Second Short Quiz

[johnkarls]

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1. Has George Kunath, a retired NYC attorney who never misses any of our meetings by always participating via Skype, engaged in a weekly multi-hour gabfest with Yours Truly for 28.5 years since we were partners 1988-1997 when George was our worldwide coordinating tax partner on Mobil Oil?

2. Does George know as much about the workers of Ohio’s factories and foundries as Yours Truly knows about the workers of Michigan’s factories and foundries (ref Q&A-13 thru Q&A-20 of the First Short Quiz)?

3. During our weekly gabfest last Monday (Aug 22), did George and Yours Truly marvel over why The American Media wants to treat Hillbilly Elegy as an authoritative analysis of workers in the Rust Belt factories and foundries of Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania?

4. Were our minds boggled over the dissimilarity of the profoundly-dysfunctional small Hillbilly family that moved recently from Kentucky into Southwestern Ohio, when contrasted with the typical workers in Michigan and Ohio factories and foundries who, for many generations, had made the conscious choice to Live The Good Life of raising a family in style in a beautiful home with, typically, a lake-front weekend/vacation home as a blue-collar factory/foundry worker?

5. Shouldn’t The American Media have realized that Hillbilly Elegy did NOT fit what The American Media thought it already “knew” that workers in the Rust Belt factories and foundries “cling to guns and religion”?

6. After all, does Hillbilly Elegy even contain the word “religion”?

7. And does our author's profoundly-dysfunctional godless Hillbilly family from Kentucky appear to share any of the seriousness with which the overwhelming majority of Rust Belt workers and their families PRACTICE their religion?

8. After all, wasn’t it to a great extent the citizens of Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania who fought The American Civil War to eliminate slavery because it did NOT comport with their Christian religious duty to “love their neighbors as themselves” including slaves?

9. And didn’t The American Civil War leave 620,000 dead and 1,100,000 casualties in its wake?

10. And wasn’t Gettysburg PENNSYLVANIA the famous Civil War battle that turned the tide against The Confederacy?

11. And wasn’t President Abraham Lincoln’s famous Gettysburg Address (“Fourscore and seven years ago…”) a tribute to the human devastation in that battle = 23,049 for the Union Army (3,155 dead, 14,529 wounded, 5,365 missing) and 28,063 for the Confederate Army (3,903 dead, 18,735 wounded, 5,425 missing) which, incidentally, comprised more than one-third of the Confederate Army?

12. Does The American Media seem to confuse whether the recent uptick in drug abuse in The Rust Belt is evidence of an erosion of the Moral Fiber of its inhabitants, with the Destruction Of Their Way Of Life by the Exporting of American Jobs in whose wake the resulting despair has Driven To Drugs many of its victims?

13. BTW, why hasn’t there come into common usage the phrase Driven To Drugs to describe what used to happen fairly rarely in The Rust Belt when it was described by the pervasive phrase Driven To Drink?

14. Is the implied criticism of The Media Elite’s derision for anyone who “clings” to “religion” logically sound from a philosophical/scientific perspective?

15. What is socialism?

16. Would socialism have prevented the War on American Workers comprising the Exportation of American Jobs pursuant to the so-called Free Trade Agreements beginning in the 1990’s?

17. Isn’t it true that Exporting American Jobs is really another way of looking at Exporting American Capital?

18. So even if socialism has been defined by economists for ages as Governmental Ownership of the Means of Production (as distinguished from Communism which has been defined by economists for ages as “from each according to his/her ability and to each according to his/her need”), how would governmental ownership of the Rust Belt factories and foundries have prevented them from being destroyed by competition from factories and foundries in third-world countries that employ impoverished workers who earn only “starvation wages”?

19. Isn’t the key to American prosperity THE RETENTION OF AMERICAN CAPITAL to benefit American workers?

20. Did 1968 Executive Order 11387 prohibit the Exportation of American Capital?

21. Was 1968 Executive Order 11387 promulgated 1/1/1968 at the beginning of President Lyndon Johnson’s last year in office?

22. Did 1968 Executive Order 11387 continue in effect FOR THE FIRST FIVE YEARS of President Richard Nixon’s Presidency until 1/29/1974 (for a total of 6 years)?

23. Does an erudite legal analysis of 1968 Executive Order 11387 appear in Duke Law School’s Journal of Law and Contemporary Problems, Vol. 34, No. 1, pp. 47-63 (available on-line at http://scholarship.law.duke.edu/lcp/vol34/iss1)?

24. Although the primary objective of the 1968 Executive Order was to reduce the deficit in America’s foreign balance of payments -- (A) did the retention of more American capital in the U.S. mean that the additional capital would have to be invested in domestic projects that would employ more American workers, thereby reducing or eliminating American unemployment; and (B) did the resulting increase in the ratio of capital employed per American worker cause the real income of American workers to rise?

25. Is there a CRYING NEED in America today for all three objectives to be served?

26. Did we, as one of our Six-Degrees-Of-Separation E-mail campaigns, implore President Obama to Renew 1968 Executive Order 11387?

27. Was that Six-Degrees-Of-Separation E-mail campaign approved unanimously at our 2/12/2014 meeting in direct response to President Obama’s 1/14/2014 “I’ve got a pen and I’ve got a phone” solicitation of suggestions for Executive Orders only 29 days earlier?

28. Is it tragic that another 2.5 years has elapsed without a renewal of 1968 Executive Order 11387?

29. Does the failure of President Obama to renew 1968 Executive Order 11287 2.5 years ago demonstrate that even a Lame Duck President who will never run again is still “owned” by The Establishment because he believes it is more important to raise campaign contributions for other candidates running in 2014 and running in 2016, than to “lift a finger” (or at least lift his pen) on behalf of American workers?

NB: As with Questions 26 and 27 of the First Short Quiz, we have always defined The Establishment as the billionaires who “own” virtually all the pols of both political parties as a result of campaign contributions and who “own” many members of the media and who “own” many members of academia.

30. Have Dana Milbank (Washington Post OpEd Columnist 2000-present, syndicated in more than 200 newspapers) and Robert Kuttner (Business Week Columnist 1984-2005) been essential guides to our understanding of American politics since we studied for our 2/14/2008 meeting 8.5 years ago their newly-minted best-sellers “Homo Politicus: The Strange and Scary Tribes That Run Our Government” and “The Squandering of America: How the Failure of Our Politics Undermines Our Properity” -- because the thesis of both Messrs. Milbank and Kuttner was that NOTHING is done (or NOT done) in the cesspool known as Washington DC except as the result of campaign contributions which comprise EITHER bribery of the pols OR extortion by the pols?