Memorial Day: A chronical of a perpetually expanding list of names

By Joseph Walther

For years, America observed Memorial Day on May 30 of each year, initially to honor the soldiers who died in the American Civil War. Following WW-I, however, Congress expanded its observance to honor all U. S. men and women who have died in military service to their country.

Congress changed the day of observance to the last Monday in May. I’m not sure of the significance of the celebration date, but I suspect that it had more to do with a commercial opportunity for retail sales than it did with expanding the nation’s period for honoring its war-dead.

Whatever! This is not about when we observe it. It’s about why and for whom we observe it. I’m going to speak to the matter strictly from my own perspective: that of a combat veteran.

At the outset, I want you to know that in Washington, DC there is a Viet Nam Memorial Wall. It consists of 58,195 names; service people who died fighting for this country’s “security” interests.

I considered twenty-seven of them close friends. We had similar hopes and dreams for our futures. Five of us became like brothers, two of which died while cradled in my arms.

I still—over 40-years later at the age of 66—bolt upright in bed tightly clutching my pillow; their faces are as vivid as they were that awful day.

I see and feel the stickiness of their blood on my hands and combat fatigues. I watch helplessly as they exhale for the last time. I feel them go to dead weight. My heart pounds in my head and sometimes I can’t go back to sleep!

Surviving combat veterans never forget. Don’t believe, even for a moment, that we do.

Personally, I’ve never met any surviving combat veterans who’ve ever expressed the notion of looking forward to dying for their country. I know that I certainly never did.

Neither have these honorable folks ever expressed any signs of exhilaration at the prospect of being wounded, either. Again, I certainly never looked forward to my wounds.

Some military people want to be there, of course, especially young and naïve gung-hoers that can’t wait to get over there and kick enemy asses. But, most would as soon be somewhere else.

Even the young naïve gung-hoers soon change their attitudes after that first taste of real combat causes them to realize that there and Hell are the same place.

It’s amazing how quickly cockiness dissipates in the shadow of genuine fear, frequently accompanied by uncontrollable vomiting and, sometimes, by a loss of both bladder and bowel control.

There is no romanticism about it, though. Strictly speaking, military people die in combat because they’re in the military at the time a war begins and they end up over there.

For many, even though at the time they joined… voluntarily… at some earlier point, it was not necessarily to be sent over there. In Viet Nam, most would rather have been somewhere else but had no choice because they were drafted and sent over there.

There is nothing dishonorable about this. It’s simple human nature. And, military people are just as human as their civilian counterparts are.

The reason that our service men and women deserve our nation’s unyielding respect and eternal gratitude isn’t because they “unselfishly” sacrificed their lives for all of us, but because they honored their commitment to complete assigned missions, to the death if necessary.

Herein lies the honor and dignity of military service, volunteer or otherwise. These are ordinary people, who consistently accomplish extraordinary tasks under unfathomably dangerous circumstances.

It’s why the military ideal; “We’ll ALL come back—though some will be dead—or none of us will come back;” is not just rhetoric. They believe it to very depths of their souls and they prove it every day of their lives.

The other aspect of Memorial Day pertains to the loved ones left behind; the ones who must, somehow, try to piece their lives back together after a good deal of their reason for living has died in combat.

Our concern for those who have died in combat, and their families, is genuine. It is also, for the most part, clinical. But that all changes when it involves one of our own. Then it becomes very personal.

Generally, we do not experience war’s full impact. At best, we’ll see a few flag-draped caskets being carried off of transport planes. It’s all very ceremonial, solemn, and respectful. But, it’s also quite sanitized.

The raw, terrible reality that, many times, the remains inside those caskets are missing critical parts is always born by remaining loved ones. Unless we clinical observers have experience to the contrary, we miss this hideous point entirely.

The Pentagon refers to such cases as “viewing not recommended.” Inside of such caskets are shrouded, unrecognizable remains of what was, not long ago, someone’s loving spouse, child, parent, sibling, or friend.

The remains are shrouded, tucked beneath an immaculately prepared empty dress uniform, complete with medals and ribbons. Oh, there is a body, or what’s left of one, but you’d have to reach down, beneath the dress uniform to feel it inside the shroud.

If the media would let this reality smack us between our eyes, the incessant chest thumping on the part of too many wannabe warriors would stop in a hurry. And, our politicians would learn, first hand, the meaning of direct accountability.

Finally, it’s time all of us come to understand that this nation is not free because some version of a benevolent deity is on “our side.”

While it is nice, snuggly and acceptable to think such thoughts as a matter of religious faith, it is folly of the worst sort to rely too heavily on such beliefs as a matter of military tactics.

As a nation, in uniform or not, beginning on day we declared ourselves independent from King George, right up to the present, we’ve always been willing AND able to do whatever we had to do in order to keep ourselves free.

If we ever lose either the will or the ability to defend ourselves—to the death if necessary—against all foes, we’ll forfeit our freedoms and render our Constitution worth less than the paper it’s written on.

Our military personnel have always held true to their commitment of service, even to the fullest measure, to keep us free. Our civilian population, overwhelmingly, has always been willing to make the sacrifices to support our troops, the perceived righteousness of the war notwithstanding.

Before we send our best and brightest into harm’s way, we’d better have a righteous reason for doing so. We’d better fully understand precisely what we’re asking our youngsters to do. And, we’d better possess a national resolve to complete the mission successfully and bring them home.

A President’s clueless hankering to kick some ass does not qualify and a Congress inept at driving that point home is useless to us as a nation.

And, once we have our war veterans back home again, particularly the wounded, we’d better be prepared to take care of them with the same level of commitment that they had when they fulfilled theirs.

Have a safe and meaningful Memorial Day. Back at you next week.

Joe Walther is a freelance writer and publisher of The True Facts. You may comment on his column by clicking here.

Oh my GOD! Our next president's ALREADY in trouble.

By Joseph Walther

We all—at least I know I do—feel like we’ve been marinating in the endless hyperbole of a long worn out primary season. But, just you wait.

The feverish pitch of discontent is going to get a lot worse as the campaign windbaggery increases over the next 6-months.

Here is some of the less glamorous stuff. The press won’t talk about it because to do so would bore most of us to death.

Or, maybe most of the media is clueless! It’s probably a little of both, I fear.

Be aware. Even though this stuff can cure insomnia, it all came straight from the Congressional Record, some of it going back to 1938.

Like it or not, the Piper awaits payment. So, read on and get your wallets out! It’s about to get expensive. Rising gas prices don’t even scratch the surface, either.

Taxes! Nothing induces catatonia in Conservatives like the mention of the word, “taxes.” They just seem to drop right down into a thumb-sucking fetal position.

Liberals, on the other hand, don’t seem to be anywhere near as terrified of these terms. Well, at least they don’t if we don’t count both Congressional reelection and Presidential election years.

I thought NOW would be a good time to bring up the fact that ALL of our respective candidates have been less than forthright about the nation’s tax situation. Hillary? Barack? John? ANYONE?

Guess what? The Iraq war will NOT be at the top of our next president’s list of things that have to be addressed NOW. And, all three of our candidates know it, too.

No matter which candidate we elect—Democrat or Republican—the number one concern will HAVE to be the economy. If not, the present will look like GREAT times compared to what’s coming. Barack? John? Hillary? ANYONE!

First, two years from now, $300 billion in tax cuts will expire. And, because we are facing a monumental budget deficit, the next president will have to DO something.

And, it will cause whichever candidate it is to come to a complete understanding of the phrase, "between a rock and hard place."

If Congress—the president can't do a thing, really—lets the tax cuts expire, we'll be in for a humongous tax increase. If the Congress extends the cuts, the shortfall in federal revenue will become even worse than it is now. Senator Reed? Representative Pelosi? ANYONE!

Remember, we're looking at a projected budget deficit of about $500 billion. And, our national debt is around $10 trillion as I type this. Wait and see what happens to it, given the status-quo—in two years!

The three main areas of concern are first, $174 billion in individual and business tax cuts, plus tax credits for expanded child and education initiatives. These, alone, reduced the average tax bite for a family of four by about $1,700 a year—from $4,000 down to around $2,300.

Second, there is the matter of that annoying alternative minimum tax that the Democratic-controlled Congress enacted about 40-years ago as a knee-jerk reaction to trap a handful of millionaires in the process of exploiting the system.

An unintended consequence, thanks to inflation, has been the entrapment of over 25-million honest taxpayers (middle-class) getting their pants ripped off. This little mistake will cost around $82 billion to fix AND it will have to be fixed. Why is the subject of a near-future column.

Finally, something will have to be done about the inheritance tax (the "death" tax). It will expire at midnight on 12/31/2010. One lousy second later, as the calendar switches over to 01/01/2011, all inheritances over $1 million will be taxed at a 55% rate.

This will result in additional tax revenue of about $50 billion for the federal government, but it will sure piss off the natives! Remember the battle cry of "read my lips; no new taxes?" It made George H. W. Bush a one-termer.

OK, now let’s explode some fiscal myths concerning Liberal and Conservative spending...

From 1938 through the year 2007—69-years—we’ve had 35-years worth of Democratic presidents and 34-years of Republican presidents. Over that period, our national debt has increased at an annual rate of around 8.7%.

According to the Congressional Record, the breakdown is an average annual increase of 8.3% during Democrat years and 9.7% during Republican years.

This is no big deal. The difference is not worth discussing. However, when we look closer at the Congressional Record, we see something else. Let's start with Franklin D. Roosevelt, a Democrat, and go forward to 2007.

We elected 12-presidents during this period: six Democrats and six Republicans. But, the debt scenario looks a bit different under this microscope.

Democratic Presidents increased the debt an average of 3.2% annually, while the Republican presidents increased it 9.7% annually. This looks a tad bad for the Republicans, but maybe not too bad.

However, here's something interesting. The Neo-Conservative movement started in earnest in 1981—certainly, we all remember Newt Gingrich.

The Neo-Conservative presidents since then have been Reagan, Bush-I, not a true Neo by any stretch but he let the Neo's run his presidency, and Bush-II.

Of course, in between Bush-I and -II came Bill Clinton. And, Conservatives, keep holding your noses! The reason that the country elected Bush-II in his first term was NOT because he ran against Al Gore, or because of the Florida ballot fiasco, or even because of the United States Supreme Court.

It was because Bill Clinton could not run for a third term. At the time, he would have won reelection in a landslide—justifiably or not.

Clinton—I know you Bush folks won't like this—sexual indiscretions notwithstanding, raised the debt only around 4% a year, while Reagan, Bush-I, and Bush-II raised it an average of about 11% a year.

Conservatives, keep inhaling and exhaling into the paper bag! Relative to the debt’s RATE of increase, Bill Clinton has been the only exception over the past 25-years, bringing the debt growth RATE down.

By the end of his last term, he had brought it down to just about ZERO.

Looking at the entire national debt over the past 25-years, Reagan, Bush-I, and Bush-II have been responsible for around 71% of it. Neo-Conservatives, it seems, either don’t know how or don’t have the will to control government spending.

Oh, and don’t blame it on wars, either. Both Democratic and Republican presidents have taken us to war. The Neo-Conservatives just seem more inept at efficiently ending them.

I have no ax to grind here, folks. For the record, I’m a Conservative, a registered Republican since 1963—the first year I was eligible to vote.

More importantly, though, I'm just a scientific and legal researcher who knows how to find the REAL numbers and crunch them.

I've said this numerous times. If we don't get the extremists out of our government (Neo-Conservatives on the Right and their equally dumb-assed cousins on the Left), we're ALL screwed.

If you notice, none of the three candidates has brought any of this up. They have not brought it up because the media hasn’t asked the right questions: too busy spending all if its time endlessly plotting meaningless gotchas.

Until we voters take the extremists out of the political equation, Congress cannot work the way we need it to work.

While the system wasn’t perfect back in the days of Tip O'Neil (’51-’69), Everett Dirksen (’77-’87), Barry Goldwater (’69-’87), and others, we didn't have the crescendo of deal-breaking ideological stalemates as we do now.

These people would solve myriad problems over a simple round of golf or afternoon lunch sessions. They were on opposing political sides, but they knew the art of reasonable, accommodating compromise.

Both sides of the political isle talked to one and other. They also understood that the security and prosperity of this country depended on it. They still DO depend on it—desperately!

We need to get back to that way of governing. We should be looking for a candidate who can get us closer to talking to each other. I'm not sure that any of the current candidates can do this... at least not right now.

Joe Walther is a freelance writer and publisher of The True Facts. You may comment on his column by clicking here.

Ah, YES! Let's hang the little darlings.

By Joseph Walther

Have you ever noticed how, every time some teenager does something “stupid,” a hue and cry goes up to pass some law aimed at “preventing” future occurrences? Oh yes, and the loudest cries usually come from knee jerk state lawmakers.

In Delaware, there is a bill in the early stages of sponsorship that would, if passed, result in teens losing their driving privileges if caught in the act of underage drinking.

The mere presence of a blood-alcohol level, however slight, would constitute legal grounds—whether they were driving at the time or NOT!

Well, it all sounds good and tough, but it’s no more than just another one of those convenient cure-alls that will wind up on the junk heap of stuff that never actually worked.

Adolescent problems abound throughout society: teenage drinking, adolescent drug use, and teen crime—to name but a few.

We’ve increased the legal drinking age and installed zero-tolerance policies in our schools and criminal justice systems.

We’ve established curfews, tried teenagers as adults, and sent them to adult prisons. And, I’ve even heard cries for adolescent executions.

It’s amazing, really. For all of our chest-thumping, get tough on crime proclamations, we still have one-percent of our adult population in jail, the highest rate of incarceration in the world.

Obviously, something’s eschew, as comedian Lewis Black would say. But, this never stops us from attempting to get even tougher.

Oh, we try other methods for a few months, but when they don’t seem to work right away, we go back to “getting tough,” which has NEVER worked.

If these techniques fail to work on adults, why do we keep trying to make them work on our adolescent population?

Politicians love cure-all solutions, commonly referred to as panaceas. The things are so convenient in terms of almost no relative costs AND they NEVER apply to the adults who propose them.

But, every bit as important as these two characteristics, cure-alls NEVER address the need to change adult values and conditions that have a much more powerful affect on adolescent behavior.

Adolescent curfews, adolescent drug testing, zero tolerance policies, and myriad other social cure-alls are wildly popular with local and national lawmakers for three reasons.

First, they NEVER interfere with our adult freedoms. Second, they make we adults feel better about ourselves because we’re so accomplished at conning ourselves into believing that we’re “doing” something. And third, they get politicians reelected with a minimum of intellectual effort.

I am, by no means, a social “do-gooder.” I fully recognize that we have serious adolescent-generated problems; and that we must address them for the greater good. I just don’t think that cure-alls work.

Neither time nor space permits me to address all of the ones I’ve mentioned so far. So, I’m going to pick on just one: our current favorite, underage drinking.

This past week I came across some data that sheds some sensible light on the problems that occur whenever we erroneously analyze underage drinking—translated as drinking alcoholic beverages prior to the age of 21-years.

It involved an old report—around the year 2000—put out by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). The report claimed that our ban on under-21 alcohol drinking in 1975 has saved 19,120 lives to date.

I couldn’t find any documentation on that number: 19,120. I’m a skeptic by nature, as are most of us that live in the world of legitimate science. Frankly, I wanted to see where the NHTSA got 19,120.

So, I began to dig around. I found a 1984 report published by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety regarding teenaged traffic fatalities. The report cited 7,648 teenage lives saved by increasing the minimum drinking age.

The study claimed that in states that raised the drinking age to 21-years, traffic fatalities fell around 10% more for ages 18 to 20 than they did for 21- to 24-year-olds.

Fine! Does it prove cause and effect, though? I seriously doubt it. But guess what number you come up with if you multiply 7,648 by 2.5?

Do the arithmetic. If all the NHTSA did was fudge the numbers—and it seems as though they did—their report was not worth the paper they used to print it.

I did some more digging. I found another report authored by Peter Asch and David Levy, professors from Rutgers and Baltimore University respectively.

They found that raising the drinking age to 21 resulted in a reduction in deaths in the 18-20-year-old group but raised them in the 21-24-year-old group.

They concluded that a “minimum legal drinking age has no perceptible control on driving fatalities.” They concluded even further, “Inexperience in drinking is a much more applicable risk factor… AND it’s independent of age.”

In 2001, Tom Dee and Bill Evans, from Swarthmore and the University of Maryland respectively, confirmed the earlier study. Only the latter study looked at multiple factors.

They concluded that raising the legal drinking age shifted some fatality risks from teenagers to young adults.

Specifically, raising the drinking age from 19 to 21 cut traffic fatalities for the 18- and 19-year-old set by 5% but increased it for the 22- and 23-year-old set by 8%.

In other words, it did nothing other than to increase (significantly) the “magnitude of mortality redistribution.”

We need to learn that there is a difference between saving lives and postponing death, particularly as it applies to the skill sets of both driving AND responsible drinking.

All of us who do both of these responsibly, learned how to do so by DOING, not by reading a manual of some kind. And, DOING is a critical component to adolescent leaning. We need to make sure we don’t forget this.

In order to master responsible adult behaviors, adolescents must practice them, whether it’s drinking, driving, or any other responsible adult activity.

I’m not advocating letting 16-year-olds drink or letting 12-year-olds drive. I’m simply saying that raising the legal drinking age from… say 18 or 19 to 21 does NOT prevent drinking related fatalities.

Nor, will raising the minimum driving age to 18 or even 20 prevent youthful driving deaths. It will simply shift the age at which they occur.

However, limiting the number of young people who can be in a young driver’s car will prevent multiple simultaneous deaths. This is good.

And, here’s another “sobering” statistic from the same report. In 40% of the drinking-related teen driving fatalities and almost 90% of those involving even younger children, the drunk driver was OVER the age of 21-years.

Throughout the United States, objective statistics prove that the majority of these so-called tough solutions fail to work, but we keep applying them.

In controlled city studies, for example, curfews were either not effective or increased the incidence of crime. The same is true of “zero tolerance” policies. They do virtually nothing to curb drug use.

Adolescents need time to practice responsible adult skills. Postponing the learning process does not help. Like it or not, we’re going to lose some adolescents to driving accidents, drinking notwithstanding. It’s a function of inexperience.

Here’s an idea. While it will take a greater degree of intellectual aptitude and time, perhaps teaching teenagers by example would prove more beneficial in the end than draconian measures aimed at getting tough, for the mere sake of it, have been so far.

God knows that our seemingly perpetual quest to abolish adolescence has not worked out too well.

Joe Walther is a freelance writer and publisher of The True Facts. You may comment on his column by clicking here.

You MIGHT be rich and NOT know it!

By Joseph Walther

If you work for a living, you know all about the Social Security tax your employer withholds from your paycheck each pay cycle.

The total is 12.4%; of which you, as the employee, pay half and your employer pays the other half.

And, God help you if you’re self-employed and have employees of your own. Not only will you have to pay half of your employees’ Social Security tax, you’ll have to pay ALL of your own—the entire 12.4%.

There is a cap, however, on the amount of earnings that are subject to the tax. Currently that cap is $102,000 per year. So, if you earn in excess of this amount, the excess is not subject to Social Security tax.

This drives the dyed-in-the-wool Liberals right up the proverbial wall. They immediately point out how this is a Conservative attempt to protect those filthy rich people.

The political hot air blows profusely—especially around reelection time—hinting at raising the cap or eliminating it altogether.

The proponents of the move claim that it’ll kill two birds with one stone. First it will end the tax-free frenzy for those wanton rich people.

Second, it will help solve an impending shortfall in Social Security benefits to those who retire.

In fact, Barack Obama has already stated that he favors removing the cap… not raising it, but REMOVING it completely.

When I read about this—quite by accident—I called my friends of ten years, Jack and Martha (No last names. They really are friends and I don’t want to embarrass them).

“Barack Obama thinks you guys are rich,” I told Martha over the phone. “Wow,” she replied, “Wait til I tell Jack!”

Jack came on the line and asked me how the hell Barack Obama knows how much he and Martha make.

“He has no idea,” I replied. “He wants to remove the current $102,000 cap on Social Security earnings in order to strengthen the fund and make the rich pay their fair share.”

I further explained that, “by implication, he thinks you two must be rich and he’s promising all the poor folks that he’s going to make you pay up.”

Jack and Martha have been married for ten years. They have three children, ages eight, six, and three.

He has worked for a software developer company for the last eight years, currently earning $65,000 a year plus major medical benefits for which he pays group rates each pay cycle.

Martha works a full-time job outside the home also. I’m not sure of her title, but it calls for a college degree and she earns $46,509.00 a year without major medical because she’s under Jack’s program.

These folks do not live an extravagant life style. She drives a newer model compact car—still making payments. He drives a debt-free old clunker.

Their cost of living has gone through the ceiling like everyone else’s has. Plus, their third child has special medical needs for which their insurance co-pays have skyrocketed over the last year and a half.

In order to meet all of their financial obligations, and to satiate the chronic addictions of eating regularly and living indoors, Jack took a second job writing non-competing code for another software company.

He averages about 30-hours a week, earning an additional $31,000 a year. So their combined family gross income, for the past two years, at least, is $142,500.

And, the way things are going economically right now, this is not going to change anytime soon—at least not voluntarily.

Senator Obama needs to explain how taxing this family an additional $5,022 a year will ensure that those rich people pay their fair share.

Families like Jack and Martha’s outnumber those earning a great deal more… you know, the ones he’s REALLY out to get, by a ratio of 500 to 1.

I think the impact, if any at all, won’t be worth the effort to figure it out. But, hell, this has never stopped an inept Congress before.

There is no denying that Social Security is in trouble. There is also no denying that we have to fix the problem. And QUICKLY!

However, we can do it WITHOUT privatizing it, increasing the cap, or eliminating it altogether.

The problem is that YOU guys down there on the beltway won’t do it if it means cutting into your mad money.

Try this. Leave the rate alone. Leave the cap alone. Just take Social Security tax revenue OUT of the general fund.

Put it into an interest-bearing fund and make it untouchable for any reason other than retirement and SSI needs.

This will mean, of course, that people like Senator Babbling Byrd won’t be able to deliver the same amount of annual pork to their home states.

It will also mean some serious cuts into the rest of the Congress’ spending habits.

We face many problems today that YOU people can solve a lot easier than you want to admit. After all, you people DID create most of them with your knee-jerk reactions to insure reelection.

Everyone in the United States Congress agrees on what they are. So, why don’t you get together and solve them?

I mentioned that I heard of Senator Obama’s desire to eliminate the Social Security cap by accident. There’s a reason for this, too.

It’s due to an alarming increase in the ineptness factor on the part of the reporting media. The 24-hour cable talking heads have too much time to fill.

They devote incredible amounts of energy to meaningless “gotcha” scenarios. The Reverend Wright/Barack Obama saga takes on a surreal precedence over a protracted, failing war effort.

Hillary Clinton swigging a shot of whiskey and a beer chaser hilariously trumps a crumbling economy and the fact that clueless George still thinks we’re doing OK.

The next United States President—regardless of party affiliation—will be facing a national debt topping the $10-trillion mark. It’s already at $9.3-trillion and growing at a pace of $1.45-billion a day!

On top of this, there are tax-cut issues that the next one must address immediately. The luxury of postponing action the way the last one did will no longer be an option.

With the exception of a few objective investigative reporters, we don’t hear much about the things that really matter.

I fear that the reporting media has become a Pavlovian dog. The politicians have trained them to ask the wrong questions—on cue—thereby rendering the answers moot.

Edward R. Murrow and others like him—all long dead—must be turning over in their graves!

One of three sitting United States Senators is going to be our next President. For the first time in our history, both a woman and a black man have a realistic chance of winning.

While I think this is both significant and wonderful, I resent the fact that the press has reduced the contest to nothing more than gender, race, and age, as well as a contest to see which news outlet can acquire the greatest number of meaningless gotchas!

There are millions of other people in this country working two, three, and sometimes four jobs to support their families. On top, most of them fall way short of that $102,000 combined joint gross amount.

I’m not trying to diminish their efforts or plights in life. However, placing everyone in the same situation and reducing society to the classes of the insanely rich and the working poor solves nothing.

Monetary benevolence is a function of monetary affluence. It always has been. While the availability of the latter does not guarantee the former, eliminating the affluence will absolutely guarantee the elimination of ALL benevolence.

I’ll be back next week. I have a lot more questions to ask these candidates irrespective of gender, race, age, or ability to swig whiskey and beer.

Joe Walther is a freelance writer and publisher of The True Facts. You may comment on his column by clicking here.