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Ivan W.
Parkins |
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©Ivan W. Parkins 2009, All articles, text, web pages property of
Ivan W. Parkins. Use of any material
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About
Ivan W. Parkins: Dr.
Parkins is a retired professor of Political Science from Central Michigan
University. He received his PhD from
the University of Chicago and is a graduate of the United States Naval
Academy. Dr. Parkins served as a naval
officer during WWII aboard the battleship Alabama. He is a recent widower with three
daughters, 3 grand children and 2 great grand children. Dr. Parkins has written extensively, having
authored 3 books and a newspaper opinion column for many years. |
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Front Page |
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ANOTHER BANK OF THE
UNITED STATES? By Ivan W. Parkins The first Bank of The United States was
created by Secretary of the Treasury Hamilton with President Washington’s
blessing. Although it was
controversial at the time, it earned a large and very constructive place in
our history. To it is due much of the
credit for enabling a heavily indebted and poorly united, assemblage of
people and states to become one financially sound and economically viable
country. Now, something similar may be both
needed and possible. A Mortgage Bank
of The United States, with assets consisting initially of many of those
already held by Fanny and Freddie, should be created for the purpose of
acquiring, probably at a fixed maximum (90%?) of face value, “toxic”
mortgages issued within a fixed time period.
Such mortgages are now endangering our financial system, and those of
some foreign countries that have purchased financial instruments here. If such a bank is to succeed, it should
have an unusual degree of independence, answering directly to the
President. Legally, within its limited
field, it should be above the innumerable rules set by other federal, state
and local agencies. It should however
be cognizant of, and as cooperative as practicable with, such rules. The Mortgage Bank’s field would be the
acquisitions, management, and disposal of mortgages on residences and small
enterprises. It should be empowered to
protect its properties, including policing and the pursuit and prosecution of
persons abusing or misappropriating same. The life of such a bank should be fixed
at a specific period, perhaps ten years, and changed only be renewed
legislation. Meanwhile, any
interference by Members of Congress, i.e. less than a majority of both
Houses, should be specifically forbidden. In disposing of mortgages, or of the
property that they represent, some special regard for original mortgagees or
occupants may be appropriate. I.W.Parkins 12709 |
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REIGN OF THE EMPEROR By Ivan W. Parkins (a book review) If The United States has ever had an
emperor, Franklin Delano Roosevelt was almost certainly it. TRAITOR TO HIS CLASS is the title of H. W.
Brand’s book on FDR. It is a
formidable 800plus pages, but mostly very readable and sometimes even
charming. Author Brands includes quite
a lot of conversations and comments of the persons most involved, documented
unobtrusively at the end. There are small and relatively trivial
incidents. As a young Assistant
Secretary of Woodrow Wilson’s Navy, Roosevelt was an advocate of more
battleships, and he hammered the first bolt into the keel of the USS Arizona,
BB39. (It is now a memorial at Pearl Harbor.)
A little later he piloted the destroyer commanded by Lt. William Halsey through
a narrow and dangerous channel near Campobello, handling that
large and unfamiliar vessel with surprising skill. He also had a significant part in promoting
the North Sea mine barrage of WWI. Brands offers an extensive account
of FDR’s polio affliction and
treatment, plus details of Louis Howe’s role in guiding both Franklin and
Eleanor toward maintaining and advancing their promising political futures. The review of New Deal policies and
their mixed results is likely to seem a bit repetitive to readers already
familiar with the period. It began to look as though this “emperor” had few
cloths, but another chapter was about to begin. I found quite a lot of new,
to me, detail regarding FDR’s efforts to persuade isolationist Americans of
the need for us to prepare for, and to enter, WWII. In that he was a conspirator with Winston
Churchill. The Japanese brought a sudden and sharp
solution to Roosevelt’s how-to-enter-the-war dilemma by attacking Pearl
Harbor. Although the blow to our battle fleet was devastating, it left our
damaged ships where they could be most easily repaired. We were already supplying Britain and
others with food and weapons. The
Great Depression was fast disappearing. FDR’s relationship with Churchill
became exceptionally close and cordial.
That of the two of them with Stalin was neither. At first Stalin, his country in gravest
danger, was suspicious that the Western allies would let the Soviet Union be
destroyed before making any major effort against Hitler. Brands notes the change of Stalin’s
attitude after we landed in Sicily.
What he fails to explain is that in July, 1943, the Soviet armed
forces won what was arguably the greatest battle in all of history, at Kursk
several hundred miles south of Moscow.
Few Americans seem to be aware of it, but in both manpower and weapons
the Kursk battle was five to ten times as large as the Bulge conflict which
we fought nearly a year an a half later.
Following the Soviet victory at Kursk, most Nazi efforts were
defensive. Of this “emperor” Winston Churchill
said, “He is the truest friend; he has the farthest vision; he is the
greatest man I’ve ever known.” I.W.Parkins 12609 |
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FOR UNITY AND HOPE By Ivan W. Parkins The huge, spectacular, and exceptionally
civil transfer of the Presidency from George Bush to Barack Obama should
boost America’s self confidence. I am especially impressed by our new
President’s efforts to initiate an inclusive administration. He, like his predecessor, seems to share
with a very large portion of his countrymen, past and present, a deep regard
for Christianity in its most human and tolerant forms. My reservations about President Obama’s
and our future rest less upon his character than upon some of the
constituency and institutions that are now his to lead. In the 1950s and 1960s we morphed from a
society divided mainly by legal devices based upon race into one increasingly
divided by partisanship and special political action groups. Some of the latter are quite other-worldly
in their approaches. Indeed a large
and militant element of our society shun “old time religion,” and often they
favor a quite similar personal faith and devotion to environmentalism,
pacifism, or some other “advanced” belief. To many of our earthly problems,
including those with obvious mundane causes and effects, their approaches
have quite inadequate empirical basis. Among major environmental actions and
reactions is the ban on DDT in 1972, condemning millions of the world’s
poorest people to renewed plagues of insect borne diseases and deaths. Apparently, one blessing of doing work that
soars above minor practicalities is not having to say that you are sorry,
even for accidental genocide. In 1979 a nuclear unit at Three Mile
Island suffered a melt-down. There
were no serious casualties, but such “dangerous” facilities were judged by
many Americans to be unacceptable, even if no equivalent power source was
more safe. In 1989 a large oil spill at Valdez,
Alaska, caused extensive, mostly temporary, damage. That led some to claim that it was better
to buy oil from other countries, at great cost to our economy, than to risk
further spills. My WORLD ALMANAC, 2008, lists eight Record Oil Spills, all of
them in tons and occurring before 1989.
By far the largest Notable Spill, including that at Valdez and listed
in gallons, was an act of sabotage by Iraqi forces in Kuwait at the time of
the Gulf War. Let us do what we know how to do
carefully, and let us invest substantially, both our money and our hope but
not great faith, in advances of technology. I.W.Parkins 12709 |
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Brief items: Election Results A lack of
much news reporting the extent of the projected presidential landslide of
2008 has puzzled me. Apparently, the
reason is that the actual vote was less than a landslide. Obama did of course win, but with 52.9% of
the total vote. That is the most for
any Democrat since Lyndon Johnson, but less than Nixon’s 60.7% in 1972,
Reagan’s 58.8% in 1984, or G.H.W.Bush’s 53.4% in 1988. Most of Obama’s margin came from increased
turnout and percentages of Black and Hispanic voters. His partisan advantage in Congress is
slimmer than Carter’s was, but larger than any Republican President has
enjoyed since the 1920s. National ID System One of the
most overdue and practical reforms available, a reform that should contribute
to transparency in elections, immigration, and financial transactions, also
reduce identity thefts, and contribute to security against both domestic and
foreign predators is a single national identity system and data bank. Privacy?
Whose privacy, for doing what? I.W.Parkins 012709 |