The GREAT Depression

Ever think about the phrase, the "Great Depression."

A depression is an economic downturn in which the economy shrinks by 10 per cent or more. In fact, the last depression the US has had was the Great Depression. Some people still think this recession (two quarters of negitive growth in a row) could become a depression. But the Great Depression wasn't called that merely because it was a depression, but because it was bigger than most depressions, which were quite common and frequent.

After Andrew Jackson abolished the Bank of the United States (which Hamilton created to regulate the nation's economy) and prior to the creation of the Federal Reserves System, depressions were common. There was a bad one in 1832. And another in 1837. During the 1840s and 1850, firing employees during downturns was commonplace. Downturns were so common some argued that free laborers were treated worse than slaves, since the slave could at least count on his owner to protect his investment by feeding him. The Civil War kept the economy roaring in the early 1860s. In fact, the 1870s and 1880s were so bad that enough people were thrown out of work to have them close the frontier. Nobody with a good factory job would face Minnesota winters to farm hard ground. The adoption of the anti-trust laws helped, but didn't solve the problem, particularly since any law is only as effective as the willingness of the executive to enforce it.

Most of the Presidents in the early 20th Century were Republicans, who opposed regulation of business.

The Panic of 1907 lead to the creation of the Federal Reserve System, which helped. But it was only with the imposition of the serious regulatory framework of the Great Depression that we stopped seeing Depressions.

Until now.

In the late 1990s, the Republican congress and the pro market Clintons repealed the Security and Exchange Acts of 1933, 1934, 1935. And a funny thing happened a decade later. Depressions returned!

The Rightest Religious (not to be confused by the Christian Fundies of the Religious Right) hold that pure market capitalism is their G-d of choice.

So, where am I going? I'm here to say, the Europeans, whose automatic safety net will ensure they run massive deficits as people lose jobs, are at least partially right. There is a need for more regulation.

The reason the Republicans gave for the repeal of the 1930s Securities and Exchange Acts was that US banks could not compete with foreign banks without it. You see, the Europeans did not regulate their banks as strongly as we did ours.

So we should consider seriously a coordination in regulations. That should end the argument that got us into the mess, ... at least for another generation.

Judicial Activism: Common Law v. Code Law

What Is Judicial Activism? What is Judicial Restraint?

"Judicial Activism" has become a right wing code phrase for any decision they dislike. "Judicial Restraint" characterizes any decision they do like. Hence, when state law is overturned by a court to support a right wing agenda, that's never "Judicial Activism" it's just upholding the United States Constitution. The same action, when they dislike it, is "Judicial Activism."

Right now, we are looking at the oddity of having a Supreme Court nominee being raked over the coals for "Judicial Activism" for not overturning a lower court case which upholds a local administrative decision. Why would respecting the decision of local government be "Judicial Activism"? Simply because the right disliked the decision of local government. By definition, this not "Judicial Activism., it is "Judicial Restraint."

But what is the place of the courts in creating law, if any? Do the right wingers who use the phrase "Judicial Activism" have, at least, a theoretical point? Should the courts defer to local legislative and administrative bodies when they make and interpret their own laws? This is what Judge Solomayor did in the New Haven Firefighters case. Or should the courts, as the right wingers would like in this case, overturn that decision, which would be, one would think, judicial activism? That depends on whether you favor a Common Law system or a Code Law system. The United States and Canada both have both systems.

The Common Law

The Common Law system is based on the English system of law, which is the system that has developed for thousands of years in England. For centuries, the courts of England have decided cases whether or not Kings had proclaimed law and Parliaments have met. There was a time that the only reason a Parliament met was to raise taxes. The Magna Carta demanded the King raise taxes in this way, and not just by decree.

The courts determined if a pickpocket was to pick their victim's vegetables or go to jail, if shouting in a market was the right of the shouter or a disturbance of the peace. These matters were not considered important enough for the legislative body to consider. The English courts, quite literally, made the law.

When a similar case came up to a new court, if the court were aware of a similar case by a different court, it would usually follow the same rule. Rules by other trial courts were influential, but not binding. Law cases were not well organized, and much of what was known was from massive reading of the law. At times, centralized courts with the power to make overarching rules met, courts of appeal, which then and now set the rules of law from among the different ways different courts had decided the law. These rulings were binding. A lower court decision which was contrary to such a rule was, and still is, considered a wrong ruling.

As time went on, some of the rulings by local and appeals courts were effected by laws passed by the legislatures. Parliament or Congress, laws were considered amendments to the existing body of Common Law... law made by judges. When new issues came up, rules which existed under older law were looked to to create new rules. Except where a legislative law was called a principle and expressly stated it was to be construed broadly, it was construed narrowly as a band aid and amendment on the overall body of the Common Law. In projecting the new rules, the courts looked first to the laws made by their historic judicial predecessors.

In the Common Law, judges make law, legislatures amend law. The English Common Law is the basis of law in 49 of the 50 states, and in Anglophone Canada.

Code Law

In Louisiana and Quebec, there are communities founded by the French. The French had absolute monarchy until the French revolution. The courts were answerable to the crown. When the revolution came, the principles of the revolution came to be embodied in a massive Code of French law, the Napoleonic Code. Under French law, the Code and the actions of the legislature are the underlying law, and the courts look to the Code for First Principles.

The Napoleonic Code was not the first attempt to make law systematic, but it was the first successful attempt. It was drafted, not surprisingly, not by a legislature, but by judges who had experience in passing on real cases. Nevertheless, it was then adopted as the underlying law expressing a set of principles, and the rules could be amended by the legislature. Hence, the legislature was given greater diffidence than in a Common Law system.

The French System v. The English System

Right wingers, who object that legislatures are corrupt and government can do nothing, nevertheless seem to think that the collective wisdom of the ages should be overwritten by gerrymandered legislatures elected by campaigns financed by lobbyists. The principles which have developed in the English Courts had often been at odds which the desire of those who wish to keep tight controls on society. For example, the English Courts have ruled that it is not legal to shoot an unarmed intruder in your home. This law dates to the 12th or 13th century, if not earlier. In most of the Southeastern United States, this rule has been overturned by legislation. Clearly, in a slave-owning society, those which have great homes and own other people are advantaged by being able to shoot their slaves. When people are property, one cannot say their lives are more valuable than property. Similarly, there was no basis for enslaving a newborn under English law. This was an innovation adopted by Southern legislatures to create the institution of American slavery.

Having legislated these changes, time passed. In the 1850s, Southerners dominated the United States Supreme Court. In a case of going to their Southern legislative principles, they overthrew the laws of the Northern states which forbade slavery in their boarders, and applied those legislative principles to the North, overturning the Missouri Compromise and centuries of Common Law, and finding that black people had no rights white people were bound to respect. This is usually cited by the right as a matter of Judicial Activism. Dred Scott v. Sandford held that legislatures did not have the right to forbid slavery... even though the underlying law creating slavery was created by the legislatures in Southern states. I would submit this is the same brand of 'Judicial Activism' as Bush v. Gore, which likewise was based on no legal basis but only on the right wing going for the outcome they wanted without regard to principles of any type, legislative or judicial. I have never heard one word from the right wing objecting to the judicial activism of Bush v. Gore. However, now that they are trying to separate themselves from an unpopular Bush presidency, you may hear such objections in the future.

In sum, there is a basis for judges to proceed with principled caution, without regard to whether one defines such as judicial activism or judicial restraint. What one sees as one or the other is partially a function of what one believes the outcome should be, rather than just a matter of what one believes principles are. Such principles do not change with political fashion. However, the cries of the right are not based on principles of judicial restraint, just on pressing their agenda in courts, in legislatures, and in the executive branch.

Angels and Demons.

First, a confession. I never read the book, and I'm not a big fan. So I'm a lot less fussy about what is likely to be at most one of three or four movies than I am about Star Trek. Damn it Jim, I'm a Trekkie, not a symbolist!

I enjoyed Angels and Demons a lot. Happily, I never saw the plot twist coming, in spite of thinking it odd that people just shot the head of the Swiss Guards without giving him a chance to drop his weapon. I thought the critics were wrong in most of what they said. For example, I heard and read that the physics was idiotic. This only showed that the critics are unfamiliar with The Standard Model, which has formed the basics of particle physics since the 1970s. The great search for the god particle is real... it' the Higgs boson. It's not "Angels and Demons" that has particle physics wrong, it's the movie critics.

That said, Angels and Demons, while head and shoulders above The DaVinci Code in it's understanding of the Roman Catholic Church, is still infested by misguided notions about the relationship between the Church and scientific truth. the Roman Catholic Church is not against science, it just thinks that fertilized eggs are people, and you shouldn't kill people. Even 400 years ago Galileo didn't really get into trouble until he published a popular pamphlet in which the guy who stated the Pope's position was called "The Idiot." The insistence by atheists that since the Church punished Galileo 400 years ago (and more for insulting the Church than for disagreeing with it), the Church opposes science is, to paraphrase Galileo, idiotic.

And before you conclude I'm blogging for the Church, I'm not even a Christian. I just don't feel the need to insult Christians without cause or basis. I don't believe a fertilized egg has a soul. The traditional time a soul enters the body, for most of the last 2000 years, was at quickening. I see no reason to change that belief. However, that disagreement does not blind me to the fact that the Church believes it is saving lives, not stopping science. In Angels and Demons, cardinals and bishops that support science are identified as 'liberal'. In fact, this is not a matter of dispute in the Church. At least those in the Church that supported truth was shown to win in this film.

In sum, Movie good, critics bad.

Does Evolution Prove Anything about G-d? Why the Creationists Do G-d a Disservice.

Math, Physics, G-d, and Evolution v. the Creationists.

Creationists would have you believe that the Rambam (Moses Maimonides, also known as Rabbi Moshe ben Maimon or the acronym the Rambam, born Cordoba, Spain March 30, 1135 died Egypt December 13, 1204.), the greatest Jewish rationalist of his time, was an idiot, and that the Book of Power by the Maharal of Prague (Judah Loew ben Bezalel (c. 1520 – 17 September 1609), also known as Yehudah ben Bezalel Levai [or Loewe, Löwe],) one of many late midevil Kabbalists, had no effect. They want you to think that a Roman Catholic monk named Joseph Mendel and an Anglican Preacher named Charles Darwin were atheists. Creationists, in other words, are either idiots or liars... or both. It disturbs me when I hear or read about Jews who are rejecting science, an action anathema to solid Jewish thought. And I think I can prove it.

Let's start with something we are all familiar with. Lotteries. We know that the numbers are picked at random, and that the chances of any particular set of numbers coming up are very, very small. One in 18 million. One in 180 million. Does that mean that it is a very rare or even unheard of event for somebody to win a lottery? To the contrary, this is an event that happens every week somewhere. How is that possible? Well, the game is set up so that there are a limited number of outcomes, and there are enough tickets sold over time that, sooner or later, somebody wins. And there are hundreds of games.

Modern Physics tells us that the universe would be very different if any of the fundamental forces were even very slightly different. Matter would have flung apart so fast that galaxies, stars, and planets would never have formed... or it would have fallen back onto itself so that, likewise, we could not have happened. Or sub-atomic particles would be unstable. Or atoms would not have formed in exactly the ratio needed to form billions of galaxies, around which there were billions of very large stars which blew up and seeded the universe with the exact mixture of heavy elements needed for life as we know it... then a new generation of stars formed with these heavy elements forming planets with carbon, oxygen, nitrogen... OR these elements would not have formed. But in fact, all that happened. Billions of galaxies, each of which holds billions of stars, around which, it now appears, there could be an average of numerous planets. Maybe four. Maybe fourteen. Maybe it depends on how you define the word planet... just ask Pluto.

The odds that we would happen on any given planet, given the randomness proposed in evolution, is very remote. But the odds that we would have happened SOMEWHERE EVENTUALLY in the universe, given its size and the huge number of chances, would make it, like SOMEBODY eventually winning the lottery, almost inevitable.

The universe is formulated in a way that we pretty much had to happen. Some think there may even be an 'us' within most of the billions of galaxies. Now, there are problems with our current theory of physics. Either we have gravity wrong, which seems to be the most likely explanation, or there appears to be plenty of dark matter and dark energy about which we know little or nothing. Clarity on what it is that is wrong with our understanding of the universe might effect this. This formulation is called the anthropic principle. Some dislike it, and have formulated unprovable mathematical theories to make an infinite number of universes, so that our very special one's existence shows nothing philosophically. But these are mathematical or philosophical theories, not scientific ones. They are atheistic numerology. Not only are they unproven... they are unprovable. There is no result of any scientific test anyone could run which could prove or disprove these theories, so they cannot be proven wrong... or right.

So, does evolution bear on the existence or nonexistence of a divine being? I would suggest that it does not. If it does, however, one must take a step back, and view not just this tiny part of creation, but all of what we can see, tens of billions of light years in every direction, hundreds of billions of galaxies with quintillions of stars and sextillions of planets. Given the limitations of physics, the Theory of Evolution suggests that our occurrence somewhere in this Universe, was like somebody, somewhere eventually winning some lottery... almost a certainty.

The Rambam told us that where science and the Bible disagree, we have misunderstood the Bible. But here, I see no disagreement. The Maharal of Prague suggested that the Bible tells us that there were creatures that no longer existed in his day, which had once existed, and that there would be creatures that existed in the future that do not yet exist, and this would demonstrate the truth of the Torah and the presence of the living G-d. Living as a contemporary of Galileo, he concluded that the story of Joshua had to be understood to show that space and time were linked, and to speak of one without the other is nonsense. He pointed out that even before the Heliocentric System, we knew that other civilizations had not recorded the suns standing still, so that it was clearly a local event. Today, we know the Greenland Effect permits the air, at rare times under special circumstances, to act as a prism, and make the sun appear to sit above the horizon for hours after it has set, but only in one location. Mendel and Darwin, Maxwell and Einstein was not atheists. We should not permit the fact that atheism has become fashionable in the scientific community to confuse us about whether science dictates that view. It does not. Nor should we let our thinking be influenced by shallow religious thinkers who insist that, if they cannot conceive of a god so grand as to create a universe the size and age science speaks of, then there can be no such G-d.

What makes us human? Genisis 2:19,20 and the Herp Department at the American Museum of Natural History.

What makes us human?

Genisis 2:19,20
19 And out of the ground the LORD God formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air; and brought them unto Adam to see what he would call them: and whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof.
20 And Adam gave names to all cattle, and to the fowl of the air, and to every beast of the field; but for Adam there was not found an help meet for him.
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Today, biologists of ever stripe all over the world are racing to find, and name, every living creature, before we destroy them.

We know the most about the creatures with backbones. Multi-cell life has existed only since the Cambrian Explosion, 540 Million years ago. For billions of years before that, life existed as single-celled organisms. Most variety is in single celled organisms. Entirely new kingdoms are being discovered in that area, just in the last 20 years.

We used to think there were plants, animals, and single-celled life. Today, we know single-celled life can live in compressed 300 degree water and in ice, can eat chemicals deep within the earth, and can have energy cycles entirely different than those found in plants and animals. These entirely different ways of making a living divide single-celled life into different kingdoms, just as plants are one kingdom and animals another.

Two new large mammals were discovered in Southeast Asia since 1990. An antelope and a miniature rhino.

The number of species of known amphibians and reptiles in Southeast Asia has gone from eighty-something to one hundred eighty-something.

And so, Adam is still finding and naming the animals.

Related New York Times article: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/11/science/11naming.html?_r=1&hpw