Budd Saunders : Barack Obama and the Hog:Corn Ratio

Hog:corn ratio. These handsome creatures were headed to market due to high corn prices. Photo by Mark Steil / Minnesota Public Radio.
No jake brakes:
The Palin shriek, and the hog:corn ratio

By Budd Saunders / The Rag Blog / May 16, 2010

DURHAM, Arkansas -- There's a sign at the Elkins city limits, "NO JAKE BRAKES." I don't know how many have heard a semi jake-brake down, but you never forget it. It reminds me of that bubble-headed joke Sarah Palin. She shrieks! If she's making a point she emphasizes it by shrieking louder. The "Moose Killer" has become The Shriek.

Why the Republican Party, which used to be a well-tended political party, chose this character to carry the banner of conservative ideology is beyond me. She is surely a curse to torture us. And after she used the term "reload," she tried to explain it away, but it means one thing to anyone familiar with guns.

Having now vented this fine morning which once again finds me alive, I must move on.

President Obama is a bitter disappointment for many of us who are Democrats and probably a few Republicans. Very few. I've written before that no one can compromise with Republicans. They believe that bipartisan means to do it their way. And our President Obama is marching resolutely on doing what the Republicans want done. For starters he introduced a comprehensive reform healthcare package. When the Republicans wanted public option taken out, he took it out. They wanted parts about immigrants changed, so he took those out. And so on.

I didn't know who Geithner was, however I had heard of Bernanke. When Obama appointed Geithner my wife exclaimed loudly "not him!" She was right. Those two characters come straight from Wall Street. When I was an undergraduate in the College of Agriculture I took a course in Economics. I don't remember much more than what Debits and Credits are. Debits is money I don't have and credit is something I have too much of. And for whatever reason I remember the Hog:Corn Ratio.

I suppose the Hog:Corn Ratio has changed a lot but surely some family farm operations still manage hogs and raise corn. The theory is based on live hog price per 100 pounds divided by the price of corn per bushel. If corn is selling for a low price, feed the corn to the hogs. If the corn has a high price, sell the corn and the livestock. If it's above 20 the profit would lead to raising more hogs. If below 20 it works in a reverse ratio. If you believe that is complicated, try the other economic theory I remember, that of John Maynard Keynes or How To Really Screw Things Up. Mr. Keynes had a theory about how to get out of a recession. It's a beaut.

Keynesian Theory puts the idea forward that the private sector cannot keep our economy stable. According to The Concise Encyclopedia of Economics, "full employment could be maintained only with the help of government spending." As I understand it, this theory was used to pull us out of what is called The Great Depression and during WW2. That made ours a War Economy, and it has stayed that way until the present. Accordingly the private sector wasn't investing enough money in the economy during that time so the government -- i.e., us taxpayers -- had to invest more.

Meanwhile the private sector figured that if government would take over paying for everything, why should they bother to spend their own money. Thus St. Ronald the Reagan and his buddies came up with the idea of "trickle down economics," in which the government let private industry keep its money, theoretically so that it could afford to hire more people. Didn't work. Corporate executives would rather give themselves bigger bonuses for getting bigger tax breaks from the government. Daddy Bush rightly called this "Voodoo economics."

Guided by Geithner and Bernanke, Obama used Keynes as a guide to stimulate the economy by giving stimulus money. AIG, Fannie Mae, and her significant other Freddie Mac, got billions. Keynes would have loved these guys. As I recall my wife and I got a total of $200. It didn't go very far, but it went into the economy nonetheless. The Cash for Clunkers Program also invested in the economy, bailing out banks and the automobile industry.

Keeping the Keynes Theory leads to another of my disappointments in Obama. He promised peace and received the Nobel Peace Prize. He sent troops to Afghanistan. Did I miss something here? He says he has a plan for leaving Iraq but with casualties mounting, we will probably have to send in more troopies. The governments of Iraq and Afghanistan are waiting with a handful of gimme and a mouthful of much obliged. Republicans are standing by to dictate which part of bipartisan they don't like. Based on past performances Obama will back off again. My buddy Troll is leaving America to settle in a foreign country. It's times like this when I wish I could just gather my gear and join him.

Then there's the oil catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico. It is so terrible that there are no words to describe it. We are destroying our planet. My wife suggested that the human race are parasites and the Earth is fighting back. Each time I start my car I think about that.

Question authority. It's the American way.

[Budd Saunders is a Vietnam veteran who lives in Arkansas and writes a regular column for the Durham Dispatch.]

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Budd Saunders : Luck, and Dumb Luck

Sailers in 1946 are shown wearing goggles to shield their eyes from an atomic blast. Dr. Phil Trapp told about how such goggles were expected to protect his World War II Marine flotilla from the effects of a third atomic bomb to be dropped on the beach just ahead of them. Dumb luck saved them. Photo by Bob Landry / Life Magazine.
(And a whole row of 'had's...)
Luck, and dumb luck

By Budd Saunders / The Rag Blog / May 8, 2010

DURHAM, Arkansas -- I ran across a note that had been lost for some time and I want to share its content. The note has nothing to do with politics, war, or anything but English grammar. It is a sentence that contains 11 "had"s in a row, and it is perfectly correct.

My father-in-law wrote it out years ago. My wife Nancy's father is George Armitage Miller, one of the outstanding intellects of the 20th century. Words and communication were his life. Whatever else the sentence is, it is interesting: "John, where Bill had had 'had', had had 'had had'; 'had had' had had the teacher's approval."

When George visited us years ago, Nancy mentioned several things so I would notice them. When her father was sitting in a chair with his head nodding, he wasn't asleep, he was thinking. He would take out a small notebook from his pocket and write in it. I was told not to ask what he was writing because I wouldn't understand it. It was to himself. When he would later communicate, you would understand, like WordNet 2.1. You can find it with your computer and download it. It's free and very useful.

There have been another two disasters and a near disaster recently affecting our country. The oil blowout in the Gulf of Mexico, Nashville under water, and a car bomb in Times Square. We watched CNN for news on these disasters.

Actually, I rather think the real disaster in the bomb scene was the character who built the "bomb." Faisal Shahzad, a naturalized American, had it all worked out. He had placed a vehicle where an explosion would have caused destruction of property and many casualties. His explosives were amateurish at best. But he had transportation to JFK International Airport.

There was an announcement by some government agency representative extolling the various groups involved and how alert they were. Homeland Security had all of the bus stations at the Port Authority covered, but at JFK, Shahzad got through security. That pretty much put the wraps on those characters as the heroes in this made-for-TV drama in which, just as the villain is about to escape, somebody notices that he is on a plane. I can hear the dramatic music build, until the plane is called back to the gate. I suppose it was TSA who went on board and trundled Mr. Shahzad off to be interrogated.

Then the story changed. It seems he only got through security once and hadn't been on the plane after all. The plane was called back because there were "suspected accomplices" on board. I suppose they looked Middle Eastern, which is racial profiling and only permitted in Arizona.

As I have continued watching and listening to the news I have come to a conclusion. It seems that all of the agencies involved were working together. That's good. But it's not so much that they were smarter than the bomber, as that they were very lucky. This guy was just plain dumb.

Luck reminded me of something a friend of ours wrote and I dug it out of one of the many piles of papers around the house. Dr. Phil Trapp is Emeritus Professor of Psychology from the University of Arkansas. He wrote a letter to the Northwest Arkansas Times in 2007 in which he gave some examples of "dumb luck."

In World War II he commanded a flotilla of landing craft destined to invade Japan. They were to invade right after a third Atomic Bomb was "dropped on the beach just ahead of" them. They were to wear goggles to protect them from the "brilliant light" of the bomb. Nobody back then knew about radiation fallout. Fortunately Japan surrendered before the invasion.

Another example he gives of "dumb luck" is the chlorine compound in aerosols and car air conditioners being discontinued before the ozone layer was completely destroyed. Professor Trapp also commanded Marine landing craft at Red Beach on Iwo Jima Island. He survived. And that was really luck.

We can't count on luck, but we can remember (if our attention spans aren't too short) the words of the man who alerted police to the suspicious SUV in Times Square. He was a street vendor and disabled Vietnam War veteran who sold T-shirts. When asked what he had to say about the event, he replied, "If you see something, say something." He saw something different and said something for sure. He told a police officer and thus the comedy began. In the classical sense, comedies all have happy endings. This one did. And a clown for the central character.

Question authority. It's the American way.

[Budd Saunders is a Vietnam veteran who lives in Arkansas and writes a regular column for the Durham Dispatch.]

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