoint Hitler as Chancellor by von Hindenberg in 1933 caused worldwide suffering.

Language has many purposes. It is used to communicate facts and opinions, compliments and insults. Virtuallly all languages have built-in
structures to express respect. Titles.  Mr. Smith, Dr. Brown, professor
Jones, general Black, reverend Bush, father Furgusson, officer Blake, your honor, your highness.    If your child is in the hospital, you address the doctor as Dr. Jones.  If you were to say, “Hey Jones, what is your prognosis? How long will Billy have to stay here?”, you may  convey a lack of respect for his station.  Dr Jones may be slightly less likely to give the same deference to your son, Billy.

Another structure present in virtually all languages is what anthropology calls forbidden words. In the vernacular:  profanity, curse words, obsenities, expletives, swearing or foul language. Forbidden words have a multitude of uses.

They are used by an in-group among themselves where they wouldn’t use them publicly to define an identifiction. On my dormitory floor in college, we all used profanities fluidly. it was sort of a bonding mechanism.  ”My goddam prof gave us 30 fucking pages of reading.”

Secondly they are used to convey respect by not using them in many situations. The same college student goes to a History discussion class and refrains from using the forbidden words that are de riguer back in the dorm. They would be out of place, and convey disrespect. If  a pastor gave a sermon and said,  “Theres’s too much fucking sin in the world”  it would likely be deemed inapproprite and disrespectful- breaking the taboo of forbidden words. And thus the respect for the pastor may diminish.

In 1972  Comedian George Carlin had a comedy routine where he identified the 7 words you cannot say on TV:  shit, piss, fuck, cunt, motherfucker, cocksucker, and tits. He was arrested for breaking obscenity laws. The case was dismissed but  later the case went to the Supreme Court when a radio station broadcast the Carlin sketch. SCOTUS ruled that the Federal Communications commision could sanction broadcasters for airing inappropriate material. But the decision was accompanied by subjective definitions that attempted to define speech that was indecent, but not obscene,  protected by the first ammendment, or “patently obscene,” which is not protectected. It asserted that speech that was merely indecent, (and, in turn, indecent defined as inappropriate for minors) could be broadcast only at certain times of the day. And that “patently obscene” could not be broadcast at all.  Of course all this meant not only that  all these terms were debatable, but the passage of time changed the words that fell into each catagory.  Since Carlin, the word piss, one of his 7 forbidden words, as in pissed off, is a regular staple of even buttoned-down news shows.

The hard sciences are concerned with hard concepts:  light, heat, energy, gravity, wave, particle, distance, speed, time, and others.  There are other real concepts which effect daily life that are only considered scientifically by the social sciences.  Fear, hate, motivation, gratification, structural violence, love, learn, and respect. In testing rat labs the international standard for motivation of the rat to find food is a reduction in the animals weight by 15%.  And a recent one, structural fear, which means fear propagated by demagoguery to compel a target audience to support a certain cause or leader.  Typically a population is made to be fearful that if a leader is not elected or a law is not adopted the country will be thrown into war or inundated by rising crime.  Many people speak casually about what they think of these concepts but it is left to the social sciences to  speak of them with operational definitions and  determine the the interaction and impact of these concepts on the society.

Once a student of mine said, scornfully, that just because he saw a murder on TV doesn’t mean he would go out and commit  murder.
For most people this is true, but the social sciences have massive amounts of scientifically attained research showing that, indeed, mass media has enormous influence on human behavior. The Bandura experiments showed how groups of young children reacted more violently across several measures, including hitting a plastic punching bag, than the control group after watchining a more violent video than the control group. And, rarely, the effects have an immediate, striking impact.  The film”The Boys Next Door” showed teens, trying to impress, made the stunt of lying down on the line in the middle of the road, letting cars pass by on both sides.  Within a week, in 2 different incidences, two youth were killed after trying the stunt in real life, on a real highway, and the film was shelved.

A society, at any given time, has its own tacit rules of what speech is acceptable and when. In 1940 the classic film Gone with the Wind was
made.  A minor scandal was caused when the producers decided to include the later famous line, “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn.”
Such a word had never been spoken in a public medium. The producer David Selznick, was fined $5000, but the line was subsequently allowed in the film.  But why?  Why are there forbidden words?  Again it is a device arising out of culture, a device to maintain a level of respect in the society – respect that reaches across differences.  And this is a quintessential element of forbidden words, as well as titles – to generate respect across barriers, personalities, ethnicities, ages, religions. We use titles for people who are opposite politically, ethnically, regionally. Societal respect. A reflection that we all benefit from the sacrafices, accomplishments, and diligence of the many who came before us and helped build our society.

So why do the forbidden words become no longer forbidden and what are the effects of the process?  The most overwhelming driver of  the process is, of course, the media, and its go-to phenomenon that substitutes for great writing – voyeurism.  Violence, along with sex, loathsome behavior, betrayal, etc is the required voyeuristic  formula for modern TV dramas.  And violent, abusive, language is, of course, mandatory.

screenply…???   eloquent, forceful, dramatic, convincing, and entertaining without erroding the purpose of the taboo on forbidden words.

Media shows a US president who is patently, and unabashedly dishonest in House of Cards, a vice president of the US who is cynical and disingenuous (as all of her co-workers are) in the show VP,  a former teacher who is in the glamorous, exciting business of  drug smuggling in Breaking Bad and the Sopranos, the also-glamorous mafia family.  And we shouldn’t omit the glamorous violence of every episode of Game of Thrones.

What is  role model?

Sparta was the superpower, Athens was the rising star.  In May, 431 BC, Sparta pre-emptively attacked Athens. The Peloponnesian war lasted 28 years.  Harvard scholar Graham Allison identified what he called Thucydides’ Trap, a tendency toward war when the top dog among countries percieves  another country catching up to them, and threatening their predominnce. He cites several other times in history where this phenomena is visible.

Allison says his studies show that the leaders of the most powerful countries use structural fear to generate popular support for opposing the encroaching challengers. Structural fear is fear that is organized, generated, perpetuated  by social  and political institutions to manipulate individuals and maintain control.  So leaders who wish to reduce a the capabilities of a rising power can generate support for war
by inducing fear of the new power and describing  it as an existential threat to their nation.  Allison relates this to the position of the US, and its relation to its economic challengers, mainly China.

In 1990 I was pretty sure that China was going to become our next prime enemy, biggest threat, worst fear, replacing Russia.  Does it worry you that China will soon overcome the US as having the largest economy in the world?  They will be number one. Some Americans have been convinced by demagoguery that they should fear this. Whether there is anything to worry about or not, politicians cannot resist the use of structural fear, describing China’s overcoming the US economically as an existential threat. Rally round me. I am strong and I will save us all.  Its like free money. Press the fear button and, voila, out pops support like a gumball machine.

Not all Americans fear China’s economic climb, hopefully, but guess what. Nobody, zero, in Poland or Paraguay or Thailand or Spain fears another country’s surpassing their GDP.  Everyone wants their country to thrive, but only #1 gets caught in Thucydides trap.

Ira: OK, people, settle down. There seems to be a few more people here tonight. I’m Ira Cordell, and this is the second meeting of Modern Anthropology in the Coreyville adult education program. If you signed up for Zumba you are in the wrong room. (snickers) … OK, first I want show you a picture of my son at his first communion on Sunday.
Phil: Ha ha. I don’t think so, Ira.
Ira: Why is that, Phil? (grinning)
Phil: Because last week you told us you were gay and Jewish.
Ira: Bingo. 2 points for Phil for paying attention. And now I’m saying I’m straight and Catholic. I said that last week just as a fun experiment to demonstrate the generalizations, good or bad, correct or otherwise that come with identity. So in effect I WAS gay and jewish to you. Now, without thinking much about it, you will adjust your . . .. . perceception of me- based on your preconceived notions of what those categories mean.
Jim: Will you be a bisexual Klingon next week, Ira?
Ira: Ha, I don’t think so, Jim. I will remain as I am. So let’s move on. This evening, a survey. It is universally illegal in the US to marry a sibling. If you think this law is appropriate write ‘yes’ on these little cards. If not write no.
Frank: Are you kidding, Ira?
Ira: No, Frank. And don’t get neurotic about anything. It’s just a little entertainment.
……OK, raise your hand if you wrote ‘yes’….(pause) uh, 13 out of 13. OK can anyone give me a reason for your answer.
Frank: Who would want to marry their sister? (laughter)
Ira: Well, in fact, almost nobody. So the question becomes, why DON”T people want to marry their sister.
Christy: Well, inbreeding is supposed to produce deformities, I’ve read.
Ira: That’s right. Research clearly shows that mental aberrations as well as
physical deformities occur after continued inbreeding, but not always.
Steve: There’s also the stigma. It’s disgusting and it’s not socially acceptable.
Ira: Yes, its certainly socially unacceptable. So now we have 2 reasons for the taboo. It causes developmental problems and it won’t get you on the society A list. Now, question: Which came first? The concern over abnormalities or the social unacceptance?
Christy: I think it was the social unacceptance. In ancient Rome, the emperor Caligula…married his sister and it was as much of a scandal then as it would be today.
John: Yeah, they thought he was literally crazy.
Ira: Okay so the stigma, social faux pas, taboo, distaste was evident 2 millennia ago. So where do we go from there?
Jim: Well, I think the taboo existed before there was the scientific sophistication that incest led to deformities. Especially because they didn’t happen every time.
Ira: So this means – possibly – that social behavior may be driven by biological determinants?
Tom: It seems so. Like our appetites. Things that don’t taste good together aren’t digested well together. Personal tastes differ. Some people like seafood. Others hate it. But no one likes to eat mustard and jelly together, because the digestive juices stimulated will cause putrification.
Ira: woah!! I don’t think this class needs me. That was quite relevant, Tom.
Tom: I studied this once in grad school, heh heh.
Ira: That’s very cool. OK, moving on, from incest to homosexuality.
Lara: What about it?
Ira: Well, until about 50 years ago it was considered immoral or perverted and was
illegal virtually everywhere in the world:
Steve: And it still is illegal in many places.
Mark: I suppose it was like the taboo of sibling sexual relations. It was considered
distasteful and unnatural.
Ira: And perhaps a threat?
Lara: How do you suppose it was a threat?
Ira: In the sense that historically change has often been a threat. If there is a change in cultural values, a change you do not hold to, your position or influence, real or imagined, may be diminished. Values you hold may no longer be as respected. So homosexuality can become an enemy of one’s identity group. Leaders of a community may feel their position, status, power threatened by a new norm and may be hostile to a change in the intolerance of new group, which may be gays,
immigrants, a different religion, a minority, etc. Any people you can group together.
Tom: So the leaders of a community feel their status is threatened so they marshal intolerance to the new group to preserve their own power?
Ira: Exactly, and it often isn’t hard to do. Just verbal abuse can do it. Whether it is rational or not, it may model abuse, open the door to aggressive abuse, which is gratifying in itself for many. And produce an out group which is fair game for discrimination.
Tom: And make them scapegoats. Blame everything on them like the Jews in the 1930’s and 40’s.
Ira: That’s right. But are there biological determinants feeding non-acceptance of gays like we concluded there likely were with incest?
Lara: I would think there could be. People have to procreate to survive.
Ira: Yes, and many tribes and clans of people did not survive in the last 100,000 years.
But the curious question remains.
Mark: If there were a biological determinant driving a taboo for homosexuality, why would it be wrong to discriminate against homosexuals?
Ira: Well, Mark, this would be my argument. Sex between siblings can lead to a weakening of the gene pool and extensive deformities and disabilities. But homosexuality in the 21 century will not lead to declining population. If it were ”natural”to discriminate against homosexuality, man is not always at his best when he is natural. That is why we invented civilization to make laws forbidding man’s natural proclivity to kill, steal, pillage, conspire against fellow humans. So it may be argued that sibling sexual relations cause many problems to the species – and people can find others besides siblings for relations. Homosexuals are causing no harm by not having heterosexual relationships and procreating. And, because of sexual orientation, cannot have, are not attracted to heterosexual relations. Okay, we’re running out of time so let’s try to sum up what we have all concluded together. Or if not concluded, what we have put together as a theory of human behavior and an ethical way forward.
Jim: Well, we have suggested that there may be two reasons for the taboo of incestuous relations. One, that there is a detrimental effect to the human gene pool, and causes physical and mental aberrations. So there may be a genetic predisposition for a distaste for marrying your sibling. And in different cultures there is a conscious taboo on it. It is illegal and very socially unacceptable.
Ira: Or if not a genetic predisposition, a developmental phenomena. There is a new science called evolutionary psychology which contends that some parts of our brain
have evolved to adapt to changing demands met by the species. When man invented jelly and mustard, his brain may have evolved to alter his appetite. But it is all very speculative and not really necessary for our discussion.
Christy: So for the homosexuality, it may also be for 2 reasons. Something we were born with – an aversion to homosexuality, or something we learn through culture.
Steve: And also the purely social thing. People wanting to turn people against gays as a way of maintaining or gaining power. The way people turned others against jews and blacks to gain power.
Ira: Very true. like George Wallace, governor of Alabama ceremoniously stood in the doorway blocking the entrance of the first black student to be admitted to the University of Alabama. He was elected 4 times and had millions of devotees. So there we have it.
We have solved the problem. Two reasons for the sibling taboo and 3 for the homosexual discrimination. (social unacceptance / a genetic or developmental revulsion / use as a tool for power)
Ira: Well, next week why don’t you all bring your ideas on what are the most difficult
unsolved problems of our society.
Phil: Then after this course we can all run for Congress.
Ira: Don’t see why not.

Just kidding.

NASA recently held its first public conference on the recent sightings of UFOs. Except they are calling them UAP’s – Unidentified Aerial Phenomena – seemingly to tone down the sensation. But I’m sure the conference will jack up the hopes of the many co-conspirators who desperately want to believe that extraterrestrials from afar have intruded into our biosphere.

I never want to crush anyone’s raison d’etre, but the chances of aliens visiting our solar system is virtually 0.0. (The term ‘virtually’ keeps it scientific and covers me if little purple men call a meeting in Times Square tomorrow.) This is because of The Factor. The Factor keeps aliens from making it to our solar system and always will. But UFO buffs can take heart that my words will have far less reach than alien believers such as William Shattner, Chloe Kardashian, or Katy Perry. And to know you are a part of a grand tradition of sky watchers and alien searchers.

In the 1890’s, with the expanding reach of new telescopes, an Italian astronomer reported seeing a multitude of “canals” on the surface of Mars – in straight lines and parallel to each other. The sighting was repeated around the world and speculation that they were created by an intelligent civilization launched a tumult of sensational news and compulsive Mars watching. Although the the phenomena was soon found to be an optical illusion, the genie was out of the bottle. Like news of a fraudulent presidential election, many couldn’t let go, and doubtlessly some gained by not doing so. The sensation lasted into the 1920’s after decades of no new evidence of life on the red planet.

Later, eyes turned to Venus as the most likely place to find life. It was the most similar to Earth by size and distance from the sun. But as time passed, Venus too became a dead end for alien searchers and researchers. The increasing abilities of science to measure found that “daytime” surface temperatures on the planet went up to 900 F, it had 92 times greater atmospheric pressure than that of Earth on the surface, and clouds of sulphuric acid and methane are constantly swirling through its atmosphere. Oof, I’d rather live in Hoboken.

After this, UFO people didn’t really have anywhere to search for UFOs’ homes. But this hardly mattered. Many UFO groups were satisfied to concentrate on the thousands of reported sightings every year. And their origin? Out there, of course. One group is called The Center for the Study of Extraterrestrial Intelligence. It’s founder had a project called the Rapid Mobilization Investigative Teams that were on the ready to quickly get to the site of a UFO landing. Another was a project to protect any and all whistleblowers working for the government, who surely know all about many alien landings, and want to come forward but are fearful.

Then in the 1990’s the first known exoplanets (planets outside of our solar system) were discovered orbiting distance stars. Now UFO fans had an unlimited source for purple people. Solid ground. Not burning stars or crushing neutron stars. It seemed a little more credible to claim that we surely aren’t alone if there are an unlimited number of planets.

Now to return to The Factor. The reason for my obstinate dismissal of visitors from space has to do with the understanding of distance. I may have attained a slight advantage here because from the time l was ten through high school l had a map of the solar system hanging on a wall in my bedroom. And like the words of the Lord’s Prayer
hanging next to it, I remember the words of the paragraph in the corner of the map almost verbatim. In part, it said, ‘An idea of the vastness of space may be better understood if we consider it to scale. If the sun were a globe 30 inches in diameter, the earth would be more than 100 yards away and smaller than the size of a pea. In this same scale the nearest star would be more than 14,000 miles away.

So The Factor – super distance – is what precludes space travel for humans beyond our solar system and for extraterrestrials from intruding on us. Our space craft travel fast. Speeding through the void at 30,000 km/hr, 18,000 mph, or 6 miles per second, they reach Mars in a little over 9 months. This is doable for humans so inclined. But exoplanets are a fur piece. The closest one to Earth is called Proxima B, circling the closest star, in our home galaxy, The Milky Way. It is 4.2 light years from Earth. I told my friend Chat the speed and distance, and he calculated the time it would take for a brand new US spacecraft to reach it.

Chat told me it was 152,287 years. 150 thousand years!!!! One way!! Imagine how daunting just planning for the provisions would be. OK, 290 billion beef jerky sticks.  Check.  870 billion chicken bouillon cubes.  Check.

For those not yet convinced, there is the Second Factor, the ‘find me’ factor. Imagine you are standing at the center of a circle with a radius of 100 meters. You can’t find your dog Elvis, but you know he is sitting somewhere on the circumference of the circle.
So you take off between the houses and trees to get to the circumference. After running around for 15 minutes you find Elvis. Now imagine you are again at the center, but this time Elvis is on the circumference of a circle with a radius of ten miles. So now to travel completely around the circle you must travel 10 x 2 x pi = 62,8 miles. Now this is quite a walk and Elvis is a bit harder to find, might take weeks  Finally imagine a circle with the radius of the distance from Earth to Proxima B – 4,5 light years. Chat told me this is 23.54 trillion miles. This is how far away Elvis is, damn dog. But now Elvis isn’t located on a circumference this far away. (Which would be a 144 trillion mile walkaround). He is located anywhere on the surface of a sphere around your spot on the Earth – this far away – 23 trillion miles. Good-bye Elvis. And this is just the closest rock to our Earth. So the goal of this little vignette was to help convey that beings from Proxima B, or anywhere else, have but an infinitesimally small percentage of a chance – virtually zero – of finding their way to us here on Earth.
(Addendum. For those of you who are worried that the chance of Proxima B being able to sustain life is pretty much nill, much less than Mars, the second closest exoplanet is only 30% further. So if the 150,000 years we spent going to Proxima was a royal waste of time, we can try for Barnard B which would take 190,000 years. Or third closest Ross B, 425,000 years. We should probably do all 3 on the same trip to save time)

Man is a romantic species. We have always been intrigued by the mysterious and scary – dinosaurs, ghosts, wars, UFO’s , the 9/11 conspiracy theories, the giant geoglyphs of the ancient South American Nazca visible by airplane, and who really built the pyramids. It would be unthinkable for a modern society not to ponder about UFO’s and aliens coming to Earth. We can’t deny the imagination. But neither can we deny science, objective truth, and rational thought. And rational thought, for those who want to embrace it, precludes the possibility, given our understanding of physics, of living things traveling between our solar system and anywhere else in our formidable universe.

Which countries in the middle East have nuclear weapons? Israel only.
Israel has, experts say, between 90 and 300 nuclear weapons.  They are deployed in a triad, in the same manner as the US nuclear weapons. They have 5 Dolphin-class submarines with nuclear-armed cruise missles. They have 40 to 50 F-151 and F-16 fighter bombers, with nuclear capability.  They have 25-50 land based Jerico 2 (medium rnge) and Jerico 3  (intercontinental range) missles armed with nuclear weapons. Sources debate over exact numbers but no one disputes that Israel has nuclear capabilities deployed and ready to strike.

Israel has kept info about their nuclear program top secret. It was unknown until Israeli nuclear engineer Mordechai Vanunu divulged it in 1986, sending documents to the British press. As a result, he was kidnapped and drugged in Rome by Mossad and returned to Israel where he served an 18-year sentence, 11 in solitary confinement.

Over the years Israel has conducted these operations to impair Iran’s ability to enrich nuclear fuel.
* Stuxnet cyberattack. (2012)  Computer worm damaged 1000 centrifuges
* Nantanz explosion.  (2020) Destroyed centrifuge assembly plant.
* Karaj centrifuge attack  (2021) Drone attack on centrifuge components production unit.

*  Nuclear scientists assassinated in Iran by Mossad
Masoud Alimohmmadi- (2010)  remote control bomb.
Majid Shahriari (2010) car bomb
Darioush Rezainjad  (2010) shot by gunmen on motorcycles.
Mostafa Roshan (2012) magnetic bomb under car
Mohsen  Fakrizadeh (2020)  remote control bomb

sources:  Rand Corporation,  US Istitute of peace, Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, U of Virginia National Data and Policy Institute

Hypothetical :  China develops an intercontinent missle and propulsion  that will travel 4 times the speed of previous missles.  The US starts to replicate the science.  China attacks the new US installations, and assassinates 5 American scientists working on the program.

I included zero opinion in this article. I invite you to add your opinion.

Justice Louis Brandeis, 80 years ago, said, ” We must make our choice. We can have democracy or we may have wealth concentrated in the hands of a few.  We cannot have both.”  Brandeis probably couldn’t have imagined that the disparity in wealth could ever grow to what it is today in the US.

The Trump administration has conveyed their belief that the way to stop crime in our cities is to send in the military.  Before he was assassinated, Charlie Kirk supported the idea, saying that we couldn’t afford to have such crime in our great cities, so “send in the tanks,” he said.  I have heard many opposing sending the military to fight crime on the basis  that the crime rates in the cities are going down.  I have heard few say that, whatever the crime rates, this isn’t the way to fight it.

The crime in our cities is not a problem of a lack of interdiction. It is a structural problem.  People commit crimes because of poverty, drug addiction and the accessibility of guns. Virtually all street criminals would rather have a comfortable monthly income than to have to break the law. I moved to Poland from the US more than 20 years ago ( I remain an American citizen) and the added perspective I gained is instructive in many ways.  There is virtually no crime problem in Polish and other EU cities.  I may not be able to speak for every city in Europe but one experience was edifying.  A few years ago I found myself in Paris waiting in a subway station alone after midnight.  I heard footsteps coming down the stairs and found it to be a woman, also alone, and nicely dressed. I asked her about how safe she felt and she said, yes, she felt perfectly safe.

During the current government shutdown  there was much reporting on the privations of those with federal government  jobs and those recieving SNAP benefits. Many people have little more than enough money to pay their immediate living expenses.  You often hear that the US is the richest country in the world.  This must be qualified: the top half of the US is the richest country in the world.  The bottom half not at all.

In the US, the top 1% hold 30 – 32% of the wealth, (about $51 trillion)  a number that has constantly grown for decades.  The bottom 50% holds 2.5 %!!! This disparity is unheard of in most other countries.  Here is a quick comparison of other countries where data is available.
………………………….top 1%                     bottom 50%
US                       30-32%                         2-3%                              Britain                  10                                 9
France                 20-26                           4-6
Italy                     20-30                           6-10
Japan                   12-18                           8-12

The crime in cities caused by the impoverishment of the bottom half of society cannot be overcome by National Guards, federal troops, more police or more arrests.  The most obvious path is to reverse the redistribution of wealth from the lower classes to the richest classes that has been going on for decades.  How to do this of course is the problem.  It will entail many steps and  hard working public servants who want to curtail our system of legalized bribes to congressmen,  changing the tax schedule so it looks more like it did under Eisenhower and earlier administrations, stopping off-shore tax havens and all the rest of the ways the rich are permitted to rip us off legally.  And also will entail changing climate of public opinion to embrace the belief that maintaining a billionaire class is antithetical to freedom and democracy. And fighting the Fox News mentality which is constantly demonizing the welfare state and the slackers and cheaters who get “handouts” from the state.  The Trump administration recently announced that there would be work requirements to get SNAP benefits.  I can imagine the cheering from the MAGA crowd how this would spite the freeloaders.  Turns out the vast majority of recipients who are not children nor handicapped already  work – the working poor.

And there are other ways in which the bottom 50% in other countries are better off than in the US.  The minimum wage is a living wage and the working classes make much closer to the professionsl classes.  Also the universal health care systems are far superior in serving the bottom half  than in the US.  Universal health care is not free health care. It means that the costs are shared more equally iu the society.    It also means that the costs are less because they are not paying middle men – the health insurance robber barons.  Of the billions of dollars we pay health insurance companies in the US, much of it goes to pay CEO’s, board members, staff and stock holder’s dividends. This is money that goes to medical services in the EU.

“We must make our choice. We may have democracy or we may have wealth concentrated in the hands of a few. We cannot have both.”
The “we” in Justice Brandeis’s quote is an abstract construct. But the “we” that are choosing wealth in the hands of a few are also choosing power in the hands of a few.  And power in the hands of a few and not the American people is a good working definition of the absence of democracy. Ray Tut   <mintchippolitics.com>

A RAT IN a laboratory Skinner box inadvertantly steps on  lever and a food pellet drops out of nowhere. He quickly learns to depress the lever for the reward.  A religious group from Holland came to America and found they could practice their religion without persecution. They sent word back.  Young men from some of the German states came to America and found they didn’t have to spend 20 years in the king’s army. They sent word back.  Some farmers from Ireland came to America and found they could acquire land after only a year’s saving.  And they sent word back.  And many quickly learn there is opportunity for land, and freedom of religion and from military bondage. And they came to America.

All of this is explained quite adequately by BF Sinner – the father of the branch of psychology known as Behaviorism,  or Learning Theory. There are millions of undocumented migrant workers in the US because of the attractions they have learned from their cousin or uncle or brother who came to the US and got jobs and made a better life.  Either by staying in the US or sending money back to their home country or both. Like the rat in the Skinner box, they learned that coming to the US leads to reward. So come they do.

And unlike the immigrants from previous centuries, today’s immigrants are needed and wanted as well as rewarded for coming. They are wanted by big business and small business.  They are gladly hired for agricultural work, planting and harvesting;  construction trades, laborers, painters, roofers,  equipment drivers, and cement form scrapers, (like I did once, ugh) ; hospitality,  maids, servers, cooks, desk clerks, janitors; and other trades.  They are all wanted. And like the rat in the Skinner box, the illegals get rewarded for their endeavors.

I was surprised to find how many undocumented immigrants live and work in NYC. According to the Fiscal Policy Institute’s study, illegal aliens are working as cooks (21,000), janitors and cleaners (19,000),  construction laborers (17,000), taxi drivers and chauffers, (11,000), automotive service (5000), stock clerks (7000) and many other lines of work. When he was mayor,  Michael Bloomberg noted, “Although [illegal aliens] broke the law by illegally crossing our borders or over-staying their visas and our businesses broke the law by employing them, our city’s economy would be a shell of itself had they not, and it would collapse if they were deported.”

The “labor force participation rate” is a measure of what percentage of a certain group has paid employment.  The Fiscal Policy Institute study found that illegal aliens had  a 70% participation rate whereas native born workers had a 60% participation rate and all foreign born workers 64%. These figures go far to dispell the myth that illegal aliens come for wellfare payments – which they cannot get.

It is incorrect that undocumented immigrants are needed because “Americans won’t do the work (that the immigrants do”).  America’s labor force has always been hardworking and willing to do anything they need to do to earn a living, no matter how difficult.  But- why should a young American choose to pick vegetables in the hot sun all day for 10 dollars an hour when they could work at McDonalds and earn 16  dollars an hour.  The agricultural jobs and factory and cleaning jobs are simply the ones that immigrants can do that may not require the social  skills or English language skills but are sufficient and needed for many employers.

So, the illegal labor is needed and wanted in the US.  The migrants are attracted here like the rat in the Skinner box is attracted to the food producing lever,  and like the early seekers of land and freedom were attracted to our shores.  But now Trump’s henchman Miller is excoriating the ICE commanders for falling short of the administration’s goal of removing 3000 people suspected of being illegals per day.  What is wrong with this picture? Is undocumented labor truly working against the needs of the national economy?  Of course if Donald Trump truly wanted to illiminate illegal migrants, he could do it simply by cracking down hard, jailing and fining employers who hire the illegals, which is illegal. The rat in the Skinner box stops pressing the lever when he stops getting the food pellet. The illegals would stop coming if there were no jobs open to them.

But that wouldn’t help the economy dependent on this labor.

Now, despite all this, here is something I don’t think many Americans know. There is such a thing as a guest worker visa in the US.  In other words the Government DOES recognize the need for foreign workers.
But hows that working out?   Acknowledged: There’s a need for guest workers.  Remedy: Guest worker program. Evaluation of efficacy of that program: It does not significantly reduce the immigration of many illegals to the US to find work.

The reasons for this are obvious.  1  The bureaucratic hoops employers must navigate. They must apply to two different agencies and give evidence they cannot find domestic workers. 2  The employer must provide free housing, which is a regulation considerate to the guest workers. But without enforcement of laws banning the hiring of undocumented workers, the employers can hire the illegals and forego the expense of housing.  3 There are a limited number of visas granted.  The non-farming visas are limited to 68,000 yearly. There are fifty times that number of illegals working in non-farming positions. 4  The visa applicants must apply at the American embassy in their home country. The average wait time for the  response of possible sponsors is 7 months.   5 The visas are temporary, usually 3-10 months, and the workers must return home to renew the visas.

So here are the factors.  First, there are 6 million undocumented migrants in the US illegally and an essential art of the labor force.
The employers who hire them are not prosecuted for  illegally hiring, therefore an inducement for migrants to come and seek jobs. Many illegals are quite willing to work under the conditions experienced working illegally, even though the conditions are inferior to those of legitimate guest workers – so they keep coming.
The trump administration has vilified illegal aliens, calling them rapists and murderers.  Because of this demonization, undocumented workers are harrassed and discriminated against. And by one author, have been cheated out of 1 billion dollars in the NYC building trades alone. The illegals actually have a lower rate of criminality than the general public.

So here are possible actions that may mitigate the situation where the country’s industry is dependent on people doing illegal things.

1 Allow for the registration of all undocumented migrants as guest workers who, with their employers verification, can prove they are gainfully employed.  This would require an administration that would utilize local employment agencies, county and municipal.

2  Employers would be required to report any change in the status of the guest workers he hires, and report any changes in the need for workers in his company.  They would be held liable for hiring migrants without papers and fraudulent reporting.

3  Commisions would have to work out what minimum wage, and what benefits, such as free housing, would not give preference to guest workers over native workers that would want the jobs.

4   These are simply suggestions and possibly viable ideas.  I do not pretend to have all the answers.  But any change woud probably be an improvement.  The situation that, as ex-mayor Michel Bloomburg said, “the (New Yok) city’s economy would collapse if they were all deported” seems non-viable.  The fact that  undocumented workers are both necessary to the economy and a political scapegoat for the Trump administration is a conundrum that can and should be solved.

What are your ideas on the subject?

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Think Tanks!!!  Oooh, look at them all.  There’s the Hoover Institute, the Constitution Project, The Brookings Institute, the Center for Public Integrity, Concord Coalition and…  and… about 200 more.  A place where people are paid to think, and ostensibly produce useful thoughts.  And better, each one has a mission statement telling us how good and important their work is. For example The American Enterprise Institute says it exists for “expanding liberty, increasing individul opportunity,  and strenghthening free enterprise”.  A heady committment.

We have had tons of think tanks for many decades.  And thank God.  Just think, if we hadn’t had all these stables of great brains, our country might be in a big mess right now.  How lucky we are.

And here is one great idea the geniuses will probably come up with soon because they are so smart – a solution  to the  day care problem: do like they do in Europe!  In Poland, where I have lived for the past several years, day care has been the business of public elementary schools for 50 years. Virtually every public preschool and elementary school has a “szwetlice” or day care room, open from 7am to 5 pm every day.  The caregivers are certified elementary school teachers.  The children have games and materials to use, and when weather permits can play on the school playground.  They also have an area where they can do their homework or read. Working in elementary schools, I have seen daycare teachers reading to groups of kids on occassion.  It would have to be paid for in US elementary schools as it is here, but it could certainly be the cheapest and most easily managed, serving families at their children’s school.  If Poland can do it, I have faith that the US could manage.

But, of course there will be kneejerk criticism. What about children who don’t go to public schools?  What about kids whose parents work late?  It seems to me that if this system could work for even  half of the 25 million elementary school children in the US it would be a huge gift to many American families.

Here’s another concern that may soon be brought up by a think tank (because they are so wise).  In the EU, the independence of the judicial branches of the federal governments is thought to be sacrosanct. Judges and prosecutors are selected by the judiciary.  A few years ago when the PIS party was in power in Poland, they moved, Trump-like, to get the power to select judges moved to the parliament.  Of course this gave the dominant party more authority over the judiciary, was seen as politicizing the process, and was penalized by Brussels. Over 100 billion Euros in funds allocated to Poland was frozen, and was not released until the new government, elected in 2024, started to reverse the process and return the power to the judiciary.  As previously, the Judicial Council selects the personnel, and the president confirms.  The president has the nominal power to reject the nominee, but rarely has the political power to do so, and as a rule confirms.  Poland has a separate head of state (president) and  head of government (prime minister). And the president does not have the power to nominate someone to replace a nominee he may reject.

But here is the thingy.  When I tell Poles that in the US, the president has the sole power to nominate all federal judges and prosecuters, they don’t believe me.  They don’t believe how the selection of supreme court judges could be so blatantly politicized as to allow the president to choose them – and FOR LIFE!!

So I’m SURE that some of the wonderful think tanks that grace our capital city and many august institutions of higher learning will soon come up with a brilliant new plan.  A fabulous plan, perhaps even better than the governments and judiciaries of Europe, (or at least concepts of a plan) to de-politicize the selection of all the federal district judges, circuit courts of appeals judges, and the justices of the Supreme Court.  I’m sure.  Where would we be without them?