the view from vicworld

The Alinsky Connection

2012-01-26T22:00:00.000-05:00

Well, my brain keeps up, more or less, but, really, it's just too zany. Suddenly, Obama is a kind-of-liberal again, playing the populist card (financed by Wall Street) to counter Mitt and Newt.

("Mitt" and "Newt" are not especially human names. Where is humanity?)

Newt dropped Saul Alinsky's name again in tonight's debates. So, ignoring the so-called State of the Union, let's look at the "Saul Alinsky" references. Obama, Newt tells us, is a "Saul Alinsky radical."

Me, I hadn't even thought about Saul Alinsky for roughly forty years — well, maybe thirty — but, all of a sudden, Newt is saying Obama is a "Saul Alinsky radical." Frankly, I actually never read Alinsky back in the 60s or the 70s. I downloaded "Rules for Radicals" for my Kindle some months ago, having read about how it was a favorite of Tea Party radicals. Well, it was, fer sure...

You know how Amazon suggests other materials based on what you order? Based on my Alinsky purchase, I was referred to books by Glen Beck, Sarah Palin, and many lesser known crypto-fascists. Nobody on the left (except me, apparently,) is reading Alinsky. The right-wing crazies who gave South Carolina to Newt, however, know exactly who Saul Alinsky (1906 - 1972) was.

The left should read Alinsky. "Rules for Radicals" is a practical handbook on how to organize, and it seems to have been quite useful to Tea Party organizers. I suspect alleged "history professor" Newt never heard of Alinsky until the Tea Party rediscovered him — but the name, however, had a certain resonance.

Saul Alinsky. Do you reckon he was one of them Jeeeewwwws?

JoPa

2012-01-23T15:54:00.004-05:00

Really, he would have done better to die 6 months earlier — but he was planning on coaching Penn State for who knows how much longer.

Asshole. Everybody dies, and I doubt he didn't know he was dying . He just refused to believe it.

I think that's the definition of an asshole.

The Circus Continues

2012-01-21T12:05:00.010-05:00

While mourning the death of Etta James — and the non-death of Henry Kissenger, who will be sharing his alleged wisdom with Vladimir Putin in the near future — let me make a few bemused comments on the state of the Republic(ans.)

I have no problem with Willard Romney's activities at Bain Capital. He was, after all, obeying the law. I do not know the extent to which Bain manipulated that law, nor the extent to which Bain participated in buying the lawmakers who gave such firms and their executives such generous tax advantages — albeit, my guess is that Bain was a full participant. What I am sure of is that Romney's proposed tax "reform" would enshrine and extend those advantages.

Newt Gingrich is an unmitigated wack job, which probably explains his increasing appeal to South Carolina Republicans. Are those "man-in-the-street" interviews we see on television genuinely representative of ordinary South Carolinians, or is the "liberal media" going out of its way to cherrypick certified morons? If the NAACP, the SCLC, and/or the Democrats really wanted to screw things up, they could have urged the state's black voters to register Republican and all vote for Ron Paul. Well, maybe next time.

Rick Santorum is basking in the glow of his endorsement by the most vindictive and narrow minded religious leaders of America, and by his "victory" in Iowa. I have clear memories of his days in the Senate, and I don't recall him being any more "moral" than the rest of those over-entitled bozos, despite his very sincere efforts to deprive women of custody over their bodies. Still, if Gingrich somehow manages to grab the lead in South Carolina today, Florida — that other-worldly mix of rednecks, Cubans, and the elderly — could be decisive.

Hopefully, Romney will not have the nomination "sewn up" tonight, because I'm looking forward to more rib-tickling debates. The fact that just three scarcely significant states can "sew up" a nomination for a candidate is, of course, an absurdity of our system — but the mechanism is clear. The leading candidate (and his superpac) get increased contributions from bundlers and wealthy donors, the less successful candidates get less. Money, as always, wins.

..........

11:50 PM
Hoo hah! Batshit wins!

Newt blew it away in SC, and the speech I just heard was extremely well done. He found positive things to say about the other three, but managed subtly to dis them at the same time. For some odd reason, he kept associating Obama with Saul Alinsky, even though everybody who's been paying attention knows that Alinsky has been the theoretical godfather of the Tea Party. (Download Rules for Radicals from Amazon, and see how many right-wing "recommendations" you get.)

Anyway, we get to see it go on to Florida, at least. Who knows? There's a chance Ron Paul could win the Nevada caucuses in February, and everything could become totally crazy. Wouldn't that be fun!

Viva la batshit!

MLK Day

2012-01-16T18:58:00.005-05:00

I was part of the march on Washington in August of 1963. During the "I have a dream" speech, I suppose I was wading in the reflecting pool, trying to cool off, because I never heard a comprehensible word from the podium in the general uproar.

Needless to say, in those days I was more enthusiastic about Malcolm X than Dr. King, but King, nevertheless, was a radical. He was radical enough to put J. Edgar Hoover's panties in a twist, and I certainly admired him. I'm sorry I had to hear his most famous speech later, on TV.

There was another great speech that day, from John Lewis of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. I couldn't hear that one either, but here is a sample:

For those who have said, "Be patient and wait!" we must say, "Patience is a dirty and nasty word." We cannot be patient, we do not want to be free gradually, we want our freedom, and we want it now. We cannot depend on any political party, for the Democrats and the Republicans have betrayed the basic principles of the Declaration of Independence.

Today, the big news is that the "quotation" engraved on the new King monument in Washington will be changed — replaced by words King actually said. Personally, I think they should blow up the whole goddamned monument and start over. The monumental King doesn't even look like King — he looks more like fucking Mussolini to me.

King has been mythologized, which is not a wonderful thing for somebody who dedicated his life to radical activism. Maybe we'll rediscover the real MLK someday.

Anybody but...?

2012-01-14T09:55:00.006-05:00

Willard (aka Mitt) has a problem: nobody actually likes him.

He's been doing his best, this time around, to hide his insufferable sense of entitlement. Somehow, though, it keeps leaking to the surface. As an unrivaled opportunist with no core beliefs about anything but the preservation of wealth, it is no wonder that people have a hard time warming up to him.

Has anybody asked him why he wants to be President? Perhaps there is some underlying Oedipal need to surpass his father, but to me it looks more like he genuinely feels superior to the rest of humanity, and has decided that becoming the most powerful man on Earth is his due.

No wonder nobody likes him.

In Iowa and New Hampshire, he managed to scrape together roughly a third of the votes, primarily from people who think his is the best chance to oust that socialist darkie from the White House — not because of any personal characteristics of his own. If the Republican field included a truly viable candidate to oppose him, Romney wouldn't have stood a chance — but objects in motion tend to stay in motion, and he's been in motion since 2008.

Just the same, I wish the Virginia primary were next week instead of Super Tuesday. The only candidates who filed in time to qualify for the Virginia ballot are Romney and Ron Paul. Wouldn't that be an amusing test of the "anybody but" hypothesis? Would the voters of Virginia reject the Mormon multimillionaire for a crazy old coot who wants to put us back on the gold standard and withdraw all our troops from everywhere?

Sigh. I'm afraid we'll never know.

Why they Hate Him

2012-01-07T17:04:00.008-05:00

Let's see. Could it be because he's a "socialist?" Well, some of them don't have a clue what a socialist is, and probably are dumb enough to believe the hype from Fox; but would a socialist get all that Wall Street backing?

Oh, wait! It must be because he's an abortion slinging, gay loving, social radical! Mmm... maybe not. He never talks about the "choice" vs. "right to life" controversy, still hasn't publicly endorsed gay marriage, and took a hell of a long time to end "Don't ask, don't tell.". Granted, he's not religious. He doesn't do all those church appearances we've come to expect from our presidents, and the connection to Reverend Wright was nothing but Chicago political expedience. Okay, it's clear he's not a social conservative. Maybe that explains some of the animosity.

Well, then there's the little matter of the blackness. That's reason enough for most of the white south and entirely too many working class white men, but it still seems inadequate to explain the extent and the intensity of the hatred. It certainly is not enough to ensure a Republican victory.

As you may have noticed, I haven't been too enthusiastic about him myself, for none of the above reasons. On the other hand, he's a mile above any of those assholes trying to win the Republican nomination (albeit John Huntsman wants to break up the big banks, and that goes a long way with me. I haven't heard it yet from Our Esteemed President, sure as shit.)

Actually, I suspect they hate him because they're taught to hate him — by Fox, ALEC, the Koch brothers, et al. I have to admit, that cabal does a pretty good job of it. Still, even with all the money in the world (which they seem to have,) it's hard to get someone to spring such a a really stiff hate-on unless there's some initial antipathy from which to work.

And, as you may have noticed, he kind of looks black.

Re: Willard Romney

2012-01-05T00:52:00.010-05:00

I was just reading the Wikipedia entry on Willard Mitt Romney, and I'm 99.6% certain it was written (or rewritten) by one of his PR people. Well, what the hell — that's Wikipedia. The last one to get there gets the last word, and I imagine Mitt's people get there several times a day.

One thing Wikipedia does not mention is that Romney is the test case for whether or not a shitload of money can buy an election. The funny thing is that nobody in the Republican base actually seems to like him, but he seems to have locked up the 25% who consider him the candidate most likely to defeat the heartily hated Obama. Well, the Democrats, too, consider him the candidate most likely to defeat Obama. There are two reasons why that probably is the case. First, he has a ton of money behind him and, second, his chameleonlike ability to shift in the political winds should make him especially attractive to so-called "independent" voters.

(Long-time readers will remember that my take on so-called "independents" is that they are those who don't know shit from Shinola, and therefore are most likely to be persuaded by 30 second spots on TV.)

The Romney superpac, "Restore Our Future," outspent the Romney campaign 2 to 1 in Iowa — and did a devastating job on Newt Gingrich. Mind you, pretty much everything they said about Newt was true but, nevertheless, I believe Newt is enough of a son-of-a-bitch to get even. His own presidential hopes may be down the toilet now (albeit his book sales have surged), but it's pretty clear that Newt is pissed. Needless to say, in the light of the Citizens United decision, the "Winning Our Future" superpac that supports Newt will not in any way "coordinate" with Newt's pissedness, but nevertheless will spread some significant negativity on the former Mormon missionary to France. (France?!! Jesus in a manner of speaking Christ!)

While it seems likely that Rick Santorum will turn out to be the Mike Huckabee of 2012, there's no telling how the evangelicals of South Carolina and Florida may vote later in the month. I'd like to see Mitt and his moneyed buds go down in flames, of course, but "Restore" is much better funded than "Winning" — and if Santorum has a superpac, its budget probably is around $12.95.

Oddly enough, I think there still might be a slim chance for John Huntsman, who also has a rich Mormon father but a lot less ideological baggage than Mitt. At the moment, though, my money still is on Obama this year.

The Iowa Caucuses

2012-01-01T18:48:00.004-05:00

Well, happy new year. Maybe. 2011 kind of sucked — earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear meltdown for the Japanese; total fuckup for the Eurozone; continued suppression of the working class in the US (albeit with some vague rays of hope); general craziness, with only minimal hope of non-authoritarian governments, in the Middle East; droughts and floods in Australia; more of the usual shit in sub-Saharan Africa; slowing economic growth in China; Putin being Putinesque in Russia; etc., etc.

Now, our American news media are wasting our time by devoting tons of time and space to the Iowa Republican caucuses. Does anybody remember who they selected last time? Mike fucking Huckabee! Why would anybody take Iowa Republicans seriously? As of tonight's network news, Santorum is surging there.

Anyway, back in the summer of 1976, I pulled off the interstate for want of a vodka gimlet in Harlan, Iowa, and found myself in a bar that turned out to be the hangout for local government officials. I can say with more than reasonable certitude that they were not evangelical Christians, but they still held Jimmy Carter in very high regard. Harlan, they said, was "Carter Country." I stayed for several days, and had a hell of a good time.

Jimmy Carter is the kind of man we all would like to have as our president. Sadly, our disgustingly corrupt political system cannot accept a genuinely good man at its helm. The presidency did its best to corrupt Jimmy Carter but, fortunately for him, he did not win a second term. He's been spending the rest of his life making up for the damage he was forced to do in those four sad years. Yes, he's the best ex-president in American history, and if his beliefs about redemption are correct, I'd imagine he's redeemed by now — but he still keeps trying, harder and harder.

Iowa doesn't matter — nor does New Hampshire. It's all just a show. Even without the Citizens United decision, it still would be all about the money. Obama has been sucking up to Wall Street just as hungrily as he did four years ago, and any Republican who wins their nomination will be just as deeply in Wall Street's pocket.

Let's all sing along with the chorus from Les Mis: "We want a revolution — now."

10 Dumbest Moves of 2011

2011-12-26T12:29:00.011-05:00

Year-end lists are a longstanding tradition, so who am I to struggle against them? The following is my contribution, a list of the stupidest things done by persons and institutions over the past year. As is customary, they are listed in reverse order of stupidity:

10! Bank of America announces debit card fees

Really, they should have known better. Clearly, people were going to notice. One assumes they now have found other, less in-your-face ways to gouge the same revenues from depositors.

9! Wisconsin governor Scott Walker attacks public sector unions

I guess he though he'd get away with it and become a Republican icon with a clear path to the White House – but it kind of backfired. Unwittingly, he managed to revitalize the labor movement and become the target of a recall campaign.

8! Dominique Strauss-Kahn gets blow job

It may have been the most expensive blow job in history, surpassing the Bill Clinton blow job of 1998. Clinton kept the presidency, but DSK never will be Premier of France.

7! The Supercommittee

(groan)

6! Democrats buying into the "deficit problem"

The biggest concern of the largest number of Americans is unemployment. Even the people with jobs seem to understand that high unemployment rates are depressing their wages, but, as usual, Democrats let Republicans define the parameters of the debate — and, as usual, wound up on the defensive. Given that the Treasury currently is borrowing at less than 2%, nobody who matters is too worried about US solvency.

5! Republicans having all those debates

The more the Republican primary candidates debate, the more obvious it becomes that they're all genuinely defective. The most victimized victim was Rick Perry. Hell, he has great hair, rugged good looks, solid conservative credentials, and cowboy masculinity. Difficulties arose, however, when his handlers let him open his mouth, thereby demonstrating just what an ass he is. (Nevertheless, the debates have been the most entertaining "reality television" I've ever seen.)

4! Ongoing US support for al-Maliki in Iraq

It's been clear for years that Nuri Kamal al-Maliki is a corrupt, self-aggrandizing piece of shit, and about ten minutes after our long overdue withdrawal from Iraq, he showed us just how stupid we were to put any trust in him whatsoever. Sorry, Barack. There goes democratic Afghanistan.

3! European austerity programs

So, where's the growth supposed to come from? Just because the eternally anal-retentive, moralistic Germans have all the money doesn't mean the rest of Europe should buckle under to their demands. Outside the Eurozone, I'm thinking David Cameron, too, might be in trouble.

2! Egyptians putting trust in their military

Damn, it's rough when, after your revolution, you have to do it again. Maybe there should be a handbook telling people how to tell the difference between a revolution and a military coup.

1! Obama attempting to compromise with Republicans

Dammit, he's not that stupid! Well, maybe he is. Maybe he thought his neo-liberal stances would somehow endear him to his sworn enemies. (That kind of thinking would have been very stupid indeed.) More likely, he thought his Wall Street friends would come to his rescue. Well, they didn't. Wall Street execs still value short term outcomes over long term outcomes, because the short term still is where their bonuses are generated.

So there you are, and a happy New Year (uh-huh!) to all.

As 2011 draws to a close...

2011-12-23T17:14:00.005-05:00

It's nice to see Republicans attacking Republicans for a change — including, of course, the attack ads against Gingrich in Iowa, but especially the Establishment Republicans slapping around the Tea Party maniacs to stop them from blocking an extension of the Payroll Tax holiday. Could it be the GOP (with an especially fond wave to Dick Armey) created Frankenstein's monster leading up to the previous election cycle? Probably not. Not only are most American voters not paying attention, but most didn't even know what the controversy was about.

Okay — if they'd seen their take-home pay go down as of their first paychecks in January, they might have figured out what was happening, and perhaps even who was at fault. Now that the crisis is averted (or at least delayed for two months), there will be spin — and individual perceptions will depend on individual choice of news outlets.

And, yes, I'm one of those arrogant asses the average American loves to hate. Needless to say, so is Newt — and his "all positive campaign" is meant to suppress memories of just what an arrogant ass he's been in the past. Honestly, though, I can't imagine him winning the nomination. People don't change that much as they age, and he's overdue for a self-destructive detonation.

***

Meanwhile, Iraq, Pakistan, Syria, Afghanistan, Egypt, and other so-called countries are strenuously enacting these famous lines from Yeats (1919):

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

No, I don't think "the Second Coming is at hand." Just the same old shit. Happy holidays.

Leaving Iraq

2011-12-18T10:17:00.005-05:00

Okay, the United States has officially withdrawn the last of its armed forces from Iraq as of today — but what have we left behind? Is Iraq in any better shape now than it was in 2005, when we might have pegged a troop withdrawal to the election of the Iraqi parliament? I don't think so.

US troops had been there roughly half a year when it was concluded that the "weapons of mass destruction" the Bush administration offered as a justification for invasion did not exist. After another couple of months, Saddam Hussein was captured and turned over to the Iraqis. We could have been gone by a year later, when they (very picturesquely) hanged him. They really didn't need us for that.

Today, Iraq continues to be splintered along religious and ethnic lines. Nuri Kamal al-Maliki shows little regard for the rule of law, the Iraqiya coalition of secular and Sunni Iraqis is boycotting the parliament in protest, and militias loyal to individuals like Muqtada al-Sadr have not been disarmed nor disbanded. No agreement has been reached with the Kurds about sharing oil revenues, and the Kurds seem willing to fight to maintain their autonomy. The forces of our allies in the "Sunni Awakening" are complaining of persecution by the majority Shi'a government. Iran's influence is extensive, and growing.

When the US leaves Afghanistan — at some unspecified date in the future — that country is likely to be even more disordered, corrupt, and crazy than Iraq is today. So, why wait? Let's bring all the troops home.

SB 1867

2011-12-09T15:19:00.005-05:00

It's been easy to miss, but this year's Defense Appropriations Bill includes some language that has civil libertarians in an uproar. See if you can figure out what's wrong with this section:

SEC. 1032. REQUIREMENT FOR MILITARY CUSTODY.
(a) CUSTODY PENDING DISPOSITION UNDER LAW OF WAR.—
(1) IN GENERAL.—Except as provided in paragraph (4), the Armed Forces of the United States shall hold a person described in paragraph (2) who is captured in the course of hostilities authorized by the Authorization for Use of Military Force (Public Law 107–40) in military custody pending disposition under the law of war.
(2) COVERED PERSONS.—The requirement in paragraph (1) shall apply to any person whose detention is authorized under section 1031 who is determined
(A) to be a member of, or part of, al-Qaeda or an associated force that acts in coordination with or pursuant to the direction of al-Qaeda; and
(B) to have participated in the course of planning or carrying out an attack or attempted attack against the United States or its coalition partners.

So far, it seems almost reasonable — military detention for terrorists, right? There are a couple of little problems, though. First, there is no burden of proof involved. An accusation is enough to justify detention indefinitely, with no right to anything resembling a trial. More importantly, perhaps, it authorizes the military to exercise police powers within the borders of the United States, thereby overturning the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 — but stay tuned for the real kicker:

APPLICABILITY TO UNITED STATES CITIZENS AND LAWFUL RESIDENT ALIENS.—
(1) UNITED STATES CITIZENS.—The requirement to detain a person in military custody under this section does not extend to citizens of the United States.

On first reading, you might think US citizens are exempt but, as the ACLU has pointed out, the fact that there is no requirement that the military detain citizens without trial (or even a grand jury hearing) does not mean that the military cannot choose to do so — nor that the President cannot order the military to do so. Remember, all that is necessary is an accusation — no actual evidence is required.

Currently, the bill is in the hands of a Conference Committee to reconcile House and Senate versions, but there is no reason to believe that committee will do anything to ease civil liberties concerns. An attempt to amend the Senate bill to change the language failed. Our President has threatened a veto — not because he doesn't think he ought to have the powers of a military dictator, but because he sees other sections of the law as an attempt by Congress to micromanage the so-called "war on terror." Violations of roughly half the Bill of Rights don't seem to bother him.

George W. Bush began the campaign to suspend the right of Habeus Corpus. Barack Obama has continued it. Somehow, I can't see Mitt Romney or Newt Gingrich sacrificing any executive powers if one of them becomes our next Commander in Chief.

Occupy CUNY

2011-12-05T09:49:00.003-05:00

I'll start with a complaint. Why am I making contributions to an alumni association that did not inform me of the November 21st "Occupy CUNY" march on Wall Street? I'd have been there, and so would a lot of other long-ago graduates who went to CUNY... those of us who went for FREE.

We geezers who attended the schools of the City University of New York before 1976 paid no tuition. Why, I have to wonder, was New York City able to do it then, but not now?

Well, the city has lost a hell of a lot of state aid over the years — but where did that money go? I'm still not sure. Also, I'm not sure where the federal money went, specifically, except that the later seventies were the time that tax rates on the rich began their precipitous fall.

College should be free. It's hard enough to make it out of the working class — and if you have to put yourself in ridiculously crazy debt you can't even shed in bankruptcy court to get a little bit beyond where your parents were, it may never happen. (Are there any corporate debts that can't be shed in bankruptcy? I can't think of any.)

Back in the sixties, I'm sure I could have qualified for some financial aid, and probably won a scholarship or two, but I doubt it would have been enough to get me all the way through a private college. It's certainly not enough for many students today, especially since jobs for those without college degrees are in such short supply and pay so poorly (and since full-time work and full-time school really are incompatible.)

The Occupy movement is about economic inequality — but also points out how generally screwed up our priorities have been for the past few decades. It's really time to get them straightened out.

The Demise of Herman Cain

2011-12-03T17:24:00.005-05:00

Sex scandals? Jesus Christ!! Newt surges ahead, with not much attention paid to the fact that Newt was banging a Congressional aide while he was leading the thrust (pun intended) to impeach Clinton for getting head from a Presidential aide.

For all I know, Cain is not guilty of the accusations against him. Well, what do I know? It all could be a plot hatched by Mitt Romney, who may have had his own kids by immaculate conception. Okay. Cain has been a CEO, a lobbyist, a politician, and probably part of many other categories of lying scumbags with more testosterone than is good for the world order. Sorry, though, but when a guy (any guy) is trying to be President of the United States, you can't believe a word anybody else says about him (or a word he says.)

Here we are, in the world of unimpeachable lies — lies that are unimpeachable because scarcely anybody is paying attention.

Pay attention, damn it!

Humor

2011-12-01T22:05:00.003-05:00

I tore this paragraph out of today's Times.

Just how stupid are we supposed to be? Mind you, it's not just the asshole Republicans, but also the asshole Democrats. Did they think we wouldn't get it?

I am acquainted with some people whose ideology dispenses them to agree with every idiotic thing they hear on Fox News, even though they're not idiots. I'm also acquainted with some idiots, but even they are not that stupid. All of us should be offended right now. According to recent polling, 91% of us are offended. The rest, for inexplicable reasons, approve of the job being done by our Congress.

* * *

There's a promo on Comedy Central where Carlos Mencia says, "Barack Obama looks like Curious Fucking George! There! I said it!"

We really need humor these days — but, preferably, not from Congress.

Saving the Euro

2011-11-28T10:46:00.009-05:00

Greece and Italy have been handed over to technocrats, tasked with taking the difficult steps that politicians find impossible. Democracy, clearly, is incompatible with austerity. Make people suffer (most often for the sins of economic elites,) and they vote you out of office. It's as simple as that.

In Spain, the Socialists have been replaced by the center-right Partido Popular — not because Spaniards have suddenly become more conservative, mind you, but because the Socialists were presiding over the austerities forced on Spain by other Eurozone countries (mostly Germany.) Since the Popular Party will be obliged to continue the same unpopular policies the Socialists began, we can expect it to get a lot less popular in short order. Watch out, amigos, here comes another technocrat.

As for mes amis en France, your turn will come as well. Sarkozy is not long for power, and nobody in French politics will want to take responsibility for austerity measures. Yet another European technocracy would not be a surprise.

The source of all the unpopular austerity is Germany. The eternally anal-retentive Germans just can't stand it that their neighbors to the south were inclined to spend more than they earned. Their disapproval goes beyond the economic: it is moral disapproval. Since the southerners were so profligate and generally naughty, Germans feel, they don't deserve to be bailed out. Most Germans probably believe they ought to be birched on their bottoms.

As I see it, the most straightforward way to save the Euro is for Germany to drop out and return to the deutschmark. Maybe they can form a monetary union with the Netherlands, Europe's other economically responsible country. After that, the rest of the Eurozone can inflate its way out of debt.

Word is that there are some financial whiz kids in Germany quietly thinking through this solution. It's extreme, but if the German ants won't save their grasshopper neighbors, it may be the only remaining possibility.

So Much for the Supers

2011-11-21T10:06:00.004-05:00

Well, what did you expect? Of course they deadlocked, and as Paul Krugman pointed out in his column in Friday's Times, it's the best outcome we could have had. Anything short of a deadlock would have been a Democratic cave-in, since the Republicans are totally committed to protecting their plutocratic masters from any slight discomfort or inconvenience.

As we all know, in our current government, it's the President's job to cave. Okay, maybe that was a bit cruel. Honestly, I think Obama really believes a lot of that neoliberal bullshit the "New Democrats" have been spouting for twenty years now. Coming out of the Ivies and then teaching at the University of Chicago, he would have been marinated in it for most of his intellectual life.

I think those "automatic cuts" that are supposed to be triggered in 2013 have about as much chance for survival as a Democratic candidate in Utah, even though $1.2 trillion over ten years is not a hell of a lot of money. Congress will have over a year to backtrack, and find ways to rescue its unquestioned overlords, the defense contractors.

If Obama genuinely wants to make a difference with regard to deficit reduction, he has to veto the inevitable effort Congress will make to extend the Bush tax cuts. Since he's unlikely to get a bill that only raises taxes on the rich, he has to be brave enough to let them all expire. What's left of the middle class will manage with a little less money in their pockets.

What frightens me most is talk about "streamlining" the tax system — reducing the number of tax categories and eliminating most deductions. When it was done under Reagan in the eighties, it started the decline in taxation of the rich — and in the years since, just about all the corporate tax breaks that were eliminated at the time have been written back into the code, and then some.

We should not be worrying about deficit reduction now, in any event. Even with the so-called "downgrade" of US debt by S&P, we don't have any trouble borrowing at ridiculously low rates. We should be taking advantage of those ridiculously low rates to borrow the money we need to put people back to work. The best way to balance the budget is to expand the number of people earning good salaries and paying taxes.

Egypt, again

2011-11-17T16:32:00.002-05:00

As embarrassed as I may be (not much) by saying "I told you so," well, I told you so. Here was my prediction for the Egyptian revolution. Fuck it. I told you so.

Yes, the Egyptian military has no desire to give up the power it has exercised since Nasser replaced Farouk. Would you? Hell, they have all the money and all the power. Who the fuck needs democracy when you have the army?

....

Not entirely related, I heard on the BBC today that the number of Israeli settler attacks on West Bank Palestinians has tripled over the past two years. The UN official in the area — some guy from India — says the settlers are largely responsible. Okay, the Palestinians are far from perfect — but the Israeli settlers seem to be total pieces of shit. Why burn a guy's olive trees, trees that his great-grandfather planted?

(Answer: if he's still around when and if a Palestinian state comes into being, he actually may get to keep his land.)

...

As you may have noticed, I do my best to stay away from mideastern bullshit, as best I can. My avoidance, however, does nothing to stop the carnage.

Assholes.

Sexual Sidebars

2011-11-09T15:13:00.013-05:00

According to yesterday's Times (and today's Times as well), the Pope of Pennsylvania (aka Penn State football coach Joe Paterno) is being pushed out of the job he's held for forty-six years for the little matter of neglecting to take appropriate action when given some lurid details of what assistant coach Jerry Sandusky was doing with that little boy in the Penn State shower room. Somewhat like the Pope in Rome, Paterno has been viewed as pretty much infallible by football fans. Even more like the Pope in Rome, Paterno was willing to let the sexual peccadillos of his underling go unreported to civil authorities, and probably for the same reason — money.

Like the Catholic Church, the Penn State football program depends on private contributions — and Penn State itself gathers about five percent of its revenues and most of its notoriety from its football team. Would the alumni be as inclined to contribute to a school that harbored kiddy diddlers? Would the faithful continue to top off the collection plates of a Church that harbored kiddy diddlers? Who knows? Better not to take the chance. Shove it under the rug, by all means.

* * *
Speaking of money, Silvio Burlusconi's adventures with underage prostitutes never did him a bit of harm, but threatening to bring down the Eurozone is another matter entirely.

***

Then there's that little matter of Herman Cain and the sexual harassment: since I am not of the female persuasion, I'm not entirely sure just what makes a woman "uncomfortable," but what Sharon Bialek describes certainly would make me "uncomfortable." I can't see any way to confirm the Bialek accusations, and I have no doubt that a lobbying group like the American Restaurant Association would pay off any woman (like Karen Kraushaar) ready to file a complaint, whatever the circumstances that provoked it. Well, so what?

Herman currently is blaming the "Democratic Machine" (would that it existed outside of Chicago) for his publicity problems, but his previous preferred hitman, Rick Perry, still seems a more likely choice. Perry has been wasting a hell of a lot of money garnering his 7 or 8 percent, and you just know he wants that nigra out of the competition. Obama, on the other hand, knows he can out-white Cain (because he is very nearly as white as Ivory soap.) Against Cain he can pull in the liberals, half the blacks, and the racists — and win the general election.

As for Mitt, he can't have any problem with Cain and Perry banging away at each other. His foremost problem is America, which sometimes can suss out assholes. I sincerely wish there were going to be a candidate who might win my enthusiastic vote, but I'm not counting on it — and it's certain that she (or he) never could win.

Another reason to dump Geithner

2011-11-03T15:43:00.003-04:00

It made the front page of the business section of yesterday's Times, but the broadcast media haven't had much to say about it: it seems that back when Timmy Geithner still was president of the New York Fed, he and his crew had a real opportunity to get the banks that bought credit default swaps from AIG to take a haircut. Some, according to the Binyamin Appelbaum, were ready to do so voluntarily. Nevertheless, Timmy ("Wall Street's Pocket Puppy") Geithner determined that American taxpayers would make good 100% of Wall Street's potential losses.

If you've been around this blog for a while, you may remember how I was especially pissed off by the AIG bailout — here, for example, and here, and here. Well, I certainly am no happier now than I was back then — in point of fact, "pissed" no longer is an adequate description of my feelings of revulsion. Now that the GAO has reported that Geithner, apparently, felt greater obligations to the banks than to the human beings rescuing them from their paroxysms of greed, I am angrier than ever — both at Geithner, and at Barack (Robert Rubin's Pocket Puppy) Obama for appointing him to Treasury.

If Obama wants to align himself with the populist perspective, and portray the Republicans (accurately) as pawns of big finance, he'd better stop being a pawn of big finance himself. Dumping Geithner would be a very good start.

Well, here's to democracy... I guess

2011-11-01T16:09:00.005-04:00

Nominal socialist George Papandreou is referring the current Greek bailout deal to the Greek public in a referendum. The pundits seem to think he is "tossing the dice," hoping the Greek public will back his negotiated deal, and thereby shutting up the voices of opposition. That interpretation seems unlikely to me.

Could it be that Papandreou remembered that he is, at least nominally, a socialist? I sincerely hope so. I hope he returned from the negotiations asking himself, "What have I done?" From a political perspective, he might very well be asking himself how the Socialists let the Greek center-right seize the issue. Don't political labels mean anything?

(These days, probably not. Hell — Obama is accused of being a liberal.)

I would like to think that Papandreou's decision to put the bailout plan to the Greek people arises from pangs of socialist conscience. Most Greeks seem to understand that while austerity may be good for European banks, it is not necessarily good for Greece. Whatever chaos an "uncontrolled" default might cause around world financial markets, for the Greeks, following in the footsteps of Argentina seems like the best bet to me. I've already posted my unsolicited advice.

I just hope the rest of us survive it.

The Latest Eurodebt "Solution"

2011-10-28T17:51:00.006-04:00

If there's anything the latest news out of Europe shows us, it's that markets bounce around like crazy on any news at all — even news that doesn't mean very much. Of course, the market professionals (and especially their computer algorithms) like volatility. Anyway, let's take a quick look at what's been announced.

First, even after their bondholders take their "voluntary" 50% haircut, the Greeks still can't afford to pay. All the extreme austerity measures the Greek government has been forced to accept have so crippled the Greek economy that the likelihood of Greece paying anything at all is very small.

Second, European banks have been required to increase their capital reserves. Granted, their capital reserves should be a lot larger — but rather than dilute their stock too far by selling shares to raise cash, they can be expected to cut back lending even more, stepping down even harder on Europe's economic brakes.

As for beefing up the European rescue fund enough to "ring-fence" Italy and Spain (and hopefully not France), the "plan" would inspire a lot more confidence if there were a real plan. Hoping the Chinese and Russians will come to the rescue is not a "plan."

I can't wait for next month's "solution."

Ubeki-beki-beki-beki-stan-stan

2011-10-26T09:51:00.000-04:00

So, just who is the president of Ubeki-beki-beki-beki-stan-stan, the guy Herman Cain never heard of? Cain, you will recall, recently said:

"When they ask me who is the president of Ubeki-beki-beki-beki-stan-stan I'm going to say, 'You know, I don't know. Do you know?' ... Knowing who is the head of some of these small insignificant states around the world I don't think that is something that is critical to focusing on national security and getting this economy going."

Assuming he was making an ignorant and probably racist comment about Uzbekistan, the former Soviet republic, I have some news for him. The president of Uzbekistan is Islam Karimov, and he is a really bad guy. He runs the most repressive regime in the region, will not tolerate dissent, and is accused of many human rights abuses.

By the way, he's also an ally of the United States in our "war on terrorism," and has the wholehearted support of Vladimir Putin as well. Hey, Herman! You do know who Vladimir Putin is, don't you?

We shouldn't be surprised by Rush Limbaugh'ss praise of the Lord's Resistance Army for being "Christians... fighting Muslims," while ignoring the fact that the LRA is the most brutal terrorist paramilitary cult in central Africa. We all know that Rush is an asshole.

Cain, however, is running for President of the United States. Unlike Rush, he should not have the opportunity to revel in his ignorance.

999?

2011-10-19T00:11:00.005-04:00

Herman Cain has been shooting himself in both feet from quite a few different angles lately, but now that some major media have started paying attention to what econometricians make of his 999 plan, we should not have to wait too long for the shot to his head. Although all of 999 is a shameless giveaway to the rich, the real "killer" is the national sales tax.

Even innumerate Americans can understand that a 9.1% federal sales tax on every gallon of milk, every pair of new shoes, every gallon of gas, and everything else except for "used" items (used milk?) will cost them a hell of a lot of money. Ordinary Americans, who spend most (or all) of their incomes would be hit the hardest. Even those willing to ignore how a 9% income tax would devastate the working poor will come to view that sales tax with horror.

The rich, of course, whose incomes far exceed whatever they conceivably could spend, would pay an even smaller proportion of their incomes in taxes than they do now. I'm far too lazy to do the math and construct a chart showing the impact of "999" on people in different income brackets, but I assume somebody will do it fairly soon — probably some anonymous somebody from the Romney campaign. (It won't be the Obamanistas, who will be happy to see Republican infighting go on for as long as possible.)

In the meanwhile, most of the Wall Street money is going to Romney — and as far as politics is concerned, Wall Street money is the smart money. Needless to say, though, the financiers are hedging their bets by contributing to Obama as well. Then again, once there's a clear leader — of whatever party — they'll flood him with money. They always like the winner to think he couldn't have won without them. (It sure worked with Obama!)

* * *

Following up on my previous post: recent polling shows that a majority of Americans are sympathetic to the "goals" of the Occupy Wall Street movement — which shows that you really don't need specific policy goals to win public support. Most Americans don't have specific policy goals. They just get it.

The Occupation

2011-10-14T17:33:00.005-04:00

I don't believe the media really does not understand what it is the "Occupy Wall Street" crowd and their cousins around the country are demanding. Maybe news types are so accustomed to "specific" recommendations like Perry's call to drill for oil and gas in National Wildlife Refuges or Cain's idea for an immensely regressive national sales tax (more on that in a later post) that a simple idea like "Stop the goddamned plutocratic parasites from sucking our blood" is beyond their comprehension.

No, it's not beyond their comprehension. They just don't like to think about such a scary idea because the media are owned and controlled by goddamned plutocratic parasites. So who is left to explain the Occupation's simple, straightforward message to the long-deluded segment of the 99% who haven't quite caught on?

Simple. Those of us who do understand have to make every effort to explain, face to face, to those who don't. Most people catch on immediately, even those who never heard the word "plutocrat" before. Do not leave the task to organizations like MoveOn.org, which are working hard to co-opt a populist movement on behalf of Obama and the Democrats. The Democrats — especially since Clinton — have done just as much to advance the parasitic/plutocratic agenda as the Republicans.

Screw the Democrats. It's time for us to do it ourselves.

Απονομή, η ελληνική κυβέρνηση!

2011-10-07T10:02:00.007-04:00

(That is supposed to say, "Hey, Greek government!" but I must admit it's Greek to me.)

Anyway, I thought you guys were supposed to be Socialists — so what's with the sucking up to the ECB, the private banks, and the IMF? Those are your people in the streets. Don't fuck them over.

There's an odd chance your rocky, sunwashed little country could bring down multinational capitalism by tipping over banks like a row of dominos. That would present a big problem for the rest of the world, but in Greece you'd hardly notice the difference. Everybody knows you're going to default, so why keep torturing the Greek people when you could start helping them now.

First, of course, you have to leave the Eurozone. Yes, we all know there never was an orderly way provided for a country to do that, so you'll have to improvise: start printing drachmas, and use them to pay your very numerous government employees. Pick any conversion rate to the Euro you like. Close your banks long enough to replace all their euros with drachmas. Pretty soon, what's left of your private sector will be paying its employees with drachmas too, because they'll be a lot cheaper than Euros; and those who sell goods and services will have to accept them because they'll be the only currency around. The idea, of course, is to end up with a devalued currency. The tourists will love it.

There will be, of course, a black market in currency — which will help to devalue the drachma even more. Inside Greece, though, prices will adjust to the new (old) money. Imports will be very expensive. Local producers will sell more of whatever they produce. Maybe you can find something other than tourism to sell abroad.

Gather together all the euros you can get your hands on — it doesn't matter how many. Set some aside so you'll have a little foreign reserve for when you really need imports, and explain to your creditors that all they'll be getting is what you have left to give them. Their haircut might take some scalp along, but you can just shrug in that charming Greek way you have, and go about your business.

Granted, nobody will give you credit for quite a few years but, at last, you'll learn to live within your means — and don't worry about the Germans invading again. They can't get blood from a stone.

The "Robin Hood" Tax

2011-10-01T11:02:00.005-04:00

There has not been very much discussion of the European Commission's proposed "Robin Hood" tax on financial transactions on this side of the Atlantic, probably because it is seen as a dead issue here. Both Democrats and Republicans are far too deep in the pockets of big finance to even give the idea a hearing. Nevertheless, it deserves some attention, especially if it can be tweaked a little to address a problem we've seen a lot of lately: excessive volatility in the markets.

The heart of the European plan is a .01% tax on all financial transactions, including stocks, bonds, derivatives, and other financial instruments. Although only one one-hundreth of a percent, it is estimated that the tax would raise €210 billion annually to support the European Union.

So what's the tweak I'd suggest for the USofA? Simple. Do not tax the sale of an asset if it has been held for more than one month. Tax it at .005% if it has been held for at least one day, and tax it at .015% if it has been held for any shorter period of time. This would put the greatest burden on program (aka "high frequency") traders, who may make as many as 10,000 trades per minute, and would reward longer-term investments. Long-term investment — the kind used to finance real economic growth — is the kind of investment the United States needs right now.

I have no idea how much money this plan might generate, but I know for certain that it would royally piss off the big investment bankers, hedge fund managers, and anybody else bailed out by the taxpayers in 2008. Most Americans would get a good deal of satisfaction from that outcome alone, but, more important, getting big finance to repay taxpayers for their 2008 largesse also would be a form of justice.

Hey, Obama! Looking for another populist ploy for your 2012 re-election bid? Try it.

Eurocrisis

2011-09-29T08:47:00.006-04:00

It's been said many times that democracies are unable to deal with economic crises, but I don't mind saying it again. Voters always respond to promises of free lunch, despite having been told, over and over again, that there is none.

Keynesian economics really ought to work — and would, were it not for democracy. Stimulus really is necessary to pull an economy out of a recession, but the other side of Keynesianism never happens: when economies are booming, responsible governments should raise taxes and cut spending, building reserves to use during the inevitable downturns. Democracy makes that impossible. When there's extra money flowing in, pandering politicians delight in giving it away.

By comparison with most of Europe — especially the south — the USofA doesn't look all that bad. Greece, of course, is a total basket case. Word is out that bondholders will have to take a 50% haircut, although I'm inclined to think 50% won't be enough, and we should brace for the crash and burn. The Germans have approved about $600 billion in bailout funds, but most economists think that's not nearly enough. It's more than enough for the German voters, however, who don't want their tax money going to bail out those feckless, swarthy southerners.

One of the biggest problems central banks around the world have to deal with, as usual, is lack of transparency. Nobody is clear on how much exposure banks around the world are carrying — not only for Greek debt, but for sovereign debt from other shaky countries as well. Banks have been allowed too much power to hide their holdings, worldwide.

For Europe, moreover, getting a fiscal solution to the financial crisis is even harder than it is in the United States. If the Eurozone is going to survive, it needs fiscal as well as monetary union — and the usual democratic political restraints make that look next to impossible. The ECB, if it gets up the nerve, may just have to inflate Europe out of its dilemma. Bankers and bondholders, of course, will hate that — but the only way I can see for all that sovereign debt to be paid off is with a much cheaper Euro.

The Germans, of course, will hate it the most — but so will individuals whose savings, in Euros, are greater that their debts. It would, of course, also hurt all those trying to boost their economies by exporting to Europe. All in all, it's a mess.

Obama Mans Up

2011-09-21T09:29:00.005-04:00

It is good to see Our President taking up the populist banner and telling us it's time to "soak the rich." I guess Plouff and Axelrod finally figured out that the old Clinton approach of "triangulation" wasn't working, and it was time to try the old Clinton approach of "doing whatever the polls say." A sizable majority of Americans want the rich to pay significantly higher taxes. Now, so does Obama.

"Class warfare," say the Republicans. I don't know about you, but I saw the class war begin thirty years ago, and guess what, fellow proletarians? We lost. If there really were any "class warfare" going on now, it would have to be a counterrevolution. The rich won the war outright, culminating in the Bush income tax cuts and, more important, the reduction of capital gains taxes to 15%.

I'm still not at all persuaded that Our President is on Our Side, but if it keeps Rick Perry out of the White House, whatever chicanery he attempts is okay with me. More important, delivering a strong, populist, anti-fat cat message could help the Democrats weaken or break the Tea Party grip on the Republican Party and the House, and also hang onto the Senate.

As for economic stimulus, the new tax proposals, even if they were enacted into law, would not do any more than the similarly doomed JOBS proposal; but, like the JOBS plan, they make for good politics. Anyway, the actual proposals don't matter, provided the president is seen as aggressively asserting his belief in them.

An unspoken but obvious truth of American politics is that independents don't know enough to make rational choices. Granted, most registered Democrats and Republicans also don't know shit from Shinola, but at least they have people telling them what to believe.

Independents ignore policy, and vote based on personalities. They particularly look for strength. One must hope that fourteen months is long enough for America to get over its perception of Obama as a wimp. If not, a raging asshole like Rick Perry might be our next president.

The Vickers Commission

2011-09-16T15:26:00.006-04:00

Regular readers of this blog are familiar with my view on the repeal of Glass-Steagle back in the last days of the Clinton administration, and my view of Bill Clinton for signing it. Irregular readers, I suppose, should be made aware that my feelings about that action are far more uncomfortable than their constipation.

The British, at least, seem to see the problem in allowing retail banks and investment banks to be one in the same. Governments that provide deposit insurance, when banks are on the brink of failure, find themselves facing the necessity to bail out the whole institution — thereby making whole investors, speculators, and just plain gamblers as well as depositors.

What Sir John Vickers and his colleagues have come up with, for the UK, is a plan to "ringfence" the segments of the banking industry that serve ordinary consumers and businesses, while letting the "players" eat their losses. It sounds like a good idea to me, albeit a bit odd. The too-big-to-fail institutions, under the Vickers plan, could be allowed to fail — while their retail subsidiaries would be saved. Go figure.

Well, if that's all that's politically possible, I say, "Go for it." The British, according to all the talking heads I've heard, are likely, indeed, to "go for it." Here in the USofA, of course, anything similar wouldn't be at all likely. The banks still own both our political parties, and they're still working (with nauseatingly predictable success) to eviscerate Dodd-Frank, which wasn't a particularly strong bill in the first place.

What we really need, of course, is a return to Glass-Steagle — which would require the megabanks to split their investment and retail segments into separate companies, and might encourage a bit more healthy fragmentation along the way.

2008 should have taught us that too big to fail is to big to exist.

Remembering 9/11

2011-09-11T11:03:00.005-04:00

On the morning of September 11, 2001, I woke up in the guest room of my mother's condo in Margate, Florida. I was due to start driving back to New York that morning. She was saying something about somebody blowing up the World Trade Center.

My mother was suffering from dementia, and it was getting worse. I'd been in Florida all the previous week, trying to get her life straightened out, and to figure out how long I could let her stay on her own. When she told me about the World Trade Center, I thought she must have been watching the History Channel — a show about the 1990 attempt — and mistaken it for the news.

I made my way to the kitchen, and looked at her little TV. A minute later, the second plane struck.

Mom thought I should stay a few more days, but I wanted to get home. I had to get home. I got out on the road, listening to the radio. In South Carolina, I stopped for gas. The attendant noticed my New York tags.

"Did you know anybody got kilt?" he asked me.

"I don't know," I told him. "I just have to get home."

"I'll pray for you," he said.

Inside the station, the walls were hung with NRA banners, American flags, and a big portrait of Ronald Reagan. "These people," I thought, "are my polar opposites, but they're going to pray for me." Throughout the South, everywhere I stopped, my New York plates brought me special kindness and sympathy. It was the only time, in my frequent travels up and down I-95, that ever happened. I would leave a rest stop with fresh coffee, think about just how goddamned nice people could be, and drive on with tears rolling down my face.

I drove straight through the night. As I came closer to home, I heard about bridge and tunnel closings, and wondered if I'd be stuck in New Jersey for who knew how long, but I got lucky. I hit the Verrazano Narrows Bridge during about a two hour window when it was open. When I got onto the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, mine was the only car on the road. If you know the BQE, you know that never happens.

There is one section of the BQE where the eastbound lanes run underneath the westbound lanes, and the roadway makes a wide turn. As I came around that turn, lower Manhattan came into view across the river.

I'd seen the endlessly repeated video of the impacts on every TV at every gas station and rest stop along my way. Now, though, I was seeing what was left. It was still dark, but the scene was lit with floodlights. Two giant columns of smoke went up and up until they disappeared into the sky.

Eventually, I got home and collapsed into bed. Of all the times I've driven between Margate and Long Island, that was the fastest I've ever done it.

It wasn't long before the war drums were beating. Many of us marched against invading Iraq, but it made no impression on anybody in power. All the major news media were caught up in a patriotic frenzy, and none of them seemed to be paying attention to the available facts. Some of the Southerners who had prayed for us New Yorkers on 9/11 were saying that the attack was God's punishment for our sinful, liberal ways.

National unity lasted about a week. Now, ten years later, our country is more balkanized than ever.

The JOBS bill: weak economics, great politics

2011-09-09T20:03:00.006-04:00

Yes, having listened to the Republican debate, I felt obliged to listen to the President's "JOBS" speech as well. Since it was a bit more subtle than the debate, I listened twice.

The first thing I noticed, of course, was that Obama was taking an aggressive tone — something he hasn't done since before he was elected. I'm wondering if David Plouffe, chief Obama political adviser and architect of Clinton's "triangulation" approach, might be tendering his resignation soon. Damn, I hope so, but I suppose that even Plouffe must have learned something over the past two years. It really is time for a new, ballsier* Obama.

*[Surprisingly, the word "ballsier" is not identified as a spelling mistake by my computer's dictionary.]

I liked the fact that the White House "leaked" a $300 billion proposal, then came through with 50% more. Maybe Obama is finally getting the hang of how to negotiate. By presenting the Republicans with policies they supported in the past, he leaves them with the choice of going along with most of it, or looking like the obstructionists they are. Count on seeing about $300 billion worth of stimulus.

The new stimulus package, based on politics rather than economics, will do little or nothing to create new jobs, of course. I suppose it's conceivable that a further extension of unemployment benefits might make it through the House, but I wouldn't place any bets on it. That leaves the payroll tax cuts, the infrastructure projects, and some state aid.

Tax cuts rarely increase demand. Payroll tax cuts for workers only affect people who already have jobs. Some of them will use the extra money to pay down debt, and most of the rest will use it to increase savings in the face of job insecurity. (When their jobs are insecure, workers tend to take defensive stances — not yell "Whoopie!" and buy a new sofa or a trip to Vegas.) If employers get cuts to their share of payroll taxes, they'll just pocket the money. They won't hire new workers unless there's a lot of new demand — demand that can't be met by bleeding their existing workers dry.

As for the infrastructure projects, they're unlikely to generate new jobs for a year or two. Granted, we'll certainly still need those new jobs in a year or two, and the jobs have to be done, but I can't see any great increase in construction jobs any time soon.

As I've said many times before, though, federal aid to the states can be one of the best things Congress can do. Yes, it will be too little, too late, but at least some jobs could be saved — provided the aid is targeted at keeping state and local employees from losing their jobs. We really don't need any more subsidized sports arenas, for example, providing short-term construction jobs followed by long-term tax drains.

To me, the jobs bill the President will be sending along to Congress was a pleasant surprise. It already has the likes of Eric Cantor on the defensive, and it just might give the Democrats a boost in the next elections.

On the other hand, it's hard to imagine any real economic progress any time soon.

The Republican Debate

2011-09-07T23:22:00.010-04:00

Unlike most of America, I actually watched it. Needless to say, what most of America thinks about it depends on what most of America's individually preferred media have to say about it. Here are some personal impressions:

Rick Santorum's facial expressions, as he listened to the few questions the moderators bothered to address to him, precluded anybody actually listening to whatever answers he eventually offered. "Gee," I thought, "he looks like he comes to school on the little bus." I suspect he won't be around for the next debate. (By the way, the eventual answers were not too impressive either.)

Michele Bachman's hair and makeup were just wrong. There was a bit too much blue eyeliner, and a hell of a lot too much hair lacquer. Many will say that it's a shame that a female candidate's appearance should matter so much, but appearances matter just as much for male candidates as well. As for what she had to say, who knows? She got totally predictable questions, and answered them with generally off-topic talking points.

Newt Gingrich, who knows he's out of it, was just having fun. I kind of enjoyed the way he stirred the pot — when the "moderators" (ha!) gave him the chance. As a long-term pot stirrer myself, I just had to smile.

Herman Cain acquitted himself nicely. Although I suspect nobody in the mostly Tea Party audience was following his "9-9-9" plan, he sounded as if he knew what he was talking about, which, of course, is what matters most. The plan itself would exacerbate the rift between the rich and the poor (and the decimation of the middle class) in the United States, but it is proof that race need not be a significant factor in the class war. Wealth is colorless. Nevertheless, as we're all aware, he doesn't stand a chance.

Jon Huntsman has good hair, but he's a bit too tan. Is that supposed to suggest that he actually spent time outdoors in Afghanistan? If so, I suspect that suggestion might be just too subtle for the Republican base. Anyway, he didn't use the opportunity of the debate to establish himself as a centrist — his only chance to differentiate himself from the pack — and hence made little or no impression at all.

Ron Paul came over as aged and frail, I'm afraid. He's lost the oomph he showed four years ago, and while he tossed a dart or two at Perry, they didn't hit very hard.

So, that leaves Mitt Romney and Rick Perry, the front-runners. In the handsome-off, I thought Romney had a slight advantage tonight — that is, until MSNBC tossed in an homage to Ronald Reagan (presumably because the debate was held at the Reagan Library.) Perry, we could see, looks a lot more like Reagan that Romney does.

The big news, however, will be that Romney wants to preserve Social Security while Perry wants to end it. Given that primary voters tend to be a bunch of old farts like me, I'd say "advantage Romney" for tonight — but you can't, by any means, count Perry out.

Hell. He really looks quite a lot like Reagan.

Balanced Budget Amendment

2011-09-04T16:25:00.003-04:00

Frankly, I don't know why I'm even bothering to write about a balanced budget amendment, because it is now, and always has been, an extraordinarily stupid idea. A balanced budget amendment means that government no longer has access to fiscal policy — and given that monetary policy appears to be totally tapped out at the moment, fiscal is all that's left.

Well, it would be left — if the right-wing crazies were willing to use it — but, no, then the economy might pick up a little and offer a little advantage to the center-right not-quite-so-crazies represented by Our President.

In case anybody reading this is unaware, the states that must balance their budgets tend to do it with tricks — case in point, New Jersey raiding its public employee pension system for a couple of decades — and with federal subsidies. Nobody is going to subsidize the feds, though.

Then, there's that "family" argument. Families do not run balanced budgets, year to year — even the most responsible. Scarcely anybody buys a house or a car without borrowing; and, these days, scarcely anybody gets a higher education without borrowing. They get the economic advantage when they need it, and pay it back over time.

So, just in case you think a balanced budget amendment is a good idea, remember — you're an asshole.

The Speech

2011-09-02T16:44:00.003-04:00

We don't know what Barack Obama will say to draw viewers away from the opening game of the NFL season next week, but Robert Reich has thought about it. You will find his thoughts here.

Sadly, his ideas would require that Our President grow a set of balls. I don't see much chance of that happening, of course.

Read Reich. He says it a lot better than I could.

The Problem with Keynesian Economics

2011-08-31T19:32:00.009-04:00

The problem with Keynesian economics, sad to say, is that it's incompatible with democracy. Ordinary citizens of a democracy — or of any other political system, for that matter — always like more, and never like less. Hence, only half of the Keynesian formula ever is implemented. (Well, maybe "ever" is a slight overstatement, because Bill Clinton sort of moved in the right direction during the boom years of the nineties.)

Until very recently, Keynesianism was almost an automatic response to recession: cut taxes and increase government spending to stimulate the economy. The problems always arose during the good times — the boom times. That's when, according to Keynes, we're supposed to raise taxes and cut government spending, to keep things from overheating and build up a reserve to see us through the next recession.

Unfortunately, that second part of Keynesianism is the hard part. When incomes and profits are up, and lots of tax money is flowing into government coffers, the suck-up politicians of democratic governments say, "Hey! We've got the money! Let's make the voters happy by cutting their taxes and tossing lots of bucks around! While we're at it, we can toss even more bucks at the special interests who pay for our election!"

Everybody's doing better (except for those "fixed income" suckers and the minimum wage crowd, who can't handle the inflation), so everything goes swimmingly until the next recession. It's been going on for about eighty years now.

Note, however, that during those boom times the big benefits go to the special interests — and the most special of those interests, at least since Reagan was president, have been the very rich.

Yeah, I know — if you read this blog, it's not exactly news to you.

So now we're at a point when Keynes (like most contemporary economists) would recommend stimulus. Thanks to eighty years of getting Keynes wrong, though, our national debt is a bit on the high side. The "democratically elected" pols — Republicans, especially, but plenty of Democrats as well — are righteously demanding austerity. But why, especially when we need stimulus so badly, and interest rates are so low?

The answer, of course, goes back to those extra-special interests — the people and institutions that own that debt. They can never be losers, of course, so the rest of us have to pay.

I'm too old and lazy to start a revolution and, frankly, I wouldn't know even where to begin now that revolutions seem to start on Facebook and Twitter. I have to tell you, I'm not optimistic. Any suggestions?

Rick Perry

2011-08-28T15:33:00.005-04:00

I know I'm not allowed to make predictions anymore, but I really think Rick Perry is the most likely Republican presidential candidate for 2012. Needless to say, it has nothing to do with policy, promises, or, for that matter, politics.

He's tall. He has good hair. He's aggressive. He's Texan tough.

Oh, crap! He's the perfect candidate! Not only can he win the Republican nomination, but he can beat Obama in 2012. Americans, by and large being assholes,will ignore the fact that his brains are up his ass, that he's a total lackey of the corporate elite, and that he doesn't believe in climate change, evolution, women's rights, or the scientifically established age of the world.

Those of you old enough to remember when Clinton beat Bush the First will remember the most important advantage Clinton had: back then, they called it "the wimp factor." Yes, G.H.W.Bush was widely regarded as a wimp. Now, let's consider our current chief administrator.

Oh, shit! This time around, wimp is an understatement.

"President Perry" is, to me, about as awful a situation as I can imagine. If he really is the Christian airhead he portrays himself to be, we're in for big trouble. If he's actually the shit eating dog of the capitalist establishment I suspect he might be, we're in for much bigger trouble.

Wimp-in-Chief Obama seems to be trying to grow a set of, at least, marble sized ones lately, but he'd better grow them a lot faster if he wants to hold onto his office. Once, as I recall, he said he'd rather be a good one-term president than an ineffective two-term president. He didn't mention the possibility of being an ineffective one-term president.

But, on the other hand... Rick Perry?

What next for Libya?

2011-08-23T22:44:00.006-04:00

Now that NATO has enabled the "Libyan rebels" to push Qaddifi (aka Gadaffi, Ghadafi, Khadaffi, etc.) out of Tripoli, it is time to start wondering who will be running the alleged "country" in the future. According to the New York Times, "Colonel Qaddafi proved to be a problematic partner for international oil companies, frequently raising fees and taxes and making other demands. A new government with close ties to NATO may be an easier partner for Western nations to deal with."

This motivation for the invasion has been clear enough from the beginning, but the question remains: who will govern Libya now that Qaddifi, albeit uncaptured and not thoroughly vanquished, is out of power? The situation might prove more problematic than dealing with the old Colonel himself.

The "Transitional National Council," currently "speaking for" the "rebels," seems to consist of expatriates from Europe and the United States, a few defectors from Gaddafi's government (one of whom already has been assassinated), and a couple of tribes traditionally opposed to Ghadiffi's tribe. They are not the stuff of a unified government.

Well, whatever "government" emerges from the wreckage, I suppose there will be some contracts negotiated for Libyan oil. My suggestion, similar to my suggestion for Afghanistan, is that the western powers let the tribes work it out for themselves. Tribalism is the basic political motif for the middle east, so the best idea is to go with it. (Afghanistan, by the way, needs a loya jurga, not an "elected" government, to get it back on the road to nationhood.)

Meanwhile, though, let us all hope that Libya can begin to ship oil again — so that European (and world) oil prices can decline a bit. Will it make up for the expenditures of the Libyan War?

Who knows.

Volatility

2011-08-12T20:13:00.004-04:00

Up, down, up, down, up.

My usual advice regarding the stock market: ignore it. The bitter truth about the stock market is that is has virtually nothing to do with the real economy of people trying to earn a living so as to keep food on the table and a roof over their heads. The markets may affect the sales of Louis Vuitton accessories and all the crap indispensable for accessorizing those accessories, but sales of rice, beans, and gasoline will stay fairly constant.

Granted, it's hard to ignore the market if you're trying to eke out the final few years of your life of thankless labor on the proceeds of a 401k — but equally needless to say, anything you try to do now will be much too little, much too late.

Forget the "confidence fairy." Forget all the conjecture about the impact of this, that, or the other barf-out of the latest "economic data." It doesn't take an economist to figure out that things are, in a manner of speaking, fucked up — and you don't have to be an economist to recognize that your personal investment in the stock market amounts to chicken shit by comparison with the investments of banks, hedge funds, and similar corporate straw men for the plutocrats.

And, no, it NEVER "trickles down."

So what's with the volatility? Okay, there are assholes out there trading for their own accounts, and some of them must be dumb enough to panic when others seem to be panicky and to buy high in bursts of irrational enthusiasm only to see their investments droop like a certain national leader's limp dick. How much can that explain, though, when a great majority of the buying and selling is institutional, and when most of that institutional buying and selling is program trading?

Who has the best algorithm today? Who is the fewest microseconds distant from today's Biggest Board? I'm just guessing that it's not your retirement fund, so how you're doing amounts, pretty much, to pure chance. Just bear in mind, though, that there's a great deal of money to be made in volatile markets — and that somebody is making it.

The Riots Across the Pond

2011-08-10T15:57:00.003-04:00

I've been listening to the BBC for coverage of the rioting/looting in London and other English cities, and I've come to think that nobody over there actually gets it. In case you hadn't noticed, the class system over there is quite pronounced (including "clahhss," "clawws," "clows," and several others.) The rioters, according to David Cameron's "clahhssmates" from Oxbridge, are the "lowest of the low." They are young, uneducated, and unemployed. They are white, black, and various shades of brown. They are just knowledgeable enough to realize that the only way they ever are likely to have a few nice things is to steal them.

I think it was my favorite senator, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who first coined the (now very politically incorrect) term, "underclass." Back in Moynihan's day, the "underclass" in the USofA was predominantly black, since race and class were even more closely correlated then. I know I heard that very term on the BBC today, spouted by some Tory twit or another, whose argument seemed to be that "the lowest of the low" are congenitally defective, with no regard at all for their lower-middle-class neighbors struggling to keep their beauty salons and falafel stands unburnt.

It's true. They couldn't care less. They'll never have a beauty salon or a falafel stand. A more upscale Blackberry or pair of sneakers is their height of aspiration.

Cameron and the Conservatives are committed to austerity. So are our homegrown plutocrats and their political allies, from both parties. Here in the USofA, as the rate of teen unemployment and the widening gap between rich and poor continue to increase, our ability to pretend that we really don't have a class system is falling apart. As state and local governments, strapped for cash, cut back on policing, fire fighting, and education, things can only get worse.

'Ow's 'at 'it ya, guvner?

Hey, what happened?

2011-08-04T19:22:00.005-04:00

While I've been calming down from that last post — not to mention the consummation of that Faustian bargain I mentioned — it seems many others have been getting a bit more excited. Today's market plunge may be just more of the "volatility" which indicates that nobody knows what the hell is going on. On the other hand, it just may be that investors finally have figured out that austerity is not likely to be good for their investments.

After all, the corporate world has been sitting on its money and spending bupkes for the past couple of years, and plutocrats tossing their loose change around at Bergdoff-Goodman and Tiffany do not an economy make. When the United States joined Europe in the cult of what Krugman calls "the confidence fairy," it appears many Wall Streeters decided it was time to listen to the economists rather than the Koch brothers.

Then, of course, there's the SUPER-COMMITTEE, whoopie doo! Since the Republicans already have sworn that no tax increase supporters nor loophole closers will be appointed to their six, one supposes they are assuming at least one of the Democratic appointees will be an Obamesque anilinguist (and one assumes that we all can assume they are correct in that assumption. And, okay, I haven't calmed down all that much.)

I know I swore off making predictions a while back, and hence I will refrain — but I just can't see anything good coming out of any of this.

Punk-ass Pussy President Sucks GOP Cock Again

2011-08-01T10:50:00.004-04:00

I am sorry that the most visceral words that signify great cowardice in the English language are either misogynistic or homophobic. I'm in a very visceral frame of mind.

Barack Obama is not an idiot, so I assume he realizes that the Faustian bargain he just struck with Boehner and Co. will make anything resembling economic recovery impossible at any time in the foreseeable future. Thing can, and will, get much worse before they get better.

The only hope I see is that Congress turns down the alleged "compromise," forcing Obama to act like a mensch and use executive power to raise the debt ceiling on his own — but would he do it even then? I don't know.

Immediately after publishing this post, I intend to fax my representative in the House to request that he vote "no," but he's a complete party hack who narrowly held onto his seat in 2010, so I don't expect him to comply with my request. After that, I suppose I'll fax the White House so they understand that they can't count on their left-leaning base after such a complete betrayal. I wouldn't vote for Barack Obama again even if it meant risking the election of, say, Louis Gohmert, who is so stupid his district has to send him to Congress on the "little bus."

I may use some visceral language.

BREAKING NEWS!!!!!!!

2011-07-30T21:06:00.005-04:00

According to a teaser from my local NBC station, "The East Side Groper Strikes Again!"

Gee! Somebody was groped, and he/she was not the first! Very upsetting, indeed!

In the meanwhile, Boehner got a bill past the House by adding a totally crazy balanced budget amendment requirement, and the Senate shot it down. The House, in turn, shot down Harry Reid's allegedly "Democratic" bill, making way for a "compromise" somewhere between the right wing and the starboard side of a flat earth.

Apparently, this is okay with Obama, who made it perfectly clear that he is far too cowardly to invoke the 14th Amendment — or even just common sense. (Common sense suggests that once Congress has spent the money, it is obliged to pay the bill — because a default is the equivalent of declaring bankruptcy. Clearly, the United States cannot be bankrupt while so many of its citizens and corporations have so much wealth.)

And, so, I guess the "warring parties" will get something together before 8/2 replaces 9/11 as the low point in American history. Given the most recent GDP figures, though, one hopes that European style austerity can be delayed for a while — say, five or six years. Otherwise, it's really looking like 1937 all over again.

Anyway, if you think getting groped might actually make you feel better than the rest of what's in the news, head over to the East Side. Maybe you'll get lucky.

Now what?

2011-07-29T11:22:00.001-04:00

As of this writing, John Boehner still can't gather enough votes in the House to pass a bill to raise the debt ceiling, despite support from all Republican leaders, presumably including Eric Cantor — although I suspect next-in-line-to-be-Speaker Cantor may be less upset than he appears. If there is no breakthrough today, somebody in Washington may have to show some courage.

We all know who that somebody is, and we all know what he'll have to do. Barack Obama will have to go right ahead and break the 1917 debt ceiling law by ordering Treasury to keep selling bonds after the debt ceiling is breached. Presumably he can find some lawyers willing to write some opinions explaining why he's really allowed to do it. As we all know, it's not hard to find lawyers willing to justify anything. Hell, George W. Bush found lawyers to justify torture.

But who would buy those bonds? Well, Ben Bernanke is no idiot, and I think he could persuade the rest of the Fed to go along. Yes, it means "printing" money, and is likely to put even more downward pressure on the dollar, but inflation hasn't been any sort of problem for the past few years. An out-and-out default would do much more harm.

Yes, Obama would certainly be impeached in the House — creating even more political theater — but he wouldn't be convicted in the Senate. As for his electoral chances, they might improve if he finally showed some balls — portraying himself as the strong leader who finally stood up to the incompetents in Congress.

The "Gang of Six" Plan

2011-07-21T16:29:00.004-04:00

If you haven't read the actual document released by the "Gang of Six," you can download it here. Don't feel intimidated — it's short and not even remotely technical. As a matter of fact, it says pretty much nothing in terms of suggestions for real legislation.

So why is Our President so enthusiastic? Well, it's, sort of, bipartisan. Three extremely conservative (but not Tea Party) Republicans got together with three Blue Dog Democrats, and came up with roughly four pages of mostly conservative talking points. Needless to say, both the left and the Tea Partiers are extremely upset. "Mostly conservative" is what passes for "moderate" these days.

As for me, I continue to hope that Our President has no strong interest in any of these particular talking points, and is using them just to put pressure on the Tea Partying ideologues in the House. All he wants right now is a goddamned increase in the debt ceiling without being forced to raise it himself, without Congressional approval (as I suggested a couple of weeks ago.)

Bill Clinton, it seems, agrees with me. So far, as best I can tell, nobody's heard from W.

Murdoch

2011-07-19T11:43:00.002-04:00

Schadenfreude? You betcha!

For a few minutes, there, I was hoping Fox News might be caught up in the scandal — but then it occurred to me that Fox doesn't actually do news. They don't have to. Fox subsists on its ability to mirror the perspective of its viewers, reinforcing what they already believe. Fox isn't a tabloid — it's an echo chamber.

If Rupert's boy James deserves to spend some time in jail, and that causes the old man some discomfort and leads to a fracturing of the Murdoch empire, I can't say I'd be terribly upset. If it turns out that young Murdoch, Rebecca Brooks, Lee Hinton, Andy Coulson et al all can maintain their plausible deniability, and manage to duck their responsibility for the hacking, bribery of police, etc., that's also okay with me — at least if there's enough of a tempest in the Murdoch teapot to restrain Rupert's coterie of asslicking politicians until the old man finally dies.

(If the Wall Street Journal is sold to somebody who can restore its journalistic integrity — even with its rabid-right editorial pages intact — that would be especially welcome!)

Boehner's Dilemma

2011-07-17T11:20:00.003-04:00

John Boehner has a problem. Well, okay, he has several problems.

First, despite his nominal leadership of the Republican party, he can't control the troops. Given his long history in the House, this must have come as a surprise to him — if there was anything Republicans have been good at for the past thirty years, it's been party discipline. The Tea Parties seem to have ruined that.

Second, he can't help but feel Eric Cantor's dagger poking at his side, looking for a good soft spot between the ribs. Cantor really wants to replace Boehner as Speaker of the House, and he doesn't seem to mind keeping his party divided against itself to get there.

Boehner is a corporatist, but also a pragmatist. As a corporatist, he prefers not to mess around with the possibility of creating financial meltdown. As a pragmatist, he follows Reagan in the belief that when you get 80% of what you wanted in a negotiation, you've won. When Obama offered up large chunks of Medicare and Medicaid on the altar of "moderation," Boehner was willing to go along with closing a few tax loopholes for the rich.

Cantor saw Boehner's "weakness" as an opportunity to run up to the front of the Tea Party parade with a large bass drum. Although he's been sounding more and more like a Grover Norquist ideologue lately, I suspect Cantor is much better understood as a pure opportunist — a man whose personal ambition far outweighs any party loyalty

After a few drinks the other night, I had this really neat fantasy. It won't come true, of course, but a lot of us would be supremely amused if it did.

John Boehner has lots of friends with money and power. Suppose he quietly encouraged some of them to start a "draft Eric Cantor" campaign for the 2012 presidential race. After all, the current crop of candidates is not especially impressive, and even the Tea Partiers have to be able to see that Cantor has a lot more on the ball than the intellectually challenged Michele Bachman.

I know, very unlikely — but what if Eric Cantor's hubris was great enough to get him to go along with it, and what if he won the nomination?

Why, then you'd have a black man running against a Jew for the highest office in the land! Oh no! Crisis in Redneckland!

As for me, I'd still be poking around the available third-party candidates looking for a place to cast my protest vote — but at least I could have a few good laughs.

More Debt Ceiling Crap

2011-07-15T18:03:00.006-04:00

Have you ever watched a game of chicken? Some of us geezers automatically think of the one in that James Dean movie, Rebel Without a Cause. In the case of the debt ceiling, though, two cars driving side by side towards a cliff really isn't the right metaphor. To me, two cars driving on a collision course down a single lane road with brick walls to each side seemed more apropos. It isn't possible for just one of them to step on the brakes and bail out. Either both chicken out or both wipe out.

Then along came that canny little bastard, Mitch McConnell, with a neat idea for creating an exit ramp for the Republicans — a ramp that would allow the Republicans to duck out of the way while Obama drives the country off a cliff and ensures a Republican victory in 2012. There's just one little problem with the McConnell plan.

What if there's no cliff? The Republicans would have chickened out, the economy wouldn't be significantly crappier (albeit still quite crappy), and Obama probably could go on to win another term. Nobody actually knows what a second Obama term would look like, but I'm not betting on a great flowering of liberalism. I figure it will be the same corporatist crap, just minus the worst of the supply side bullshit.

If both parties still are obeying their corporate overlords, McConnell's plan is likely to be the one that flies. It will take a few days for House Republicans to figure out which of them can get away with voting for it and which of them get to beat their chests and vote "no," but it can pass. (Expect, of course, a very close vote.)

Those of us old enough to remember the James Dean movie cannot help but feel a bit cynical. It's only to be expected.

Regarding what's "on the table"

2011-07-09T10:41:00.009-04:00

The June job figures show employment continuing to crash, even as corporate profits increase. Is anybody surprised? The profits are coming mainly from overseas, although "productivity increases" here at home (automation plus increasing worker exploitation) aren't hurting at all.

In his column in yesterday's Times, Paul Krugman pointed out that the president is running very low on economic advisers, and wondered if the political advisers — who, like Obama himself, seem to know very little about economics — might be exerting too much influence. Given the quality of the economic advisers he used to have, I suspect there's not a hell of a lot of difference, but I'm hoping somebody can communicate some sense to him.

First of all, somebody has to pound it into his thick skull that we are not dealing with supply-side problems. It doesn't matter how many tax cuts and tax advantages government tosses at business — they'll just take the money and sit on it, or use it to buy back their own stock or take over other businesses (with concomitant staff "consolidations") or distribute it as dividends to shareholders. None of it will be used to create jobs in the United States as long as Americans can't afford to buy their products.

(The political advisers, of course, will point out that some percentage of "independent" voters have swallowed the supply-side line, and will encourage Obama to "get out ahead" of the Republicans. Obama once said he'd rather be a good one-term president than an ineffective two-term president, but I suspect he was either lying or self-deceiving at the time. I don't have a lot of confidence in Obama — or any of our current political elite — putting the country ahead of their own ambitions.)

If we disregard political ambitions and corporate contributions (har de har har), it makes absolutely no sense to give the corporations "tax amnesty" for bringing overseas profits back to the United States. We tried it back when Bush was president, and all it did was create a great deal of moral hazard, inevitably leading to the current proposal to do it again.

It also makes no sense to cut entitlements, which would serve chiefly to further reduce demand, and make our employment problems even worse. If Obama really has Social Security and Medicare "on the table" in the current talks with the Republican leadership, let's hope he's feeding them a line of bullshit no less stinky than the line they're feeding him about the possibility of increasing tax levies on the plutocrats.

Shit, nobody in either party wants to tax the plutocrats! They are the plutocrats! (Where's the IWW when you need it? We need it now.)

The Debt Ceiling Dispute

2011-07-06T11:13:00.003-04:00

This week we get to see whether Our President has finally grown big enough balls to stand up to those big bad Republicans. Yes, I know, they're very scary! Some of them are so stupid they may as well be crazy, and some of them have been publicly committed to supply-side voodoo for so long they are incapable of making rational choices.

Obama's biggest problem is that he's backed down so many times there's no reason for even the sensible Republicans — those who are just ordinary politicians — to believe he won't do so again. That means he has to get out ahead of the game this time, even given the fast approaching "deadline" that's supposed to frighten all of us so much.

Here's my suggestion: begin by announcing that there will be no agreement that does not include tax increases for the rich. He should not fudge the language by talking about "closing loopholes" or "eliminating subsidies" — he should come straight out and say "tax increases." The Republicans will, of course, accuse him of "class warfare," but what the hell? America is ready for a little "class warfare" at the moment, and the tea parties should not have a monopoly on populism while so-called conservatives load greater and greater burdens on the backs of the middle class and the poor.

Obama has taken a good first step by rejecting any temporary, stopgap measure that will do nothing but push the problem closer to the 2012 election. He has a history (think of the Bush tax cut extensions) of being nickled and dimed into major concessions, and he shouldn't allow that to happen again.

After drawing his line in the sand, his next step should be to announce that he will instruct Treasury to continue to sell bonds even after the debt ceiling is reached, based on the idea that when Congress votes for spending without raising sufficient revenues to pay the bills, it must be assumed that Congress is empowering the executive to borrow. By the time the Supreme Court issues an opinion on the Constitutional validity of a debt ceiling, breaching it will be a fait accompli, and the debt ceiling no longer could be held hostage by Republican blackmailers.

It's time for the president to start acting more like a scary black man and less like somebody who got his job through an affirmative action program. The only way to deal with bullies is to stand up to them. Barack Obama seems to be beginning to make that attempt. Let's hope he follows through.

Greeks v. Banks

2011-06-28T14:56:00.008-04:00

We'll see tomorrow if the Greek parliament approves the austerity measures and the deep-discount privatizations the ECB and the richer European countries are demanding for another alleged "bailout." To me, the most likely scenario floating around is that the Greeks will go along with the demands for legislative actions tomorrow, and then just not implement most of them as they come due.

If the parliamentarians are paying attention to the riots in the streets, though, they just might say "no" to the package. If that happens, we'll have to see what ensues. A collapse of the Eurozone is a real possibility, and that certainly would be disruptive to the world economy.

Of course, there are some of us who think it just might be time to do it and have done with it. Having a single monetary policy and more than two dozen fiscal policies, from my perspective, is not a formula for success. It worked well enough when credit was cheap, borrowing standards were lax, and government leaders could buy support with all that borrowed money. Granted, the Greeks went a bit more overboard than most — and lied their way into the Eurozone to begin with — but the system was and is essentially flawed.

Whatever the original sins of Greek leaders, though, I could not condemn them if they tell the rest of Europe to screw itself. The interest Greece has to pay on the debt it incurs right now is in the junk bond category. How much higher could it go, and would it really make a difference? Greece can't afford to pay current rates, so higher rates mean nothing. The only sensible thing to do is default now, rather than enter into dubious refinancing schemes and then default for even more later.

The popular jargon for the current bailout proposal is "kicking the can down the road." It makes sense, though, to look at how the road might change a few kicks ahead.

Sarkozy has worked out a deal with private French banks that hold Greek debt to, essentially, roll it over — offer new loans to pay off the old ones (only at higher rates.) The immediate advantage of that for the banks is that it would mean they will not have to write down the bad debt for another three to five years, leaving their balance sheets looking healthier for a while. If the bailout deal goes through, we can expect other private holders of Greek debt to do the same.

Look back a little bit, though, and we see what French, German, Swiss, Belgian, and other private European banks have been doing since the last bailout — that is, selling off their Greek debt to the European Central Bank. If they can continue to do that, private losses can be minimized. Losses by the ECB would have to be offset by infusions of capital from European governments — in other words, by the European people as a whole. Fat cats, hedge funds, and corporate investors will transfer their gambling losses to ordinary people.

For the Greeks themselves, selling off public assets like their ports, utilities, railroads, etc. at this time seems like an especially foolish move. As the people in the streets and squares of Greek cities understand very well, not only would the sale of those assets sharply increase unemployment, but they would bring only a fraction of what they're worth. It makes a lot more sense to default first — tell their creditors they're not going to be paid — and save the assets for later sale, when Greece really needs the money. Cut off from credit, Greece finally would be forced to slice away the corruption and patronage from its economy. The nest egg provided by asset sales, if they turn out to be necessary, could be the country's key to survival.

US exposure to Greek debt is quite small, and the predicted domino effect on Portugal, Ireland, Spain, and Italy also would not have great impact on American holders of European debt. What we don't know, however, is the exposure of US banks and related corporations in the form of credit default swaps. How much of the impending European losses are insured in the US, or in European subsidies of US banks?

Well, we're still kind of in the process of writing the transparency rules on derivatives, so nobody actually knows.

"Withdrawal" symptoms

2011-06-23T11:56:00.003-04:00

Well, the president finally has decided what to do regarding Afghanistan and, to nobody's surprise, it seems to be another of his bloody "compromises." Announced as an "acceleration" of troop withdrawal, by the end of next year it still will leave more than twice as many troops in Afghanistan as there were before the "surge."

The military, needless to say, really didn't want any troop withdrawal at all. First, as long as we're over there killing Taliban (and any civilians who happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time), we can deny that we've lost the war. I imagine there are those who hate to think the 1500 American troops killed in action haven't "died in vain" — although, of course, they have died in vain, and the thousands more with severe combat related disabilities have been disabled in vain. Another factor important to the careerists is that combat is where the promotions are to be found, and a less bellicose United States would hinder their advancement.

As for Obama, I suppose it's not politically expedient to call it quits before the next election, considering all the bug-eyed, meat-rending Republicans who would call him both a sissy and a betrayer of American values — and also considering what a big deal he made in the last election about how Afghanistan was the right war to fight. On the other hand, perhaps he should pay more attention to the growing number of Republicans joining the Democratic left in demanding immediate withdrawal — mostly for fiscal reasons, but for other reasons as well. "If we're going to leave," said Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA), "we should leave. The centralized system of government foisted upon the Afghan people is not going to hold after we leave. So let's quit prolonging the agony and the inevitable."

Hear hear!

Greece and the Eurozone

2011-06-18T16:12:00.006-04:00

The street protests in Greece continue, as more and more Greeks figure out that they are being asked to transform themselves into citizens of a third-world country for a generation or so for the sake of minimizing losses by the banks of Europe. US exposure seems to exist mostly in the form of credit default swaps; how many, one wonders, were written by taxpayer owned AIG?

All in all, it looks like Greece, shortly followed by Portugal, Ireland, Spain, and Italy, soon will be forced to accept "bailouts" of the very rich by the middle classes and the poor.

Forced? Uh huh. If it turns out to be "politically impossible" to persuade ordinary outer-edge Europeans to vote for governments that will impose the requisite "austerity" measures needed to keep the super-rich fat and happy, the availability of governments (through coalitions and similar tricks) will be sharply reduced — leaving only those "democratically elected" governments willing to play along.

Can it be stopped? Can the megacorps be compelled to take "haircuts" for fear of far greater losses, perhaps to neck level? It may depend on the Greeks.

From my perspective, it would be better to take our chances on a Greek default — and see what shakes out — than to keep the bailouts going and spreading until the eventual default becomes devastating to the point of worldwide depression. The Greeks, of course, will not be letting me write their economic policy — but maybe somebody that somebody listens to will start the conversation, and quiet the whining of the Germans and the European Central Bank.

The Eurozone — like NATO, perhaps — just expanded too fast. Letting Greece in in the first place was a sure indication of poor oversight. Right now, Greece really needs the drachma, Portugal needs the escudo, and Ireland needs the Irish pound You can't have a unified monetary policy without a unified fiscal policy — and for the Eurozon, such a policy is far, far away.

War Powers

2011-06-16T17:08:00.002-04:00

An odd grouping of Congress Critters (thanks again, Molly Ivins) is challenging Our President's Constitutional power to conduct warlike operations in foreign countries without congressional approval. Part of the group consists of the usual Republican cabal who "refudiate" (thanks again, Sarah Palin) anything Barack Obama is inclined to do. The other part consists of Dennis Kucinich and nine fellow travelers of the sorry remnant of the Democratic left.

The administration says the War Powers Resolution doesn't apply because what we're doing there doesn't rise to the level of "hostilities." Personally, I think if you're sitting in the middle of a drone-launched missile strike, you're inclined to think the people sending the drones are pretty hostile. Just because we're sending robots instead of troops doesn't mean we're not engaged in war.

To me, it's also pretty clear that NATO has far exceeded the UN resolution permitting the "protection of civilians" from the forces of Muamar Ghadaffi/Qadaffi/Gadhafi/Gadaffi/etc. (Why can't the English language news media agree on a common transliteration from the Arabic?) The object of the campaign, clearly, is to remove the variously spelled dictator from power. That's not at all the same as keeping government artillery from leveling Bengazi.

It would be lovely if Boehner and friends helped bring this controversy to the Supreme Court, and if the conservative court decided they'd rather screw Obama than protect the administrative right to start worthless wars We'll see. Most interesting, from my perspective, is that our involvement in Libya had little to do with our role as the military force of the multinationals — or maybe not...

French, Italian, and British corporations all have economic interests in Libya, long threatened by Gadaffi. What we seem to be seeing from Obama is the smallest possible response needed to satisfy our corporations' corporate allies and preserve NATO.

Obama and Boehner will be playing golf tomorrow, but they may not give each other quite so many mulligans as the US is likely to need. Bah.

Poll numbers

2011-06-07T18:08:00.003-04:00

According to a Washington Post/ABC News poll, 60% of Americans do not approve of the job President Obama has done in managing the economy. My question is, "Who the hell are those people in the other 40%?"

The right insists that Obama can't do anything right, and the left is not far behind in its disapproval. Long-term readers of this blog may remember that Obama lost my support when he surrounded himself with the Robert Rubin gang before he was elected.

Granted, the president doesn't actually manage the economy — the Fed does the monetary policy and the Congress does the fiscal policy. On the other hand, one ought to be able to look to the president for some leadership. Leadership has been notably absent as Obama has consistently crumbled under the weight of Republican demands even before sitting down to play at negotiation.

Yes, I said play. If any authentic negotiation has taken place, I haven't noticed it. Right now, as the Republicans hold hostage the economic health of the entire world by refusing to increase the debt ceiling, the only real discussion seems to be about just how austere the austerity must be. Nobody at all is talking about the need for further stimulus.

For most Americans, though, Obama's negatives are based not on any particular policies. Their poor opinions are based on looking around — at the unemployed and underemployed, at the way wages have lagged behind the price of staples like food and energy, and (despite a good deal of shouting about the need to shrink government) reductions in government services that have an adverse impact on quality of life.

So, who are those people in the approving 40%?

Some have to be Obama loyalists who will support him no matter what he does — there's a lot of cognitive dissonance theory at work among those who drank the Kool-Aid in 2008. Then, I guess, there are the respondents who are doing reasonably well at the moment and don't much care what's happening to others. Finally, I suspect, there are those Democrats who tell the pollsters they approve in the hope that the poll results won't look too bad.

The same poll had Mitt Romney ahead of Obama among registered voters, but nobody liked him very much either, and the other Republican hopefuls fared considerably worse. It's not looking like employment is going to pick up much, if at all, by next year; and if we have to wait for the housing market to recover for the economy to recover, the next presidential term will be just as much a downer as the current one.

Okay, I seem to recall swearing off predictions a while ago. Let's just say that, like a lot of others, I'm not feeling optimistic.

Double Dip?

2011-06-04T16:24:00.006-04:00

Bad news all around this past week — jobs, housing, the markets, what-not — but, especially, politics. The Republicans are determined to drive the US economy into a hole it can't climb out of, and the Democrats are going along for the ride.

All but a few corporately connected economists see the budget deficit as a medium- to long-term problem. Do we have to deal with it? Of course — but we don't have to balance the budget next year, the year after, or the year after that. Anyway, the best way to balance a budget is through economic growth, and austerity programs — no matter what certain ideologues have to say about it — never lead to growth.

The whole idea that businesses will fail to invest because they are afraid their taxes will go up is idiotic. Taxes can only be a percentage of profits (after the usual heavily lobbied deductions and exclusions), so if that percentage is something less than 100%, investments that increase profit margins make economic sense. If a company makes an extra billion that is taxed at 50%, that's still an extra half-a-billion.Even if it's a risky investment, if it pays off it amounts to greater profits. If it fails, it's a write-off, and the tax rate doesn't matter — it may even save the company some money on the taxation of its more profitable ventures.

I do not advocate allowing the US to default on its debt, and I think a responsible Congress would have voted to increase the debt ceiling last week with no commitments to deficit reduction. Now is not the time to play dumb political games. As a matter of fact, now is a time to stimulate job growth through greater deficit spending — enough, this time, to make a real difference.

It won't happen, of course, because too many Americans are economic illiterates, and because the Republican commitment to further enriching the rich is the foundation of the current party's existence. Only by shrinking government can further upper-income and corporate tax cuts be made possible.

I am trying to learn more about Gary Johnson, a dark horse candidate for the Republican presidential nomination. I'm starting to think that a libertarian Republican just might be a better choice for 2012 than a corporatist Democrat — and that somebody (possibly with Tea Party endorsement) has to turn the Republican Party away from its own corporatist commitments. With Johnson (or, even, Ron Paul), progressives just might get more than they will out of Obama.

Eric Cantor on Taxes

2011-05-29T11:28:00.002-04:00

Naturally, we already know House Majority Leader Eric Cantor's take on taxes: cut them, with special emphasis on cuts for the rich and for corporations. Yesterday's speech called for a 25% maximum rate, with the usual trickle-down rationale — let the rich and the corporations keep more of their money and they will, as Republicans like to express it, "invest in America." This is supposed to lead to rapid job growth.

As usual, the basic premise is fallacious. Top tax rates in the United States already are extremely low. Corporations are, in common parlance, "sitting on mountains of cash." Why? Thanks to low demand caused by high unemployment and concomitant excess productive capacity, it doesn't make sense to "invest in America."

As for wealthy individuals, they certainly are looking for places to invest the extra cash they pocketed thanks to the Bush tax cuts and their unconscionable extension under Obama. The sad fact, though, is that American business and industry doesn't offer very satisfactory returns on investment these days. Surplus funds are more likely to go to faster growing parts of the world like India and China, used for commodities speculation, or sunk into the new social media bubble. (Social media companies, by the way, provide very few new jobs.)

What we need — contrary to both Republican and Democratic talking points — is more government spending, because the private sector just is not coming through. If we can pick up employment — in infrastructure improvement, education, health care, environmental preservation, and other areas where we need lasting, long-term improvements — demand for private sector goods and services also will grow.

What we don't need is European style austerity programs. They're only making things worse in Europe, and they are beginning to have the same effects here.

Medicare, again

2011-05-26T11:56:00.002-04:00

The special election won by Democrat Kathy Hochul in New York's heavily Republican 26th Congressional District had national Democrats jumping for joy. Apparently, Paul Ryan's plan to turn Medicare into a voucher program was not at all popular up there in Erie County, and Democrats expect similar feelings extend nationwide. Probably, they're right.

Republicans claim Democrats "misrepresented" the Ryan proposal. Frankly, though, their chief problem seems to be that people understood all too well: just eliminate Medicare, the government insurance program, and replace it with a voucher to buy private insurance. Government savings only can come from voucher amounts always being significantly less than policy premiums. Those who can't afford to pay the difference wind up with no insurance, so they would not even be using their vouchers — leaving even more money to distribute in the form of tax cuts for the rich.

Republicans are right, however, in pointing out that Democrats have not offered a real alternative for reducing Medicare costs. The Obama plan, such as it is, depends mostly on reducing payments to providers — which logically would result in fewer providers accepting Medicare. We are still waiting the administration to suggest a replacement for the cost inflating fee-for-service model, which encourages providers to provide many unneeded tests and unproductive treatment protocols.

The chief reason Medicare is so costly, though, is that the people using it are older and sicker than the general population. To bring costs per patient down, the most sensible thing would be to bring younger, healthier individuals into the pool. In the past, I've recommended selling Medicare policies to major employers who wish to provide coverage to their workers. Since Medicare does not have to advertise nor pay out profits to stockholders, it ought to be able to offer real competition to private insurance companies. To stay competitive, the privates would either have to cut rates or offer better coverage and service.

Yes, this would look a lot like a first step towards a single-payer system, but if the private sector really is so much more efficient than government, it just might be able to steal away Medicare's customers — including the ill and the elderly. Now wouldn't that be a triumph for the free market?

Obama at AIPAC

2011-05-23T14:01:00.006-04:00

I was very interested to hear what Our President had to say to AIPAC, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. Many think of AIPAC as the chief lobbyist for Israel, but that is somewhat off the mark. AIPAC is the chief lobbyist for Likud. When Labour is in power, AIPAC's perspective does not change in any way. AIPAC represents the Israeli right wing, not Israel as a whole, and could not care less where Israeli public opinion falls at any particular time. Supported by old-line Zionists and Christian fundamentalists hoping to accelerate the advent of "end times," AIPAC has no interest in making peace with the Arab world. As long as American taxes go to feed the Israeli military, AIPAC has achieved its purpose.

Regular readers of this blog will appreciate how pleasantly surprised I was when Our President actually held his ground while addressing yesterday's AIPAC convocation, and did not pull back on the statement which referred to 1967 borders despite a major hissy fit by Bibi Netanyahu. Yes, he recognizes that some land swaps will be necessary to accommodate forty years of imperialist incursion, but he didn't back down. Whoopie doo!

Interestingly, it was Bibi who backed down, despite encouragement from Mitch McConnell and others who pander to Christians hoping to bring about an early Apocalypse. Did Obama suggest that the United States might not block the Palestinian Authority's attempt to gain recognition as a nation from the UN unless the Likudniks made enough concessions to get Abbas back to the bargaining table? I'd like to think so, but then, there are a lot of things I'd like to think.

(I'd like to think BSK was set up, but I know he's just another of those powerful men who thinks his dick is a scepter embodying unlimited sexual power. Somebody really ought to inject all those guys with medroxyprogesterone 17-acetate. It would be a far better world.)

Debt, more debt, and a bit of Afghanistan

2011-05-16T10:14:00.004-04:00

I've been remiss. Sorry. Let's try to catch up a little.

So the US reached its current debt ceiling today, and Timmy Boy Geithner was only too happy to dip into the pension funds of federal employees to prolong the suspense. Nobody was surprised, and the yawns resonated across the Potomac. Wall Street, apparently, is not at all worried.

Why isn't Wall Street worried? My guess is that the Street is sure that nothing that happens will be in any way damaging to the Street. Oh, for Christ's sake, that's not a guess — that's just a totally non-creative reading of the way life is, these days. All I can hope for is that Democrats won't give in to "triggers" unless there are tax increase triggers as well as spending cut triggers. Hopefully, they won't have to look to Obama for leadership.
—————
Dominique Strauss-Kahn is in a New York City jail at the moment. Is it entirely likely that he, as a powerful world leader, has the testosterone, the hubris, and the disdain for lower class African immigrants to be guilty. Quite possibly, if he stopped to think at all, he presumed she was an illegal, and hence wouldn't report the assault.

On the other hand, it's not outside the realm of possibility that he was set up. Nicholas Sarkozy can't be terribly upset — in fact, quite a few champagne corks must have been popping at UMP headquarters when the news broke. A more likely scenario, though, is that certain bankers holding short positions on Greek debt find it in their interest to stop another bailout of Greece. With Strauss-Kahn out of the picture, the inevitable default is likely to come far sooner.

NYPD says it has forensic evidence supporting the alleged assault, which seems a little odd considering it took the form of what Bill Clinton famously called "not sex." The maid, who came from a Francophone country where France continues to exercise a good deal of economic power, must have shown extraordinary presence of mind — especially for a presumably traumatized woman pushing around a cart well stocked with those little bottles of mouthwash. Yes, testosterone, hubris, and disdain offer a more likely explanation, but I'm just saying that's not the only explanation.
—————
Meanwhile, John Kerry and a few others are suggesting that the recent Osamacide makes a somewhat accelerated exit from Afghanistan more acceptable. Sadly, somewhat accelerated is not likely to mean "next week," but at least Petraeus is keeping his mouth shut for the moment, which is appropriate for the future director of the CIA.

Now, if only Asif Ali Zardari and Ahmad Shuja Pasha can persuade Pakistani Islamists that they really didn't have anything to do with bin Laden's assassination, and also persuade Hamid Karzai he's better of accommodating Pakistan than India, some real progress in getting the US the hell out of Afghanistan might be achieved.

Yank the Trigger

2011-05-06T16:10:00.008-04:00

Even though it's lots of fun to make up stories about what might have happened in Abbotbad earlier this week, and how Pakistan may or may not have been involved, this post involves a very different kind of trigger — one a lot more dangerous than the one that helped blow a hole in Osama bin Laden's head. This trigger comes in the form of the Corker-McCaskill CAP Act, a bipartisan (if you count McCaskill) bill that would tie combined discretionary and non-discretionary spending to a specific (and sharply reduced) percentage of GDP, and "trigger" automatic across-the-board cuts should that limit be exceeded.

(I still can't find a reference to one of my favorite quotations, "Bipartisan means everybody gets screwed," so I can't attribute it properly. Maybe I made it up myself, but I don't think so.)

Bills that "trigger" automatic spending cuts or tax increases are favorites of cowardly, self-serving "Congress critters" (RIP Molly Ivins), because nobody has to take personal responsibility for whatever shit happens as a result. Bob Corker calls his bill "a legislative straitjacket, a way of forcing Congress to dramatically cut spending over 10 years."

A straight jacket is a comfortable fit for a legislator who wants to serve the corporate agenda without attracting too much public disdain. Corker-McCaskill, which could have been written by Grover Norquist himself, naturally makes no provision for automatically raising taxes. It is designed to "starve the beast," more efficiently and effectively than would be possible were Congress required to vote for specific cuts. Even more distressing, it would outlaw Keynesian economics, making it impossible for government to respond to recession with economic stimulus.

Another "advantage" (from Corker's perspective) is that the bill would "eliminate the deceptive 'off-budget' distinction for Social Security." What this means is that Social Security payments could be cut automatically, well before the Social Security trust fund is exhausted. Social Security, because of the trust fund, is not a government expenditure — it is government debt, because the trust fund consists of surplus funds, collected over many years and invested in the world's safest investment: Treasury securities. What the Corker-McCaskill bill requires is that the United States default on the debt it owes current and future retirees. To default on that debt is no different than to default on the debt owed to banks, foreign governments, or private investors — and nobody is suggesting that we default on that debt.

Corker-McCaskill is the kind of bill one expects of Republican toadies to the plutocrats. If Claire McCaskill really is a Democrat, however, she is a particularly stupid and/or cowardly Democrat — and so is any other Democrat, in either house of Congress, who signs on to this particularly repellent proposal.

We won! Right?

2011-05-02T15:38:00.010-04:00

Whoopie doo! Bin Laden is dead! We finally got him!

Now, as I see it, is a perfect time to declare victory and get the hell out of Afghanistan — and, while we're at it, the rest of the way out of Iraq as well. Yes, the death of Osama bin Laden is more of a symbolic victory than a military victory, but what the hell... as long as we won.

Our president has to be feeling pretty chipper today, as he should. If you're president, symbolic victories go a long way. How it all happened remains more than a little vague, so I don't mind indulging myself in a little pure conjecture, just for fun, mind you. I have no direct evidence for anything that follows, but it sounds good.

From what we've been told to date, there was only one mansion with eighteen foot walls in the upper-middle class neighborhood of Abbottabad where bin Laden was staying — and given what we know about the pervasive penetration of Pakistan by its security agency, we should assume that ISI knew who was living there. CIA operatives, on the other hand, may have been in the dark — since ISI doesn't make them especially welcome in Pakistan. It follows that the US got the tip about bin Laden from ISI.

It also follows that ISI wanted something in return for giving such politically valuable information to the Obama administration. One hopes that what ISI wanted was an expedited withdrawal of the US from Afghanistan, so that Pakistan can reassert what it considers its "natural" influence over its neighbor. Add that to the US foreign policy/military shuffle discussed in my two previous posts, and it seems that the troops just might be home well before the announced date of 2014.

Rejoice, ye progressives! Perhaps you weren't totally screwed. ("Hope" springs eternal, especially in the run-up to an election.)

In the meanwhile, expect to hear demands for Osama bin Laden's long-form death certificate from the usual quarters.

Very interesting...

2011-04-29T19:40:00.007-04:00

No sooner did I post my wish for the demilitarization of David Petraeus than the Obama administration stepped up to grant it. Even though nobody in the punditocracy is interpreting the general's move to the CIA in the light I presented it a few days ago — they honestly couldn't now, could they? — I'm hoping the groundwork is set for a more efficient withdrawal from Afghanistan than we've been led to expect.

A new military assessment claims that seven — count 'em, seven — provinces now can be taken over "successfully" by the Afghan military. Our military drawdown is scheduled to start this summer, shortly after the US leadership shuffle takes place, and it may be that more provinces will be added to the list by then — no matter what actually is happening on the ground. In addition to the Petraeus transfer, the rest of the shuffle looks promising as well.

Robert Gates did a fine job of de-escalating the craziness of Donald Rumsfeld, and I sincerely wish him a pleasant retirement. I think he probably has the grace to keep his face off the cable news networks and spend his time enjoying golf or gardening or grandchildren or whatever. Leon Panetta should be a fine replacement — politically astute, low key, and not seeking further advancement. He should do quite well deflecting criticism from Congressional hawks as he explains how we actually "won" the longest war in our history.

Scarcely anybody outside top military brass seem to know anything about Lt. General John Allen, and one only can hope it stays that way. He doesn't seem like the kind of guy to revel in press conferences, so he's probably a fine choice to take the lead in Afghanistan. It's time for the civilian leaders to reassert power over the military, and Allen is unlikely to stand in the way.

As for Petraeus, he can have the pleasure of continuing to piss off the ISI by lobbing drone-borne bombs at Haqqani network bases in Pakistan. He and the Haqqanis deserve each other, and Predator strikes are about all the CIA is (moderately) good at these days. As an intelligence gathering agency, they've been pretty useless for the past decade or so. (I wonder what the CIA assessment of Gadaffi's ability to hang on in Libya looked like.)

Meanwhile, in Afghanistan...

2011-04-26T10:48:00.003-04:00

Afghanistan finally made it back into the news today, and all it took was the escape of nearly five hundred Taliban fighters from the Kandahar prison. Kandahar, you'll recall, is that "former" Taliban stronghold where US troops and their Afghan allies have been doing so "well" lately.

A photograph in the New York Times shows a hole about three feet across, through which the nearly five hundred men escaped Monday night. Even if nobody happened to notice five months of construction to build the tunnel — complete with electric lighting and air vents — one wonders how so many prisoners managed to queue up and disappear down the rabbit hole without a guard or two wondering what was going on. Apparently all the Taliban fighters were held in some common area, not locked in individual cells. It seems, to me, at least, a very odd way to imprison presumably dangerous men.

Afghanistan, of course, is monumentally corrupt — and corruption certainly must have played a role in the great escape, just as it plays a role in everything else that has to do with US support for the Karzai government. For some reason, though, US officials, both military and diplomatic, refuse to accept that if you can't trust your "allies" — the people for whom you are spilling lots of blood and spending vast amounts of money — there is no chance of "victory."

Since the start of the Obama "surge," death rates for NATO troops and Afghan civilians have spiked. Parts of the country occupied at great cost suddenly lose their "strategic importance," and are abandoned to the Taliban as the troops that took them are withdrawn to fight in some new, "strategically important" area. Most Americans, tired of hearing more of the same news from Afghanistan over and over, have tuned out — but if you ask them, most say we should just pull out of the country and let the Afghans sort things out for themselves.

What keeps a poll-driven administration from recognizing the will of the people, declaring victory, and just getting the hell out?

One factor, of course, is the political power of the military contractors who are making fortunes producing all the crap we are flushing down the Afghan toilet. The other is General David Petreaus.

Petraeus has cleverly positioned himself as the heroic military genius who may never be criticized. Whatever his alleged skill in the field of anti-insurgency, his talent for self-promotion and public relations is unsurpassed. Whenever there is any sign of movement to end our involvement in Afghanistan, Petreaus takes to the media to tell us all how, thanks to his personal genius, victory is just around the corner.

Obama can't control him, so it seems the only way to get the US out of Afghanistan is to get Petreaus out first. An opportunity to do so may arise when the CIA Director's position falls vacant, giving the president an opportunity to "promote" the thorn in his side straight out of the military. I'm sure the general's anti-insurgency "expertise" will be just as "useful" at the spy agency as it has been on the battlefield.

Then, just maybe, command of the war in Afghanistan can be put in the hands of somebody willing to bring the troops home.

Standard and Poors Downgrades Congress

2011-04-20T13:33:00.005-04:00

A couple of days ago, Standard & Poors announced that there is a one in three chance that it will downgrade US debt from its customary AAA rating within the next two years. The bond market barely flickered, indicating that nobody who mattered was terribly concerned. Granted, S&P's reputation for accurate evaluation of risk suffered somewhat in 2008, but the real reason for the collective yawn was that bond traders understood the announcement was a political rather than an economic statement.

(Yes, the stock market took a bit of a dive following the announcement as the amateurs panicked, but it rapidly recovered. One might be curious to know just who was shorting the most volatile stocks just prior to the S&P pronouncement.)

So, what was the political point S&P wanted to make? In the words of the shop teacher from South Park, "Hey, you kids! Quit messing around!"

More than anything else, Wall Street values stability — especially since it has shown itself to be so inept at risk management. While nobody in his or her right mind believes the US ever would default on its debt, S&P probably thinks there might be enough idiots in Congress to create instability by playing politics with the debt ceiling right up until the last minute. If the rest of the world gets to thinking that our government is approaching critical mass for idiocy, US debt markets — private as well as public — could suffer.

A statement similar to S&P's was sent by the bond trader PIMCO earlier this year, when it announced it no longer would be purchasing US debt, thereby implying distrust of government. The real reason PIMCO is getting out of the market for government debt is that is pays such low interest — specifically because it is so very safe an investment.

Look a little deeper, though, and there may be cause for concern. S&P issued virtually identical statements — twice — with regard to UK debt. It is widely believed that those "devaluations" helped elect the Cameron government, and encouraged the current British austerity program.

Would Wall Street prefer a compromise closer to the Ryan proposal than to the Obama proposal for debt reduction? Well, S&P speaks for a lot of very wealthy individuals. What do you think?

Obama on Deficit Reduction

2011-04-14T16:12:00.004-04:00

Okay, he threw a hefty wad against the wall. Now we have to wait and see how much of it sticks.

To me, the best part of yesterday's speech was the commitment to let the Bush tax cuts expire — presumably including the possibility that middle class taxes also will increase. Personally, I don't think a middle class tax increase would be all that awful. Granted, there is not quite so much middle class as there once was, but what the hell... most of the people who think of themselves as "middle" wouldn't be out more than a couple of hundred a year. Too bad for McDonalds, WalMart, etc.

The worst part of yesterday's speech was the continued assumption that Obamacare would reduce health care costs. The only sensible way to reduce health care costs is to remove the profits enjoyed by private insurance companies. Given that Obama is an unrepentant Clintonista, we won't be hearing anything from him about Medicare for All.

While Obama's speech was more aggressive than I expected, we won't know what any of the rhetoric — generally seen by the news media as "the first speech of the campaign season" — genuinely means in terms of action for a while.

I would love to be surprised.

Obama on the Debt Ceiling

2011-04-12T11:29:00.002-04:00

The president announced a speech for tomorrow in which he is expected to offer his plan for reducing the deficit, in the teeth of Republican demands for more blood from the American working classes as a condition for approving an increase in the debt ceiling. As always, the announcement comes with promises of "bipartisan" appeal, but given that the result of failure to raise the debt ceiling would be economic catastrophe, the Republican threat is hollow.

To date, every time Obama promised to be "bipartisan," he followed up with a Grand Canyon sized cave-in to Republican demands, which in turn was followed by greater cave-ins as he proceeded to "compromise" from his weak starting position. If he thinks this is the only way to win himself a second term — appealing to so-called "centrists" in an attempt to appear "reasonable" — maybe he ought to pay a little more attention to what, in a previous administration, was called the "wimp factor." Americans don't like to be led by a shrinking violet, afraid to offend anybody at all.

The first rule of negotiations is to lower the opponent's expectations by demanding absolutely everything on one's wish list. The Republicans do it every time, Obama never. I'll be very pleased if this time, at least, he follows this most basic rule. I'll also be very surprised.

A Tale of Two Cities

2011-04-10T19:27:00.006-04:00

Back in 1984, Mario Cuomo delivered the keynote speech at the Democratic convention. In it, he articulated what used to be the basic values of the Democratic party. I like to listen to that speech at least once a year, to remind myself that, once upon a time, Democrats shared my values.

I have a fantasy in which I take Barack Obama prisoner, prop open his eyes with those mechanical things so popular in the B movies of twenty to thirty years ago, and force him to listen until at least some of it sinks in. That won't be happening, of course, but I provide the following video for the edification of any of you who have seven minutes or so to spare, plus, perhaps, a little extra time to mourn what we have lost.

The Ryan Budget

2011-04-06T20:32:00.000-04:00

The 2012 budget proposed by Paul Ryan has received a good deal of press attention for its audacity, with many comments on how "politically risky" it is. Well, it ought to be risky — in point of fact, it ought to bring the Republican party crashing down in the 2012 elections — but Republicans don't seem all that concerned. Once again, they are counting on the overwhelming economic ignorance and the pathetic intellectual laziness of the American people.

Yes, they want to bring the top tax rate for the rich all the way down to 25%, and the deductions they plan to eliminate are those most beneficial to the middle class. The cuts they propose have an inordinate impact on the poor, children, and the elderly. Don't even bother to ask about the estate tax. As usual, their policy advances the further transfer of wealth to the very rich from everybody else.

Are Americans really stupid and lazy enough to buy into it?

Maybe. Well, probably, especially since the Democrats are not likely to make significant efforts to educate and motivate them. The president wants to amass a billion dollars for his 2012 campaign, and given his penchant for pissing off his base over the past two years, he'll have to get almost all of it from Wall Street and other big donors. Watch for some of his signature "compromises," and be ready to put your fingers down your throat.

Obamablabla

2011-03-29T15:58:00.003-04:00

I listened to the president's speech last night, hoping for some disconfirmation of my admittedly cynical perspective. It didn't happen.

Okay, it's not another Iraq — which is to say, it's not an all-out invasion with the intent of occupation. On the other hand, neither is it Bosnia.

It is, however, kind of like Afghanistan, in that NATO (read the US) is taking sides in what is, when you take a hard look, a civil war. (Yes, the initial invasion of Afghanistan was aimed at punishing al-Qaeda and capturing or killing Osama bin Laden, but the al-Qaeda leadership has been in Pakistan for nine years now — all we've been doing since then has been propping up the blatantly corrupt al-Maliki government. The Taliban never attacked the US.)

Why did Mohammed Younis decide to switch sides when Gadaffi sent him to quiet the protests in Bengazi? Why did Mustafa Abdel Jalil — currently being treated as "leader of the rebels" by all and sundry — decide to abandon his patron of many years and switch sides? It's hard to imagine either man would have acted as he did without significant encouragement from outside power centers like France, the UK, and the US.

Had Younis not defected, the protests in Bengazi could have been put down in a day or two, with no more deaths among civilians than are currently occurring in Bahrain — scarcely rising to the level of "genocide." To wit, I cannot imagine how a significant worsening of human rights conditions in Libya would have occurred without the involvement of outside agitators from the French DGSE, the British SIS, and/or the American CIA.

Yes, I know. I sound more and more like a conspiracy theorist, and I probably should go off and wrap my head in tin foil to keep "them" from invading my brain — but if all you have to work from when you try to figure out what actually is going on is a string of not especially skillful lies, it's human nature to make up scenarios that seem to fit the information and misinformation available.

What should Obama have said? How about, "We are bombing Libya for reasons that you ignorant peasants cannot be trusted to hear. Just remember America that always sides with the good guys. Honest. Cross my heart."

Air Traffic Control

2011-03-24T16:51:00.003-04:00

The only air traffic controller working at Ronald Reagan National Airport last night seems to have fallen asleep on duty. It couldn't have happened at a better named airport.

On a hot September day in 1981, about half a million of us marched on Washington to protest Reagan's firing of striking air traffic controllers. It was a loud, heartfelt, satisfying demonstration which didn't do a damned bit of good. The striking PATCO workers remained fired. Some years later, just to rub salt into the wound, the Republicans renamed the local airport after Reagan.

Under the PATCO contract, needless to say, there wouldn't have been just one controller on duty — but going back to those primitive days would mean having two greedy public employees sucking at our wallets. The modern solution , of course, is technological — a mechanical elbow that attaches to the air traffic controller's chair and jabs him in the ribs every two or three minutes.

Problem solved.

Who ARE those guys who asked us to bomb Libya?

2011-03-20T10:03:00.003-04:00

With ten out of fifteen votes, the UN Security Council voted to lend air support to the "Libyan rebellion." Russia, China, India, Brazil, and Germany opted to abstain, which seems to be their way of saying "You assholes in France, the UK, and the US can do as you please, but we'll just sit back and deal with whichever side wins. Frankly, my dears, we don't give a damn."

Now that warplanes are on the way, it seems a bit overdue to answer the question I asked two posts ago — just who the hell is leading the "Libyan uprising?" Since the major media aren't bothering to tell us, I've done a little research, and come up with some names.

Former Libyan Justice Minister Mustafa Abdel Jalil, who defected from the government Feb. 21, appears to be one of those at the top of the pyramid — which means he's been an opponent of Gadaffi for about a month now. Omar El-Hariri, now in charge of military affairs for the rebels, was a participant in both Gadaffi's 1969 coup against the Libyan monarchy and a 1975 coup attempt against Gadaffi. It seems likely that Gadaffi now regrets commuting El-Hariri's death sentence.

Mohammed Younis, who was sent by Gadaffi to quell the protests in Bengazi and decided to switch sides instead, does not seem to have a formal position in the rebel government, but still exercises a lot of influence. Then there is Ali al-Essawiis, Gadaffi's former economic and trade minister, who now represents the rebels as Minister for Foreign Affairs.

Except for El-Hariri, all were close allies of Gadaffi very recently; and all of them, including El-Hariri, had ties to the Libyan army. None ever seemed in any way "pro-democracy" in the past, and none seem especially outspoken now. To me, at least, it looks like just another military coup — just not executed as well as the one in Egypt.

So why support the rebels, even after Defense Secretary Robert Gates told us doing so would in no way enhance our national interest? Did the Libyan intelligence service stop cooperating with the CIA? Did we have anything to do with fomenting the rebellion in the first place? Have the rebels agreed to privatize the currently state-owned oil fields? And why in hell are the regional monarchies suddenly so upset with Gadaffi, more than forty years after he "set a bad example" for prospective anti-monarchists in their own countries?

Whatever the truth of the situation in Libya may be, it's pretty clear it's not being shared with anybody outside the governing elites. Where is Private Bradley Manning when we really need him? (Oh, right, he's in solitary confinement undergoing psychological torture.)

Democracy my ass!

Hot (Fuel) Rods

2011-03-18T09:57:00.003-04:00

It's interesting that the main threat from the Fukushima nuclear mess arises from spent fuel rods — that is to say, the waste products of power generation. The spent rods, busily boiling away their containment pools, appear to be considerably more dangerous that the reactors themselves.

Here in the United States, we've been trying to figure out what to do with spent nuclear fuel for about forty years now. Burying everything under a geologically unstable mountain out on an Indian reservation was a popular idea for a while, but moving the stuff down the interstates to Utah or wherever was a lot less popular. Right now, keeping all the waste on-site — like Fukishima — is the official solution. Communities that want the plants get to keep the waste too — forever.

The Chinese, who have been opening nuclear plants at an unbelievable rate in recent years, just put a hold on. I guess even the Communist Party recognizes the pervasive corruption of their management class, and Japan got them wondering just how many nuclear plants have been built with substandard concrete and duct tape. The US management class, one presumes, is a bit more subtle in its corruption, but Americans have plenty of opportunity to observe (from Enron through Madoff and beyond) that a quick buck often is irresistible.

Yes, Mr. President, I understand that building nuclear plants is the fastest way to reduce out carbon footprint without (heaven forbid) compromising our profligate lifestyles. Just the same, I think a little rethinking is in order.

No-fly or not no-fly

2011-03-15T11:00:00.008-04:00

It seems there is a good deal of soul searching regarding whether or not the US (sometimes known as "NATO") should try to create a "no-fly zone" over Libya, in defense of "Libyan rebels" (whoever they are.) In the region, there have been requests for us to do so from some "Libyan rebel leaders" and from the Arab League. At home, the call has come from legislators who say we should be supporting the "brave freedom fighters" struggling (unsuccessfully) to seize control from long-time boogey man Muammar Gadaffi.

Before we start waving our little flags and throwing big bucks at Libya, though, we really need more information. First of all, just who are the Libyan rebels? Nobody seems willing to tell us where they come from, what they stand for (except ousting Gadaffi), how they happened to assert leadership over what has been portrayed as a "spontaneous uprising," or what they are likely to do if they gain power. There's no sense in poking our noses into a tribal war or an attempt to replace the Gadaffi family and its allies with a new set of self-aggrandizing autocrats.

In case you haven't noticed, the closest thing to democracy we've ever seen in the Arab world was the election of Hamas in Gaza, back in 2006. We have some promises from the Egyptian military, but I wouldn't hold my breath. Neither Iraq nor Afghanistan — where we've been trying to "build democracy" for most of the past decade — has yet managed to pull off an election not totally rife with corruption. Elections just don't work in tribal cultures, where the idea of the nation state still hasn't taken hold.

Then again, if the Arab League really wants a no-fly zone that badly, why don't they ask the Saudis to do it instead of the US and Europe? The Saudis certainly can afford to take action, and thanks to US and UK arms sales, they have the equipment as well:

The last thing in the world the US needs right now is another war in the Middle East. As Secretary Robert Gates has told us, imposing a no-fly zone is an act of war. How long would it be before "military advisers" and "strategic support services" were tramping around the North African desert?

Liar liar

2011-03-11T11:19:00.005-05:00

Every so often, some public official tells such a blatant lie that even the lapdog news media feel obliged to point it out. One thing they never do, though, is come right out and call the liars what they are: liars. Okay, every so often we can accept that somebody might "misspeak" — but when somebody tells a straight-out pants-on-fire whopper, I don't think liar is too strong a term.

In yesterday's Times, for example, there was a well-reasoned and well-documented article about New Jersey governor Chris Christie, documenting how he repeatedly delivers misinformation (also called lies) to the public and the press. Not once, of course, did the Times use the plain English word "liar" with respect to the governor. One supposes the editors are sensitive to accusations of liberal bias, but the accusations will come anyway — especially from those who want the public to go on believing Christie's lies.

Of course, New Jersey Democrats also refrain from calling Christie a liar. Granted, New Jersey politicians of both parties are not exactly renowned for their scrupulous veracity, and sometimes it surely would be a case of "the pot calling the kettle black." You might think a good defense against that might be honesty, but you'd be wrong. Liars have no compunctions about lying to claim that truths are lies and lies are truths.

On the other hand, the secret of Christie's success — and that of most other political liars as well — lies in his very aggressive stance towards his opponents. He doesn't even have to answer questions or criticisms to satisfy the voters, as long as he stays on the attack. A successful counterattack has to be equally aggressive, and the consistent use of a term like "liar" will do the trick — whether he's genuinely lying, merely mistaken, or just spouting ideological sound bites that can be neither confirmed nor disconfirmed.

It's not realistic to expect everybody to use factcheck.org or some similar service. Realists must assume that people believe whatever fits best with their pre-existing beliefs and prejudices. Come to think of it, when you consider that most Americans think the vast majority of politicians are liars, it is not surprising that verified facts play such a small part in our political discourse.

The Imperial Presence

2011-03-06T10:26:00.009-05:00

I was just reviewing the Defense Department's Base Structure Report for FY2010, an interesting document that provides information on US military bases, both domestic and overseas. It lists 4,337 military bases within the United States and its territories, shedding some light on why our military budget is what it is. It divides out to over 80 bases per state, excluding the territories, although some states are more blessed than others. North Dakota, for example, has one base for every 2,800 inhabitants.

In addition, there are 662 bases in foreign countries, a number that does not include bases in Iraq or Afghanistan. Many are located in Germany, Japan, and Italy — a legacy of WWII. (Hmm... just how long ago did that war end?) In Japan, the bulk of US forces are located on Okinawa, where the locals have been agitating for their removal for years. (They'd prefer their young women not be raped quite so often.) There also is a substantial military presence in South Korea, where, one supposes, our soldiers are supposed to deter a missile launched nuclear attack from the North. (Go figure.)

More interesting, at the moment, is the US presence in the Middle East. Not only do we have troops all over the northernmost third of Kuwait to support our activities in Iraq, but we are present in other Gulf nations, including some currently undergoing anti-authoritarian political movements. We have no official base in Yemen, where there is a popular movement to oust Ali Abdullah Saleh, but it no longer is a secret that the Saleh regime authorized US air strikes in Yemeni territory against Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula — with particular emphasis on killing radical cleric and American citizen Anwar al-Awlaki. Not too far away is the 3000 acre, $11.4 million base in Oman, a country where ongoing protests against endemic corruption continue.

Bahrain hosts the headquarters of the US Fifth Fleet, which protects the revenues of multinational oil companies throughout the Persian Gulf area. Bahrain also is the site of growing protests by the long suffering Shi'a majority against the autocratic al-Khalifa dynasty, a Sunni monarchy with close ties to Saudi Arabia. The Obama administration, of course, is calling for the Shi'a to "compromise" with the monarchy in ways extremely reminiscent of the way Obama "compromises" with Republicans, Wall Street, and Corporate America in general — that is, by kissing ruling class ass and settling for a few token concessions.

So far, there is little sign of democracy in Egypt or Tunisia, and the State Department is showing no enthusiasm for helping it along. Stability — especially for the sake of maintaining the US Imperial Presence abroad and keeping the Palestinians in their place — must necessarily take precedence over popular sovereignty.

Anyway, the success of democracy abroad (or even the appearance of its success) might have an uncomfortable tendency to encourage democratic yearnings at home. Some say the protests in Egypt helped to inspire the protests in Wisconsin. Personally, I think the overreaching hubris of Scott Walker did far more to arouse American workers than anything done by unemployed Egyptian college graduates (or the AFL-CIO), but I'm not one to look a gift horse in the mouth.

We need all the help we can get.

The Case for a Democratic Primary in 2012

2011-03-05T09:40:00.003-05:00

Yes, I know, incumbent first term presidents always get to run for a second term. To do otherwise might suggest — heaven forfend! — that his party could have made a better choice four years earlier. Nevertheless, I can see some real advantages that might arise from forcing Barack Obama to defend the 2012 nomination against a challenger from the left.

For one thing, if Obama has to defend his positions against a real liberal, it is likely to take the wind out of the sails of those on the right who accuse him of being a socialist. He would be forced to defend the things he did (and elected not to do) during his first term , and demonstrate just what a "moderate" (free-market worshiping corporatist toady) he really is.

His Democratic challenger could be anybody from the Democratic Progressive Caucus other than Dennis Kucinich. (While I hold Dennis in high regard, despite the olive pit episode, he's been turned into a joke by even the liberal media.) I like Jan Schakowsky, but the candidate need not be anywhere near as liberal as she is. Russ Feingold might provide the right combination of liberalism and name recognition.

If only for amusement value, the candidate could run on the same platform Obama espoused in 2008, and appear on cable and Sunday morning news shows affirming how thoroughly Obama had sold out the liberal wing of the Democratic Party. Obama could pull out his bullshit about the importance of bipartisan compromise, and how only he could "unite" America. A good time would be had by all.

In the meanwhile, Republican primary contenders would appear more and more extreme — unless the Rapture carried away a big part of the Republican base and the party actually wound up nominating Mitt (Obamacare) Romney. The independent voters who, like Obama, prefer "compromise" to anything resembling principle, will move back to the Obama camp.

After losing the primary to Obama, the progressive stalking horse would take on the task of bringing disaffected liberals back into the Democratic fold — suggesting that his or her challenge "influenced" the Democratic platform (as if a party platform ever might turn out to mean anything once the election is over.)

A second Obama term, at least, probably would mean that things wouldn't get too much worse for a while. Who knows? No longer having to worry about re-election might even allow Our President's testicles to descend from whatever cranny of his gutless abdomen they've been hidden in since 2008. At the very least, it might give organized labor enough time to find its own long-misplaced balls, and become a viable progressive force again.

Kabul Bank Bailout

2011-02-28T16:47:00.003-05:00

It's no secret that Our Friends in Afghanistan are blatantly, shamelessly, and thoroughly corrupt. Last fall, just one more example of Afghan public corruption hit (with minimal impact) the US news media. I am embarrassed to say that while my rage meter certainly registered, my soul, at the time, was too deadened to support even a moderately angry blog post.

Now I'm just sitting here groaning. According to a report by NPR, the USofA is likely to take on a bailout of Kabul Bank, which got itself in trouble by lending money to the brothers of both Afghan president Hamid Karzai and vice-president Mohammed Fahim, along with other well-connected individuals. None of those borrowers seem to have any noteworthy ambition to pay those loans back, so the ordinary Afghan depositor will lose most of his savings unless somebody steps in to prop up the bank.

Guess who is expected to step in? (If you guessed anybody other than the American taxpayer, you were wrong.)

Even if we weren't mired in deficit and debt, propping up the Karzai government — in any way — is pure and simple stupidity. In the context of our total debt, an extra billion may seem like chump change — but it's a billion given away to criminals. Okay, they may be our criminals, but they still belong in jail, not in overpriced US condominiums.

Excuse me, Mr. President, while I stick my fingers down my throat. Since your choice seems to be between bailing out some more thieves and pulling out of Afghanistan, and since I have 99% certainty regarding which choice you will make, I'm feeling violently ill.

Unsubstantiated conjecture

2011-02-26T23:45:00.002-05:00

Raymond Davis, the CIA operative, claims he shot two Pakistanis on motorcycles because they were attempting to rob him. The Pakistanis say he shot both of them in their backs, through the windshield of his car, for no particular reason — although it has been suggested that the two were "assets" who had turned against him.

Washington maintains that Davis is entitled to diplomatic immunity. Islamabad says he's a murderer, pure and simple.

So here's my unsubstantiated conjecture: the two dead men were agents of ISI, the Pakistani intelligence agency, and the killings were the outcome of some kind of "spy vs. spy" conflict that neither government cares to discuss. What kind of conflict? How the hell would I know? Clearly, the CIA and the ISI have not always worked and played well together, and the last people to find out about it are citizens of the US and Pakistan.

Let's just wait and see what emerges.

Sunday, 2/27, 9:40 AM — Unsubstantiated conjecture substantiated

Well, we didn't have to wait long! Here's the latest update!

DESPICABLE!!!

2011-02-18T17:13:00.005-05:00

The Republicans have a new hero.

Wisconsin governor Scott Walker and his Republican controlled state legislature have launched a vicious attack on the state's public employees by attempting to bust their unions. The governor maintains that taking away public workers' right to collective bargaining is necessary to reduce the state's deficit, and the major media seem happy to parrot that justification.

Needless to say, that's a lie.

Want public workers to pay more towards their medical insurance? Negotiate it! It's been done, over and over again, in state after state. Need public workers to accept pay freezes or reduced hours? Negotiate it! Public worker unions have gone along with such cuts when real needs exist.

Of course, it's a lot easier to balance a budget on the backs of public workers when government can dictate the terms of employment. Health care costs going up too fast? Easy. Just take away their health insurance — all of it. Need more money to give even more tax breaks to business interests? Easy. Just take it from the public workers.

(Incidentally, the real reason Wisconsin is in deficit — instead of running a surplus — is because Walker signed two big tax giveaways to business and another tax break to encourage an experiment with health savings accounts. Before that, Wisconsin was in very good shape by comparison with other states.)

In other words, Walker created the deficit, then used it as an excuse for union busting. I've got a word for that.

Despicable.

Exempted from the proposed anti-labor law are law enforcement and firefighting unions, either because they were supportive of Walker during the election, or because the public may be willing to live without schools, but not without cops and firefighters to protect them from the depredations of young people who aren't going to school. It would be nice if the cops and firefighters would support their fellow public workers if a general strike became necessary. I wouldn't count on it, though. After all, they got theirs — and "everybody" knows that they're special.

Every cloud has a silver lining, though. Unions, nationwide, are waking up to the real Republican agenda — wiping out whatever remains of the American labor movement. Union members, frightened and disheartened in recent years, finally seem to have had enough.

Thanks, Scott. We're awake now, and ready to push back.

The Future of Fannie and Freddie

2011-02-12T16:09:00.009-05:00

Back in the early 1960s, Fannie Mae was a government agency, and had been so since it was created as part of the New Deal. Lyndon Johnson took it private to raise funds for the Vietnam War. In the intervening years, most commentators seem to have forgotten that history — and that the recent implicit government guarantee of Fannie Mae securities has been a carry-over from the explicit government guarantee that was there pre-privatization.

Today, Fannie Mae and it's near relation Freddie Mac are owned by the government again. Obama, along with most other government leaders who have drunk the Kool-Aid of free market miracle cures, can't wait to take it private again — or, better yet, eliminate Fannie and Freddie altogether. The basic idea, albeit offered as three separate "alternatives," is to make these big mortgage securitization houses less and less competitive until they disappear.

I cannot disagree that the mortgage giants' standards became entirely too lax when it came to deciding which loans would be purchased for securitization. The reason for that laxity, though, was that they were private companies, and had slipped the harness of government regulation thanks to free-market deregulatory fever. Their executives collected vast bonuses based on the amount of business they were able to churn, so riskier loans helped pad their pockets. Shareholders pressured those executives to increase earnings enough to remain "competitive" with finance houses like Lehman Brothers. There was nobody to say "no" when Fannie and Freddie took on vast amounts of irrational risk.

To me, the best thing to do from this point on is for the government to keep Fannie and Freddie, as federal agencies, with the goal of eventually earning back the money spent on their bailout. As federal agencies — better yet, as a single combined Agency — Fannie/Freddie could be operated according to succinct rules, with no need to pander to the greed of Wall Street oriented directors or the pressures applied by shareholders. Think about it:

A specific rule could limit the size of a mortgage the Agency could purchase. Reducing the maximum amount to $400,000 seems in line with the goal of helping the middle and working classes afford housing.
A specific rule could specify the percentages that must be paid in down payments to qualify a loan for purchase by the Agency, with lower interest rates available for those paying 20% or more, and a minimum down payment of 10% limited to smaller loans designed for the less affluent. Such a rule would reduce and offset possible defaults.
If the rules are clearly and precisely defined, "talent" is not necessary among the agency's directors. Bureaucrats, on specific salaries with no bonuses, would fill the bill.
The Agency would remain competitive with the private sector because an explicit government guarantee of the securities it issued would allow it to offer lower interest rates than the banking industry. Agency profits usually would not be as great as those generated by private financial firms, but they would be far less volatile.

Without Fannie/Freddie, it seems very certain the 30-year fixed-rate mortgage will wither and die. No private banker will be willing to tie up funds for more than ten to fifteen years at a fixed rate — with no ability to predict the kinds of rates that might prevail in the future. That uncertainty would make shorter term fixed rate mortgages more expensive as well. Without the 30-year mortgage, prospective homeowners would have to wait and save for many years before even thinking of buying a home, and many would wait forever because their incomes never would grow to a size sufficient to pay off a ten- or fifteen-year loan.

If mortgages are difficult or impossible to obtain or afford, demand for existing housing stock will plummet, and so will real estate prices. For the many middle class families whose homes are their most significant reservoir of wealth, the effect will be devastating.

Yes, Fannie and Freddie are seriously flawed — but the flaws emerge from their "hybrid" status. As purely government entities, they can operate successfully and continue to fulfill their original purpose. They can be designed to be moderately profitable or just to break even, depending on will of (a mostly imaginary) Congress. The only reasons to end their existence by complete privatization are ideological rather than practical. Our economy already has been hamstrung by the ideology of the so-called "free market." It's time to take a new look at the true successes of the New Deal.

Told you so!

2011-02-11T19:02:00.004-05:00

I was planning to post about Fannie and Freddy today, but, instead, I'll take a few minutes to point out that my post of one week ago, in which I predicted a military coup in Egypt, was right on the mark.

Yes, I know, the media and the President and damned near everybody else is saying that the "democratic revolution" was a success. Well, I suppose it is possible that the Egyptian military will replace Mubarak's corrupt, authoritarian plutocracy with a corrupt, democratic plutocracy (like the United States), but it hasn't happened yet — all that's happened so far is a military coup.

Frankly, nobody really knows what the military elite will do in the coming months. What it has to accomplish, though, is not political, but economic reform. The wealth has to be spread at least a little bit further, so that the educated children of the middle class can find jobs that will enable them to live middle class lifestyles, and the members of the labor syndicates see some improvement in their standards of living.

Unfortunately, the Egyptian military has not shown a great deal of economic creativity, despite the fact that it is involved in a wide range of businesses and industries. It is sure to need help. Hopefully, the generals will know enough to hold the line against the army of free marketeers certain to descend on them momentarily. (If Obama really wants stability in Egypt, he'd better put Jeffrey Sachs on the no-fly list.)

So, good luck to the Egyptians. I now return to "no prediction" mode, and will emerge from it only if I perceive another chance to shoot fish in a barrel.

Coup time?

2011-02-04T16:07:00.003-05:00

There is a straightforward way out of the mess in Egypt: a military coup.

A coup would work. Egyptians like and admire their military, and would probably stand behind it if it tossed out Mubarak and crew. The United States would be totally cool with a coup as well. Traditionally, we get on well with military leaders of developing countries, and our arms merchants would be happy because their lucrative contracts supplying the Egyptian armed forces would not be interrupted. (By the way, foreign aid from the U.S. pays more than 80% of the cost.)

The leaders of the coup, of course, would be portrayed in the western press as a "transitional" government. Democracy could wait a while — maybe another thirty or forty years — and the arms shipments to keep the military in power would continue. Israel could breathe easy, since Egypt would continue to be bought.

The chief responsibility of the coup leaders would be to put an end to Mubarak era patronage and corruption, and create a new system of patronage and corruption that would better serve angry middle class youth. The peasantry must continue to receive its subsidized wheat, and a few more NGOs could be invited to drill wells and provide schooling for little girls, but not much else need be done for the poor. As long as they're eating, they'll stay quiet.

Yes, there will be elections — typical Arab world elections to put in place very cooperative legislators with very limited powers. Some members of Parliament can even represent the Muslim Brotherhood, which already is planning its own cooption. There will be no reason to find a place for Mohammed El Baradei. He's been in the news lately mostly because the western press already knows who he is, but he has no real power base in Egypt.

I know I swore off making predictions a while back but, frankly, I don't see a real alternative to a coup. It's vaguely conceivable that new Vice President Omar Suleiman could run a caretaker government until September, when the next elections are scheduled, but there are significant problems with that scenario.

While many seem to prefer Suleiman to Mubarak, he is part of the old regime.
There is not enough time for any of the anti-Mubarak forces to organize viable parties and candidates in time for the next election, with the single exception of the Muslim Brotherhood.
Neither Egypt not other potentially unstable Arab countries would be stabilized.

Given that the Egyptian military is the single most important component of the Egyptian economy, and that military leaders require stability to maintain profitability, it is hard to see how a military coup could be avoided, even if anybody (other than Mubarak's inner circle) actually wanted to avoid one.

So here comes the coup.

Cairo, Illinois?

2011-02-01T11:44:00.005-05:00

I know that nobody reads Karl Marx anymore, but just in case you happened to glance at the Cliff Notes, let me point out something interesting: the bourgeois revolution finally has arrived in Egypt.

Like almost all the Middle East, Egypt never quite managed to emerge from the Middle Ages. It was kept marking time by a series of native born and colonial rulers who hogged up all the wealth and power, and distributed it to their families, friends, and toadies with little regard for the country as a whole. Granted, Egypt's last king (Farouk I) and his British enablers were deposed by the military in 1952, but new strongman Gamal Abdel Nasser merely transferred the graft and related goodies to new favorites, while distracting the populace with pan-Arab nationalism and military campaigns against Israel. His successor, Anwar El-Sadat, figured out that there was more money to be had by cooperating with the United States and making peace with Israel than in remaining recalcitrant.

Anyway, Mubarak has followed in Sadat's footsteps for almost thirty years. Presumably, it was the uprising in Tunisia that inspired the current uprising in Egypt, and both Tunisia and Egypt seem to be following the same pattern — the middle class, tired of being cut out of the loop for acquisition of the really big bucks, has finally had enough.

Egypt's is not a revolution arising from political discontents; the young people in the streets couldn't care less about creating a "democracy." It also has nothing to do with Islamism; the Muslim Brotherhood may be hitching a ride, but the movement, at its roots, is secular.

The problem, as always, is economic — unemployed and underemployed Egyptian youth, mostly children of the middle class, want a chance to make lives for themselves. If the resurrected zombie of King Farouk could guarantee them decent jobs and a chance to move out of their parents' basements, they'd follow him. They've been joined by many older workers who have gone years without opportunities to use their skills, and even some of the poor — although most of those abandoned all hope years ago. (Popular revolutions always begin with the middle class.)

So, that got me to thinking about this other country with an entrenched plutocracy; large numbers of young people unable to move out of their parents' basements; middle class college graduates working in temp jobs and unpaid internships; and older workers apparently doomed to structural unemployment for the rest of their lives. Is it time for a popular uprising?

Probably not, unless you're willing to count the Tea Party. Just the same — in case any of you are interested and connected to the social media — allow me to suggest Cairo, Illinois as an initial rally site. It just might help get the point across.

State of the Bullshit

2011-01-26T18:23:00.006-05:00

Obama got off to a good populist start last night when he suggested taking away the tax giveaways to the carbon companies and using the money for alternative energy development. It went downhill from there.

If I hear any more blather about "competitiveness" I'm likely to go out of my mind. I can't see any way we're in direct competition with China, India, Europe, Russia, Brazil, or any other country. We can't compete against China, our current boogeyman, in any sort of labor intensive manufacturing sector, and they can't compete with us when it comes to our most important industry, finance. Speaking of labor intensive pursuits, I heard the President mention that the United States has the most productive work force of any country in the world. A little later, he went on to say how we had to become even more productive.

Hmm... How did we get so productive? Easy. Our captains of industry just lay off workers, don't replace them, and insist the remaining workers pick up the slack for fear of losing their jobs too. It's getting to look more and more like the age of sweatshops in the American workplace, but calling for even more productivity will not do much for our unemployment crisis.

High speed rail won't happen unless major Republican contributors can be assured of getting all the contracts. The President's other big priority, more money "invested" in his Race to the Top education "reform," won't happen either. Personally, I'm happy about that. Race to the Top forces states to compete against each other for a few extra federal bucks, with most of them (and their unionized teachers) coming up losers. With Democrats like Obama, who needs Republicans?

Paul Ryan's response for the Republicans was described by the pundits as "measured," mostly because he didn't sound nearly as crazy as Michelle Bachman, who also delivered a speech last night. It was carried only by CNN — even Fox wouldn't touch it — so it follows that almost nobody saw it. I watched it, though!

Bachman gave what I guess is her standard Tea Party stump speech. Her delivery reminded me of the teacher's pet running for class president, and her remarks were addressed to a space somewhere above the viewer's head and off to the left. Dick Armey, whose group arranged her appearance, should have hired technicians who know where to place the teleprompter.

Frankly, it all makes me sick. There is nobody speaking for the poor, the unemployed, the exploited, the underwater, or the foreclosed. Anybody too young to remember Lyndon Johnson has no experience of liberal government, and so what passes for liberalism today is anything that wouldn't have qualified as fascism in the 1960s.

I don't know if I've mentioned this before, but I'm starting to feel more and more sympathy for the Tea Partiers. They're totally ignorant and working against their own self-interest, but they've got good reasons to be angry — even if they're entirely ignorant of what those good reasons are.

Obama on regulation

2011-01-19T12:33:00.005-05:00

In an editorial in yesterday's Wall Street Journal, the President announced an executive order calling on administrative agencies to work towards "more affordable, less intrusive" government regulation of business. The business world emitted welcoming, albeit distrustful, purrs of approval; consumer and environmental groups, to continue the cat analogy, got their backs up and their fur in a fluff, anticipating another presidential sell-out.

The general consensus, though, is that not much is likely to happen either way. Indeed, it seems most likely that the executive order is nothing but a bit more triangulation, aimed to appeal to "moderates." (Who are those legendary moderates? In my experience, "moderate" is a self-description by those who don't know enough to have an opinion.)

Anyway, if every agency begins the presidentially mandated review of all its regulations tomorrow, scarcely any changes are likely before the 2012 election. Rule changes require hearings, hearings, and more hearings, and every lobbyist and his pet iguana will line up to testify. I figure I'll just ignore the whole thing for now.

***

Note: Don't miss David Leonhardt's column in today's Times, which discusses reasons the U.S. unemployment rate is so much higher than unemployment rates in other parts of the world, including most of Europe, Japan, China, and Russia.

"Shared Sacrifice"

2011-01-18T13:17:00.002-05:00

I am so sick of hearing about "shared sacrifice," possibly the most egregious example of newspeak for the past two years and still growing in popularity, especially among the nation's governors. Just who is "sharing" the sacrifice? Let's see.

The states are cutting education budgets, so children get to share the sacrifice. They are cutting contributions to Medicare and Medicaid, so the elderly and the poor are sharing the sacrifice. They are cutting funding for community development and social service programs, including those helping the homeless, battered women, children with special needs, unemployed teens and excessed workers who need job training — yes, the poor again.

Funds for hospitals, police, sanitation, public transportation, and infrastructure are being slashed, so the struggling remnants of the middle class also get to "share" in the sacrifice. Public employees and, especially, their pensions are under attack, affecting another segment of the middle and working classes. States with new Republican majorities are moving toward enacting "right to work" laws, to further weaken labor unions, pushing middle class workers into the ranks of the working poor, and the working poor into indigence.

Corporate taxes are being cut, so corporations too must share...

Uh, well... the governors explain that lower corporate tax rates will attract more investment and jobs to their states. Where will the jobs come from?

Not from India or China. If they come at all, they'll come from other states, accelerating the internal "race to the bottom" that has characterized the United States for decades. In the meanwhile, corporate profits are soaring, executives are collecting record bonuses, and those earning $20 million a year still pay at the same tax rate as those earning $200 thousand.

As usual, the "sacrifice" is shared by the poor and the middle classes, while the transfer of wealth to the super-rich — with their private schools, jets, hospitals, police forces, and more — continues apace. Ninety-nine per cent of us are "sharing the sacrifice." One percent of them are sucking our blood: to wit, business as usual.

With the single, shining exception of the state of Illinois, taxes will not be increasing. (The people and the corporations of Illinois will be "sharing the sacrifice" needed to get that state out of the hole its politicians have dug for it over the years.) State spending cuts can only exacerbate economic weakness, but regardless of political affiliation, the nation's governors will be participating in the "starve the beast" agenda that began in the Reagan administration.

I'm not sure who first said, "Bipartisan means everybody gets screwed," but that old bit of political wisdom needs a slight amendment. "Bipartisan" means almost everybody gets screwed. The oligarchs, as usual, are immune.

The Arizona Shooter

2011-01-11T11:00:00.005-05:00

I'm sure there is some code in the DSM-IV that fits Jared Loughner, but for those of us less concerned with the niceties of psychological evaluations, the term "nut job" should do well enough. Judging by descriptions of young Jared by some who knew him at his community college in Tuscon, he was erratic, disruptive, and — especially when trying to express his most deeply held beliefs — completely incomprehensible.

I find it unlikely that the wack-a-doodle right wing populists of talk radio and TV had any influence on him at all — they are generally far too conventional, doctrinaire, and focused to have had all that much impact. Perhaps he culled a bit here and there from the darker recesses of the internet, but I think it most likely he concocted his own, personal set of paranoid delusions — "motives" that he might not be able to explain comprehensibly even if given the chance.

There will be plenty who will want him sentenced to death, and when I see photos of that dear little girl he murdered, I am not entirely unsympathetic to their point of view. In the meanwhile, though, we'll have to wait for the experts to decide whether he is lucid enough to participate meaningfully in his own defense.

I wonder if young Jared's parents, with whom he lived, ever noticed his deteriorating emotional condition, and if they ever considered finding him professional health. I wonder if the Tuscon Parks Department provides Mrs. Loughner with family health coverage, and if that coverage includes psychological benefits.

I wonder if it might be arranged for Jared Loughner to be cellmates with Theodore Kaczynski. Ah, what fascinating philosophical discourse might ensue!

Army of World Capitalism

2011-01-08T14:58:00.003-05:00

Since Robert Gates recently called for reductions in defense spending, an interesting and, to many, surprising statistic has been in the press — the fact that the United States military is larger than all the other armies in the world, combined. Some even are daring to ask why. Why is our Department of Defense so large, what is it defending, and what is it defending against?

Thirty years ago, we could be told it was defending us from "the Communist threat." These days, it's hard to justify such a force to "protect" us from Cuba, North Korea and (maybe) Vietnam. China's system, over the years, has "developed" into fascism, and they're hardly likely to try to destroy us while we owe them so much money.

Right now we have roughly 100,000 troops in Afghanistan "defending" us from a few hundred "terrorists," most of whom are in Pakistan. There are close to another 50,000 still in Iraq — but they're not (ahem!) "combat" troops. We have troops deployed in over 150 countries around the world, and some questions are in order:

Why are there as many troops in Germany as in Iraq? Are the Nazis making a comeback?
Why almost 10,000 troops in the UK? Are we expecting another blitz?
Why do we need another 10,000 in Kuwait, Bahrain, and Qatar if Iraq is "at peace?"
From what threat are nearly 33,000 US troops defending Japan?
With all those troops in Japan, what's the need for another 28,000 in South Korea? Foot soldiers would not be especially effective against North Korean nukes.

Let's not forget the Navy, which has ships sailing around every body of water in the world big enough to hold them. In brief, why does the United States need a worldwide military presence?

To me, the answer if fairly obvious. Multinational corporations have a worldwide presence, and the United States seems to be stuck with the task of defending them (and their profitability) worldwide. Which leads to another question: why us? There are plenty of European and Asian and Middle Eastern plutocrats profiting from World Capitalism, and even some Latin Americans and Africans getting into the mix. Upholding the world plutocracy is expensive! Why can't some of those other countries pick up some of the expense?

Notice that I'm not calling for the plutocrats to pay for their own protection from popular uprisings, sticky fingered premiers and prime ministers with a penchant for nationalization, and those who want to replace the current monopolists with new monopolists. I know that's impossible.

The plutocrats don't pay — they just take. It follows that I'm not expecting anybody in the US government to make a serious effort to block raising the debt ceiling. Where would their corporate patrons go for their "defense?"

War on Workers

2011-01-07T16:55:00.006-05:00

Republicans have taken control of state governments in more states than I like to think about. Since this is a census year, they will get to gerrymander with impunity. Idiot working class voters who supported them will get it up the ass. Probably, they deserve it for being so stupid, but you really can't blame people for being so stupid when government has taken so many actions to keep them stupid for so many years.

Those Republican state victories, however, are likely to do more damage to working people than most of us "liberals" are likely to consider. As many as ten previously Democratic or divided states, now controlled by Republicans, are enthusiastically embracing "right to work" laws.

"Right to work" may have been the first seizure of terminology by Republicans that made Democrats look like they were the enemies of workers. Completing the phrase brings us to "right to work with full union benefits without paying union dues." Democrats ought to call them "free rider" laws — but they don't.

Right now, only about seven percent of private sector employees are union members. For the public sector, the percentage is somewhere in the thirties. The targets of the new "free rider" laws, needless to say, are the unions that still have some power — the state and local employees who still earn decent incomes while workers in the private sector continue to fall behind.

If the oligarchy is to continue leaching wealth from the middle class, the only place from which to suck it is the public sector. While the public sector unions might do more to contain the oligarchy, they are not looking ahead in any significant way. Most of them are entangled with the Obama-Clintonista crew, who continue to bend over and offer their well-used rosebuds to Wall Street and the megacorps.

Nobody is on our side. Nobody at all.

New Rules

2011-01-06T11:22:00.003-05:00

The House of Representatives has adopted a new set of rules that require any spending increases to be offset by spending cuts elsewhere. Tax cuts, on the other hand, need not be offset by tax increases elsewhere.

After thirty years of trying, one would think even the dullest witted Republican would have figured out that tax cuts do not increase government revenues. Even Arthur Laffer, creator of the famed Laffer curve that was used to justify Reaganomics, has come to that conclusion. Frankly, I don't believe even Reagan believed in the magical efficacy of tax cuts for raising revenues — he and his crew were more interested in the "starve the beast" school of reducing the size of government, especially those programs introduced as part of Roosevelt's New Deal.

That leaves Democrats, both in the Senate and the White House, in an uncomfortable position. If they are in any way serious about deficit reduction, they will have to reject every tax cut the House sends their way — and since the Republican answer to every problem is a tax cut, you can be sure the House will be sending them. Naturally, that would allow the Republicans to accuse Democrats of sabotaging economic recovery by stifling economic growth.

Actually, given the small Democratic majority in the Senate, including the remnants of the Blue Dog caucus and some who will do just about anything to keep their seats in the 2012 election, it may actually be necessary for other Democrats to filibuster tax cut bills to keep them from being enacted — or just pass them along to the President for a veto.

Does Obama have the balls to do that? Not from any of the evidence we've seen to date.

2010

2010-12-29T16:04:00.005-05:00

Yes, it was a pretty crappy year.

Our President spent the year sucking up to Wall Street again, except for a couple of days when he tried to sound like the populist he pretended to be pre-election. Bad couple of days, Barack — you got those Wall Street boys all mad at you and they started tossing all the taxpayer money you gave them at the Republicans. With a little help from the Supreme Court, they took the House, and all the ass kissing you've done since has been to no avail.

Now that long-term unemployment lasts longer than ever before — at least since it's been measured, which was roughly when the Great Depression ended — it's nice to have a new statistic that allows people to be unemployed longer than 99 weeks. It's also nice of you to remind us how the private sector keeps adding jobs, even if it's not fast enough to accommodate the young people entering the workforce, and even if the public sector is cutting jobs faster than the private sector is adding them.

Did Larry Summers and Tim Geithner remind you to cash in those municipal bonds before they default? Probably not. They don't work for you, Barack, they work for Wall Street.

Fuck bipartisanship — we really didn't need that tax cut legislation. As for "postpartisanship" — well, that best describes both major parties pole dancing for Wall Street, each hoping for a few more bucks tucked into its g-string than might be tucked into the g-string of the other.

***

By the way, I turn 65 in January, and I have decided to officially declare myself the very first Baby Boomer ever. It is a serious responsibility, and I intend to fulfill it by being a total pain in the ass.

Burning down health care — the "free rider" principle

2010-12-19T16:13:00.002-05:00

By this time, everybody's heard about that incident a few months back when Tennessee firefighters stood by and watched a family's home burn down because the family had neglected to pay its $75 annual subscription fee for fire protection. As reported by the Times, this led to a bit of a dispute in the conservative wing of the Republican Party, and an interesting dispute it was!

Mr. Cranick, the owner of the home, offered to pay for his subscription — which he had paid in previous years — if only the firefighters would come over and save his house, but it was too late. The fee was due when it was due, and that was that. They came to protect a fee paying neighbor's house, but Mr. Cranick was on his own.

More recently, Fourth District Court Judge Henry Hudson ruled the Obamacare mandate that individuals purchase health insurance unconstitutional — an overbroad interpretation of the Commerce Clause. I am inclined to agree with Judge Hudson. I was unhappy with the mandate when it was first announced. I don't see why, for the sake of my health, I should be required to buy, for example, a gym membership; nor, for the sake of my moral health, a copy of Why Good People Do Bad Things.

The root of the problem, of course, was Obama's typical bargaining strategy — start out by giving the opposition half of what it wants, and then "compromise" by giving it most of the rest. What could be better for private health insurers than forcing young, healthy people to pay them? Since the only way to make private insurance affordable for sick people is to enroll healthy people, the mandate is the linchpin of the whole, complex, schizophrenic policy.

So let's get back to the Tennessee firefighters, who refused to "treat the uninsured." Unlike the vast majority of public hospital emergency rooms, they were allowed to do that. Because of the 1986 Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act (EMTALA), any hospital that accepts Medicare has to provide treatment to every patient, regardless of ability to pay. Offering free treatment to the uninsured guarantees free-ridership — people who take advantage of the "fares" paid by others to benefit themselves.

If the Supreme Court upholds the decision of Judge Hudson, it makes perfect sense to repeal EMTALA. Is your leg broken, otherwise healthy young man? Set it yourself, or pay the hospital, say, $17,000. Need a liver transplant, oh rugged, self-sufficient libertarian? That will be $329,ooo please.

I would hope that children whose parents failed to buy them a heavily subsidized CHIP insurance plan would receive treatment at public expense, but their parents should be charged with gross neglect, lose custody, and spend a little time in jail. I can't see why that would be unconstitutional.

Of course, the real answer is a single payer system funded through taxation. I can't see any court ruling that one need not pay taxes for goods or services one does not want. Hell, I don't want the taxes I pay to fund the war in Afghanistan, farm price supports, faith based initiatives, and scores of other things they pay for now — but I still have to pay.

The truth is, Obamacare won't put nearly as big a dent in our health care spending as is needed, even if the Supreme Court upholds the Administration's point of view. We have to start viewing health care as a public good — something government should provide for everybody — and strip the profit motive out of our health insurance.

Well, we lefties lose again

2010-12-17T17:06:00.004-05:00

So what else is new?

Working people, to be sure, will average about a thousand bucks in reduced payroll taxes. It will be more than twice that for those up near the top of the income cap — or above — and it seems inevitable that the new Republican majority in the incoming House will try to extend the 2% discount next year. That will leave Democrats with a choice of stopping it in the Senate and looking like the Grinch who stole Christmas 2011, or helping the Republicans defund Social Security. Great compromise, Barack. Great politics. Brilliant.

Then there are the Bush tax cuts, which the Republicans will want to renew or, more likely, make permanent, just about when you come up for re-election. Why defund just Social Security when they can defund the entire "evil" government? Maybe you were too young to be paying attention in the days of "starve the beast," but I hope you have the guts to let all the cuts expire then, even if it means you won't be Our President anymore. If you honestly think you can redo the whole tax system, even if you have the full six years, you're crazy.

Anyway, the Reagan tax restructuring of 1985 — "simplification," we were told — just accelerated the transfer of wealth from the poor and middle classes to the rich. I don't think you'd do any better, even if you really want to do better.

Since there's so much underutilized productive capacity these days, there's only one sensible way for businesses to use the tax incentives they're getting for new capital equipment — buying automated tools to replace workers. Isn't that exactly what we need at the moment?

Frankly, I don't give a damn about the change in the inheritance tax, but it's likely to leave a sour taste in a lot of middle class mouths. Now, of course, you're sucking up to business interests even more than before. What happened? Did a smidgen of populist rhetoric hurt their feelings?

You make me sick.

Mark Madoff

2010-12-13T16:50:00.003-05:00

Unless I've missed it, nobody's been to to Butner — the prison in North Carolina where Bernie Madoff is serving his 150 year term — to get his view on his son's suicide. I'm entirely sure that Mark Madoff's suicide was far more painful to Bernie than anything the legal system could do to him.

My heart goes out to Bernie and his wife. Yes, he was an extreme exploiter of deregulation and underregulation, but losing a son or daughter is the worst thing that ever can happen to a parent — especially if the parent knows it's his own fault.

Somebody send Bernie a dog leash. He can use it.

Afghanistan, again

2010-12-12T12:10:00.003-05:00

Now that the US has been in Afghanistan longer than the Soviet Union was — which also makes our fumbling around there the longest war in our history — it seems like a good time for a review of what's going on over there. The Obama administration is planning to release a "December Review" shortly, but we already know what it's going to say. According to Petraeus and crew, we'll be "making good progress" — military leaders just hate losing wars, possibly more than even presidents do.

On the ground, though, all we're doing is propping up a corrupt government, lining the pockets of warlords and military contractors, and creating a great deal of misery at very great expense. We already know that whatever remains of the original Al Qaeda, Osama bin Laden included, is in Pakistan — probably guests of the Haqqani Network, under the protection of Pakistan's ISI. Yes, it's a shame that so many lives had to be lost so that a pack of rich, sleazy bastards could get even richer, but that's what happened, and throwing more lives and money at an impossible situation won't bring any of them back.

Some are concerned that the Iranians will go into Afghanistan if the US pulls out "too soon." If they do, it will be a damned shame for Iran. Afghanistan is not called "the graveyard of empires" for nothing.

Let's talk primary

2010-12-09T17:14:00.006-05:00

It's only a few of us talking about a primary challenge to Obama in 2012, but maybe if a few more of us engaged in the discussion, Our President just might think a bit more about his base. He thinks it was the so called "independents" who put him in office in 2008, but, really, it was his Democratic base. Democrats were the ones who went out, house to house, to persuade the politically ignorant that the dark complected guy was the candidate of "hope and change."

A lot of Democrats actually believed that. At this time, a lot of those Democrats have figured out they were wrong. Except for a few who put in a lot of work, and, hence, are dealing with a lot of cognitive dissonance, they won't be hitting the streets again in 2012.

So, a primary challenge is a distinct possibility in 2012. Unless some miracle candidate emerges from the manure heaps of the Republican stable, the prospect of Obama's re-election remains a toss-up, and a primary challenge just might persuade the President it's time to firm up his base. As for a primary challenger , there are lots of us who truly admire Dennis Kucinich, but Dennis has just been too "symbolic" for too long. Me, I like Jan Schakowsky, but I'll go with any progressive who can put real pressure on the administration.

First, I suppose, we ought to wait and see if some of Obama's current anger at liberal Democrats might be transferred over to the incoming Republican majority in the House — although that doesn't seem too likely. All the Clintonistas around him will be reminding him about how Bill won a second term by moving right after his midterm setback.

(No, Clinton did not move to the "center." He started out in what passes for the center these days and ended up working with Phil Gramm to overturn Glass-Steagle, thereby creating the financial monsters that rampaged through our economy and have been sucking us dry ever since.)

It seems to me that when unemployment is at 9.8% and the people who have jobs (outside of Wall Street) are earning less than they were two years ago, a little left-wing populism is in order. Actually, it was in order two years ago, but "Obambi," as Maureen Dowd calls him, was still trying to frolic with the predators. We can only hope, now that he's had their claws really rake across his ass, he might start listening to his fellow Democrats.

No Deal!

2010-12-07T11:51:00.002-05:00

The following is a copy of the letter I faxed to each of my Senators this morning:

NO DEAL!

Barack Obama has to be the most inept negotiator in the history of the Democratic Party. Would somebody please remind him that he is the PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES, and that he finally can stop Uncle Tomming his way to the top?

On payroll taxes: If payroll taxes are cut for a year, would anybody in his or her right mind expect Congress not to continue extending those cuts indefinitely, making Social Security less and less viable? How about permanently eliminating the tax on the first $20,000 of income, and entirely removing the upper cap on taxable income?

On the Bush tax cuts: Let them lapse! The higher tax on working and middle class people will not significantly slow the economy, and the rich will have less money to speculate on commodities, thereby holding down gasoline and food prices.

On the Estate Tax: Take no action at all, and let it revert.

On the Alternative Minimum Tax: Permanently key it to inflation, so the charade of “adjusting” it every year no longer is necessary.

On the Tax Code: It really is time to rewrite the tax code, eliminating most deductions (including mortgage interest and charitable bequests to religious institutions) and increasing the number of tax brackets to make income tax more progressive.

On extending Unemployment Insurance: Perhaps the President might try reminding the American people that it is the Republicans who are holding the poorest among us hostage to benefit their fat cat patrons.

Americans admire strength, but we haven’t seen much of that from Barack Obama. If we can’t find any strength in the administration, perhaps we can find some in the Senate. From you, perhaps?

Uncle Tom's White House

2010-12-04T21:42:00.004-05:00

Years ago, my ex had a little black girl in her art class who wouldn't share her crayons. When asked why, she said, "Mama says don't share your crayons because they'll just take 'em and they'll still call you nigger." Mama, of course, was right.

So, our President proposed freezing all non-military (and non-legislative, of course) federal workers' salaries for two years. In exchange for what?

As far as anybody can tell, in exchange for nothing. He just pissed off some of the few people left who don't hold him in total contempt on the off chance that he might Tom his way into the good graces of a teabagger or two. Good luck, asshole, but you ought to know they'll just take your crayons and call you nigger anyway. It's a shame your Mama was a white anthropologist instead of a black factory worker. Maybe you'd know better.

In the meanwhile, it seems pretty clear that the Republicans are determined that nothing shall be allowed to improve the employment picture over the next two years. Bernanke's quantitative easing won't do anything but make it cheaper for business to buy the hardware and software that will replace human workers. Mind you, I don't think that's what he's had in mind — I think he just felt he had to do something, and since a Republican House means that fiscal stimulus no longer is remotely possible, he figured that QE2 was worth a shot. Personally, I think it could do more harm than good, but I can't fault him for making the attempt. He strongly suggested that a fiscal rather than a monetary approach was needed, but nobody was listening — including a few turncoat Democrats, among whom is a pathetic wimp who just keeps giving away his crayons.

Some people are starting to talk about a Democratic primary in 2012. Me, I'd be happy to support Jan Schakowsky, figuring that Dennis Kucinich is just a little too well known. If all it did was remind Obama that he'd better suck up to a few progressives — not just conservatives — it might be worth the trouble. Losing the presidency in 2012 would not be too big a deal if all we lost was Obama.

Somebody get that king some clothes!

2010-11-30T14:36:00.003-05:00

While Hillary Clinton runs around the world kissing ass, I've been entertained by the latest wikileaks. It's always amusing when people get caught talking behind other people's backs — provided, of course, that the tongue wagger is not oneself — but so far I haven't seen any startling revelations.

Sarkozy's, Merkel's, and (especially) Berlusconi's "character flaws" have never been especially well hidden, and the State Department employees who decided to enshrine them in diplomatic cables should be reprimanded for wasting time belaboring the obvious. Russia under Putin is a mafia state, as any Westerner who has done business there can tell you, and it doesn't require much imagination to infer that the Sunni leaders of Saudi Arabia and the Emirates are not at all happy about the prospect of Shi'a Iran having nuclear weapons. And, yes, both Maliki and Karzai are corrupt. Big news.

It also wasn't much of a secret that the Obama administration has been bribing foreign governments to accept internees from Guantanamo. (Kuwait's interior minister, by the way, came up with what I think is a pretty good idea for getting rid of the ones who are dangerous, but can't be prosecuted because of fuck-ups by the Bush administration: drop them off in an Afghan war zone where they are likely to be expeditiously killed.)

We await further revelations — although the New York Times, which received the documents in advance and is participating in their recission, let it drop in an editorial today that this time, at least, there's nothing about torture or rendition. If the Times isn't lying, that's good news.