POLITICS AS MURDER Chapter Two

I can sum up Joseph Stalin (above) in a single paragraph. He rose to leadership in the International Communist Party as a bank robber, financing Lenin's political activities. His intended Pièce de résistance sent twenty bomb throwing Communists into a crowded Yerevan Square in the center of the Ukrainian capital of Tilfis, in broad daylight, to hijack a cash shipment. The resulting carnage killed forty people and wounded another fifty. The condemnation over the blood bath was unanimous, even from within the communist ranks. Worse, it netted just 340,000 rubles, but most of it was new 500 ruble notes, which could not be spent. An embarrassed Lenin  had then distanced himself from Stalin, and the Czars secret police arrested and banished Stalin to Siberia, where he was cut off from advancement in Communist Party politics.  If they had only executed the man, millions of people might have been saved.

The young Stalin (above) had been born Georgian, and spoke Russian with an accent, marking him as a “country bumpkin” to the party intellectuals, like Trotsky and Lenin.  He had two webbed toes on his left foot.  He was raised by an alcoholic father who regularly beat his mother. At seven he caught smallpox, which left his face scared.  Shortly thereafter, he was struck by a carriage which broke his left arm.  It was set badly, and healed permanently shorter than the right. Everything set him off as an outsider.  He fell in with street gangs, until his desperate mother secured him a scholarship to a Georgian Orthodox seminary.  But his father refused to pay a tuition hike, and abandoned his wife and son.  But Stalin persevered, switched this religion to revolutionary politics and rose to replace Lenin himself in the later 1920's. But he never forgot how Trotsky had belittle him.

In the winter of 1938, Stalin personally ordered that Trotsky “...should be eliminated within a year.” The assignment, given the code name “Pato”, in English, “Duck”,  eventually fell to NKVD agent Leonid Eitingon, (above),  who was living in Spain with his Cuban mistress, Caridad Mercader. Eitingon's  budget for the murder of this one man was $300,000.  First, Leonid needed a trusted agent in Mexico, where Trotsky now lived.  He recruited a Mexican veteran of the Spanish Civil War, painter David Alfaro Siqueiros.  Leonid then moved to New York City with Caridad, They were followed soon afterward by her adult son Ramon. 

 Ramnon Mercader had also fought in Spain on the Republican side,  trained as a spy in Russia and already had two NKVD developed identities.  One was a stolen Canadian passport in the name of Frank Jackson, who had died in Spain.  This easily pierced identity was used to make Ramon/Jackson  more believable when he claimed to actually be Jacques Mornard,  the Communist son of a Belgium diplomat.  Ramon had used both identities before,  in Paris,  to seduce a young American communist, whose sister was a typist for Trotsky.  The seduction had led nowhere operationally,  but illustrated Stalin's determination to infiltrate Trotsky's inner circle via as many paths as possible. 

After the 1917 revolution, Lenin rewarded Stalin with the job of editor of the party newspaper “Pravda” - Truth. The Georgian used that as a base to win election to the parties' powerful Central Committee. Then, after the Red Army, which Trotsky (above) had founded and led, had defeated the last of the Czarist holdouts in 1919, Lenin saw an opportunity in the power vacuum in Poland.  In 1920 he dispatched the Red Army to spread the revolution beyond Russia's borders. Operations aimed at Warsaw were, of course,  commanded by Trotsky, while Stalin commanded troops in southern Poland. The Poles managed to defeat the Soviets, in part because Stalin refused to cooperate with Trotsky's forces. At the next party conference, Trotsky criticized Stalin in a public speech.

Once in America, Leonid  set up "Amtorg Corporation",  a Brooklyn based import-export business, which allowed him to transfer funds to Mexico City for Trotksy's assassination. Shortly after he arrived, Ramon (above)  re- reignited his affair with the young American typist.  It was a short interlude. Three months after Ramon arrived in New York,  in September of 1939,  Leonid traveled to Mexico City,  to check on Siqueiros' preparations for the assassination.  He was followed a month later by Ramon, using his old Frank/Jacques cover.

During 1921 Stalin (above, left) managed to re-ingratiate himself with the boss, always siding with Lenin (above, right)  in petty squabbles with Trotsky and other party leaders. In response, in 1922, Lenin named Stalin General Secretary of the party. Shortly thereafter Lenin suffered the first of several strokes, and began to withdraw from leadership. When Lenin finally died in January of 1923, control of the Communist Party and national leadership quickly fell under Stalin's control. 

Siqueiros reported that he already had an agent inside Trotsky's villa (above) -  the cook Carman Palma. She  had supplied detailed floor plans, daily schedules and personal habits of the residents – “The Old Man”, his wife Natalia and grandson Seva, and a servant girl, There was also Trotsky's three male assistants and his two American bodyguards, as well as the newest bodyguard, Robert Harte.  But Harte was also an NKVD operative, code named “Amur”.   Leonid was impressed, but did not share with Siqueiros any information about Ramon, nor that the operation was receiving  funds and technical support from Adolf Hitler's anticommunist Nazi Germany.

It took three years for Stalin to isolate and then have Trotsky expelled from the Communist Party, and another year to have him exiled from the Soviet Union.  Over the next six years Trotsky was forced to move to first Turkey, then to France, and then Norway, always writing criticisms of Stalin, always the inspiration for the hated "fellow travelers" to the International Communist Party.   At the same time, in a series of “show trials”, Stalin eliminated all domestic opposition to his rule. Best estimates are that during that decade Stalin ordered the murder or imprisonment in Siberian “Gulags” of over 2 million Russians, and starved to death another 4 million through his collective farm programs. By the time the 57 year old Trotsky arrived in Mexico, in February of 1937,   his was the only Communist voice still critical of the paranoid 5 foot, five inch tall Stalin.  But in their article noting his arrival, Time Magazine wrote, “Today Trotsky is in Mexico — the ideal country for an assassination”.

In Mexico Leonid Etington avoided all contact with the Russian embassy. All his communications with Moscow were made through Nazi German diplomatic channels. Nazi agents kept watch on Trotsky's movements outside the villa, while two attractive female agents, Julia Barrados and Anita Lopez,  took an apartment three blocks from 19 Avenida Viena, and befriended the police officers guarding the place, often hosting parties for them. On Thursday afternoon, 23 May, 1940, a few hours before the actual assault, they even stopped by to confirm everything was as usual and no alarm had been given inside the villa.

Once in Mexico, Trotsky began writing what was to be his ultimate anti-Stalinist work, a biography of the Georgian himself.  Prophetically, Trotsky observed “Stalin...seeks to strike not at the ideas of the opponent, but at his skull.”  And in detailing Stalin's command of the Tilfis massacre, Trotsky wrote that ““Others did the fighting; Stalin supervised them from afar”.  It was this intended biography that finally convinced Stalin to murder Trotsky as soon as possible.

At four the next morning, 24 May, Sequeiros, code named “Horse”, and dressed in an over sized coat, and a over sized fake mustache, got the drop on the two police guards. He led the first team into the foray to capture the three sleeping guards, gag and tie up all five of them. The second team, lead by Russian, Iosif Grubgykevich, code named “Felipe”, knocked on the inner door. Hart opened the door because he recognized “Felipe's” voice.  Hart had been compromised.

Once the guards in the guest house had been pinned down, the operation turned artistic. 

It was Spanish painter Antonio Pujol who burst into the study, and fired into Trotsky's bedroom from the left side.

And Mexican painter Luis Arenal who burst into Seva's room and fired into Trotsky's bedroom from the right. 

But it was Siqueiros, the most famous painter and biggest ego of the trio, who at the end burst through the french doors and emptied his pistol directly into Trotsky's bed. Then Pujol set off a grenade in the study, intended to destroy Trotsky's biography of Stalin. But it was Arenal who drew the only actual blood, a ricochet from the bedroom wall, which struck 14 year old Seva in the toe.

And then there was the problem of Robert Harte. It appears that he, like many of those who helped the conspirators, had been told the object was only to destroy Trotsky's work, not the man himself.  During the escape Harte became “agitated and upset” with his handler “Felipe” because of the murder attempt.  The Russian realized he could no longer trust Harte, and so after they arrived at the farm rented by Siqueiros' sister, Grubgykevich shot the American once at the base of the skull and once into the temple, the standard NKVD execution method.  The next night his body was dumped into a grave dug along the main road.  It seems certain it was the Mexican communists did the heavy work, because Harte was covered in quick lime, under the mistaken belief it would hasten the decay. In fact quick lime preserves flesh. Any trained NKVD agent would know that. Stalin certainly did.  In any case the attempt had been a bust. There was going to have to be another attempt. 

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POLITICS AS MURDER Chapter One

I am certain Robert Harte died knowing he had made a terrible mistake. Of course, by then it was far too late to fix.  He should have acted before the man came around the corner from Morelos Street, and approached the two Mexico Police officers guarding the single story hacienda at 19 Avenida Viena (below). It was just after four on Friday morning, 24 May, 1940, in the quiet farming suburb of Carranza, at the edge of the arroyo of the Churubusco River.  The man raised an arm in greeting. The officers were deceived for a moment by his large military looking overcoat.  And then, as he came closer, his huge, almost comical mustache.  But before they could say anything, the man suddenly shouted “Viva Almazan!”, and pulled his pistol.  The right wing revolutionary Juan Almazan was one of the richest and most famous men in Mexico, and currently an unpopular candidate for the Presidency.  The use of his name kept the two officers bewildered just long enough to be disarmed.

A half dozen men appeared out of the darkness and shoved the officers through the front door of the villa (above).  In the reception hall were three more police officers, sleeping.  At the same time the telephone lines into the villa were cut. All five prisoners were quickly gagged and tied up, and left on the floor, under guard, while another score of armed men filed silently into the dimly lit foray. The mustached man knocked heavily on the left hand inside door.  After a moment, a voice was heard from inside the villa, asking “Qué es ?” The mustached man demanded, “Abra la puerta! La policía de la ciudad de México.” There was a hesitation, and then the voice said, “Un momento”, followed by the sound of a bolt being lifted, and a lock being turned.

The second it began to move the door was violently shoved fully open, bowling over the young man with his hand on the inside door knob.  Instantly, eager hands lifted him up and spun him around. Without pause he was hustled across the Villa's 100 yard long garden (above) There was a seven foot wall to the left (above, right), topped by barbed wire, and a series of doors to the villa's separate rooms to the right (above, left).  At the end of the garden stood a small, two story red brick guest house, painted white (below). 

With military precision the men divided. Several spread out in front of the guest house (above), while others filtered to the gate beyond, which opened on Churubusco street. Still  more men ran through the back gate to a Ford pickup and a Dodge passenger car, parked there.  At that moment, the electrical power to the villa was cut off.  At the same time  a new handful of armed men men raced through the front door, turned left in the hall and out into the garden, where they split up, one man stopping in front of each of the villa's doors.  Just as they did so, a voice called out from the guest house, “Es que usted , Roberto?. Lo que está mal?” A loud blasts of automatic gunfire ripped the suburban night apart.  Over the next two minutes, the only exit from the guest house was blocked by a continuous hail of lead.

As soon as they heard the gunfire, the figure outside the farthest entrance,  bent down and crashed through the five foot high door and into the study beyond (above). As he did so the man in front of the middle room, stood and pulled the bolt of his MP 35 German made machine gun, and the third man bent over and crashed through the remaining door into a bedroom. (below) 

 Immediately all three men opened fire, blasting the adobe and plaster walls separating them, filling the bedroom sandwiched between with 200 deadly 9mm lead missiles. The firing went on for less than fifteen seconds, while over 70 bullets thudding into the wall and the bed's headboard. Then the middle gunman dropped his weapon, pulled a pistol and burst through the french doors, emptying a clip directly into the lumps on the bed (below).

As he did so the men in the foray silently filtered toward the back gate, followed in their turn by the kill squad, who dropped incendiary grenades behind them, and then the squad assigned to suppress the guards in the guest house. The raiding party then piled into the two stolen vehicles and disappeared into the night. Within five minutes of the two police officers being surprised at the front door, the raid was over.  It would be some hours before the raiders realized they had failed.

The target had survived. His wife Natalia had been awakened by the crash of the inner door. She shook her husband and then pulled him onto the floor beside her. The hail of bullets, when it came, passed over their heads, and the pistol fire punctured the mattress they had been sleeping on, but the two elderly intended victims were safe, unseen, on the floor of their dark bedroom.

As soon as he was certain the raiders had left, the intended target, "the old man man" (above, center), as everyone called him, asked Natalia (above left) to check on their 14 year old grandson Seva (above, right) , who was sleeping in the bedroom next to theirs. Even after pushing aside a burning chest of drawers, Natalia could not find her grandson. Her first panicked thought was that he had been kidnapped. But then she heard his voice from the library at the end of the house, beyond, calling out in Russian, “Ded?” - grandfather? She found Seva clutching his bleeding foot. He had been awakened when the gunfire at the guest house erupted, and had hidden under his bed.  A ricochet had clipped his toe. And that was the only blood spilled that night at 19 Avenida Viena.

Meanwhile, the bearded old man retrieved his wire rimmed glasses, and then ran into his study, next to the bedroom. Inside he found two small fires, which he quickly extinguished. That saved the secondary target of the would-be assassins – the biography  of his rival the old man was writing .  Then he joined his wife and grandson in the library. He warmly hugged them both, and told his wife, “Natalia, they have given us one more day of life.” It was a phrase the old man, Lev Davidovich Bronshtein, more popularly known as Leon Trotsky, would repeat every morning for the rest of his life.

There was one resident of the villa missing after the raid,  25 year old New Yorker, Robert Harte (above).  But had he left with his fellow conspirators , or was he the victim of a kidnapping?   The day after the raid the Communist newspaper in Mexico City reported the shooting had been staged to garner public sympathy for Trotsky.  The next day the police brought in   “The Old Man's” bodyguards for two grueling days of questioning.  But at the same time they began taking a hard look at the communist members of the International Brigade,  veterans of the Spanish Civil War.  First step in this line was to interview the chauffeurs for the Mexican Communist Party. And the name that kept popping up here was the then famous Mexican painter, David Alfaro Siqueiros. 

Siqueiros had recently been paying visits to an isolated farm a few miles south of Carranza, rented by Siqueiros' sister. And the morning after the attack, not far from the farm, the stolen pickup truck had been found abandoned and burned. A week after the assault, the farm house and property were searched by the Mexican government. On the property, beside the road from Carranza, recently disturbed earth was spotted. A month after the attack, in a shallow grave, the police found the disfigured corpse of Robert Harte (above).  He had been shot twice, and then quick lime had been poured over the body.  It burned some his features, but it also preserved most of the flesh and bones.

A warrant for Siqueiros' arrest was issued. But rather than surrender, Siqueiros (above) began issuing written statements to the communist newspaper, at first protesting his innocence, and condemning police incompetence. But as member after communist member of the International Brigade was arrested, until the number reached 27, and their confessions and connections to Siqueiros appeared in the general press,  Siqueiros' statements to the Communist press began to shift to defiant and arrogant,  justifying the attempted murder of Leon Trotsky. And then, finally, Sisqueiros turned himself in.  He was immediately released without bail. And then promptly disappeared.

Trotsky was not surprised by the ease with which his attempted assassin escaped justice. Nor was he in any doubt that Sisqueiros was the actor but not the author of the murderous attack on his home and family. As “Bugs” Moran had insisted after the Chicago St. Valentines Day Massacre that “Only Al Capone kills like that”,  four years before the May 1940 attack on his own life,  Leon Trotsky had prophetically written, "(Joseph) Stalin...seeks to strike not at the ideas of the opponent,  but at his skull.”

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FOREIGN AGENTS Chapter Seven.

“More than likely, the Bush campaign used the racial facts of the case intentionally...as part of the overall strategy to recruit white voters without drawing the ‘racist’ label. Atwater (above) ...was a white man raised in the Deep South…who was accustomed to referring to black men with overstated familiarity.”

Tali Mendelberg Professor of Politics, Princeton University. 2001

The location chosen to shoot the ad was the 37 year old the Utah State Prison in Draper (above). The prison had experience working with film production companies, including “Halloween 4”. The weather was reliable and there were support services (film laboratories, editing facilities, local air freight) 20 miles to the southwest in Salt Lake City, and the Utah Film Commission was friendly to Republican ideology. 

 The script for the spot titled “Revolving Door” was written by Milwaukee ad man, Dennis Frankenberry (above) and his firm of Frankenberry, Laughlin and Constable. Later he told an interviewer, "Fortunately, we were in a position to commit our resources to the campaign just then." In truth his availability had been created by his conviction for drunk driving and leaving the scene of an accident having caused bodily injury,  Which his how a white man who had received the benefit of work furlough during his sentence, was able to "commit resources" to create an advertisement which would bring an end to furloughs for thousands of prisoners - most of them black.  D.L. and C. hired a production company called “The James Gang”  out of Dallas, Texas, , run by conservative photographer James Beresford,  to actually shoot the spot.

Ominous drum roll. Quick Fade In Long Shot. The camera pulls back from a guard carrying a rifle as he climbs the watch tower outside of a prison. Title fades in, reading, “The Dukakis Furlough Program”, then fades out quickly. Narrator: “As governor, Dukakis vetoed mandatory sentences for drug dealers.” Dissolve to a Long Shot of a rifle carrying guard walking along a fence line. Narrator: He vetoed the death penalty. His revolving door prison policy....”

Dissolve into a Medium Long Shot of a line of prisoners walking away from the camera toward a fence. In the center of the fence is a glass revolving door. A line of prisoners, heads down, pass through the door and then continue walking back towards the camera. Narrator: “...gave weekend furloughs to first degree murders not eligible for parole.” 

Title fades in across the lower center of the screen: “268 escaped”. Narrator: “While out, many committed other crimes like kidnapping and rape”. Fade in a tighter medium shot centered on the revolving door.

A title card fades in lower center of screen “Many are still at large.” Narrator” And many are still at large.” Quickly fade out title. Narrator: “Now, Micheal Dukakis, says he wants to do for America...” Dissolve to a Long Shot of a guard with a rifle standing on a roof, with the guard tower in the back ground. Narrator: “...what he has done for Massachusetts”. Dissolve in Bush/Quayle claimer across the bottom of the screen. Narrator: “America can't afford that risk.” Quick Fade to Black.

The revolving door was a prop, built in Salt Lake City and assembled a day early at an angle between two gates in the third, outside fence line. Some 50 members of The Young Republicans attending Brigham Young University and The University of Utah were recruited to act as prisoners. None of the actors or crew had any contact with the general prison population. And the actual shoot was accomplished in a single day.

During the shoot Dennis Frankenberry made at least one alteration to the “shooting script”. Among the endless line of down faced prisoners, one, and only one - a black man with a neat low Afro haircut - was instructed to glance upward as he exited the revolving door. He was the only “prisoner” who did anything different from the others, making him an immediate focal point. In order to increase the impact of the spot, during editing it was decided to drain the color from the film, so in its broadcast version it was gray sepia tones, as if 1960's news documentary.

Denials of racism being used as a tool by the Bush campaign are belied by the close coordination between the two spots. They were a one two-punch, one to to the jaw and the second to the breadbasket. The more blatant ad, “Furlough”, began running on Wednesday, 21 September, 1988. The following night CBS News reported on the new commercial, describing it as “crime ad”. Race was not mentioned at all.

The Furlough ad ran for 2 weeks, ending on Tuesday, 4 October. The very next day, Wednesday, 5 October, “Revolving Door” first aired. CBS did not mention either ad again until 20 October, and this time the story concentrated on William Horton's criminal record. Complaints about the racist context to the ads would not be mentioned on CBS until 24 October, three weeks into the “Revolving Door” ad run. CBS only review of the content of the ads was a comment by media consultant Tony Schwartz, who described the ads as “particularly effective”. Why they were effective was not mentioned. This at a time the average television and newspaper newsrooms  had few blacks in editorial positions.

After the campaign, Larry McCarthy, the creator of the “Furlough” ad, described William Horton as “...every suburban mother’s greatest fear.” By suburban, he meant, of course, white. And the Federal Election Commissions investigation of the ads, demanded by the Democratic party and the NAACP was forced to admit that Roger Ailes “may have implicitly communicated to Mr. McCarthy”. But any further questions were cut off by the Republicans who made up half of the commission.

Bill Keller, who edited an investigation of the Horton story for The Marshal Project, would later point out, “The astounding fact is that, at the time, all 50 states had furlough programs for prisoners, including for murderers in many states. Even Ronald Reagan, when he was (Republican) Governor of California, had a furlough program...twice, inmates who were out on furloughs...committed murders. Reagan defended the program and said nobody’s perfect.”

Keller went on to describe William Horton as “...a convenient tool in a kind of politics that at the very least was fear mongering and I think fair to say race baiting. I think it had echoes of the earlier Southern strategy of Republicans, which was to play on white anxiety.” I would say not an echo, but a maturing clarion call to white power and what would become the Republican base.

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TIME TRAVELERS - Spring Forward

I can’t believe we did this again. We got along for nine thousand years without doing it, and now we do it twice a year. It was a dumb idea when we did it the first time and now we're doing it twice a year? Why?! Doing a dumb thing twice does not make it smart. Why are we changing our clocks again?! 

The persons to blame for this are the obsessive-compulsive bureaucrats who champion the so-called Daylight Saving Time – and there is no “s” at the end of “Saving” because it’s modifying time, not daylight, which turns out to be more than a symbolic difference,  I told you these clock watchers were obsessive compulsive.  But that dropped “s” should also give you a hint that this whole thing is one great fraud being perpetrated on each and every one of us in the name of good grammar. So on 3 November,  at 2:00 AM, we will "fall back", adjusting our clocks again because we’re all supposed to.   It's a unity thing, I guess. One nation under a dumb decision. We are all dumb together because being dumb together is better than being smart individually.  I guess being smart together is not an option. And now, Sunday, 10 March, 2019, you knew in advance that you are not going to feeling like "springing" anywhere an hour earlier, no matte how you insist on repeating "Spring Forward".  In November, don't call it "Fall Back". Call it fall over.   Just because its the law, or a rule or something. These endless adjustments are an endless treadmill of dumbness.

Experts assure me that during Daylight Saving Time we’re going to save 10,000 barrels of oil a day, reduce crime and spend more time out of doors with our families during summer evenings. Of course your iPad and your iPhone might start displaying some rare Lapland dialect if you tried to instruct it to ignore the whole thing.  But why are we doing this again?!  They first tried this half baked scheme back in World War One, and as soon as the war was over they dumped it. Because it didn't work. And now, every time some liberal one-world type comes up with another energy saving idea, we are all required to smile and call it "green":  But I wonder about all that extra fossil fuel we will burn this  spring, to generate electricity to light our darkened bedrooms, not to mention run our computers, TVs, hair dryers, electric razors, water heaters and all those headlights. We used to say that people who rose early got up with the cows. Well, the cows are not getting up any earlier. Nor are the chickens. Why the hell are we?

As everybody keeps pointing out, it was Ben Franklin who first purposed Daylight Saving in his essay “An Economical Project”, (but in French, of course) (above)  in which he suggested that if authorities were to “…Oblige a man to rise at four in the morning, …it is probable he will go willingly to bed at eight in the evening." Well. duh. Unless, of course, he takes a nap. But, yeah, if you make him get up earlier he will probably go to bed earlier. And if we set him on fire, it is probable he will not litter. It is an interesting idea from the eighteenth century’s second most famous reprobate, but it strikes me like accepting interior decorating suggestions from the eighteenth century's first most famous reprobate, the Marque de Sade. Besides, how do we know that Ben wasn't  just joking? I know the Marque wasn't.

Well, if Ben was kidding, then Congressman Fred Upton (R-Mich.), who wrote the amendment to the Energy Policy Act of 2005 requiring Daylight Saving Time, missed the punch line. What a surprise, a Republican with no sense of humor.  So the same Congress that has refused to raise the minimum wage for 20  years found the time to steal an hour of your sleep every March and screw with your sanity every November. In the next election I suggest voting for Ben Franklin. It would make as much sense.

Ben was trying to save about 64 million pounds of candle wax a year. Well, look how much wax we saved by inventing electricity! And, didn't Ben have something to do with that?  Kite, key, electrical storm -  any of this sound familiar?  Listen, didn't Ben see this whole electricity thing coming? And speaking of electricity, according to the New Jersey Public Service Enterprise Group, Daylight Saving has “no impact” on energy demands in their service area. And the government of Kazakhstan has already dropped the whole idea of “saving daylight”.  Are Americans dumber than the Kazakhastanies? 

According to the University of California Energy Institute, daylight saving does not actually save energy, it just moves it around. And a recent study of electric bills in Indiana found that the time "shifters" are actually costing each Hoosier almost $3.00 a year MORE -  about $8.6 million a year in total, plus somewhere between $1.6 and $5.3 million in pollution costs for generating all that extra electricity for getting up and going to work in the dark!. And if that is what it costs Hoosiers (like me), think what it costing people in New Jersey!  Just think about it. A little more energy conservation like this and we might as well just start burning coal again.

And another problem with this bi-annual adjustment to our sense of reality is that our brains can’t adjust just because we tell them too. Meanwhile, computers solve the problem without a hitch. So while our electronics no longer need a "time patch” for programs, humans require psychiatric assistance to adjust to the depression brought on by lost sleep ever spring!  To quote from Ken Fisher’s article for ARS,  “So while the US government pats itself on the back for at least looking busy, know that the main goal – energy conservation – has not been met….Isn’t arbitrary, mostly meaningless change, great?”  Hell, no, it isn’t.

Still, I’m willing to be cooperative.  If we need more daylight then let’s move the clocks forward and be done with it. Why fall back in the fall? Listen, if the majority of the population decides that at noon tomorrow we should all pretend that it is now 10:45 AM, I’d go along with that. But for heaven’s sake please stop moving the clocks back and forth and back and forth as if we were keeping time with Mexican jumping beans. Why are we doing this to ourselves? Pick a damn time and leave it the hell alone!

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