Constructive gadfly
stevendedalus's Articles In History
December 18, 2005 by stevendedalus
The household echo then was to balance the budget in seven years. Why wait that long, or why not five, ten or twelve years? In the past, revenue enhancement was the strategy to reduce deficits. Washington D.C. over the Reagan years forgot this tactic because it meant whipping the hides of corporations and the wealthy. When Clinton revived the strategy in '93 by raising the marginal tax of the $200,000 income threshold in order to bring down the escalating deficits, the Republicans and most of ...
December 18, 2005 by stevendedalus
The previous two decades of soft but penetrating rock was dipped in acid in the 80s as the kids abandoned the Beach Boys, Elton John, Carol King, the Osmonds, the Fifth Dimension and the Jackson Five and looked to punk to override the horror of two hundred dead marines. Nevertheless, Springsteen hung in there and the movies created beautiful music. Gorbachev eradicated the fearful image of Big Brother and became "Man of the Year." Reagan grabbed credit for ending the "evil empire" ...
December 16, 2005 by stevendedalus
Holding its breath till this awful decade of the '60s ran its tragic course, the nation received comic relief in '69 when Ted Kennedy urged that the United States take steps toward alliance with China. The only one not laughing apparently was the President-elect Richard M. Nixon. The champion of the common man, Jesse Jackson, was jailed in Chicago for picketing the so-called liberal trade unions for their alleged discriminatory practices. It was a sound boom year: the SST Concord made its fi...
December 14, 2005 by stevendedalus
The fierce early ' 40s plummeted us into the greatest war in history. Despite its told and untold tragedies the war was not without its redemption; for it united a people like never before. The rich and famous were at one with the rank and file; women wore uniforms or coveralls, and children bought war stamps. At the half mark of the decade triumphant joy on V-E and V-J Days—the holocaust had scarcely poked through the cover-up, nor had much thought dwelled on the implications of the atom bom...
August 5, 2004 by stevendedalus
'Tis the season for Monday morning quarterbacks to throw their annual bombs at Truman for ordering the atomic attack on Japan fifty-nine years ago. As a marine who had experienced bloody Okinawa and having witnessed the Kamikaze off shore assaults on the Navy which lost 8,000 sailors as a consequence, I am reluctant to believe as reported years later that the Japanese were ready to surrender before, according to five out of seven five star officers who in hindsight disagreed with the Hiro...
June 18, 2004 by stevendedalus
Perhaps the greatest challenge is the permissiveness of society and its educators that have led us to the brink of anarchic disaster. Either we insist on conventional skills, perhaps refurbished by modern techniques; either we demand more of ourselves, of the parents and of the students in the art of teaching and learning in order to temper society’s iconoclastic kick under the guise of free expression and self-identity, or we lose the whole ball game of national and human identity governed by...
December 10, 2003 by stevendedalus
 A guy called Adam owned a button factory. He estimated his cost of production [the actual labor involved] was eight dollars per thousand units. The commodity yielded him $10. Here is how he arrived at this cost:  Raw Material: $2 payment for total labor costs of production of the source.  Plant Equipment and Maintenance: $1 Rent: 50¢ Delivery: 50¢ Labor: $4 representing the individual labor of end product.  Adam reasoned that though the worker theoretically is entitled to the f...
January 4, 2004 by stevendedalus
Two hundred years after declaring independence and being the first in this hemisphere to end slavery of Africans, Haiti has absolutely nothing to celebrate. Its history has been total chaos — assassinations, military coups, invasion and occupation of Santo Domingo, a long line of leaders as emperors and lifetime dictators, and continuous abject poverty. How can this be? Haitians were indoctrinated by Spanish and most notably the French — let alone memory of their ruthless tribal culture. ...