Wikileaks Needs Your Support

Take two days off and the world explodes. I’m not sure which story merits more consideration today, Obama’s complete capitulation to the Republicans on the tax “compromise”, or the concerted global effort to shut down Wikileaks. The Obama tax cut disaster was a foregone conclusion, so I guess venting my spleen at the administration wouldn’t add anything to the conversation. I’d simply like to suggest two words to the suddenly disillusioned Democrats who really, really thought that this time Obama was fighting for their interests: Primary. Challenge. He could care less about you. Dump him in the ditch like a sack of old potatoes and try to find someone liberal enough to stave off the utter dismantling of the social safety net. I’m not saying you’re going to be able to do it, but for heavens sake, at least try. And take that ring out of your nose. The party has led you around by the nose long enough.

Let’s review today’s developments in the Wikileak saga, shall we? Assange was arrested (no surprise there) and denied bail (also not surprising) in England where he will presumably be held long enough for the United States to charge him under some particularly Orwellian section of the Patriot Act. Attorney General Eric Holder is lauding the arrest, which doesn’t bode well for Assante’s future. As I was writing the preceding paragraph, I noticed that Mastercard, Paypal and Visa both shut down electronic donations to Wikileaks, thereby resolving any lingering doubts you may have had about the whether the government and bankers are one and the same. The move also deprives Assange of the funds he will undoubtedly need to avoid ending up in a CIA prison somewhere in Bumfuckistan.

It is perhaps worthy of note that Mastercard, Paypal and Visa continue to allow organizations like the KKK to utilize their services. Not sure about their reasoning there.

Fortunately, Philadelphia-based Xipwire has stepped in and set up a page where Wikileaks supporters can donate. "Our motivation is really simple," Xipline founder Sharif Aleandre explained in an email. "While people may or may not agree with WikiLeaks and the documents it has released, we feel that PayPal's recent decision to refuse to process donations on their behalf effectively silences voices in this democracy. In fact, it was the Citizens United case that basically equated donations with free speech and if the Supreme Court decided that our government doesn't have the power to regulate that speech then it's our opinion that corporations certainly shouldn't have that power either."

I can’t fault his reasoning. Reaction on the interwebs to the concentrated attack on Wikileaks has been pretty intense. Most savvy internet users know that this is bigger than Wikileaks. Glen Greenwald rightly noted over at Salon that 'What's really going on here is a war over control of the nternet and whether or not the internet can actually serve what a lot of people hoped its ultimate purpose was, which was to allow citizens to band together and democratize the checks on the world’s most powerful factions."

If governments are allowed to dictate what can or cannot be published and debated in the public square, the chilling effect on free speech cannot be denied.

Donations to Wikileaks can be made HERE. You can also donate $10 by texting WL to 56624.

Fat Cats vs. We the Sheeple

Deficit reduction is the hot topic in the MSM these days. Various ostensibly "bipartisan” panels are meeting behind closed doors and deciding exactly how much fleecing the citizenry can stand, in order to ensure that a regular supply of money flows unimpeded into the higher income brackets. The media has been dutifully reporting the recommendations presented by these panels of aristocrats (or, aristocats?) without question;  certainly without positing other, more obvious solutions that would impact the wealthy more than the rest of us. In other words, its business as usual.

Excuse me, but General Electric paid NO corporate income tax last year, and you want me to work until I’m 70 years old to pay some bankers year-end bonus? Go fuck yourself!! You know who else paid no federal income tax last year? Bank of America. Yup, one of the largest recipients of taxpayer bailout money had sufficient profits to pay out millions of dollars in bonuses to its top executives, but had a federal tax liability of exactly zero. Let’s see, who else……..oh, I almost forgot, Exxon Mobil also paid NO federal income tax last year, despite raking in $10.3 billion in pretax income. How do they do it? Easy, they report all of the losses in the United States, and declare all of their overseas income, which they don’t have to pay taxes on. Yup, the US Government rewards giant corporations for moving their operations overseas by giving them massive tax breaks.

I'm really having trouble wrapping my mind around this. Rather than suggesting that corporate welfare be eliminated to substantially reduce the deficit, the bipartisan commission actually suggested REDUCING the corporate income tax rate to 26% from 35%! (Presumably this would only apply to those corporations whose accountants aren’t smart enough to figure out how completely elude their tax liabilites.) It's still kind of breathtaking to actually see it written down in the same document that purports to be a responsible approach to the deficit.

 Other highlights from the commission:

 -Collapsing today's five income tax rates into three brackets: 8 percent for the lowest incomes, 14 percent for middle incomes and 23 percent for the wealthiest. (Note the wealthiest would see the most significant reduction in their federal taxes under this plan);

 -Ending $1.1 trillion in popular tax breaks ranging from deducting mortgage interest to receiving health insurance from employers on a pre-tax basis. (That would broaden the tax base and make virtually all Americans pay more in taxes.);

 -Increasing the federal gas tax by 15 cents a gallon to pay for transportation improvements. (I actually agree with this one);

 -Raising the age at which Americans can get Social Security benefits - to 68 by 2050 and 69 by 2075 - reflecting that Americans are living and working longer. (Unless you are poor, or black, in which case you’ll likely die at your desk).

 The deficit reduction seems to forget the fact that the 6-8 billion dollars we’re spending EVERY MONTH in Afghanistan would be better spent here at home, but are you really surprised?

And then there's the tax cuts, which honestly deserve a post all to themselves.The most conservative estimates show that continuing the Bush tax cuts for those making over 250k a year adding adding four trillion dollars to the deficit. Let me say that slowly. Four. Trillion. Dollars. Yet the Deficit Commission declares that they need to get their money by strip mining Social Security and Medicare, Medicaid and from raising taxes on the middle class? Bullshit! (Firedog Lake has a great posting on the Obama administration's duplicity on this issue.)


 The current hysterical urgency surrounding the need for immediate deficit reduction, smells a lot like the manufactured urgency that was used to sell the bank bailout package. Remember how that ended up? Don’t buy it. There’s money aplenty. (After all, we keep printing it when we run out.) This is all a matter of choices, and the banks and the fat cats are making those choices right now, while we the people are distracted by dancing B list celebrities and shiny electronic things. I don't know about you, but I'm more than a little concerned that Americans are behaving more sheepish now than at any time in our history. Now would be an excellent time to get out in the streets and make a little noise. Anybody? Anybody?

My Wiki is Leaking

How pissed is the US government at Julian Assange? Well, if I were him I wouldn’t go for any long walks in public without armed guards. Everybody from the CIA to Interpol is no doubt looking for a way for Assange to have an unfortunate single-vehicle accident on a secluded mountain road. Plan B includes fictitious charges of rape followed by a  lengthy prison term where Julian could be more easily dispatched by an intelligence operative disguised as an inmate. This is how our government has dealt with this sort of thing in the past, so I have absolutely no doubt that Assange is for all intents and purposes, a walking dead man, unless he has a secret stash of photos of Obama and Hillary Clinton with a transsexual hooker. Even then, I’d still fear for his safety. The only thing that gives me hope is that the CIA is pretty clueless about how to do anything.

It has been strangely satisfying to watch the administration freak out about having its foreign policy lies exposed for the entire world to see. I only wish these revelations had come out when Bush was still president. He probably would have ordered a drone strike on Sweden and invaded Western Europe to grab Assange and subject him to extraordinary rendition somewhere in a neutral third country. The Obama administration’s response has been a bit more restrained, although it’s starting to sound a little hysterical. I think it’s worthwhile to read Daniel Ellsberg’s take on the government’s response. The man who leaked the Pentagon papers had this to say about the State Department’s assertion that lives would be put at risk as a result of Wikileak’s publication:

That’s a script that they roll out, every administration rolls out, every time there’s a leak of any sort. The best justification for secrecy that they can find is that lives are at stake. Actually, lives are at stake as a result of silence and lies, which a lot of these leaks reveal. Certainly the same charges were made about the Pentagon Papers and turned out to be quite invalid over the years, the same things that Hillary Clinton is saying now about WikiLeaks. As a matter of fact.

Pretty standard, that script. Maybe the media will have the temerity to question the administration on that point. Nah, who am I kidding?

Assange’s life expectancy is sure to be further shortened once he turns Wikileak’s attention to the financial sector, which he has promised to do next. I mean, fuck with the government ok, fuck with the banking system? Swim with the fishes.

I Need to Take A WikiLeak

Whatever you think of the propriety of the recent document dump that the anarchists over at Wikileaks have graced us with, one thing is inarguable-there really are some awfully stupid people in charge of national security. As my wife aptly pointed out in a text message to me this morning: “Really, an army private has access to what King Abdullah says in his bathroom? Hahahaha.” Every time I start to think that maybe there is something to all those conspiracy theories out there, I’m confronted with the reality that governments are completely incapable of keeping any secrets.

Our government sure is pissed about this latest release of secret diplomatic cables, although one wonders how secret they really were when roughly three million people had access to them. Their protestations of injury ring a little hollow to me. This is a government that justifies its intrusion on the lives of its citizens with increasingly oppressive security and surveillance by intoning, “you have nothing to fear if you have nothing to hide." Talk about being hoisted by your own petard. The government is clearly pissed at having thousands of ready examples of how their back room maneuvering was completely at odds with their propaganda, circulating so freely on the interwebs. Compared to what's in those the diplomatic cables, our government's everyday press releases and public pronouncements on the same subjects appear to have been totally fabricated.

As Norman Solomon noted over at the Huff Post, “In a democracy, people have a right to know what their government is actually doing. In a pseudo-democracy, a bunch of fairy tales from high places will do the trick. No government wants to face documentation of actual policies, goals and priorities that directly contradict its public claims of virtue. In societies with democratic freedoms, the governments that have the most to fear from such disclosures are the ones that have been doing the most lying to their own people.”

The foregoing does much to explain why the administration has been much more interested in assigning blame for the leaks than discussing their contents. Concentrating on what is in the cables would open up all sorts of uncomfortable subjects for discussion in the main-stream media. (Although, I wonder. They usually report the administration's nonsense as factual without letting anything like best-practices journalism get in the way.) Since diplomatic malfeasance reaches across the aisle these days, Congress is similarly outraged. Not at the contents of the cables, but at their dissemination. Peter King-(R)NY has gone so far as to suggest that Wikileaks be charged under the USA Patriot Act as a terrorist organization. Joe Lieberman (Lieberman-CT), frames the leak as an attack on our national security, and presumably would recommend torture and indefinite imprisonment in a secret CIA prison for Julian Assange.

I’ll close this entry with the same question Solomon posed in his article, which is a really, really good question: “[W]hat kind of "national security" can be built on duplicity from a government that is discredited and refuted by its own documents?” Indeed.

A Triumphant Return

Hi, I’m back. I might explain my absence at some point, or I might not. This blog might still be about politics, or it might not. I haven’t decided yet. All I know is that I find myself getting bored and feeling mildly depressed that I don’t have some outlet for my mental diarrhea. Since this page was already set up I figured, why not? With all the Cialis spam clogging up the comments section it looks like I have a readership in the millions. Why not build on that base?

Speaking of the base….tsk, tsk Obama. Freezing the salaries of Federal employees is one sure fire way of dooming your re-election hopes for 2012. Not that I give a crap. You lost me somewhere between the Wall Street bailout and that blow-job you gave the insurance companies that you call “health care reform”. Nevertheless, what kind of president cuts middle-class salaries in the middle of a recession in a country where 70% of the economy is driven by consumer spending? A one-term president, that’s who.

I only hope that at some point prior to the drubbing you’re bound to receive at the polls two Novembers hence, your fixation on deficit reduction draws your sleepy eyes towards the disaster in Afghanistan. Our little foray in nation-building in the Middle East is costing us six billion dollars a month, which is enough to hand each and every American taxpayer a million dollars. Imagine how putting all those dollars into the stream of commerce would stimulate the economy? But Americans aren’t bankers, are they? So we won’t be the recipient of any government largesse this holiday season, will we? In fact, all the grannies and disabled widows and the blind people will have to tighten the belt another notch this year because there isn’t enough money in the budget for a cost of living increase. Bah, humbug indeed.

And yet….we both know that the money really is there, don’t we. Unfortunately it’s locked up in yachts and mansions and private jets, all purchased with our tax dollars that you gave to the bankers in the naïve hope that some of it would trickle down to the masses and stimulate the economy. I, for one, have always been able to tell the difference between getting stimulated and getting fucked, and I must say this feels more like the latter than the former.

Meet the New Boss, Same as the Old Boss

I haven’t been posting here regularly, mostly because it seems like an exercise in futility. Obama has proven himself to be a Bush-lite clone whose administration has bent over backwards to line the pockets of the bankers and corporations. I see little evidence that the man has done anything but continue the Republicans’ agenda of screwing the American people by presiding over the biggest wealth transfer in the history of the republic. When I think of all of that taxpayer money going to Wall Street and then hear that Obama is planning to tax employer provided health benefits, do away with the mortgage exemption and continue the war in Afghanistan without an end strategy, I have to draw the conclusion that Ralph Nader came to years ago: there is no fundamental difference between the Republican and Democratic parties.

The situation with the government’s bail-out of General Motors is a great example. I can’t say it better than some letter-writers to the Times today whose thoughts are excerpted below:


"I simply don't understand why our government chose to back G.M. Wasn't the rationale behind the handouts to save millions of jobs and local economies? Taxpayers have invested 50 billion dollars into this company only to watch hundreds of thousands of jobs being slashed with the transition to the "new G.M." Left behind are the little guys.”

“Most offensive was GM's chief attorney's claim that the Union members left behind opposed the sale because they were "envious" of the UAW workers, and that such workers had naively and delusionally imagined a "conspiracy" between GM and the government. As someone from a working-class background who belongs to a union, and whose family members have benefited from union membership, I find it appalling that President Obama would and his administration would sanction such contemptuous, class-ridden, smears against working Americans. These people lost their health benefits because of you, Barack. They were not a jealous, disgruntled paranoid mob, but rather workers who now face retirement without their union benefits. Shame.”

“Odd that corporate socialism is desirable(GM, AIG, Chrysler, Citi) but public socialism such as health care for all causes our president and congress to have second thoughts.
I guess they're just dancing with the ones that brought 'em.”

Not odd my friend, just business as usual in Washington.

Torturing the Truth

I completed the Long Island ½ marathon on Sunday with a new PR for the distance-1:47.53. This marks the third consecutive ½ marathon in the last year where my time has improved. I do realize that at some point the limitations of flesh and bone will invariably intersect with the decreasing numbers on the clock and I will be forced to confront the reality of aging and diminishing performance. But not quite yet. Running has saved my more times than I can count so I will keep at it until they carry me off the road kicking and screaming.

Speaking of kicking and screaming, it appears that the Obama DOJ has decided not to prosecute the attorneys who wrote the so-called “torture memos,” which gave the CIA permission under color of law to torture suspected Al Qaeda operatives to extract information about future attacks on the United States. Instead, they plan on wagging a stern finger at the naughty lawyers and suggesting that they be reported to their local bar association for disciplinary action. I don’t know where these lawyers practice, but the only thing that will get you disciplined by the bar where I live is if you flagrantly steal a client’s money. Using flimsy legal arguments to justify torture that ends in death? We call that zealous advocacy ‘round these parts.

I had thought that when I pulled the lever for a Democrat in this last election that I would be doing my part to help reverse the general collapse of the rule of law in the United States. The Patriot Act, warrantless wiretapping, torture were legacies of a reactionary Republican administration, or so I thought. It is worth recalling that we prosecuted Japanese soldiers who used waterboarding in WWII. Why is Obama willing to look the other way while those who perpetrated the act in our name get away with murder?

Running

This Sunday I’ll be towing the line at the Long Island half-marathon; the second year in a row I’ve braved the boredom of the Wantagh Parkway in pursuit of inner excellence. This will be my 3rd ½ marathon in the last year. I discovered that the distance is perfect for the time constraints I have; the training isn’t so onerous that I’m away from the house for too long on the week-ends, and the race (with any luck) is over in less than two hours. At times I wish I could get back into running full marathons, ultras even, but I simply do not have the time to adequately train and also spend enough quality time with the family. Plus, when I’m running a race my 41 year old knees start telling me that 13.2 miles is QUITE enough. Erin is kind enough to allow me an hour on Saturday and Sunday to run, unencumbered by either guilt or a baby jogger, so I have been learning to squeeze as much joy out of my runs as possible.

The north shore of Long Island is a great place to run but it can also be fairly challenging. Despite the relatively empty roads and bucolic scenery-views of the Sound abound-there are also a lot of very wealthy people driving around in big cars while simultaneously talking on cell phones. I have had to jump the curb many times to avoid being flattened by Bentleys and Hummers whose drivers were more intent on their phone calls than on what was going on in the space around their cars. After running for 20 years on the roads you develop a 6th sense of which cars pose the most danger, even if you’re jamming down the road blasting your i-pod. There are also a lot of hills, but I prefer running up hills to running on the flats.

Have a good week-end everyone.

Obama, Prosecute the War Criminals

Obama’s decision not to prosecute the perpetrators of the torture that was carried out in secret military bases, torture that resulted in the death of at least 100 people is completely inexcusable. Article 2.2 of the U.N. Convention Against Torture, to which the U.S. became a State Party in 1998 under Ronald Reagan is quite clear:

"No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat or war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture."

The Bush administration and its legal enablers violated the treaty. Treaties which have been ratified by the United States Senate have the same force and effect as laws passed in the United States. Those responsible MUST be put on trial and, if found guilty, sent to prison. Yes it was a group of pretty despicable people who were subjected to this treatment, but that shouldn’t matter. Laws against torture and abuse of prisoners were not put in place to stop crimes against people we like, but to stop interrogators from misusing their power to harm people we despise. It is very strange to me, this idea that we should just “move on”. Why? As a letter writer to the Times astutely noted this morning, if some average Joe imprisoned somebody in his basement, chained them from the ceiling, kept them awake for 11 days straight, and waterboarded them 183 times resulting in their death you wouldn't question for a moment the need for prosecution. In fact, in most states, murder of this sort is a first degree offense and would subject the perpetrator to the death penalty. Yet Obama, in the name of God knows what, has decided that this is somehow an inappropriate path to tread down. Perhaps he doesn’t want to start taking whacks at the increased presidential power that Bush seized during his reign of terror for fear that his own power would be truncated. Who knows?

Nevertheless, Presidents are not above the law and history will not treat us kindly if we choose to look the other way at this monumental crime for the sake of political expediency.

100 Days

Like most of you I was raised with the aphorism, “if you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all.” Of course I routinely ignored that advice during the Bush tenure, but I promised a few people I would give Obama the benefit of the doubt before subjecting him to the same sort of critical review due politicians of lesser intellect and stature. So, I took a little hiatus during the first 100 days of the Obama administration, hopeful that when I returned I would be able to report that the ship of state was sailing along smoothly under the steady hand of our taciturn commander-in-chief. Well…….not really. Obama has proven himself an able leader and a masterful politician, but in some areas he has fumbled badly and should be brought to task for his mistakes. For example, he has deeply disappointed the left and hasn’t made any new friends on the right-so much for change in Washington. He has supported the Bush administration’s assault on the Constitution and failed to prosecute the perpetrators of torture at the CIA. The stimulus plan gives too much money to Wall Street, etc., etc. At least he is taking a stab at healthcare and I can’t say enough positive things about his push towards green energy and support for a high-speed rail system. But he won’t get a free ride from this blogger. Not anymore.

For a part-time blogging hack like myself, Obama poses a dilemma. He is so active, on so many fronts, that it is impossible to analyze his performance in the amount of time I have to devote to this blog. So I’ll take little bites and chew thoroughly. Stay tuned.

Baby You Can Drive My Car

Obama’s finger wagging at Detroit is mighty curious considering that the amount of money being sought by the automakers is a mere drop in the bucket compared with the bail-out of the fat cats on Wall Street. I guess you get what you pay for. The financial sector has spent over $20 billion over the last ten years to curry favor on the Hill and in the White House, and now they’re calling in their chips.

You could also argue that the auto industry is being treated like garbage because the government blew the bank bailout badly by pouring $350 billion down the drain with no benefit on Main Street. The political reality of the moment is that somebody has to get in it in the shorts to satisfy the public's need for blood. The sheeple glued to CNN apparently buy the party line that the collapse of GM and Chrysler was the fault of the union line worker (damn those people who can afford THREE meals a day on their salary), rather than bone headed management decisions. Couple the public perception with the fact that the industry’s influence in Washington is on the wane and presto, the auto industry gets to die in place of the financial industry that caused our current problems.

Yes, the banking industry is important to the American economy, but the banking industry is not wholly composed of BofA, Citibank, et al. As long as they remain the sole focus of the discussion and the people are browbeat into believing that their rescue is absolutely necessary, it becomes clear in whose interests these banks are being saved. Hint: it ain’t ours.

Legalize It

I’m coming off hiatus to issue a stern wag of the finger at Obama’s cavalier treatment of the marijuana legalization issue in his internet town hall meeting yesterday. As anyone with ½ a brain knows, and Obama has much more than ½ a brain, the war on drugs has been a total failure. There are over 1 million Americans in jail for the victimless crime of possession of marijuana. Ending the prohibition on drugs would solve numerous problems. Crime rates would plummet (big time organized crime, small time stealing, possession), taxes go up as drugs are sold legally like liquor. The cost of the War on Drugs (billions wasted) eliminated. Prison costs cut in half. The money saved can be used to treat drug addiction as a medical condition and there would be a lot of money left over. Whole countries are now being destabilized because of drugs. Why is Obama a coward on this issue, when the solution is obvious?

Maybe because decriminalizing pot would actually be counter to his goals. Prisons create jobs. Building prisons creates jobs. Spending billions on the War on Drugs every year creates jobs. All those potheads getting locked up are just more Americans sacrificing in the name of economic recovery.

I’m starting to think that this guy is too slick for his own good. One week after the Attorney General seemed to indicate the feds would no longer raid pot clubs, DEA agents busted a medical marijuana facility in San Francisco the night before his speech. If this is the position an administration filled with intelligent thinkers is going to take on this issue, I have to question their motives. This one is a no-brainer.

Back in the USSA

The Patriot recently returned from a short vacation to Italy and has been having some trouble readjusting to the American lifestyle. Some of this may be related to lingering jet lag, but I suspect a good deal is malaise at returning to a country that seems so small minded and paranoid compared to its European neighbors. Returning to US soil through Immigration and Customs was a humiliating experience; poorly educated bureaucrats drunk with their own power, screaming at people for talking on cell phones and deigning to ask impertinent questions about what line to stand in while waiting to be evaluated for the rubber glove treatment. So it goes. We may have gotten rid of Bush, but his legacy lives on in the police state that he created and which Obama shows little interest in dismantling.

I’m not holding out Italy as some sort of paradise. Far from it. But what Italy, and the rest of “old Europe” have going for it is a lifestyle outlook that eschews consumerism in favor of simple pleasures like friends, good food, and an appreciation of leisure. Before you all write in to flame me, I am aware that Europe has issues with rigid class structures and an appalling record on dealing with immigrants. Nevertheless, the small cars, small apartments, rigidly enforced recycling program and focus on living life rather than buying crap you don’t need is something American’s should pay attention to. For better or worse we’re all going to have to start living small.

I watched Obama’s speech last night and I was not at all impressed. After a few minutes, I felt as if I was hearing the campaign rhetoric repackaged and rebranded for a slightly different audience. The speech was long on style and short on substance. With the stock market still in freefall and the "details" of our economic salvation yet to be revealed, this administration can hardly be said to have taken the bull by the horns-despite the lofty rhetoric.

Many of the ideals espoused by our Dear Leader lacked a basis in anything approaching objective reality. Obama sternly lectured that corporate executives will not be allowed to profit form the financial bailout-and yet refused to push for any strings to be attached to the money. He stated that bold action was necessary to save the country from the economic crisis and yet was short on specifics. I have a few ideas. How about bold actions like FBI forensic accountants pouring over the books of bad banks looking for fraud. How about bold action to claw back the bonuses paid to executives from the last round of TARP money? None of this is in the stimulus plan he was crowing about last night.

I see no evidence that Obama's plan to fix the banks does what the American people are demanding-hold those who gambled with the public's money accountable-or what the economy requires. His plan seems to be little more than a continuation of the philosophy of the Bush years.

While our president speaks of “necessary sacrifice”, the centerpiece of the economic recovery plan is apparently more lending and more debt. Oh, and printing more money to pay for everything. Am I alone in finding this approach to be, well, insane? Wasn’t it the accumulation of debt and laxity in lending that started us down the rabbit hole?

Meet the New Boss

I would have thought that this administration would have had a better read on the pulse of the populist rage sweeping the county, but I guess I was wrong. The new stimulus plan is a disaster and it won’t work. It also isn’t very much different from the first TARP plan, who’s funds disappeared down the rabbit hole of $40,000 commodes and corporate jets.

The architect of Tarp II is none other then Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, erstwhile head of the New York Federal Reserve and overseer of the financial meltdown. Why Obama put this man in charge of The Treasury when his short-sightedness was instrumental in causing the problem in the first place, I don’t know. The man couldn’t even be bothered to pay his own taxes, but he is rewarded by control over the entuire financial system. Nice.

As intended by Mr. Geithner, the current stimulus plan stops short of intruding too significantly into bankers’ affairs even as they start to receive corporate welfare. The $500,000 pay cap for executives at companies receiving assistance applies only to very senior executives, who will likely find a way around it anyway. The plan also will not require shareholders of companies receiving significant assistance to lose most or all of their investment. Perhaps most galling, while the administration will “urge” banks to increase lending, it will not attach any conditions to the billions of dollars in new government money. This plan is hardly different from the Bush administration’s approach of greasing the palms of the same companies and executives who peddled risky loans and investments at the heart of the crisis. How is this a change from “the failed economic policies of the last eight years?”

I think the plan is a mistake. I also think that any plan which props up home values, and extends more credit to overextended consumers is ill conceived at best. Irresponsible use of credit got us into this mess in the first place. How is extending more credit so people can resume living beyond their means going to solve this financial crisis?

This is just more protection for the wealthy and their money. I cannot understand the thought process behind a government decision that risks economic catastrophe to protect the wealthiest Americans while enraging everyone else. I think the administration will come to deeply regret this decision.

Down the Drain

The Senate on Wednesday voted to expand the economic stimulus package with a tax credit for homebuyers of up to $15,000, a provision championed by Republicans as addressing a root cause of the recession. The tax credit would give buyers 10 percent of the price of a primary residence bought within one year, up to $15,000, and is intended to stabilize plummeting home prices. This single-minded obsession government has with propping up housing values is misguided at best and seriously damaging to the economy at worst. Housing prices have to continue to fall until they are in line with incomes and the government should not do anything to screw around with the natural correction currently going on in the housing market.

The tax credit assumes that people have sufficient liquid resources for a 10-20% downpayment. The US has had a negative savings rate for the last ten years and the value of most people’s investments has been cut by ½ in the last quarter of the last year alone. I doubt too many Americans are sitting on a big wad of cash they feel would be best spent gambling on the unstable housing market right now.

The housing industry needs to downsize. There are over 2,000,000 excess housing units in the US, most of them overpriced. There was far too much construction during the boom. This not only created an excess of housing but also an excess of unsustainable jobs. Having an economy based upon building houses and selling them to each other rather than on the production of tangible goods or innovative technologies is the difference between a consumption economy and a production economy. Consumption economies are inherently unsustainable and bound to fail.

And frankly, the whole ideology of saving the economy by spending was discredited, wasn’t it? We're supposed to spend our way out of this? With what real income? With what credit? Isn't spending imaginary money what got us into this mess in the first place?

“Businesses are panicked and fighting for survival and slashing their payrolls,” said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Economy.com. “I think we’re trapped in a very adverse, self-reinforcing cycle. The downturn is intensifying, and likely to intensify further unless policy makers respond aggressively.” The Obama administration needs to stop fucking around with bipartisanship and come up with some drastic solutions to what is fast becoming a spiraling economic disaster. 598,000 jobs were lost in January of this year. A half million jobs. In one month.

Parenting

There has been a lot of discussion in the blogosphere about a “study” that was done last week by Parenting magazine which broke the startling news that married women, as a whole, are pissed at their husbands. The reason? According to author Martha Brockenborough:

"We're mad that having children has turned our lives upside down much more than theirs. We're mad that these guys, who can manage businesses or keep track of thousands of pieces of sports trivia, can be clueless when it comes to what our kids are eating and what supplies they need for school. And more than anything else, we're mad that they get more time to themselves than we do."

I am going to reserve comment for a minute on how completely banal and stereotypical such a depiction of lazy husbands and nagging wives sounds. I have to wonder though, who lives like this? Are there really still places in America where Everybody Loves Raymond is an accurate depiction of life in the suburbs? My gut instinct is that this “scientific” survey is nothing more than a reflection of the views of a cross section of the irate mommies who read Parenting magazine. In other words, white, upper middle class women who, for whatever reason, are stuck in lousy relationships with men they have little in common with.

The real problem? Our relationships are out of whack because our economic system is out of whack. If both parents are working full time the home is always one step away from chaos. Our children are not only being being raised by strangers out of necessity but they are being taught rigid social conformity as if it is some kind of civic virtue. (We sacrifice art and music in school for business and math and expect that we are going to have well-rounded kids-but that’s another posting entirely).

Our society needs to follow the European model and give more support to families with children. A fraction of that bailout money could go a long way towards paying for programs that allow more flexible work hours and options for part time work for both parents. We should demand that Obama and Congress pass laws that insist that companies allow more work-from-home options, and provide paid maternity and paternity leave. We need an economy that brings the buying power of our wages out of the 1970, and we need universal, single-payer health care, and publicly funded college, and retirement. Don’t tell me the government can’t afford it. If we can afford the banking bailout and bankroll two wars simultaneously, we can afford it.


Fuck Parenting magazine and their facile approach to a serious social problem. Instead of fomenting a war between the sexes, if they have any interest in helping parents they should use their platform as a bully pulpit to steer some of the billions of dollars going to bail out the Wall Street Fuckers to support working families.

Pull Back the Tarp

Is anyone surprised, really surprised, that the Wall Street folks took our taxpayer bailout money and gave it to their already super-wealthy friends as bonuses? I sure ain’t. You cannot give a crack addict more crack and delude yourself into thinking he’s going to share it with others. Obama was right to express his anger at the misuse of the TARP money, but that doesn’t go far enough. While there may be no legal means by which he can claw back the compensation already paid, he can certainly place stringent conditions on the dispersion of future funds. The question is whether he has the will. Have a nice week-end everyone.

The First Seven Days

I promised Erin the day of the inauguration that I would refrain from making any negative comments about Obama until at least 100 days had passed. At the time I expected this period of self-imposed silence to be a teeth-gritting, hand-wringing sort of affair. I imagined sitting in front of the keyboard, vein throbbing in my head, willing my fingers not to smash out a bitter screed of betrayal and dashed dreams. Much to my pleasant surprise, this has not been the case. Yes, I know it’s only been seven days, but the ability of a politician to keep his promises and tell the truth usually has a half-life measured in hours, not days. Consequently, there is reason to hope that the next 93 days will be as filled with fresh-baked cookies and hot chocolate as these first seven were.

Obama’s first week in office has been such a clear repudiation of the Bush years that one scarcely knows where to begin. Let’s begin with this, a partial transcript from an interview-the first of his presidency- Obama sat for with Al Arabiya:

“I have Muslim members of my family. I have lived in Muslim countries….[t]he largest one, Indonesia. And so what I want to communicate is the fact that in all my travels throughout the Muslim world, what I've come to understand is that regardless of your faith – and America is a country of Muslims, Jews, Christians, non-believers – regardless of your faith, people all have certain common hopes and common dreams.

And my job is to communicate to the American people that the Muslim world is filled with extraordinary people who simply want to live their lives and see their children live better lives. My job to the Muslim world is to communicate that the Americans are not your enemy. We sometimes make mistakes. We have not been perfect. But if you look at the track record, as you say, America was not born as a colonial power, and that the same respect and partnership that America had with the Muslim world as recently as 20 or 30 years ago, there's no reason why we can't restore that. And that I think is going to be an important task.”

Quite a sea change, isn’t it? Contrast that with the Bush administration’s paranoia and inability to draw fine distinctions between terrorists and, well, anyone else. Quite refreshing. In the same interview, the President acknowledges that the tone of a conversation is just as important as its content-something else lost on our last president:

“[T]he language we use matters. And what we need to understand is, is that there are extremist organizations – whether Muslim or any other faith in the past – that will use faith as a justification for violence. We cannot paint with a broad brush a faith as a consequence of the violence that is done in that faith's name.”

Obama has more faith in religion than I, but the point that we, as a country, will use our collective intellect to discern intent from context is something I can get behind 100%.

Year of the Earth Ox

The Times reported today on a recent Danish study which showed that people who drink coffee are at a greatly reduced risk for developing dementia later in life. Scientists found that the subjects who had reported drinking three to five cups of coffee daily were 65 percent less likely to have developed dementia, compared with those who drank two cups or less. People who drank more than five cups a day also were at reduced risk of dementia, the researchers said, but there were not enough people in this group to draw statistically significant conclusions-probably because they couldn’t sit still long enough to complete the questionnaire. The Patriot is greatly relieved that he has an excuse to increase his coffee consumption without guilt.

Welcome to the year of the Earth Ox. Generally The Ox is the sign of prosperity gained through fortitude and hard work. The Ox is unswervingly patient, tireless in his work, and capable of enduring any amount of hardship without complaint-a very Protestant Animal, in the Weberian sense. According to a Chinese astrology web site I happened across while engaging in the very non ox-like activity of shirking my own work, “Effort, commitment and duty will be the keywords for 2009. Creatively and artistically, the Year of the Ox could see influential and exciting new works and creations being announced. Environmental and green issues will also dominate the world stage with countries establishing tighter controls and regulations.” Amazing how Chinese astrology can be so issue specific. I wonder what all the little rats in Congress-whose year has ended- think about their feng shui prospects for the coming year? Perhaps they should get a reading.

The Audacity of Hope

There are endings and there are beginnings. The United States, and by extension the world, experienced both this week. The ending, of course, was the final exit of George Dubya Bush, who decamped to his suburban ranch in Texas, smarting in the wake of Obama’s devastating indictment of his legacy so eloquently framed in his inaugural speech. While Bush no doubt wished for nothing less than full imperial powers, he also must feel relieved, finally left alone to indulge his penchant for mountain biking and brush-clearing unencumbered by the unceasing demands of the Oval Office. Like a house full of graduating frat boys, he and his cowboy cabinet left one helluva mess for the rest of us to clean up. The Patriot Act, FISA, torture of prisoners and the suspension of habeus corpus, have left our Constitution tattered and faded, brittled by spending too much time immersed in the fires of ignorance and self-righteousness. Much damage was done and much needs to be undone.

The beginning of the Obama era started on Election Day and really lifted off in Washington on Tuesday. Along with everyone else on the globe I was riveted by the spectacle of an African American with a Muslim father and a strange name, take the oath of office a scant eight years after the World Trade Center collapsed into a hole in the ground, dragging with it our leaders moral compass and our collective sanity. I felt something that I haven’t felt in a long time. Hope. For those of you who have read this blog with any regularity over the last four years, you are well aware that hope is not an emotion I have usually expressed when holding forth about the capability and intent of our leaders. Nevertheless, the sheer size of the paradigm shift which is occurring here is, I think, beyond all of our capacity to fully appreciate.

Let’s face it, the perception of America around the world is of a country full of scoundrels and self-interested, naval-gazing consumers. We pull our heads out of the feeding trough just long enough to turn the channel on the television, pray to Jesus or start a war, then its back to our slop. Yet this very same group of people put a (relatively) young black man in the White House and gave him the keys to the treasury. It defies stereotype. It further defies stereotype that our new president is single-handedly restoring faith in reason and intellectualism. (The fact that concepts like “reason” and “intelligence” have taken on a pejorative air speaks volumes about how far off track we’ve gotten in the last eight years.)

I’m not expecting miracles. Obama is an establishment politician and still beholden to the interests that allowed him to accede to the seat of power. However, in his first two days in office he has suspended the Guantanamo show-trials and issued an executive order to close the prison within a year. If he keeps going in that direction we’ll be in pretty good shape in 100 days, or even eight years.I think Jefferson would be proud of us today.