Let's talk business and other things

     My wife's niece seems to interested in politics and, to say the least, has a rather liberal viewpoint on some subjects. In a discussion on Facebook I posed several questions to her to see how she would answer. I found her response interesting and I thought I might try to respond. I think this kind of discussion is a bit much for Facebook, as it is essentially a social medium and is not intended for any meaningful discussion of anything. I decided to address this on my blog and share it with her. I find the subject quite interesting.
    I asked her to contemplate the questions: How are jobs created? Especially the middle income type jobs. And, what are the impediments to creating those jobs? I also stated that there is no such thing as a free lunch; somebody pays, always. 
    She answered that jobs were created  by the demand for goods and services and stated that middle class earning jobs were created from some form of contract.  She also stated, suspecting where I was going, that taxes don't kill jobs. That greed is responsible for stopping job growth. 
    The answer to the first question I find (while true in a sense) to be a little overly simplistic. In fact jobs are created by businesses. Very often businesses that require a huge initial investment to get them started. But, whether it's a massive investment to start or expand a large business, or to start one on a smaller scale the result is the same. An investment that carries with it the risk that the business will fail and the investment will be lost. That investment is the engine that drives the creation of the business for the purpose of making money if they succeed. Some call that greed.  It is businesses that are formed to meet the need or desires for goods and services, jobs follow. Sometimes there was no perceived need for a product or service until a business is formed and as a result of marketing strategies, a desire was established.  These businesses in turn hire people to design, produce and market the product or service. When you think about it a lot of the businesses operating today started that way.  Nobody thought they needed the dishwasher, clothes washer, electric toaster, the light bulb or radio until it was developed and the public found that they wanted those things. Now they are considered almost necessities. 
      Let us take a few examples of businesses that produced a lot of jobs. 
      In the case of the market responding to a built in demand we can take the automobile industry after WWII. In fact all kinds of manufactured products such as washing machines, refrigerators were in high demand. Following WWII the American manufacturing capability was totally intact and able to switch from war time production to peace time very rapidly. We kind of had the world by the tail. The manufacturers hired a ton of people to design, manufacture and market the goods we were making to meet this demand. We were almost  the only source of  produced goods in world for a number of years. The jobless rate stayed so low that an unemployment rate of over 4 1/2 percent was viewed with great concern. In this case, indeed, demand created jobs because industry responded to the demand. 
     This condition, however, was a two edged sword. Having no global competition and a ravenous market, the manufacturers did everything to feed that market. They produced cars with their bumpers literately falling off and depended on the dealers to fix the problems. That came back to haunt them later as they lost market share to foreign cars, especially Japans, on the basis of reliability. They capitulated to the unified labor unions ( the UAW) for almost every demand in order to keep the lines moving. The unions demanded and got work rules which, to say the least, were ridiculous. The unions did ever thing they could to expand the work force. They paid middle class wages for putting nuts on bolts. They only had themselves to compete with and the unions negotiated as a group. No outside players were as yet in the game. In a sense all the car companies were competing on a level playing field. 
     As everybody knows that condition slowly came to an end as the products from Japan and Europe begin to enter the market. Especially after the first great oil crises created by OPEC.  Many of the manufacturers went out of business because they couldn't compete and thousands of workers lost their jobs. Remember Studebaker, Rambler, Hudson, and Packard? And, still the unions, with strong government backing hung on to all the perks that they had gained during the plush times, in spite of the fact that they were making American manufacturing noncompetitive in the new emerging global market.  In the end, two of the remaining  three major auto makers had to declare bankruptcy and only Ford was spared because they had negotiated a large loan just prior to the recent recession. Only massive loans by the government saved GMC and Chrysler.  The failure of these companies would have resulted in thousands of American jobs lost.  The demand was there for cars, but that could have easily been satisfied by overseas industries. The demand for goods and services would be there but, that would not have resulted in any American jobs. Only saving the businesses did that. Under auspices of the bankruptcy court they restructured their contracts to reduce costs and with the money from the government loans, the car companies are now back in business and competing very well with the foreign made cars. They have paid back all the money they borrowed. 
     Take a look at your appliances, clothes and shoes; where they made?  Not likely in the USA. High costs due to labor, taxes and regulations have driven almost all major manufacturing overseas. Your say they are greedy. But wait a minute, why did Americans stop buying home grown products resulting in the exodus of manufacturing?  For two reasons. They actually were made better and they were cheaper. Businesses either compete or say adios and kiss all their workers goodbye.
          Let's now consider the creation of a jobs where there was no demand for a product; ergo no business,ergo no jobs. Because there is no history or established Washington mafia these types of business are generally not regulated as much by government bureaucracies making it much easier for a start-up. Apple computer is a good example. There was no demand for personal computers. Two guys went into their garage and developed this technology specifically for computer geeks (the Apple I).  They got initial investment capital from a "greedy" investor who thought they might have a good idea and proceeded to market their creation.  It was more successful than they had imagined. This led them to  design the first true desktop stand alone computer, the Apple II.  The established computer powers such as IBM never conceived of a market for personal computers at that time. They thought the market was with the large main frames where they excelled. They questioned why the average citizen would ever want to have access to a computer. They thought the market was limited to Engineers, Science, big business,government and the like. But, some investors saw the product and took the risk that the Apple II would make money and invested in the manufacturing capacity to build the computer. Of course the Apple II was roaring success as ordinary people bought it in droves and it changed the computer landscape forever. The investors were rewarded for their faith and assumption of risk. Following that was whole string of Apple products that had no demand until they marketed it and created that demand. They produced a the IPad, IPod and all the other "I" products, most of which had no market until Apple marketing made one. Apple hired a whole bunch of middle and high end labor to keep at the forefront of the tech design. In this case business didn't respond to a demand, they created one. Out of that venture rose Microsoft, Intel, Dell Computers, a bunch of PC makers and a whole host of additional companies employing thousands of well paid people.  
      You can also look at Facebook, Tweeter, Google and a lot other so called dot-com businesses that were created before there was any demand for them. After all, who really needs any of the social media. They employ a ton of people. Some required massive investment to grow to their present condition others are small operations employing less that 100 people. Remember also, that most of the dot-com adventures, involving a lot of investment money went belly up and all the investment was lost. 
      Another example might be the type of business that took some service or product that existed in a limited way, usually only for the rich, and improved it so much that it became the standard for their industry from that point on. A good example of that might be creation of the Ford Motor Co.  
     Henry Ford envisioned a new manufacturing method that could revolutionize the way cars are built so that they could be owned by the average person and not just the wealthy. His ideas of mass production however, would require huge investments of capital to built the facilities required for his methods to work. He acquired the capital from individual and institutional investors who were willing to take the risk on his ideas. Of course the first mass produced car in the world was the Ford Model T. A roaring success. It seemed that everybody in America wanted one. As a result of Ford's ideas and foresight, thousands of workers were employed in making of the Ford cars. Of course it wasn't long before his assembly line methods were adopted by other manufacturing companies producing everything from toasters to automobiles resulting in hundreds of thousands of new jobs being created as the price of manufactured goods plummeted and ordinary people could begin to afford these luxuries. 
      Of course Ford was entering virgin territory with his venture and there were not yet a ton of government regulators breathing down his neck at every turn. Nor where there a large body of entrenched interests in Washington set to protect the then current industries. 
     And Ford wasn't only example of this type. There was Carnegie, who figured out how to produce steel cheaply and spawned a building boom never seen before; there was Rockefeller, who revolutionized the oil industry and made American the largest producer and exporter of oil for many years, Edison with his many inventions and the industries that came out of his ideas, Tesla and the electric power systems we use today. And the list goes on. 
     So again I reiterate that business creates jobs. Therefore, it should be clear that impediments to business development has a negative effect on the job market. 
     So what are the true obstacles that businesses have to face at their start up and every day of operation?  Mainly, if you are competing in the open market, it's controlling costs. The price you can sell your product or service for is dictated by market conditions. If the manufacturer of  the product or service can not meet the market price because of high costs and still make a profit, they will fail and go out of business with all the concurrent job losses that go with it. It follows then that an essential task for any business leader in a competitive environment is to control costs.
     Of course government does not operate under those restraints. There is absolutely no incentive for government departments to worry about controlling costs. They have no competition.  
     There are a number of factors that go into the cost of providing a product or a service.  The cost of the material they have to purchase, their faculties costs (likely a nearly a constant),  labor, including executive salaries, taxes and adherence to government and collective bargaining regulations and restrictions are some of them.  Companies have some control over most of the costs involved with the exception those that are government imposed. I.e. taxes and regulations. 
     Of all the things government does to hamper job growth, the more onerous is probably the abundance of regulations they have created for a business to get started and to operate. Potential businesses have to spend a large amount of money and time doing all kinds of studies to show the potential new businesses impact on everything. They must show the impact on the environment, wild life, ancient tribal sacred grounds and their compliance with local zoning and long term objectives of local planning commissions among other things. And none of the studies are cheap. If a company gets over the initial hurdles and starts to operate, they now have a prolific set of laws and regulations that must be met concerning workers safety, access for the disabled, working hours, product safety, and other regulations. An over abundance of these types of things results in companies fleeing to less onerous locations. 
       One should also be very clear that the cost of a company complying with a government regulation is, by necessity, passed on the consumer in form of a higher price. It is almost impossible to conceive of a regulation that doesn't cost money to implement. That is not to say that all regulations handed down by a myriad of government bureaucracies are all bad. But, they do cost money. And, the originating agency never seems to consider cost of implementing their brain burst.     
     On the subject of taxes.  Let's be clear. Who Pays All Taxes? And I do mean all taxes. The answer: the consumer. That's in addition to the up front taxes the consumer pays in the form of income tax, sales tax and any special tax that local government has imposed. When you buy that new Chevy you are paying GMC's corporate taxes. You are also paying their workers compensation in all forms. The company contributions to pensions, Social Security and Medicare, vacations and sick leave for their workers are factored into the selling price of the car. That's in addition to the taxes that their subcontractors had to pay in order to sell their own product, which the final manufacturer  has to absorb. Taxes are just another expense to the manufacturer. If the manufacturer is competing on a global scale then higher taxes mean higher costs and thus they are
less competitive. If they are less competitive they sell less of their product, therefore don't need as many employees; loss of jobs. The average corporation pays something like eighteen percent of it's net profits in taxes. That's money that is not there for reinvestment in R&D, expansion and hiring more workers as a result and payment of dividends to it's stockholders. The company has to offset those expenses somehow and the only means they have is to reduce hiring to a minimum to reduce labor costs.  
      If there is one thing the economists all agree on is that taxes are bad for the economy. What they don't agree on is the effect of a tax cut on Federal Revenue. Historically as taxes crept higher the economy suffered and unemployment rose. When the tax rate was lowered an economic resurgence occurred almost always occurred with lower unemployment, a growth in the GNP, and the government actually took in more money. A good example was the Revenue Act of 1964, an across the board tax reduction championed by JFK and carried through by LBJ. In 1964 and again in 1965 unemployment fell, the GNP increased and the Federal revenue increased. That is a story that was repeated under Reagan in 1984. 
      To the statement that "greed" is what hampers job growth, just doesn't stand up. "Greed" i. e. a desire to make money, as a matter of fact creates jobs as a myriad of  examples would show. What hampers job growth are factors which effect businesses ability to produce products at a price the people are willing to pay. People are willing to pay only so much for their widgets. If the price gets to high, or the quality gets too bad, they will slow down on their widget purchasing resulting in the lose of jobs in the widget industry. Produce a high quality widget at a good price and the mob will beat a path to their door and the widget manufacturer will hire lots of people to make more widgets. 

The Republican's Party Future?

            
     Is there a future for the Republican Party at the national level or is destined to become irrelevant; remember the Whigs?  It seems that every time the party seems to be written off, it comes bounding back. However, the resurgence is usually just a rebellion against the Dems and some particular unpopular law that they have rammed though congress and got signed by the President. Currently that's Obama care (Affordable Care Act) and it's impact. It seems now that most of the Democrats running for office never heard of it. That issue may result in the Republicans taking control of the Senate as well as the House. It seems to me that this gain may be only temporary as the pain of the ACA is absorbed by the population. I'm afraid that the Democrat's basic constituency will regain the upper hand and the liberals will come back into power. 
     To my eyes the Party has a couple of  issues that must be addressed, and somehow come to terms with, or they will become the loyal opposition party in perpetuity. They must deal with the advantage the Democrats hold with women, and the huge support for the Democrats from the African-American and the Latino populations. The Republicans must approach and develop a plan and approach to convince these groups that the Republicans are not their enemy.  These are the three cornerstones the Democrats have used to move into the White House in the last elections and will ride these groups into power in the foreseeable future unless the party wakes up and makes some fundamental changes in some of it's positions. To make matters worse for the Republicans, the Latino and African-American populations are an ever growing group of voters that will determine the future of national politics in America in the coming years, especially the Latinos.         
       The way our system of government is set up leads to a two party system.  There really is no viable alternative. That is largely due to the fact the our President is separately elected by the electoral college and must receive a majority vote from that body.   One of the downsides of that system is what would be third or fourth parties in a parliamentary system, end up having to find their way into one of the major parties if they are to have a voice. And, if they are vocal enough and have a fairly large following in a few key states, they can end up having an out of proportion influence on the parties platform and election process. A quick view of history will tell you that a few third party candidates have had an influence on the election; the Bull Moose Party, Ross Perot's run for the White House, comes to mind, but they have never placed a candidate in the White House. In addition there have been few third party members of congress over the years. All this leads to a party whose core members are socially and fiscally liberal and a party whose members tend to be fiscally conservative and attracts the socially conservative as well. 
        The Democrats core base is generally comprised of a couple of groups consisting of the overtly liberal constituency (think San Francisco) and the ever growing receivers of the entitlements championed so liberally by the Dems. I'm not sure that the Republicans really have much of a chance of luring that group into a Party that preaches self sufficiency, fiscal responsibility, national defense as a top priority and independence from government control to the extent possible. The conservative Republicans and the liberal wing of the Democratic Party have little in common and it's likely to stay that way. They are on opposite ends of the pole on such items as defense spending, infrastructure development, government intrusion into private business, the proliferation of entitlement programs, and whole host of other issues. 
       The religious right occupies a unique position in the Republican party. They view themselves as a great strength, but to me they are the Achilles heel of the party. The Republican candidates have a problem, stemming from the strong influence the religious right has captured in the party, and the political clout they wield in a number of states, especially the southern states. The candidates believe that to be nominated they must embrace the religious right, or at least not alienate them. However, in the general elections they must now move toward the social center to appeal to the voters at large. The nation, as a whole, is not in sync with the religious rights position on some key social issues, especially on abortion, which is the anchor on which the Democrats hang their "War on Women" banner around the Republicans necks. The two biggest issues the religious right champions are both religious in nature. Anti-abortion and anti-gay marriage.     
     From all the polls it is clear that the majority of the American people agree, in general, with the Republicans stand on fiscal issues. They believe in fiscal responsibility in government and the goal of a balanced budget.  And, like their family finances, the government shouldn't spend money it hasn't got. However, there is a condition to this; they don't want to balance the budget by sacrificing whatever perk the government hands out to their own person or clan.      

      One of the biggest problems the Republicans have is overcoming the hard right position held by the religious fundamentalists who would totally outlaw abortion. That position has found its way into the Republican platform and is a millstone around any candidate running for President in the general election.  In many ways the abortion issue parallels the fight during the prohibition era between the "Dries" and the "Wets".  It is considered by many that the hard position of the "Dries" for the total ban on all forms of intoxicating drink let to the revolution against the Volstead Act resulting in it being repealed. They believe if the "Dries" had modified their position to some extent the Act would still be in place. 
     The Democrats have used this plank in the party platform to fling an accusation at the Republicans that they wish to dis-empower women. They have made this central to the women's rights campaign, "War on Women", and they have been very successful.  This position, and the Democrat's exploitation of it, has resulted in a lot of women, a big majority of young women, voting Democrat. With women constituting roughly half the voters, that is a big hurdle to get over. 
     The Republicans must recognize that there will never be a constitutional amendment; the right wings fond hope, to place a ban on any form of abortion.  Not now, not ever. You will never get the three fourths approval to accomplish that from the states, even if you elect a congress that would pass it; and not very likely. And until then, the courts will hold sway on this issue.  Neither the congress not the President will have the final say. 
               The Party should develop a strong position to address the issues facing the modern American women, and not some fanciful idea of the June Cleaver stay at home mom as the typical woman. The Party should address and support measures which help the modern woman achieve all she is capable of along with the requirements of the family. The issues of the single mom, child care and other issues need to addressed in a realistic manner that somehow stays within the confines of a balanced budget. Some of the bias for women to vote for the Dems may be modified in the future as more and more women enter the work force and become the taxpayers that have to support the liberal programs.  
     Another, and maybe biggest,  problem the Republicans have is the immigration issue and the Latino vote. The fact of the matter is that the Hispanics have become so numerous in the past few decades that they can, and do in some cases, become the deciding element in any close election.  In fact the Mexican vote, almost alone, has swung the biggest state in the union solidly into the Democrat's camp.  The people of Latin American heritage, especially Mexicans, in general, do not want any tight immigration laws on the books.  Nor to have the ones on the books enforced.  Almost all of them are only removed from illegals by one or two generations and they want their relations and friends to be able to enter the country at will.  Not only to enter the country, but become voters fairly quickly. The Republicans stance on illegal immigration has pushed these people into the Democrats camp. The Democrats are glad of the support and the large number of votes they bring.  Consequently the Republicans lose big time to the Latino vote, something like 90% in the last election.  
     Within the Republican Party there is fair number of members that want to close the border and kick every illegal out of the country, and do it now. They actually don't represent the majority of the membership which are open, in a limited way, to the idea of providing a path to stay in the country legally and eventually to attain citizenship. But, in general the Republicans would like to see the borders strengthened  and  recent border crashers caught and deported. But, people that serve in the military with honor, teenagers that grew up in this country and know no other should perhaps be given consideration. Such a position is the only chance that the Party has of gaining back some of the Latino vote. 
      And, like a lot of issues in the Republican plank on social issues that ship has sailed.  Look around today and you see Latinos as Mayors, Governors and other high political positions throughout the border states and beyond.  Pretty soon they will be the majority group in many states, including California and Texas, the two largest states in America. A certain pragmatism must enter into party politics. And, after all, this issue isn't what the Republican Party is all about is it.  
     So where should the party sink it's roots.  I would suggest that the model of Theodore Roosevelt  provides the kind of thinking that should become one of the bedrocks of the Party. The recent meltdown of major banking and financial institutions caused by questionable, likely illegal practices of it's top executives is a case in point. Theodore would have come down on these people like the hammer of Thor. But, nothing has happened to the people who engineered this breakdown. In fact these same people have received bonuses and raises as a reward for getting the government to bail them out. I don't think the party addressed the issue at all.  A few Senators and Representatives did, but they got no support from their party that I could see. 
       Anyone that has been keeping up with the business news of late is well aware of the stampede of mergers that have been taking place. It seems we are moving into a position where very few companies will dominate the entire market, especially the most critical markets. Government does have a role in making sure that markets remain free and open to competition.  Small business should be encouraged to the maximum extent. No industry should be dominated by just a few companies so that they can set the conditions and dictate the prices for the the services and goods they provide.   
     The basic message of fiscal responsibility along with the commitment to a strong military, a sound infrastructure, assuring  a free market for goods and ideas, improving our global commerce positions, a rational approach to the nations health care, welfare of it's citizens and Social Security should be at the core positions of the party, and either rise or fall on that platform. 
       
     
     
       

Pity the Poor Taxpayer

      The poor taxpayer has all kinds of burdens hanging on his back. He or she is expected to not only support the building of roads, support our the military, arm and feed foreign nations, monitor our food, water and air to assure that they aren't killing us, provide for law enforcement agencies to protect us from the bad guys and a huge number of additional government functions that are growing as fast as our congress can think up things that they think the taxpayer should support.
      In addition the taxpayer has the privilege of supporting retired public employees with pensions and retirement benefits that he or she will never enjoy. Of course we're glad to do that because the poor government employee with their secure jobs, 30 days vacation a year, high wages for the skills they bring to the job and medical benefits that most of us envy, along with sick leave and other fringe benefits deserve it.
     Of course the taxpayer has the privilege of supporting the  illegal immigrants flooding across our border.  The President says so, and the President is never wrong.
     Now the taxpayer has the privilege of supplying most of the funding for the medical coverage dictated by the recently enacted Affordable Care Act, otherwise known as Obama Care. That's in addition to the already imposed Social Security tax. A pyramid scheme if there ever was one.
     The taxpayer is also glad that the Local, State and Federal regulators and law makers hide a lot of the burden of taxes that they have to shoulder. Take a look at your utility bill sometimes for instance. Or better yet, think of how much the price of a new car, or any other purchase, is determined by the cost to the manufacturer of taxes that they have to pay to government. In the end the consumer pays all taxes. That doesn't include the costs to the consumer due to myriad of regulations that the manufacturer labors under, which, by necessity, is passed on.
      As we move further and further into a total welfare state, the taxpayer will have the privilege of supplying more and more of the funding necessary to keep the government engine running. And, it is clear we're heading toward a sort of quasi socialist state right now. Isn't the taxpayer lucky?
     
   
   
   

Putin gets what he wanted

It is clear to me the Putin had a plan when he encouraged and supported the unrest in the Crimea and in eastern Ukraine. His main objective was to reach out and grab the Crimea and enfold it in the Russian Federation. The Crimea provides Russia with a good warm weather port and it sets on top of a giant oil reserve. 
He clearly succeeded.  
He judged the western reaction accurately and reasoned that the US and the NATO countries were just a shadow of what they were prior to the Obama administration.  Putin would never have tried to pull this type of territory grab under Kennedy, Truman or Reagan, in fact with any leader prior to Obama.  But,he sees Obama as a naive leader who thinks that everything can be settled without the threat of force.  
Putin took over the Crimea and continued to foment trouble in the eastern Ukraine.  Recently he has pulled a lot of troops back from the Ukrainian border and Obama breaths a sigh of relief, conceding the Crimea to Russia. He's playing the west like a fine violin. By keeping the attention on the trouble in eastern Ukraine he diverts attention away from the Crimea takeover.  
Of course, now that he has let the cat out of the bag in the Ukraine, he may have trouble controlling it.  But, given that he is supplying the arms and even manpower to fight this uprising, he generally has control.  We'll see. 
If this doesn't remind you of the early days of WWII when Hitler moved in and took over the Rhineland, Austria and the Sudetenland before he just took over Czechoslovakia, I would be surprised. Obama's actions hark back to Neville Chamberland of Great Briton and the actions of appeasement that lead straight into WWII .      

Population Growth and It's consequences

There are many events that could occur in our future that could have a catastrophic result on the human population, or all life forms for that matter.  The threat of a massive volcano eruption, so large that it would spew ashes and soot into the air  high enough and with volume to cover the earth and shut out the sun for months, if not years.  Such a volcano is sitting under Yellowstone National Park right now. A large asteroid striking the earth and repeating the event that resulted in the extension of the dinosaurs. A massive epidemic of global proportions caused by some unleashed mutated or man made virus that defies all efforts to control it.  All of these could result in the extinction of the human species, or at least a significant die off of same. Think of the Black Plaque that enveloped Europe in the mid 15th century and reduced the human population by about 50%.

Any of these events could happen within a few years, or not for thousands of years. 

There is a major problem facing the human race today that is clear to anyone that is willing to look; and it's more certain and closer in time than we like to think . That is the exploding population on this place we call home; the Earth.   The graph below shows the past and forecast population of the world through 2050 as projected by the UN.  The graph is a little misleading unless you look closely. It's on a logarithmic scale. 

 Predicted World Population Growth 

Shown in Millions

Worlds population growth to the present  

It should be clear that we're headed for trouble. The population of the world in 1950 was about 2.1 billion and it has increased to about 7 billion in just over a half a century. Within a young persons lifetime today the world is projected to grow to about 10 to 12 billion people or almost double. There are more people alive today than lived in all of past history. The population of the world has been doubling about every 50 years. 

The earth just does not have the ability to support an an ever growing population.  Mother nature will prevail in the end. Starvation and the resulting diseases will keep the population in check as resources are consumed. This will hit hardest in those areas where the population is expected to grow faster.  They also happen to be the least technically advanced, poorly educated and poorest areas of our globe. Africa and the Oceanic countries.  

There will be food riots and other unrest as the demand for resources becomes more and more demanding.  Governments will exercise greater control of the resources of their countries as they try to cope with the problems.  Many of the them will become very oppressive, as history has shown. The developed countries will be no exception.  They consume most of the world's resources as it is, and the growing population of the globe puts a great strain on the available supply. A very likely result will be wars between nations competing for land and resources.  

This is not a new insight into the coming apocalypse. In the end it might result in forced population control by various means. The future doesn't look rosy folks. 

But, there is another side to the story. One that is just as frightening. Take a look a Europe which already showing a declining population and North America which is starting to slow down in growth. North America is sort of unique in the most of the growth and projected growth is due to immigration from the south. At first one might think that this is good thing. But, a bit of reflection says that this trend spells big trouble for the governments and societies of Europe and North America.  In fact, if the world starts limiting population, that will spread the problem to the globe. 

We in America and those folks in Europe have, in the last 50 or 60 years, by passing a massive number of entitlement programs, instituted an economic model that depends on an every growing work force.  Social Security, Medicare, the new Obama-Care, massive retirement packages for teachers and other public employees, and on and on depend on the growing number wage earners to feed the pyramid scheme that we have created.  In all of these schemes the current workers support the recipients of the government programs. There is myth that prevails that the recipients of these programs are merely getting back what they put in to the program. This is especially true for Social Security, one of the greatest ponzi schemes of all time.  A little calculation will show that isn't so.  The retired community draws far more from that program than they ever contributed, by many times. All of the entitlement programs ride on the back of the wage earners.  

With a shrinking population the system reaches the point where there as many people living off the taxpayer as there are taxpayers. In fact if you look a Europe's population projections, there will more receivers than workers in the not to distant future.  We're facing the same problem here a home. We have a large  segment of the  population now, the Baby Boomers, that are entering the retirement phase of their lives.  They will become recipients of the entitlements rather that contributors. The problem is that the generations that follow them are not nearly as large. To make matters worse, the "Baby Boomers" are likely to live a long time. In fact they will likely live as many years in retirement as they worked, or even longer. Compounding the problem is that the following generations are likely to be even smaller, as more women enter the work force and don't want, or need, the constraints on their careers that a large family would present.     

We could mitigate some of that pain if we acted to change the rules now. But, that is not likely to happen. The public has become enamored with government handouts and will not entertain any changes to the system that has the potential for a reduction in benefits. Even a mention of possible Social Security reform and the AARP is up in arms. Any discussion of somehow reducing welfare and any other government entitlement raises the hackles of the liberals, the recipients of government handouts, and a fire storm of protests results. 

So have fun folks.  Enjoy the world now.  Things may not be as good for our great grandchildren. 

What's Obama going to do now?

    The President has been faced with many challenges since he took office over 6 years ago.  And, as far as I can tell, he has been able to weasel himself out of every misstep he has made along the way. An overindulgent press really helps of course, and will continue to be Obama's shield in the future. 
      In fact, the only thing that he has actually accomplished is the passage of the Affordable Care Act, or Obama Care as it's popularly known. For the most part that bill has been an unmitigated disaster.  So much so that he has had to repeatedly postpone key provisions of the bill due the hardship would cause small businesses and the impact that would have on the next election. 
     Now, we have a real kettle of fish brewing in the Ukraine. It is clear the Russians have invaded parts of the Ukraine because it's in their interest to so. They mask it behind protecting the ethic Russians living there from mobs of western backed Ukrainians.  Of course as the free press has pointed out there is no mobs attacking anybody in the Crimea or any place in eastern Ukraine. 
    And what is Obama doing?  As usual he is making speeches and veiled threats. But, Russia has seen, from many examples, just how much real danger is in Obama's promises and threats. He is yet to take any action to carry out his declaration of a Red Line that will not crossed, and was, many times. 
    It is clear to me that Putin rues the disassembling of the Soviet Empire and it's position as one of the worlds super powers and wants to return to those glory days. He still pictures the west and specifically the USA as his enemy and has gone to great lengths to harass America in every part of the globe where the circumstances permit. The old Soviet State is being reborn, with the suppression of a free press and all political opposition. Next I expect to see a walling off of Russia from the rest of the world as foreign journalists are only allowed into the country under strict government control. That's already happening to some extent. It's quite possible that the cold war will start to heat up again.   
    In the meantime, Obama is moving to cut our armed forces to pre WWII levels. He is living under the typical liberal fantasy that if we're good guys the bad guys will turn good too; that Putin is an honorable man and he is only reacting to our aggressive policies. He reminds me of Chamberlain waving a piece of paper after he gave away part of a country to Hitler and stating that with this agreement we will have piece in our time. As history shows, Hitlers word wasn't worth much.  
    Now Obama is caught up in a situation largely of his own making. Our capitulation in one world crises after another has encouraged Putin to invade Ukrainian territory without any fear of United States actions to thwart him.  He now owns a strategic port on the Black Sea. And, at this stage there is little Obama can do except make some meaningless threats about sanctions, which hasn't phased Russia at all. Putin knows that any sanctions that have any teeth will not last very long, as the resources of Russia are sought by the world. 
    Putin is already making noises about protecting the ethnic Russians that populate eastern Ukraine from the "oppressive and illegal" government in Kiev. It wouldn't surprise me at all that the next move will be the invasion and annexation of eastern Ukraine into the Russian Federation.
    Stay tuned. Watch as this play unfolds. I don't think it will have a happy ending.    
          
      

I Remember

I posted a part of this blog entry on my Facebook page at the first of the year.  I thought I would expand on it for reasons only I know.

     A New Year is upon us  and in times like these I think it's good to remember the past, so we don't repeat the mistakes in the future. Unfortunately, I think that  a lot of the younger generation don't   even know there is a past, or if so, have been fed the pablum version of it. But, perhaps unfortunately, I do remember.

    I remember growing up during the great depression, where some 25 percent of the work force was unemployed. Unbridled speculation on wall street, fueled by stocks being bought on large margins (i.e. borrowed money) resulted an a great crash in the stock market in 1929 followed by a bigger one  in 1932 when the house of cards came tumbling down. Making matters worse, we had the greatest man made environmental disaster in American history. Poor farming methods on the Great Plains,which had been dubbed the Great American Desert, resulted in the removal of all the top soil and the protection the native grasses provided against drought conditions and the high winds that frequently sweep the plains. A lot of this was driven by an unusually wet period that happens infrequently, encouraging the farmers to put more and more acreage under the plow. This was only made possible due to the introduction and use of mechanized farming methods. The average rain fall for the Great Plains is about 10 inches per year. The drought hit the plain states during the same time as the stock market crash. The combination of unprotected soil, a severe drought and high winds  created what has been called the great dust bowl of the 1930's. This confluence of events resulted in great hardships to the nation, but particularly to the people of the great plains. In fact this was part of a greater depression that gripped the whole world. 
     I remember Franklin Roosevelt and his attempts to move the nation out of the depression. It turned out that all his efforts actually accomplished little in the broad sense, and in the opinion of many economists, many of his programs had the opposite effect. But, these programs and FDR's approach, created a whole new mindset as to the role of government into the everyday lives of the people. Roosevelt tried all kinds of things to get his programs moving, including trying to pack the Supreme Court so that some of his questionable programs wouldn't be nullified by court action.  It was literately the beginning of the welfare state that has blossomed into full fruition today.  But, the poor people and unemployed  loved him because he looked like he was trying to do something. He created a whole set of alphabet soup agencies that were funded directly by the federal government. It did provide jobs for a lot of people, but the numbers were small compared to the total unemployment. One of the better projects that came under the New Deal was the building of Boulder Dam.  He also set up agencies to develop and introduce new farming methods into the great American desert. Relief agencies and work programs of all kinds were formed, each trying to alleviate the effects of the high unemployment. 
       The great depression lasted from about 1932 until we started gearing up war production in 1939. A little research into history will show that the entrance of our nation into WWII was the act that finally pulled the nation out of the Great Depression. That's something to contemplate. But, the seeds had been sown on the expanded role of government into the lives of it's people. The citizens began to look to government to provide a "safety net" to guard against the ups and downs of the economy and to protect against lack of planning and foresight on the part of the individual.        I remember Pearl Harbor and how unprepared we were to fight a global war.  We jumped with both feet into the mobilization of American industry to supply the material to fight that war, a luxury granted us by the vast oceans that surrounded our nation.  That did allow us the time to rearm.  American industry performed beyond any ones expectations and we began to turn out war materials at a fantastic rate. The supply line to England had to be increased, and we figured out how to commission the primary cargo hauler, the Liberty Ship, at a rate of three ships a day.  We were building them faster than the German U-Boats could sink them. We entered the war with a lot of operational equipment that was inferior to that of our enemy. We had nothing to match Japanese Zero or the German Me109.  But, shortly we were supplying the fleet with the F6F Hellcat and the F4U Corsair, perhaps the best pure fighter in the US armed forces; both planes far superior to anything the Japanese had. The Army Air Corps very quickly got the P47 thunderbolt and the best fighter in the European theater, the P51 Mustang. The Mustang fulfilled a role in the European strategic bombing operations that was absolutely essential to the continuation of daylight precision bombing. Before the P51, bomber sorties deep into enemy territory, out of the the range of all other fighters, resulted in horrific casualty losses of bombers and crews. The Mustang could accompany the Bombers all the way to Berlin and back.  Without that plane the destruction of German production by bombing the facilities deep inside Germany would have been even more costly to the Eight Air Force than it was. The strategy  might have been cancelled altogether due to the unacceptable losses. The British had tried it early in the war and decided they couldn't accept the losses. They reverted to nighttime carpet bombing of cities. 

     The P51 Mustang was the primary weapon that won air supremacy over western Europe and permitted the invasion at Normandy on June 6, 1944.  The control of the air over western Europe was so essential for the invasion to be successful, that as the invasion date approached, the bombers were sent to prime and sensitive targets in Germany, especially Berlin, with the sole purpose of drawing the German fighters up to defend so that the Mustangs could shoot them down. And it worked. The Allies achieved commanding air superiority over western Europe. The Germans had almost no fighter cover on D Day, 1944.  
    I remember the stupidity of Hitler when he declared war on the USA and brought the whole industrial might of the United States against him. That's after he was dumb enough to open up a war with the Soviet Union with England still alive and kicking at his back door. It should be said that this was the war that Roosevelt wanted to fight and Hitler played right into his hands. The emphasis of American power was primarily concentrated on the European theater. The Pacific theater had to do the best it could for awhile. That was never more clear than at Guadalcanal. American industrial power was so great however, that both fronts were supplied with massive amount of equipment as the war progressed.
    I remember the Bataan Death March and the atrocities committed by the Japanese and the Germans prior to and  during WWII. I remember the German Death Camps where Jews along with other people were put to death by the millions. The Germans seem to have come to grips with what was done in their name, but the Japanese still seem to be in denial. 
     I remember the battle at Midway, which was a battle we had every right to lose, in spite of the fact that we knew that the Japanese were coming and when. Carrier warfare was new to everybody engaged in that battle on the American side. The Japanese had superior planes (the Japanese Zero fighter), more carriers and experienced battle hardened combat pilots. The main purpose of the Midway invasion, other than gaining a forward base for the Japanese, was to draw the American carriers into a decisive battle so the Japanese could destroy them. The Japanese plan was to occupy Midway and then trap the American carriers when they were sent to the rescue. They knew that we couldn't lose Midway and would do everything in our power to prevent the Japanese from occupying it.  Their intelligence told them that our carriers were still at Pearl Harbor. The Japanese did send out scout planes to search the oceans in case the American fleet was out there.  It is believed that one of the scout planes actually spotted the American fleet, but had radio problems and was not able to report back. The Japanese fleet's commanders assumed they were still at Pearl. In any event our scout planes, a Navy PBY, spotted their fleet first. 
      We attacked in an uncoordinated fashion, against doctrine, resulting in the almost total lose of all the torpedo planes, who attacked without fighter cover, not scoring even a single torpedo into a Japanese ship.  It was, to say the least, suicide for the crews of the American torpedo planes.  But, the torpedo attack had pulled the Japanese fighter cover down to lower levels and when the dive bombers arrived there was no fighter cover over the Japanese fleet.  The dive bombers had a field day, sinking three of the four Japanese carriers within minutes. The fourth carrier was found and sunk a little later but not before she found one of the American carriers and attacked, inflicting sever damage. The carrier, The Yorktown, was subsequently sunk by a torpedo. The only major lose for the Americans was the Yorktown.  Due to that series of circumstances, what could have been a disaster turned into a major American victory where we destroyed the cream of the Japanese Naval air arm including their best pilots. 
     I remember Guadalcanal where we were desperate to deny the Japanese an airfield that would threaten the supply lines from the USA to Australia.  We sent in the Marines with inadequate supplies, inadequate Naval support, and WWI firearms. And they held on, somehow. The initial landing was almost unopposed as we seem to have caught the Japanese totally unaware. They captured the uncompleted airfield very quickly. The Japanese quickly started to move men and firepower onto the island from their base at Rabaul in a desperate attempt to take the airfield back. The US Navy was generally over matched by the well trained Japanese Naval forces in the beginning and we had to pull our transports, with all their supplies, out of the area or risk getting them sunk. That left the Marines eating captured Japanese rations with little hope of immediate resupply of essentials. After the Marines and Army Air Corp were able to move aircraft into the airfield that the Sea Bee's had built using Japanese equipment, we were able to establish air superiority during the day. With no night fighting equipment the American planes were grounded at night. 
      The small detachment of Marines were flying the F4F Wildcat  and the Army the P400 (a variation on the P39).  The Army aircraft were essentially ineffective because of the low ceiling that of the P400. That left the main combat operations to the Marines in the heavily outnumbered Wildcats and the Navy to bear the brunt of fighting over Guadalcanal.  The Navy was still flying the F4F Wildcat also, but with tactics developed by the Flying Tigers, who flew the similarly out classed P40 Warhawk, and some imagination by a couple of Naval aviators, they were able to maximize the advantages of the Wildcat and avoid the Zeros strengths. The heavily armored Wildcat could take significant punishment and still fly, while the Zero, while agile, speedy and with a great climb rate, turned out to be rather fragile when hit with incendiaries from the Wildcats 50 caliber guns.  
     The popular term in the fleet for the Grumman factory that produced both the F4F Wildcat and later the highly effective F6F Hellcat was "The Grumman Iron Works". The Grumman designs always put great emphasis on protecting the pilot and making the plane survivable.  The Hellcat was without question a very effective airplane in the Pacific, attaining a kill ratio of nine to one over the Japanese planes. It was the favorite plane of the Naval Aviators because it was rugged and adapted well to carrier landings.  The Marines latched onto the F4U and it remained their favorite plane into the Korean war. It achieved a kill ratio of 11 to 1 over the Japanese planes. They feared it more than any other plane.  The biggest problem with the F4U was the initial difficulty in landing on an aircraft carrier due to it's long nose. The British figured how to do it however, and it became a standard carrier plane for the American Navy. The F4U had the longest production run of any fighter in the armed forces. 
      For a long time the night belonged to the Japanese Naval forces which had trained extensively for fighting a Naval engagement at night. They pretty much had their way when the Sun went down. In Naval battles fought at night between the two adversaries, the Japanese wrecked havoc on the American fleet. However, the day belonged to the Americans after they achieved air superiority and the Japanese avoided any daytime activity.  For months the Japanese continued to provide men and material to Guadalcanal coming down through the slot from Rabaul, which they controlled. 
     The Japanese finally withdrew their forces six months later, after they decided the cost in men was too great. 
      Of course then there was Tarawa, where we had to learn how to assault an entrenched enemy, an expensive lesson, and finally through a chain of bloody islands ending at Okinawa, where the Japanese Kamikaze attacks wrecked havoc on the American fleet and the loss of Marines on the island looked like a horrible precursor of things to come with the invasion of Japan. In between were gut wrenching operations as the Naval Forces under Admiral Nimitz and the Army forces under General MacArthur fought one bloody battle after another moving toward the Japanese homeland. The projected casually rates for the Naval and Army forces that would be involved in an invasion of Japan were mind numbing, which made the decision to drop the Atomic Bombs to attempt to end the war a no brainer. That act saved hundreds of thousands, or more likely millions, of both American and Japanese lives by negating the need for an all out invasion of Japan.     
     I remember the rise of Adolf Hitler and path of appeasements that led him to think he could invade Poland in concert with Stalin and the USSR, without England and France honoring their agreements with Poland.  By agreement they split the country in half. He had finally taken a step too far and both England and France declared war on Germany. I'm still not sure why they didn't include the USSR which invaded from the east. The German SS troops treated the Poles very badly, but probably not as bad as the Soviet troops. There are well documented cases of mass executions of Polish military and civilians by both the Germans and the Soviets. 
    As is usual, a nation enters a war with the leadership of people who fought in the last war and developed their tactics and strategies based on that experience.  France was setting up for a WWI type battle, concentrating on fixed defensive positions. The problem was that the Germans didn't suffer from that affliction and unleashed a new form or warfare on the French and the British Expeditionary forces on the continent. The French forces, which outnumbered and were really better equipped than the Germans, were overwhelmed in short order.  A good part of the British forces were trapped on the western coast of France at Dunkirk, and only were saved by a massive evacuation effort performed by almost everything that could float which was dispatched from England for the rescue.
      What followed has been called the Battle of Britain. It was a fight that was actually waged on two fronts, the air over England and the North Atlantic ocean. The term is generally used only in regard to the air war that was fought between the RAF and the Luftwaffe for control of the air over England. Hitler planned to invade England but had to have air superiority over the channel to do so.  
    It was a desperate war, and a new kind of war. The Germans sent wave after wave of bombers escorted by the Bf109 fighters over England day after day and the RAF rose to meet them. The original goal of the Luftwaffe was to destroy RAF fighter command. They would bomb it's airfields and when the Spitfires and Hurricanes came up to do combat shoot them out of the sky. It was working. The loses on both sides were serious. It became a war of attrition. The British propaganda had the RAF shooting down a lot more German planes than they were losing, but the fact was that the losses were almost equal.  England was in dire straits.  
     But, the Germans made three strategic errors during the Battle. First, they did not develop a long range bomber capability so that they could not reach the manufacturing facilities in western and northern England. Therefore they could not get at the factories that were churning out the fighters that were being made for the RAF. Secondly, they totally overlooked the importance of the newly developed technology of RADAR, that let Fighter Command have sufficient warnings so that they could get their fighters into the air and in the right position to intercept the incoming bombers. That allowed the fighter pilots to be off alert between raids and not having to maintain continuous air patrol. Thirdly, just when the RAF was literally on it's knees, the Germans shifted their focus from attacking the RAF facilities to bombing the English cities, especially London. While London paid the price, the RAF was able to rebuild, acquire new pilots and planes. Then the RAF came out in force and the chance to gain superiority of the air for the Luftwaffe was lost. The plans for the invasion of England was cancelled, and it became the staging platform for the invasion of the European continent. As Churchill said "Never have so many owed so much to so few".   

    I remember when North Korea invaded the South, with the blessing of the Soviet Union and supported by them, and we again found ourselves in a war that we were not prepared to fight.  Our forces in Korea and Japan were
ill prepared to fight any kind of combat. We had denied any kind of heavy equipment, including tanks and heavy field pieces to the South Korean Army because we were afraid that Sigmund Rhee would use it to invade the north. The Russians did not hesitate in supplying North Korea with the latest tanks and heavy artillery however. 
     The US Army, that first were sent into the fight from Japan, were poorly trained and inadequately supplied occupation troops, but that's all we had. And we got our butts kicked in the beginning, over powered by both men and equipment. This was as a result of the "Peace Dividend" following WWII and the divergence of funding from armed forces into social welfare programs that had become popular during the FDR reign. Our Army was pushed back into a small area at the south east peninsula (The Pusan Perimeter) of Korea and holding on with their teeth. Except for the arrival of the Marines, who were a well trained, and the air cover supplied by the Navy Carriers and the Air Force planes flying out of Japan, the outcome might have been grave. But, we held on. The Port at Pusan was essential if we were going to bring reinforcements into the conflict. If we lost Pusan, we would likely lose the war.  At this point,however, the North Korean Army supply lines were stretched to the limit,were being attacked almost continuously from the air. They were having  problems keeping their troops supplied.       
      Because we held on at Pusan we were able to build up our forces in the south and with a daring encircling move by MacArthur with the landing of the Marines at Inchon, the UN forces started to decimate the North Korean Army.  The North Korean Army began a hasty retreat north at the behest of their Soviet and Chinese advisers or they would have been totally destroyed. 
     The push northward continued until the UN forces were virtually at the Yalu river which separates Korea from China.  MacArthur's intelligence breakdown was monumental here. He was assured by his most trusted advisers and his own intelligence staff that the Chinese would not enter the war. This was in spite of the fact that Zhou Enlai had warned that the Chinese would enter the war if UN troops went north of the 38th parallel.  Well, as history shows The General was dead wrong. Chairman Mao ignited the fuse and the Chinese attacked.  About 300 thousand strong. 
     The Chinese had started to move troops in large numbers into Korea weeks before the UN troops came to a stop at the Yalu. The American forces thought the war was over and they would be going home. A good thing because it was cold and miserable and our troops were not really equipped for prolonged cold weather operations. We were loosing more men to frost bite than we were losing in combat.  
     The Chinese were able hide their movement from all the aerial surveillance prior to their open attack by moving primarily in the dark and not bringing heavy equipment with them.  They basically came with what they could carry or pack on horses or mules.  That gave them extreme mobility with respect to UN and American forces which, because we were so highly mechanized, were confined to the existing roads.  That allowed the Chinese to move through the hills and encircle the UN forces and out flank them. The Army had rushed pell mell northward, once they got the North Koreans routed, and were very strung out and really not very cohesive. There was essentially a breakdown in the command structure. The Marines, moving up the eastern side of Korea,  on the other hand, moved forward with more care, remaining an intact cohesive unit. The Marine commanders were actually criticized for their slower advance. 
    And then the Chinese struck. They routed the South Korean forces and  some divisions of the Army. Many of the Army battalions were over run before they knew what was going on. Many of them just broke and ran leaving the rest to be encircled and cut off. The whole UN line of battle was in confusion. In general the Army forces were in total disarray and were retreating as fast as they could run, leaving the Marines cut off and surrounded by the Chinese Army. An Indian regiment took enormous casualties, holding the line, so that a US Army regiment could successfully retreat southward. This was in spite of the fact that the Army was not overwhelmed in numbers on every front by the Chinese, contrary to the news releases.  The Marines, now out numbered and out flanked, were trapped at Chosen in bitter cold weather and had to then fight their way out of the trap, and did so bringing their dead and wounded with them. It was another moment in Marine history for which they can be proud. 
     The Army, under a new commander, Ridgeway, finally got it's act together and was able to stop the Chinese forces after the initial humiliating retreat. The Army had been pushed back completely out of North Korea, had lost Seoul and was in danger of being being pushed off the peninsula. Under Ridgeway's leadership the Army made a heroic stand at Chi-Yong-Ni against much larger Chinese forces. From there the US forces began to push the Chinese back north. The Marines retook Seoul for the second time. At this point, the war begin to look more and more like WWI trench warfare.  
     The Korean war saw the introduction of the jet in the equation. In the beginning of the war, all the planes were WWII vintage. The Navy using the F4U as it's primary fighter and the Air Force the P51. With these planes the UN forces commanded total air superiority over the whole of Korea. They were a primary factor in avoiding total defeat in the beginning of the war and the saving of Army and Marine forces when they had to beat a retreat before the Chinese onslaught.  Then, a new type of plane appeared over the battlefield.  The MIG 15. A new jet powered, swept wing fighter, that completely over matched the American planes. We know, from radio intercepts and other data that many of them were being flown by Russian pilots. We tried to rush our own jet fighters into the gap, but all we had was the Lockheed F80 Shooting Star and the F84 ThunderJet. Neither of them able to counter the speed and fighter capability of the MIG. The ThunderJet, however was an  effective ground attack plane as was used in that mission for much of the war. For a time the Communists took control of the air over North Korea. North American Aviation then produced a new American fighter, the F86 Saber Jet. It was a new swept wing design the was faster and more heavily armed than the MIG.  In the final tally the F86 proved to be more that a match for the MIG.  
     One of the defining moments in that war was the decision by President Truman to relieve General MacArthur of command.  The tension between MacArthur and his bosses in Washington had been fomenting for some time.  The General was openly critical of the decisions being made in Washington about the objectives of the war and how much force should be brought to bar on the enemy, including the use of tactical nuclear weapons.  MacArthur's mantra was that there is no substitute for victory. Truman did not want the war to expand outside of Korea and involve the Chinese in an Asian war that could become global. MacArthur felt that we were in a position to win a war against the Chinese and we should do so, if that was required. We can never know what would have happened if The General had his way. 
      The General was one of the most brilliant tactical commanders in the military, but he had an ego second to none. And he tended to surround himself with a staff that didn't want to tell him anything he didn't want to hear. When MacArthur decided that something was true, the only intelligence that reached him was that which reinforced his opinion. That's why he was so surprised by the North Korean invasion.  There were reports at lower levels that were warning of a North Korean buildup and possible invasion but, they never were allowed to reach MacArthur.  There were reports of the massive Chinese movement into the south prior to the attack at the Yalu, as well as the direct warning by the Chinese that they would send in troops if the American forces went beyond the 38th parallel. The Chinese could not allow the American military to share a common border with mainland China. 
     This war was finally stalemated at about the 38th parallel, and after two years of negotiations an armistice was signed that is still in effect. 
     I remember Vietnam, where again we had to intervene because the Soviet and Chinese backed forces of communist North Vietnam through their surrogate southern wing, the Vietcong, were attempting to take over the south, violating an agreement that partitioned the country until elections could be held to unify it. Elections that the Soviets blocked at every turn so that the communists would have a foothold in Vietnam. 
     The Vietnamese had been engaged in warfare for years previously against the French forces who were trying to reestablish the French Indo-China colony following WWII after the Japanese surrender, who had occupied the peninsula during WWII. The French had colonized the Indo-China peninsula in the mid 1900's. The Vietnamese drove the French out in 1958, leaving a divided Vietnam as a result of the agreements reached by the settlement. It's a no brainer to know that the North Vietnam leadership were well versed in fighting a conventional land army and how to defeat such an army. They also could field a guerrilla army with years of experience in that type of warfare, and an already established infrastructure supporting that type of operation.  
     Now we entered a war that we were ill prepared to fight on so many levels. It was, by any definition, in the beginning and throughout, a guerrilla war. Unfortunately we had a senior officer corps trained in WWII and Korea and a brain trust in Washington that didn't have a clue how to fight that kind of war. 
      Modern communications allowed the Washington crowd to have their finger in the proverbial pie and dictated the conduct of the war in detail.  So, at the top, both in Washington and the Military, we had no one who knew anything about how to fight this type of war, and the grunt on the firing line who was frustrated and felt themselves as pawns in the game.  They probably should have contacted the French on what not to do. They ended up adopting the strategy of using a war of attrition as the overall plan.  We'll kill more of them than they will of us, and then they'll just give up. Apparently none of them had read Sun Tzu"s " The Art of War" which accurately predicted how this would play out against an enemy that was fighting under a different set of ground rules.  The North Vietnam leadership had apparently read the book. The analogy I heard once was, that we were fighting the war as if it were a Chess Game and the North Vietnamese were playing the game of Go. Those familiar with the two games will get the analogy.  The North Vietnamese decided when and were they would fight, and it was always on their terms. They also understood that war was a political game more so than military. They knew how to play that game well. 
     This resulted in the longest war in American history, with the body counts piling up and no end in site. The Vietcong just wouldn't play by our rules. The North was obviously, and said so, willing to spend millions of their own peoples lives to unify the country under communism. This was a strange war to the American people who weren't used to this. We won every battle fought, but were losing the war at home. The famous Tet offensive on January 30, 1968, that was covered so extensively by the media, was one of the few times the Vietcong and North Vietnamese attempted more conventional warfare. Some 800,000 communist troops attacked  100 towns and villages throughout South Vietnam. They, for a brief instance lost their minds and played the game according to our rules. They shocked the American high command with this offensive because they had been led to believe that the communist forces were so decimated that they could not launch such an operation. They had an initial wave of victories, which really impressed the media. The Americans quickly recovered and regained all the lost territory. The end result was a total disaster for North Vietnamese and Vietcong forces.  The loses they incurred almost decimated their army, with minimal casualties for the American forces. A great tactical victory for the US forces. But, the public got a different picture from the media, which reported it as a Vietcong show of strength and determination. They almost unanimously came to the conclusion that the war was not winnable. And, they were probably right if we didn't get some leadership at the top who could figure out how change the rules of the war we were fighting. 
    It's no wonder that as time went on the American public began to turn against the war. And they had every right to do so. Not because we were in a war we shouldn't have got involved in, but rather, we were fighting it in a way that only meant more body bags with no end in sight. 
     The shame is that a lot of the unthinking public took their anger out on the returning members of the Armed Forces as the war continued and as we finally gave up the ghost and evacuated our forces. They spit on them, called them names, accused them of killing babies and even went so far as to attack them.  This from people who had no clue on what it was like over there and had no experience what so ever in situations more perilous than getting caught smoking too much weed.  
   I also remember Jane Fonda, who went to North Vietnam. took her place at an anti-aircraft gun and simulated shooting down American fliers. I will always consider her a traitor.  Every American had the right to protest the war, but she stepped over the line to the point of actively giving aid and comfort to the enemy.
      I remember the Cold War and the conflict between the Soviet Union and the nations of Western Europe and the United States. Before WWII was even over, Stalin was signaling his intentions to establish a Russian sphere of influence stretching far beyond her own borders. During the war Stalin assured the naive Roosevelt that the Soviets would allow free elections of the territories that they would "liberate" from the Germans as they moved westward. Churchill was not no easily fooled. The Russians had suffered severely under the Germans in the war, so it is easy to understand their passion for revenge. 
    As the Soviet troops moved west, pushing the German forces back to their homeland and then into eastern Germany, they set up puppet governments under the rule of Moscow. There was no attempt a holding any kind of free election. These countries existed to support the Soviets. Near the end of the war, when the outcome was clear, the Soviets declared war on Japan, invaded and took control of Manchuria. They expected to share in the occupation of Japan, but MacArthur told them he would shoot the first Soviet soldier that set foot on Japan. 
     As people under the Soviet yoke tried to escape to the west, the Soviets established, what Winston Churchill called, an Iron Current across Europe to keep their people from leaving. Decisions made during the war about the division of Germany among the Allies resulted in Berlin being inside the Soviet sphere. According to the agreement Berlin was to become a sort of free city, with equal access for all the allied powers. That didn't last long.  The Soviets blockaded the highways leading into Berlin, attempting to deny the other allied powers from entering.  Truman answered that by instituting the Berlin airlift, whereby supplies for the parts of Berlin under the control of the western nations were supplied by a massive air transport system. Stalin in the end backed off. To further partition Berlin, the Soviets built a high wall that divided the city into the east and west zones. Any person in the east part of Berlin who tried to escape to the west was shot on the spot. Many Germans lost their lives on the Berlin Wall. 
      It was called the Cold War but, it was a real war. Stalin and the Soviets intended to export their influence outward at every opportunity. Many of our modern liberals scoff at the idea, but the Stalin had grand plans of seeing all of Europe, if not the whole world under Soviet influence. It wasn't fought directly between the big powers, but rather in other engagements played out over the globe. The Soviets armed, trained and supported insurgencies in all parts of the world. Korea, Vietnam and Cuba to name a few of the larger ones that were were sucked into.  They supplied arms, including the latest Soviet fighters, tanks, Surface to Air Missiles to Egypt and Syria in their fight with Israel. They attempted to take over Afghanistan and got a bloody nose. In Korea it was known that Russian pilots were flying some of the jet fighters involved in the conflict. 
     Even after Stalin died, the Soviets really never let up. They attempted to establish nuclear missile bases on Cuba. That action came close to triggering a war between us and the Soviets. Kennedy's reaction to the threat and some cooler heads in Moscow barely averted a catastrophe.   
     They were in a serious arms race with United States, helped along by spies that were funneling American secrets to the Soviets during and after the World War. It turns out there really were communist sympathizers in critical positions in our defense systems and in our intelligence systems.
     Ronald Reagan recognized the Soviets venerability and upped the arms race with the expansion of our Navy and modernizing of the Army and Air Force. Trying to keep up, the Soviets spent themselves into bankruptcy. Hard to imagine, but it happened. The Soviet Union collapsed and the subjugated countries broke free of Russian domination.The Berlin wall came down and Germany was reunited. The cold war was over. The problem now; Putin seems to want to put the old Soviet Republic back together and return Russia back to the glory days when she was a major world power. The events going on in the Ukraine at this time is very worrisome to the west. Russia is doing a bit of saber rattling about the situation there. Another place where the potential for armed conflict between the Russians and the NATO powers appears. 
     I remember the expedition to Granada to rescue the medical students supposedly held by the Granada forces.  The operation was a case of killing a fly with a sledge hammer. But, the valuable lesson we learned in that skirmish was just how messed up the organization and communication systems among the various services were. Nobody could talk to anybody. The Army couldn't call on the Air Force for support, nor the Navy. Various Army and Marine forces couldn't communicate. In other words it was a cluster @#$$%.  It seemed we learned our lesson and almost immediately the military was reorganized and the communications problem addressed. Later excursions into Iraq indicated that the reorganization and communications resolution were successful.
   We were not through with our involvement in foreign conflicts of course.  There has been the Iranian revolution. With the revolutionists taking over of the American Embassy and holding the staff prisoners.  A failed attempt under Jimmy Carter to free them. There has been two wars during the two Bush administrations. The first, very successful, the second questionable. Then there is Afghanistan, which has captured our attention of late. Events are playing out in the Ukraine that could escalate into something bigger if the Russians enter that conflict. China is in the process of building a major military capability to rival the American forces.  That is very frightening, considering the growth and prosperity of the Chinese economy and the number and quality of engineers that she is educating; far exceeding Americas. 
     In the face of the hostile world we live in, Obama decided that our armed forces must be reduced so that present and projected entitlement programs can be supported. We can only hope that somebody in the administration remembers the lessons of the past, where we cut back our armed forces and paid the price in terms of American blood spilled on battlefields on all corners of the globe.
     Apparently Donald Trump has stepped in and gone a long way toward rebuilding our armed forces. But, the Dems in the congress have other ideas about where the money should be spent, so he isn't getting all he wants. But, it is an improvement.