INEQUALITY – Page 4 – REVIEWS AND VIEWS OF LIFE

SOCIAL BLINDNESS

Criminal imprisonment, gun control, and drug addiction solutions are elusive, just as America’s eradication of discrimination is, at best, only a work in progress.

Books of Interest
Website: chetyarbrough.blog

Locking Up Our Own (Crime and Punishment in Black America)

By: James Forman Jr.

Narrated By: Kevin R. Free

James Forman Jr. (Author, professor of law and education at Yale Law School)

James Forman Jr. argues Washington D.C. is a multi-ethnic democratic example of what is wrong with the American penal system, gun control, and an addiction crisis. Forman offers an eye-opening recognition of America’s social blindness. The 2019 estimated population of Black residents in D.C. is approximately 44%. Forman suggests D.C. constitutes a representative sample of what has happened and is happening to Black Americans in “Locking Up Our Own”.

Forman addresses three social issues with Washington D.C.s’ effort to legislate against the consequences of crime associated with a Black population’s gun possession, and drug addiction. America’s history of Black discrimination is well documented. The issues of gun control and drug addiction are top-of-mind issues in all American communities. What makes Forman’s book interesting is his analysis of what he argues is a nascent conservative movement in Black American society.

Forman’s argument is based on statistics and the history of Black discrimination. The American incarceration rates for Black citizens are six times higher than for white citizens. Today’s statistics show 33% percent of the prison population is Black when it is only 12% of the U.S. adult population. White prisoners account for 30% of America’s prisoners but amount to 64% of the adult population.

The fundamental issue of Forman’s book is that more Black Americans are being imprisoned for crimes of addiction and theft than those committed by white Americans.

Forman uses Washington D.C. as evidence for a Black conservative movement because of its high percentage of Black residents. He notes D.C.’s effort to legislate gun control and regulate drug addiction are arguably more restrictive than other parts of the country. Firearms must be registered with the police department. A permit is required to purchase a firearm. Concealed weapons require a license. Assault weapons are banned. Magazine capacities are limited. Safe storage requirements are mandated. In the case of addiction, the “Office of National Drug Control Policy”, ONDCP is established in D.C. The program is instituted to provide funding to support communities heavily impacted by drug trafficking. A “Drug-Free Communities Program” offers grants to community coalitions to prevent youth substance abuse. The city expands Naloxone access to citizens to reverse opioid overdose.

Forman explains these policies are supported by D.C. residents in the face of national opposition to gun control. Forman notes the proactive drug control programs of D.C.

The obvious irony of D.C.’s policies is that they do not reflect what white America promotes but suggests Black America is likely more victimized by lax gun controls and drug regulation. White America needs to get on board.

Several chapters of Forman’s book explain the difficulties of integrating minorities into local police forces.

Police department managers opened their hiring practices to Blacks based on growing Black neighborhoods and belief that police services would be improved with officers who would be more racially and culturally suited to understand policing in minority neighborhoods. Forman recounts 1940s through the 1960s police force integration. He notes police department integration is fraught with discriminatory treatment of Black recruits.

Of course, the idea of crime in a Black neighborhood being better understood by Black officers is just another form of discrimination.

Crime is crime, whether in a minority neighborhood or not. Relegating Black police to Black neighborhoods only reinforces racial discrimination. Integrating the police only became another example of racial discrimination in America. Paring white and Black policemen on petrol became difficult. Getting white and Black policemen to work together becomes even more problematic when promotions are denied qualified Black officers. As with all organizations, police promotions were based on experience and standardized testing. What police departments would typically do is promote white officers over Black officers whether their experience rating or test scores were better or not.

The irony of white resistance to gun control and ineffective drug addiction policies has had an adverse impact on Black-on-Black crime.

The culture created in formally white police departments adversely condones harsh treatment of minorities. Black officers buy into a police department’s culture and begin discriminating against Black residents in the same way as white policemen.

The 2003 brutal beating and killing of Tyre Nichols by 5 Black Police Officers.

Drug addiction is the scourge of our time. Its causes range from the greed of drug company executives to poor policy decisions by the government to escapist and addictive desires of the public. Addictive drugs are the boon and bane of society. On the one hand, they reduce uncontrollable pain and anxiety; on the other they are often addictive, causing incapacity or death.

Discrimination can only be ameliorated with education, understanding, and governmental regulations that are consistent with the rights written in the American Constitution.

Criminal imprisonment, gun control, and drug addiction solutions are elusive, just as America’s eradication of discrimination is, at best, only a work in progress. Guns in the hands of American citizens are not guaranteed except as noted in the Constitution which infers “A well-regulated Militia…” is the only reason for “…people to keep and bear Arms…” How many more school children have to be killed by guns before the lie of American gun rights is dispelled.

The last chapters of Forman’s book address his experience as a public defender in Washington D.C. This is the weakest part of his story, but it points to the theme of an incarceration system in America that is broken. Prisons are not meant to reform criminals. They are overcrowded, violent, understaffed and, most damagingly, lack rehabilitative programs for re-education and vocational training that could reduce recidivism and return former prisoners to a socially productive society.

REAGANOMICS

Homelessness, illegal immigration, and America’s budget deficit will not be cured by reducing taxes on the rich or by tariffs that artificially increase the cost of living, or by cutting the labor force of farmers through mass deportations, or by making it easier to do business in the U.S.

Books of Interest
Website: chetyarbrough.blog

Reagan (His Life and Legend)

By: Max Boot

Narrated By: Graham Winton

Max Boot (Russian-born naturalized American author, editorialist, lecturer, and military historian, writer and editor for The Christian Science Monitor.)

Not being a fan of Ronald Reagan’s presidency, there is some reluctance in reviewing Max Boot’s biography of the man. However, Boot’s writing and research offer an understanding that makes one separate Reagan’s political life from his experienced life. Boot explains Reagan’s life during the years before and after the depression.

Reagan’s father was an alcoholic which reminds one of how one’s childhood is rarely idyllic. Boot’s biography of Reagan shows one becomes who they are–despite the human faults of their parents. The way a child matures is only partly defined by parents’ influence. Reagan’s father’s alcoholism did not carry through to his son.

Boot’s biography shows Reagan to be an affable, well-adjusted, teenager and young adult who has a strong sense of what he believes is right and wrong.

Reagan is a football athlete in high school that grows to become a 6′ 1″ handsome young man from a relatively poor middle-class family. He aspires to college and works to have enough money to attend Eureka College in Illinois. He graduates in 1932 with a BA in Economics and Sociology. Reagan is remembered by classmates and teachers as a smart student and determined football player that gave him the grit and experience to become a movie star in the 1940s.

The first chapters of Boot’s biography of Reagan are about his break into the entertainment industry as a sports caster.

Reagan had a nearly photographic memory. He used that skill to recall a football game he played in college to impress a radio station manager with broadcast details of a game. He recalls a game he played in college and purposefully embellishes his role in the game. Reagan’s skill as a radio announcer led to a screen test with Warner Brothers in 1937 that launched his film career.

As WWII approaches, Reagan enlists as a lieutenant in the U.S. Army Air Force. (The Air Force in these early days were not a separate branch of the service.)

Reagan’s experience in the entertainment industry led to producing training and propaganda films for the Army Air Force. Boot explains Reagan had significant vision problems with nearsightedness in his youth and presbyopia (difficulty of focusing on close objects) as he got older. Reagan never served in a combat role. He eventually adopted contact lenses to correct his vision; partly to please film producers who disliked the “coke bottle” lenses he needed to see properly.

Four issues that are interesting and informative in the first chapters of Boot’s biography of Reagan are 1) how affable, and well liked Reagan was to people who met him, 2) that he was well-read, 3) very handsome with a respect for women that carried through to several relationships, and 4) that though he had a sense of right and wrong, his moral center seemed to waiver between concern and indifference.

During the depression, Reagan was a strong supporter of Franklin Roosevelt’s efforts to resurrect the American economy.

Reagan seemed more like a liberal Democrat than the conservative Republican he came to be as Governor of California and President of the United States. The remainder of the book shows how that change came about. Boot notes several factors that influenced Reagan to change from a Roosevelt to Goldwater supporter. The movie industry and the growing anti-communist era of the fifties influenced many former liberals. Reagan’s experience in Hollywood reinforced conservativism.

Reagan became rich from his relationship with Gerneral Electric. The corporate culture of GE in the 1950s and 60s was decidedly conservative. When Reagan became the host of “General Electric Theater” that culture seeped into his consciousness.

In 1962, Reagan switched from the Democratic party to the Republican party. He supported the election of Goldwater who ran against President Lyndon Johnson who was mired in the Vietnam war while promoting big government social welfare programs. The influence of Goldwater and the liberalism of the Johnson polices drove Reagan to believe big government was ruining the wealth and opportunity of Americans. He adopted conservative beliefs for economic deregulation, tax cuts that largely benefited the rich, and promoted anti-communist foreign policies. Reagan’s support for conservative policies is exemplified by his “A Time for Choosing” speech supporting Barry Goldwater’s campaign for President in 1964.

In the political climate of the 1960s, Reagan, with the support of GE, runs for Govenor of California. His position as president of the Screen Actors Guild, support of Goldwater, and the public’s perception of inefficiency of state government provided a platform for Reagan to run. The civil rights movement, Vietnam protests, the free speech movement, the Watts riots in LA, and the hippie movement in San Francisco created an environment ripe for conservative reaction. Reagan is elected Governor of California twice, to serve from 1967 to 1975.

Reagan as the Governor of California.

Reagan described his time with GE as a “postgraduate course in political science”.

Reagan’s experience as Governor of California, his Hollywood image, the support of big companies like GE, and the economic issues confronting Carter, give him a platform to run for President of the United States. Todays’ Republicans hold Reagan in high regard. Some view Reagan as one of the best recent presidents of the United States. Those who hold him in high regard cite his economic policies, strong national defense and leadership during the cold war. He believed in small government, lower taxes, and conservative values. Some suggest Trump is Reaganomics second coming.

Reagan runs for President of the United States in 1976. He wins and is re-elected in 1980.

What is not fully understood by some Americans, is the accomplishments of Reagan held some very negative consequences. Some argue he was the prime mover in nuclear weapons reduction. The biography of Gorbachev suggests the prime mover was Gorbachev and his support of glasnost with an opening of Russia to western ideals.

Some, like me, would argue Reagan accelerated economic inequality by giving tax cuts to the wealthy and deregulating the economy.

The federal deficit increased from $70 billion dollars to 152.6 billion dollars during the Reagan presidential years. In comparison to Carter’s administration, the deficit was less than half of Reagan’s at $74 billion dollars. Today’s deficit has grown to 1.83 trillion dollars. Four out of seven presidents (including Trump’s second term) since Reagan have been Republican. The deficit lays at the feet of both parties.

With the election of Trump, who emulates Reagan’s policies, one wonders–how much greater the deficit will be with reduced taxes for the rich and a renewal of economic deregulation.

NARCISSISM

Jollett concludes his memoir by arguing his mother is a narcissist. Who is the narcissist in “Hollywood Park: A Memoir”? Mikel Jollett fails to understand how difficult it is for a single mother to raise children on her own.

Books of Interest
Website: chetyarbrough.blog

Hollywood Park: A Memoir

By: Mikel Jollett

Narrated By: Mikel Jollett

Mikel Jollett (Author, American musician, frontman for Airborne Toxic Event.)

Narcissism is an excessive sense of self-importance and a lack of empathy for others. Though Mikel Jollett shows skill as a writer, his assessment of life as a child grown-up exhibits a personal blindness about the hardship of single parents.

Every child has a story. This is a memoir of Mikel Jollet’s life. Jollett’s story is about his family that joined what became a cult in the 1960s. It was called Synanon, a rehab program in Santa Monica, California for addicts that began in the late 1950s. The rehab program evolved into a religious movement. As it became a religious movement, its harsh policies drove some residents to flee. Jollett’s story is about leaving with his mother and brother when he is five years old.

Jollett’s mother leaves the Synanon commune and the father of her children to return to her parent’s house to re-start her and her children’s lives.

To Mikel, leaving was a dramatic break from the Synanon way of life and a father he misses. Jollett’s father was an addict and former convict who lived what seems a vagabond life until he joins Synanon. Mikel’s mother decides to secretly escape with her two boys as the Synanon life became more and more harsh. Despite its growing religiosity and authoritarian milieu, Synanon survives until 1991 when it faces numerous legal issues related to forced sterilizations and violence toward members.

As a single parent, Mikel’s mother struggles to regain an identity and her own life.

Some of the religious teaching at Synanon appears to have remained with her. After living with her mother and father in California, she chooses to move to Salem, Oregon. The move is motivated by the high cost of living in California and a job she finds in Salem. After some time in Salem, she meets a reformed alcoholic who comes to live with her and the boys. Mikel grows to like the reformed alcoholic, but his mother’s new companion falls off the wagon and leaves the boys and their mother. He returns sometime later, only to leave again.

Bonnie who was close to Mikel when they lived in the Synanon community became a companion with Mikel’s father in California.

The boy’s paternal father remains in California and eventually looks up his wife’s children in Oregon. Upon visiting the boys in Salem, he tells them they will be invited to visit him in California, where he lives near the beach. In their first visit they become reacquainted with Bonnie who had been in the Synanon program. Mikel had been emotionally attached to the woman when at Synanon, so he was pleased to see her.

Mikel reminds reader/listeners that many children in America are not raised in “Leave to Beaver” families.

Life is a struggle for most children, even in unbroken families. Being raised in a single parent home, particularly when the single parent is a woman is harder because of societal inequality. Mikel and his brother are boys, so they have better chances for breaking poverty’s cycle, but their mother is faced with greater obstacles. Mikel’s story shows a better chance for success than some children raised by a single parent because of a precocity recognized by the principal at his school in Salem. Precocity is no guarantee of success but being a male and smart are significant advantages.

Mikel and his brother, Tony, had older brother/younger brother conflicts.

Tony, as the older brother, was sometimes cruel or uncaring about his younger sibling. As Mikel grew older, he found ways to punish his older brother for his cruelty. As they matured, they reconciled but both left their mother to live with their father in California. The baggage their mother had from her experience at Synanon, her husband’s abandonment, and the circumstances of poverty became too much for Mikel to understand the trials of being a single mother with two children. Mikel’s judgement is that his mother was too narcissistic.

Sexual inequality are two strikes against women in life. Some women overcome great odds to become economically independent; most do not.

Women struggle with life’s inequality in ways that escape understanding of masculine society, i.e., particularly male children who live with a single mother’s nurturing through the formative years of their lives. Divorced or abandoned mothers often do what they must do to raise children that fathers mostly neglect during the formative years of life. Male parents escape responsibility by leaving their children with mothers. Ex-husbands have the privilege of regaining an independent life in a world that offers better opportunities for men than women. They often re-marry which is what Mikel’s father does.

Jollett concludes his memoir by arguing his mother is a narcissist. Who is the narcissist in “Hollywood Park: A Memoir“? Mikel Jollett fails to understand how difficult it is for a single mother to raise children on her own.

POWER IN INTIMACY

Purnell’s biography implies the drive to succeed for women is based on intimacy rather than inherent human equality. Though that is not the intent of Purnell, intimacy has historically been the avenue women have had to take in society to open opportunity’s door.

Books of Interest
Website: chetyarbrough.blog

Kingmaker (Pamela Harriman’s Astonishing Life of Power, Seduction, and Intrigue)

By: Sonia Purnell

Narrated By: Louise Brealey

Sonia Purnell (Author, British journalist, worked at the news magazine “The Economist”)

Every writer is influenced by the country in which they were born. Sonia Purnell writes an interesting biography of Pamela (Digby-Churchill) Harriman in “Kingmaker” but from the perspective of a British journalist. This is not to argue Purnell’s interesting perspective is wrong but that there is a spin that is nationalist, more than objective, about Pamela Harriman’s life.

During the beginning years of WWII, America avoided the war until Pearl Harbor when it became clear that a policy of isolationism would not work.

The reluctance of many American businessmen and industrialists like Joseph Kennedy and Henry Ford would not see Hitler for what he was, a fascist racist planning to dominate as much of Europe as Germany’s war machine would allow. Some in the American government, like Franklin Roosevelt, understood Hitler was a threat to all of Europe if not America. Roosevelt maneuvered the government to support England with a Lend/Lease program to defend themselves against German aggression, despite a political majority’s desire for isolationism.

A SIDE NOTE: Donald Trump believes a negotiated settlement to cease hostilities, even with losses for Ukraine, is best for America. Trump reminds one of Joseph Kennedy and Henry Ford who implied peace and appeasement would avoid war.

Getting back to Purnell’s history of Pamela Harriman, Purnell explains the important role Pamela played, before Pearl Harbor, that mobilized America’s entry into the war. Pamela Harriman is unquestionably an English patriot. Her close relationship with Winston made her an ideal conduit and influencer in smoothing the relationship between America and the British government. The intimate relationship she developed with Harriman is a tribute to her contribution to the formation of an allied force to defeat Germany.

The massive Lend-Lease program is created in the late 1930s because of the Neutrality Acts that kept America out of direct engagement in the early days of WWII.

The program began in 1939 as a cash and carry program that evolved into a Lend-Lease program in 1941. American could lend or lease military equipment and supplies to any country that allies themselves with the U.S. if it were to enter into the war. The United Kingdom, Russia, and China were considered crucial to any alliance that might be created to defeat Germany. The complexity and logistics of Lend-Lease required astute management by American managers. Harry Hopkins was its first administrator, but Averill Harriman was needed to become a diplomatic political expediter for the process.

Purnell argues the political process in the American/United Kingdom relationship was smoothed and improved by Pamela Digby Harriman who was married to the son of Winston Churchill, Randolph Churchill.

Randolph has at best, a mixed reputation. He was a heavy drinker, reckless, and rude. He was married and divorced twice and had gambling problems that were a constant debt problem that disrupted Pamela’s life. She became closer to Winston Churchill than to her husband and became much more politically involved and astute than her husband in government affairs. That experience made her a perfect match for building a closer relationship with Avrill Harriman that became an affair between two married adults. Harriman was twenty-eight years older than Pamela but had a reputation as a suave ladies’ man.

Purnell reflects on the many affairs of Pamela Churchill Harriman beginning with Averell Harriman, then Edward R. Murrow, and proceeding to John Hay Whitney, Prince Aly Khan, Gianni Agnelli, Alfonso de Portago, Baron Elie de Rothschild, Frederick L. Anderson, Sir Charles Portal, and William S. Paley. The story becomes stale.

There is a cloying sense of unfairness in “Kingmaker ” because Pamela’s skill seems trivialized by her sexuality.

Pamela simply wanted an equal opportunity to succeed in the pursuit of money, power, and prestige, i.e. all the secular objectives men take for granted. Purnell’s biography implies the drive to succeed for women is based on intimacy rather than inherent human equality. Though that is not the intent of Purnell, intimacy has historically been the avenue women have had to take in society to open opportunity’s door.

LIBERAL DELUSION

Eubanks is wrong to think digitization ensures a future that will create a permanent underclass. The next four years may not show much progress in welfare, but American history has shown resilience in the face of adversity.

Books of Interest
Website: chetyarbrough.blog

Automating Inequality (How Hich-tech Tools Profile, Police, and Punish the Poor

By: Virginia Eubanks

Narrated By: Teri Schnaubelt

Virginia Eubanks (Author, American political scientist, professor at the University at Albany, New York.)

At the risk of sounding like a “bleeding heart” liberal, Virginia Eubanks assesses the inefficient and harmful effects of technology on welfare, childcare services, and homelessness in America. Eubanks illustrates how technology largely reduced the cost of Indiana’s welfare. However, cost reduction came from removing rather than aiding Americans in need of help. She shows southern California is better organized in the 2000s than Indiana in their welfare reform movement in the 1990s. However, the fundamental needs of the poor and homeless are shown to be poorly served in both jurisdictions.

In the last chapters of the book, Eubanks looks at Pennsylvania’s childcare services (CCW). She argues her research shows digitization of personal information, societal prejudice, and inadequate financial investment as fundamental causes of America’s failure to help abused children. Eubanks implies the cause of that failure is the high-tech tools of the information age.

Eubanks offers a distressing evaluation of Indiana’s, California’s, and Pennsylvania’s effort to improve state welfare programs.

The diagnosis and cure for welfare are hard pills to swallow but Eubank’s research shows welfare’s faults without clarifying a cure. She clearly identifies symptoms of inequality and how it persists in America. Eubank infers America’s politicians cannot continue to ignore homelessness and inequality. America needs to reinforce its reputation as the land of opportunity and freedom. Eubank implies technology is the enemy of a more equal society by using collected information to influence Americans to be more than self-interested seekers of money, power, and prestige.

Eubank explains how Indiana welfare recipients were systematically enrolled in an information technology program meant to identify who receives welfare, why they are unemployed, and how they spend their money.

She argues this detailed information is not just used to categorize welfare recipients’ qualifications for being on welfare. The purported reason for gathering the information is to help those on welfare to get off welfare and become contributors to the American economy. What Eubank finds is the gathered information is used to justify taking citizens off of welfare, not improve its delivery. Poorly documented information became grounds for denying welfare payments. If someone failed to complete a form correctly, their welfare payments were stopped. The view from government policy makers was that welfare costs went down because of the State’s information gathering improvements. In reality welfare costs went down because recipients were rejected based on poorly understood rules of registration. Indiana did not have enough trained management personnel to educate or help applicants. Welfare applicants needed help to understand how forms were to be completed and what criteria qualified them for aid.

From Indiana State’s perspective, information technology reduced their cost of welfare. From the perspective of Americans who genuinely needed welfare, technology only made help harder to receive.

Eubank notes there are three points that had to be understood to correct Indiana’s welfare mistakes:

information algorithms qualifying one for welfare must be truthful, fair, and accurate,
the information must reflect reality, and
training is required for welfare managers and receivers on the change in welfare policies.

Another point made by Eubank is the danger of computer algorithms that are consciously or subconsciously biased. A biased programmer can create an algorithm that unfairly discriminates against welfare applicants that clearly need help. This seems a legitimate concern, but Eubank misses the point of more clearly understanding the need of welfare for some because of the nature of American capitalism and the consequence of human self-interest. Contrary to Eubank’s argument, digitalization of information about the poor offers a road to its cure not a wreck to be avoided.

WELFARE CATEGORY ELIGIBILITY PERCENTAGES IN INDIANA

Eubank tells the story of a number of Indiana residents that had obvious medical problems making them unemployable but clearly eligible for welfare payments. They are taken off welfare because of mistakes made by government employees’ or welfare recipient’ misunderstandings of forms that had to be completed. From the government’s standpoint Indiana’ welfare costs went down, but many who needed and deserved help were denied welfare benefits. The rare but widely publicized welfare cheats became a cause celeb during the Reagan years that aggravated the truth of the need for welfare in America. The truth, contrary to Eubanks opinion, becomes evident with the digitization of information as a basis for legislative correction.

Eubank notes Skid Row in Los Angeles lost many of its welfare clients with gentrification of the neighborhood. The poor were moved out by rich Californians who rebuilt parts of Skid Row into expensive residences.

Eubank explains a different set of problems in the Los Angeles, California welfare system. The technological organization of the LA welfare system is better but still fails to fairly meet the needs of many citizens. The reasons are similar to Indiana’s in that algorithms that categorize information were often misleading. However, the data-gathering, management, and use of information is better. The more fundamental problem is in resources (money and housing) available to provide for the needs of those who qualify for welfare. It is not the digitization of the public that is causing the problem. Contrary to the author’s opinion, digitization of reality crystalizes welfare problems and offers an opportunity for correction.

Homelessness is complex because of its many causes. However, having affordable housing is a resource that is inadequately funded and often blocked by middle class neighborhoods in America. Even if the technological information is well organized and understood, the resources needed are not available. Here is where the social psychology of human beings comes into play. Those in the middle class make a living in some way. They ask why can’t everyone make a living like they have? Why is it different for any other healthy human being in America? Here is where the rubber meets the road and why homelessness remains an unsolved problem in America.

People are naturally self-interested. One person’s self-interest may be to get high on drugs, another to steal what they want, others to not care about how they smell, where they sleep, look, live, or die. Others have chosen to clean themselves up and get on with their life. Why should their taxes be used to help someone who chooses not to help themselves? Understanding the poor through digitization is the foundation from which a solution may be found.

Traveling around the world, one sees many things. In India, the extraordinary number of people contributes to homelessness. In France, it is reported that 300 of every 100,000 people are homeless. Even in Finland, though there are fewer homeless, they still exist.

It is a complex problem, but it seems solvable with the example of what Los Angles is trying to do. It begins with technology that works by offering a clear understanding of the circumstances of homelessness. A detailed profile is made of every person that is living on the street. They are graded on a scale of 1 to 17 based on the things they have done in their lives. That grade determines what help they may receive. Some may be disqualified because of a low number but the potential of others, higher on the scale, have an opportunity to break the cycle of poverty with help from welfare. It is the resources that are unavailable and social prejudice, not gathered personal digital information, that constrain solutions.

With informational understanding of a welfare applicant, it principally requires political will and economic commitment by welfare providers. There is no perfect solution but there are satisficing solutions that can significantly reduce the population of those who need a helping hand. American is among the richest countries in the world. Some of that wealth needs to be directed toward administrative management, housing, mental health, and gainful employment.

Like all countries of the world, as technological digitization improves, human services will grow to become a major employment industry in the world.

America, as an advanced technology leader, has the tools to create a service economy that is capable of melding industrial might with improved social services.

Eubanks travels to Pennsylvania to look at their child services program.

What Eubanks finds in Pennsylvania is similar to what she found in LA and, to a degree, Indiana. Children who are at risk of being abandoned, abused, or neglected are categorized in a data bank that informs “Child Services” of children who need help. The problem is bigger than what public services can handle but the structure of reporting offers hope to many children that are at risk. Like LA, it is a resource problem. But also, it is a problem that only cataloging information begins to address.

Parents abuse their children in ways that are often too complicated for a standardized report to reveal. Details are important and digitization of personal information helps define what is wrong and offers a basis for pragmatic response.

Computerized reports, even with A.I., are only a tip of the reality in which a child lives. This is not to argue child-services should be abandoned or that reports should not be made but society has an obligation to do the best it can to ensure equality of opportunity for all. Every society’s responsibility begins with childhood, extends through adulthood and old age–only ending with death. Understanding the problems of the poor is made clearer by digitization. Without digital visibility, nothing will be done.

Eubanks gives America a better understanding of where welfare is in America. She is wrong to think digitization ensures a future that will create a permanent underclass. The next four years may not show much progress in welfare, but American history has shown resilience in the face of adversity.

JAMES BALDWIN

James Baldwin’s “The Fire Next Time” gives advice that resonates with the troubles of the world today.

Books of Interest
Website: chetyarbrough.blog

The Fire Next Time

By: James Baldwin

Narrated By: Jessie Martin

James Baldwin (Author, 1924-1987, African American writer and civil rights activist.)

“The Fire Next Time” consists of two brief essays by James Baldwin that are seminal works on the equality of all human beings. Published in 1963, the first essay is “My Dungeon Shook” which is advice to a young black American. The second, “Down at the Cross…” is a criticism of Catholic and the Nation of Islam religions.

The first is a message to Baldwin’s nephew about white America’s prejudice toward black Americans.

He is telling his nephew to reject white America’s stereotypical view of black Americans. Baldwin tells his nephew to embrace who he is as a human being, neither better nor worse, and to pursue life and living with the truth of his being.

RELIONS OF THER WORLD

“Down at the Cross” is a criticism of religion, particularly the Christian and Nation of Islam faiths. Baldwin argues that both diminish the truth of God by feeding the flames of anti-spiritualism and social inequality.

Baldwin argues through love and understanding of differences among religions and races, the divisiveness of inequality can be erased.

The fundamental point of Baldwin’s writing is that NOI offers a part of what black America needs by instilling self-respect and identity. However, he criticizes NOI’s separatism as counterproductive and extreme. Baldwin advocates love and understanding among all human beings.

Elijah Muhammad (1897-1975, Religious Leader of NOI)

Elijah Muhammed’s advance of the Nation of Islam (NOI) is credited for advocating black empowerment, but Baldwin implies that empowerment mitigates against belief in the equality of all human beings.

Baldwin evolves to a more humanist view of life and declines to take a prominent role either in the Nation of Islam, or the Pentacostal religion he left twenty years earlier. James Baldwin’s “The Fire Next Time” gives advice that resonates with the troubles of the world today.

VENGEFUL IDEALIST

The election results are in, and Trump is our President once again. This is a sad commentary on the will of the American people and the threat America is to world economic comity.

Books of Interest
Website: chetyarbrough.blog

People, Power, and Profits (Progressive Capitalism for an Age of Discontent)

By: Joseph E. Stiglitz

Narrated By: Sean Runnette

Joseph Stiglitz (Author, American economist, public policy analyst, received a Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 2001.)

With reservation, Joseph Stiglitz’s book “People, Power, and Profits” is reviewed here. The reservation is because of the risk of succumbing to echo-chamber’ belief. That belief is that corporations and wealthy individuals should not be able to pour as much money as they want into the American election process, that bankers unjustly escaped punishment for the 2008 financial crises, and that Donald Trump should never again be elected President of the United States.

Stiglitz is considered a “New Keynesian” economist which puts him at odds with famous economists like Milton Friedman and Friedrich Hayek. Friedman believes the most effective fiscal policies comes from monetary policy control by the government. Hayek believed in a market economy with as little government intervention as possible. Stiglitz flatly disagrees with Hayek and only agrees with Friedman in that government has a responsibility to intervene in government economic policy. Stiglitz identity as a “New” Keynesian is because, unlike Keynes’ economic theory, there is no waiting for an economic crisis for government to intervene but to intervene now to make future economic crises less likely.

John Maynard Keynes (English, Eton and King’s College graduate, mathematician, economist, 1883-1946, died at age 62.)

Why I am concerned about listening to Stiglitz’s book about the economy is that I am listening to some things I already believe. I believe the gap between rich, and poor is the greatest threat to, not only American democracy, but all forms of government. Stiglitz may be my echo chamber.

Stiglitz believes in democratic government intervention to ameliorate the wide gap between rich and poor.

Stiglitz has an idealist platform to cure what he views as the solution to narrowing the gap between rich and poor in America. Stiglitz makes five policy recommendations to reduce the gap between rich and poor in America.

Increase taxes on income from capital gains and inheritance.
Use tax revenues to improve public education in ways that equalize costs between the rich and poor.
Refine anti-trust laws to prevent monopolies and promote competition.
Intervene in corporate governance to ensure fairer compensation between management and labor.
Regulate banks to prevent exploitation of the public.

These are defensible polices but they have to survive the give and take political process of American democratic government.

However, that process is unfairly biased by allowing corporations and the wealthy to pour disproportionate amounts of money into the American election process. Contribution by corporations and the wealthy should be limited because candidates are beholding to big financial donors with little concern for the poor.

Small donors driving 2020 presidential race

In the 2020 and 2024 election cycle, big donors contributed from 75 to 78 percent of campaign donations.

The problem with Stiglitz’s book is not in his recommendations but in his vengeful angel’ rhetoric. America is founded on freedom, not revenge. It is the give and take of differences of opinion and “checks and balances” of the Constitution that have made America great. Many mistakes have been made and are still being made by our government but even a horrible President like Trump cannot change the fundamental direction of our democracy.

John F. Kennedy’s belief that a rising tide lifts all boats has not provided life vests to the poor in America.

The gap between rich and poor in America must be resolved. Neither Harris nor Stiglitz may be the answer, but Trump is only going to try to resurrect a past that has led our government in the wrong direction. The unconscionable cost of medical services and drugs, extraordinary compensation for executives, regressive taxes, election financing bias, and financial industry greed must be addressed through the American political process.

American democracy’s failures will not be cured, but they must be addressed and ameliorated to remain a beacon for freedom in the world. The election results are in, and Trump is our President once again. This is a sad commentary on the will of the American people and the threat America is to world economic comity.

PSYCHOSIS

Psychiatric illness is disturbingly believable and terrifying. Human psychosis ruins lives if not properly diagnosed and treated.

Books of Interest
Website: chetyarbrough.blog

The Night Guest

By: Hildur Ingveldardóttir Guðnadóttir

Narrated & Translated By: Mary Robinette Kowal

Hildur Ingveldardóttir Guðnadóttir (Icelandic Author, classical cellist, and composer –awarded an Academy Award, two Grammies, and an Emmy.)

The multi-talented Guðnadóttir has written a chilling tale of psychosis in “The Night Guest”. In one sense, it is a reflection of sexual equality, but it also reveals how complex and dangerous it is to be human. This fictional story is about an attractive single woman who is unable to peacefully sleep through the night. Every morning, she wakes up with a tiredness that sticks with her through the day. On some mornings she finds bruises or scratches on her arms and has no idea of why she feels so tired. She sees several doctors and finally finds one that takes her symptoms seriously.

Her doctor runs tests and finds nothing seems to explain the tiredness. The doctor asks her if she is depressed. The woman says she feels sad sometimes but not particularly depressed. The doctor recommends she see a psychiatrist, but she chooses to ignore the advice.

The tiredness, odd bruises, and scratches on her body continue to appear, i.e., after sleep and in the morning. She comes across an article that tells her of sleepwalkers that don’t realize they are sleepwalking at night after falling asleep. She is convinced that explains her symptoms and asks her doctor for sleeping pills. The doctor reluctantly agrees and provides a prescription. Initially, the treatment seems to help, and the young woman resumes her life, meets a new boyfriend, and begins to feel everything is okay.

The author explains the young woman is a lover of cats but notices that lately the cats in her neighborhood have become afraid of her.

When she approaches them, they hiss and raise their backs. She is mystified by their response. As the story progresses, listeners find she was involved with the owner of a company for which she works. He is married and the relationship is ended with some acrimony. The two avoid each other at the workplace but the still-married man tries to resurrect their relationship. The young woman is involved with another man and has no interest in resuming a relationship with a married man.

She returns to her belief that her sleeplessness is caused by her sleepwalking and decides to monitor her behavior with a video recording devise.

She reviews the recording to find she wakes up and leaves her bedroom for hours at a time. She is wearing a pedometer to measure the steps she takes and finds it is several thousand steps more than what it was at the end of her day. What makes her discovery ominous is that the recording shows a conscious and alert person that has to be her, but she feels that person is entirely different from herself.

The woman’s tiredness returns, and she finds one morning that all of her sleeping pills are gone. Her former married lover disappears. Her current lover tells her to never contact him again without an explanation. The denouement of the story is horrifying. Explanation of her psychiatric illness is disturbingly believable and terrifying. Human psychosis ruins lives if not properly diagnosed and treated.

HOLODOMOR

Communism has failed in every country that has tried to institute what their rulers believe is in the best interest of their citizens.

Books of Interest
Website: chetyarbrough.blog

“Red Famine” Stalin’s War on Ukraine

By: Anne Applebaum

Narrated By: Suzanne Toren

Anne Applebaum (Author, journalist, historian, wrote Pulitzer Prize for Non-Fiction with “Gulag: A History”.)

As an accomplished historian, Anne Applebaum offers an insightful view of the 1917 Russian Revolution and its rule over Ukraine, the breadbasket of Europe. Her history is a reminder of the Stalin’ atrocity which is being reinvented by Vladimir Putin in his invasion of Ukraine. The striking difference is that Putin, unlike Stalin, cares less about stealing Ukraine’s agricultural productivity than Russia’s return to a dead past. Applebaum’s history leads one to conclude that Russia’s twenty first century youth, its oil wealth, and political influence are being wasted by Putin. The past never precisely repeats itself, but Putin is committing many of the same mistakes made by Lenin and Stalin in the early 20th century.

Ukraine is an independent nation with its own evolving culture.

Applebaum’s history shows that only through covert and overt repression could Ukraine become a part of the Russian nation. Putin’s war may succeed in the short term, but Ukrainian independence will reassert itself when Russia’s leadership realizes the cost of repression is greater than the benefit of colonialization. Just as Israel will realize it cannot eradicate an idea by cutting off heads of its leaders, Russia will not erase a culture by murdering nationalist defenders.

Holodomor, The Ukrainian Famine That Killed Millions in 1932-33.

Applebaum addresses the history of the 1921′ and early 1930s’ famines in Ukraine to reveal the anguish felt by some, if not all, native Ukrainians. The Russification of Ukraine began with the 1917 revolution. Lenin, and later Stalin, were dealing with the many difficulties of establishing a new form of government in a nation accustomed to monarchal control. They viewed communism through the eyes of a people accustomed to totalitarian control. Lenin, with the help of associates like Stalin, preached the fiction of social and economic equality that gives every citizen compensation according to their abilities and needs. That impossible objective melded with Russia’s history of monarchal control of its citizens.

Lenin, and then Stalin, use their power to lead and govern, like the Russian Czars of its past, but with the curtain of communism to hide their ambition.

Applebaum’s story of Ukraine’s treatment in the Lenin’ and Stalin’ years (and today’s Putin’ years) reveals the cruelty and consequence of totalitarian rule. Applebaum focuses on two famines in Ukraine’s history, the famines of 1921-23 and 1932-33. The first famine is caused by drought, consequences of WWI and the complicated change in Russian governance after the 1917 revolution. By the time of the so-called famine in1932-33, Russia’s new form of government had stabilized with one ruler exercising control over the interpretation and actions of a communist government. By 1927, Stalin had become the undisputed leader of Russia.

Ukraine is considered the breadbasket of Europe.

In 1922, Stalin views Ukraine as a source of food to stabilize Russian control of what became known as the U.S.S.R.

Stalin, like Mao in China, believed collectivization of farmland and its cultivation would improve agricultural production in Ukraine. Like the experience in China, farm collectivization had the opposite effect. It reduced production and demotivated farmers. When production declined in Ukraine, Stalin ordered Russian troops to confiscate grain and the livestock of Ukraine citizens in the 1932-33 so-called famine. Arguably, that famine is manmade, not caused by nature but by Stalin’s decision. Stalin ordered confiscation of Ukrainian food and livestock provisions for the Russian people. Stalin created a famine and caused the death of an estimated 4,000,000 Ukrainian citizens.

Like Stalin in 1932, Putin chooses to murder Ukrainian citizens without concern about war’s inhumanity.

Communism has failed in every country that has tried to institute what their rulers believe is in the best interest of their citizens.

LIFE’S LOTTERY

Eugenics and the fickle political nature of human beings outweighs the benefits of Harden’s idea of choosing what is best for society.

Books of Interest
Website: chetyarbrough.blog

“The Genetic Lottery” Why DNA Matters for Social Equality

By: Kathryn Paige Harden

Narrated By: Katherine Fenton

Kathryn Paige Harden (Author, American psychologist and behavioral geneticist, Professor of Psychology at the University of Texas at Austin.)

“The Genetic Lottery” is an important book that may be easily misinterpreted. Hopefully, this review fairly summarizes its meaning. Fundamentally, Kathryn Paige Harden concludes all human beings are subject to a genetic lottery and the culture in which they mature. It is not suggesting all human beings are equal but that all can develop to their potential as long as he/she has an equal opportunity to become what their genetic inheritance, education, and life’s luck allow.

Harden explains racial identity is a false flag signifying little about human capability.

Every human being is born within a culture and from a mother and father who have contributed genetic DNA they inherited from previous generations. DNA carries genetic instructions for development, growth, and reproduction of living organisms. Those instructions are a blueprint for an organism’s growth. However, the genetic information passed on to future generations varies with each birth and is subject to a lottery of DNA instructions.

The lottery of genetics extends a multitude of characteristics ranging from intelligence to height to the color of one’s skin.

One may become an Einstein, or a slow-witted dolt. One may be born healthy or destined to die from an incurable disease. The growing understanding of genetics suggests the potential for human intervention to prevent disease, but also the possibility of creating a master race of human beings. That second possibility is a Hitlerian idea that lurks in the background of science and political power. It revolves around the theory of eugenics.

Harden suggests an ameliorating power of eugenics is its potential for offering equal opportunity for all to be the best version of themselves within whatever culture they live.

Putting aside the potential of human genetic theory’s risk, Harden explains every human is born within a culture that reflects the genetic inheritance of the continent on which they are born. The combination of the human genetic lottery and the culture in which humans live create ethnic identity and difference. Differences are the strengths and weaknesses of society. Strengths are in the diversity of culture that adds interest and dimension to life. The weakness of society is its tendency to look at someone who is different as a threat or obstacle to a native’s ambition or cultural identity.

Harden suggests every human being’s genetic code should be identified to aid human development by creating an environmental support system that capitalizes on genetic strengths and minimizes weaknesses.

This idealistic view of genetics is fraught with a risk to human freedom of thought and action. Science is generations away from understanding genetics and its relationship to the weaknesses and strengths of human thought and action. Understanding what gave Einstein a genetic inheritance that could see and understand E=MC squared is not known and may never be known. The luck of genetic inheritance and the lottery of life experiences are unlikely to ever be predictable. One interesting note in the forensic examination of Einsteins brain (recorded in another book) is that he had a higher-than-normal gilia cell ratio, non-normal folding patterns in his parietal lobe, and a missing furrow in the parietal lobe that may have allowed better connectivity between brain regions.

Life will always be a matter of trial and error.

The threat of eugenic determinism and the fickle political nature of human beings outweighs the benefits of Harden’s idea of choosing what is best for society.

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