Moral priorities ultimately inform economic priorities, as every pornographer knows. Therefore, it follows that ‘free market’ economics is manifestly incompatible with a society eager to use public institutions to address moral issues. One cannot accept amoral ‘free’ markets, but insist on religious-based, morally-justified public policy and institutions. Where there is an abundance of one, you will find a distinct lack of the other. Either serve the ‘religion’ of markets, or the religion of the church. You cannot have both.

In fact, the question isn’t either/or. It is a balance.

As every adult is undoubtedly aware, we live in a world of greys. We cannot insist on Utopia for our representative (ie. public) institutions, but allow predatory behavior by our powerful and globally-reaching private institutions. That is an invitation for gratuitous conflict, serving no purpose, other than a calculated distraction by the powerful and cynical at time when the world cannot afford to be distracted by the navel-gazing attitude of Madison Avenue. Because neither diametrically-opposed ideology is realistic. The very idea of democracy implies argument, but not a contest to the death and destruction of the opposition, or the national economy, or both. Anyone that claims to be willing to sacrifice either for the sake of winning the game of politics ‘by any means necessary’ including a willful denial of facts, is fundamentally undemocratic in their thinking. Those that do, are the true fascists. Come to think of it, this is what American fascism would/could look like. Not dressed in brown shirts, or wearing jack boots, or even uniforms. Just citizens too lazy, or too hurting, or too uneducated, or too blind to the consequences of giving up public liberty in the name of protection against terror, or private liberty in the name of ‘greasing the skids’ of the free market by further reducing government oversight of capital and markets.

It would be citizens that form the shock-troops of a group-think they don’t even recognize, much less understand, as the basis of not only their own downfall, but ultimately a threat to the civilization of humankind on planet earth, if the cumulative use and conversion of non-renewable resources into atmospheric gases is not addressed in some way. The chemistry is undeniable. Matched only by the intensity of faith by those who insist upon its denial. On some level, two plus two does in fact equal four, no matter how strong your faith that it could, someday, equal five.

But the truly sad thing (and the indicator of the internal weakness of the American electoral system generally, in my view), is that the anti-intellectualism and advocacy of political intransigence is bred, fed, sustained, and channeled, by a plutocratic cynicism that has only its own misguided self-interest in mind. Its not the jeering, angry, placard-waving crowds that have taken over the GOP (watch out, Dems, you’re next?) its the corporate elite that see the GOP as a git-along-to-get-along appendage of the Big Government Idea represented by the Democratic party. And they, in turn, represent the dangerous idea that the Individual, supremely embodied in the successful corporate titan, can and should rise above the constraints of the mediocre many and their unfortunate voice through Government and the Law. (If you want to know more about where that idea comes from, just google ‘Ayn Rand’ and ‘Nietzsche’)

In other words, the embodiment of this idea in its current incarnation of the Tea Party, is a wholly-owned subsidiary of powerful people who care not one whit about the welfare of the many who, thinking they have at last discovered a legitimate outlet for their frustration with an unresponsive government, donate their time, energy, and lives to the cause of ‘changing America’. They are, in fact, pawns in a much larger game than even they realize.

And those that manage to see a Christian message in such a ‘rugged individualism’ are opportunists of the worst kind. The kind Jesus himself admonished his followers to guard against.

To the extent government has the capacity to do Good, it should not only be tolerated, it should be exercised regularly, wherever its capacity to do Good has its greatest chance of, or greatest need to, succeed. That is not to say that goverment always does, or always can, do Good things, but to the extent it extends civilization to the furthest reaches of society, it pays long-term dividends, by both demonstrating positive humanitarian priorities in its nature (ie. democratic ideals) for later generations outside of our current politics to look back on and emulate, and by further guaranteeing in its exercise that useful ideas, perhaps ideas extending our chances of survival as a species, have an avenue of expression.

No society of ‘individuals’ in history ever survived outside of a reachable community. Our expression of community in the idea of Government should be cherished and defended as necessary for the maintenance of civilization in the difficult times ahead.

From a more personal perspective, having recently finished a lecture series called ‘The Foundations of Western Civilization’, by Prof. Thomas F.X. Noble, University of Notre Dame, and as an extension of cultural and philosophical traditions of the West, the lectures of the ‘lost books’ of the bible serve to illuminate the aftermath of a civilizational downfall. What I take away from Roman Imperialist history is that the politics of empire became a zero-sum game. The stakes became so high, that the unthinkable became thinkable. We would do well to learn that lesson in our own time. Politics in the United States has become such that the unthinkable is becoming thinkable. That is enormously consequential. Unlike the Roman period, we have the ability to end civilization as we know it tomorrow, not from one century to the next as in the past. The stakes of world power are such that those who hold power are suspect in the eyes of those who feel they do not. While it may be a pleasant distraction in the United States to talk about Libertarianism and Ayn Rand as the just desserts of an individual’s hard labor, as opposed to a more progressive and statist approach, in practice, it is a dangerous road.

Why? Because it presumes the Perfectability of Man-as-individual, much in the same way communism presumed the Perfectibility of the Worker-as-social-unit. Each assumes ‘perfectibility’ with no accountability to the community-at-large. The American conservative movement (and I use that term advisedly) of the early 21st century espouses a deregulated marketplace with minimal taxation. This should then beget minimal government, the better to remain weak and ineffectual thereby enabling those with resources to be free to exercise personal (private) judgment upon the marketplace. But what begins in the marketplace ends in the political space, for it is a contract enabled by the State that allows the private interest to exist. A corporation exists because it has a charter from the State that says so. First there was community, then came the Individual. But the individual does not exist without the community. An individual, no matter how Herculean his/her efforts cannot be allowed to exercise or influence the public space to an unlimited degree.

Libertarianism is fundamentally anti-progressive because it presumes the individual is well-balanced enough to exercise the judgment of a community, without the counsel of the community. But the reality is we are not all equally well-balanced, and will not always make correct judgements, therefore Libertarianism in practice ends up being a convenient excuse to be intellectually lazy; to define one’s priorities to simply the Self. “I hold myself responsible, why shouldn’t my neighbor be equally so unto himself?” Anything other than Self is an imposition on Self. But there is no Self without a community. Therefore, from the perspective of the community, Libertarianism is an indulgence at best, a selfish, nihilistic ideology at worst. So, while we can indulge in Nietzsche’s ’super-man’ and contemplate the possibilities, we would do well to remember that we are all living in sin. Ayn Rand’s John Galt is a hero in the novel “Atlas Shrugged”, but he is a willful, cantankerous, and not altogether pleasant individual that would be Master of all (and everyone) he surveys.

While carbon restrictions may currently not reduce total consumption, the idea (ideology, if you will) of assigning a cost to something that is chemically damaging to our atmosphere above certain quantities, is in fact not only good, but necessary over the long run for our survival as a species by encouraging socially (and historically) good behavior.

That used to be conservative dogma.

The ‘conserve’ in ‘conservation’. In short, if you care about the world our children will inherit, you care about how much carbon is being thrown into the atmospheric mix. What some consider ‘religious excess’ in the idea of keeping ecosystems reasonably intact by limiting human incursion, is in fact not religious at all. I don’t take it on faith, or for God, that I support the idea of ecosystem maintenance, I take it on the fact that an ecosystem is an interdependence. We humans are a part of that ecosystem, but we share it with other creatures that ultimately have as much a right to live on a planet that supports them as any other.

As a practical matter, we can’t save every species. I get that. But we can say that we value the system as a whole and strive to preserve what we can in the name of not only future generations, but in the name of our very survival as a species. We can argue about where on the spectrum we currently are, with respect to carbon-loading the atmosphere, but you cannot argue the outcome when it reaches above a certain point.

If you believe what the gauges and arrows tell you about the data on the consequences of increasing atmospheric carbon, you have to believe-as a simple chemical reality of a closed system that is our Earth-that the ice will melt, the seas will rise, the forests will burn, and future generations will be suffering the consequences of today’s carbon profligacy. We can either let change happen to us (the ‘afflicted’ humanity), or we can be the agents of change (the ’stewardship’ by humanity) using the technical and engineering challenge as a way to direct the engines of global capitalism toward a desired outcome. Everybody wins. You get rich, I get an education and a job, and we all get to have more babies with a future a little less horrific than sitting in caves wondering where their next meal was going to come from.

While it may be convenient to imagine a time of rugged individualists, able to fend off life’s depredations with a bit of chicken soup and a good nights sleep, it is not so simple in today’s smaller and interconnected world. A nation of 300 million has x millions living in urban or suburban settings. When the private sector, operating in a free market environment, where things happen in a rather predatory manner, changes the economic landscape of entire regions of this country, what happens to those people? Those secretaries, those car dealers, those real estate agents, the folks working at the mall? How can a nation stand by and shrug its shoulders, and say “its your fault; I’m sure there’s something you could’ve done that could have prevented this (ie. your) predicament.” How is it that our public institutions, our government, is unable to address these realities of modern life? For too many in this nation, there is an idea that making government small, for the sake of making it inexpensive to citizens, is the call of the future.

They are wrong. It is an illusion.

We need a government that is as small as it can be, but big enough to do what a nation expects it to do for its citizens, when working hard and sacrificing is no longer enough. No nation should expect its citizens to simply endure economic hardship for lack of charity, to be less of a burden on the collective population. Spending less on the unemployed is convenient, when those that pay the most taxes (whether in the aggregate, like the 1% are fond of pointing out, or individually, as the poorer Tea-Party types like to point out) are led to believe (or cynically espouse such a belief…1-Percenters?) that personal responsibility includes some sort of omniscience about the future pretty much from your college years going forward. How realistic is that?

Part of playing in the ‘free market’ is to make sure those that make a market a market, ie human beings, have the opportunities necessary to become customers and yes, even job-creators, in that market. That has a cost. The market isn’t free. As any businessman will tell you ‘You have to spend money to make money’. The business of America may be Business, but its government is for the People. And corporations don’t exist without people. When we talk about the 99% occupying Wall Street, we could also be talking about the 99% of the people needed to run a corporation. The secretaries, the cleaners, the security guards, lower level management, the food, water, and service vendors. Its not the people in the boardrooms who have to worry about keeping their jobs, their mortgages, their schools, when the ‘free market’ decides its ‘creative destruction’ has chosen this place to wreak its necessary destruction.

But we, the rest of us who benefit from our free market system, have an obligation to keep that destruction to a minimum. For the sake of the market, after all, if we want to keep them, yes? And ultimately, keeping it to a minimum with foresight and planning. Not the kind of planning that tells the market what to do, but the kind that knows what’s coming down the road, the kind that walks a beat, and makes sure buyers and sellers aren’t cheating one another. Because, once business becomes unscrupulous to itself, it isn’t long before it becomes unscrupulous toward government. That’s why I find it ironic that the loudest voices calling for cutting spending and diminishing the scope of government, are often the winners in the System as it is today. But if you’re not one of those winners, and you are injured on the field, asking the referee to leave you alone with your opponent seems suicidal.

Citizens shouldn’t be asking ‘Why is government so big?’ It should be asking ‘How big should it be, for the function I think it should have?’ Keeping human beings functional in a market economy has a cost. Nothing in life is free. Those who pay the most in taxes have an obligation to ask: is it enough? Paying ‘the most’ taxes isn’t saying enough. The most of what? Maybe ‘what’ isn’t enough, even if you are paying ‘the most’ of it? Asking how your taxes are being spent is a better question. Does spending reflect what I believe my government should be doing both short term and long term is the best question. a no nation should accept that the least among its citizens should live with less opportunity. We no longer live in a world where there’s a plot of land in every yard big enough to tide a family over when times are hard. We don’t live in a world where

From the Haymarket Riots of 1886, to the Financial Crisis of 2008, it is past time for the two great actors on the American stage of history, to begin to acknowledge that their relationship to each other is, far from adversarial, in fact symbiotic. American Business would not have achieved, much less maintained, its global dominance were it not for the organizing principles and policies of the public sector. To advocate for the reversals of even the principles of economic federalism, is to advocate for a smaller, less influential role for American business on the world stage it helped create. If this is, in fact, the goal of modern American conservatism, it should be so stated instead of obfuscating about a ‘powerful role’ for America on the world stage, while creating a weak government domestically, unable to guarantee a reasonable economic existence for a majority of its working citizens. A starving, homeless, disenfranchised, citizen cannot, by definition, be a customer for business; and certainly will not remain a friend for business if his condition continues indefinitely. Therefore, it behooves business to not only accept a level of taxation of its business practices commensurate to size of the societal problem of ‘creative destruction’ within a market-based economy, but to also accept a level of regulation by public institutions to minimize the predatory inclinations of the ’supra-personal’ liberties American corporations enjoy here.

The financialization of the American economy over the past 40 years, is about product diversification over product quality and honest competition. ‘Choice’ over simplicity (or quality). Basically, American business realized they could buy the referee–our government–off. Having won WWII and ‘won’ the Cold War, Wall St. had a hard time figuring out what to do with its philosophical and economic windfall. Instead of imagining a Capitalism that partnered with the public sector in a meaningful way, we got a rapacious Capitalism that simply went the way of least resistance. The American electoral system is open to financial manipulation? Then lets do that. And defend it in the name of ‘freedom and liberty’. Freedom and Liberty to do what? To make money, as a private affair, with as little public oversight as possible. But since not all Men are created equal, or have equal opportunity, there will always be Winners and Losers. Do the successful have the right to the labor of the less successful, only to turn around and deny them a decent return in life, on the basis of Fate? And personal responsibility? Who are the rich to judge the lives of the lesser among us? What form of morality is that?

As far as the privatized electoral system goes…Its a shakedown, by the private interest, of the public good. Because the practice of American-style democracy in particular, and market-based economies in general, are not ‘free’ it cannot, in the final analysis, be fair.

The SCOTUS is the proverbial end-of-the-line that begins with our votes for county seats, through state government, a way-station at the (anachronistic?) Electoral College, before getting to the elected offices of Senator and President (who nominates the SC justices) of the nation. Our bought-and-paid-for electoral system and politicians are choosing their voters, not the other way around. If you don’t like where our nation is headed, and with it the balance between public and private interests, Americans MUST begin looking in their backyard and start demanding an end to computer-enhanced gerrymandering of their state districts.

This is where the corruption begins. Don’t be fooled by staring at the shiny object called Washington DC. The root of our nation’s ills lies closer to home, where they don’t want you to look: the state-controlled system of determining where and how your district lines are drawn, aka as “redistricting”. The are no federal or state laws governing how and who does this supremely important but boring-sounding job. Do you feel unrepresented in your own country? Look at what your state legislators are doing to your vote in your district. They determine whether your vote (for anything) counts or is statistically irrelevant due to being artificially diluted by partisan redistricting.

Learn more here. The political parties are essentially fictional, the only interest in Washington is the corporate interest, and they are fast decoupling themselves from the empty husk of an American economy and latching themselves and their influence on the ‘global’ economy. They can do it because they’ve made sure that only the ‘right’ votes count come election time.

Three of the four recent (and politically controversial) recess appointments by Obama were for the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), set up under FDR as part of the National Industrial Recovery Act during the depths of the Depression. For the first time in American history it put a federal stamp of approval on giving workers the right to organize and hold their employers accountable. Always a sore spot for that Ayn Rand-inspired fringe element of American business, the NLRB was relatively uncontroversial in its operation until the Bush administration, when it allowed its five board members (who function as judges in a special court, all appointed by the president but, as usual, subject to consent by the Senate) to dwindle down to two, creating a ‘crisis of quorum’, as a way to quietly remove the NLRB from adjudicating disputes when Bush’s nominees were seen as unqualified by then-filibustering Democrats.

The dispute ultimately decided by the Supreme Court in 2010, its ruling required a full board for any NLRB-rulings to have the force of law and returned the controversy back to the President and Congress, forcing them to compromise on nominees. The Senate GOP now refused to do so, and Obama forced the issue with his recess appointments.

Now, this NYTimes editorial illustrates a recent NLRB ruling that basically says employer-sponsored arbitration agreements are trumped by the existing federal right for employees to engage in collective action. The Chamber of Commerce, a trade group, is predictably, screaming bloody murder. And the National Federation of Independent Business, also a trade group, has filed a lawsuit claiming the recess appointments by the President, allowing this ‘labor-friendly’ ruling, as unconstitutional.

Meanwhile, the Justice Dept has already given its opinion that the GOP-inspired gimmick in the Senate, designed to preempt ANY recess appointments by the president, didn’t stand the smell-test, and that the recess appointments were, indeed, legal.

It looks like, once again, the Supreme Court is going to play Daddy to the squabbling children.

New York State Redistricting…The ‘12 Elections Are In Jeopardy

This article on the current NYS redistricting fight (Cuomo promises a ‘fair and independent’ process, the politicians in Albany balk), is a perfect example about why most citizens don’t know about this subject, don’t care about this subject, but wonder why they feel disconnected from their representatives and the country has gone to hell politically.

Here the press does a terrible job by not giving some context about what this game is, and why its important for governance, both locally and on the federal level. But what do we get? Gobbledygook about lawsuits and ‘he said, she said’ stuff between Governor and Assembly leader, with one line about ‘…Senate, Assembly, and Congressional district boundaries…’ As if that explains how the map-making affects our political system.

Meanwhile, across the nation, known partisan voters are corralled into partisan districts by partisan politicians…and we wonder why our government doesn’t work? If you freeze out the opposition in a district, elections don’t matter anymore, only primaries do. And primaries are a one-party conversation with itself.

The goal should be (and its the idea behind an ‘independent commission’) a rough equality of partisan voters in a given district, making elections about issues, not ideology, again. The best ideas of a community win (not just the most ideologically ‘pure’), and we get politicians who represent a plurality of opinion from their district, instead of a party with an agenda authored from faraway K Street, Washington.

But rules matter! Map-making should be as politics-free as possible. Then we can get back to the people’s business in our respective states, and in Washington.

America was built to define the civilization of the Industrial Age. It did that, winning two world wars, and projecting a relatively benevolent ’soft’ power around the globe for over 70 years and 2 postwar generations. It now finds itself in thrall to a political minority (masquerading as a majority) who’s only path to power is to demonize the idea of government, dismantle government, and to render public institutions to simply be the executors of corporate initiatives that have passed a public referendum. That is not democracy as the Founders intended.

Yes, they may have been landholders, yes they may have been slaveholders, yes they may even have defined a slave as 2/3rds of a man. But they did so as…citizens of a Republic, not as corporate officers of a nameless, faceless private interest, in thrall to the idea of a christianity-inspired individualism bent on global hegemony through the cross-ownership of corporate stock certificates.

The political minority that is the GOP is intellectually unsound, morally bankrupt, and ruthless in the pursuit of power. The Establishment GOP is simply using the energy of the Tea Party to tie up Democrats until 2012. And if the Tea Party manages to get a candidate nominated as their runner, so be it. Whatever the result is can’t be bad for business, because the only thing bad for business is government, right? Which party is the party of government? The Democrats. Therefore, goes the thinking, we’ve got to eliminate Democrats politically. Let corporate America fund the political system that operates for the benefit of corporate America. That means these newly-enfranchised corporate ‘persons’ can, and in fact, see themselves as having the right to call the shots, as ‘investors’ in the electoral and political infrastructure of the country. But the public is slowly being disenfranchised from actual input in the priorities of government, since their votes are merely the chips in a larger game whose rules they are largely unaware of. Decades are spent quietly shaping the tax code for the benefit of corporations, shaping policy and bills for the benefit of corporations, but god forbid Americans want the ability to pool themselves into a group that can bargain the market down to lower costs and initiate national standards of care. To hear one side tell it, the spectre of totalitarianism hangs in the air as a consequence of America aligning a public interest within the sphere of private markets. The GOP doesn’t seek to govern so much as it seeks to disable the government’s ability to do so–if only in the pursuit of winning elections (on behalf of corporations).

Business just doesn’t get it. And they won’t. Not until business schools start thinking of themselves as social engineers as much as financial engineers. As stewards of the civilization that allows markets to exist in the first place as much as the protectors of private privilege in the name of matching buyers to sellers. And not until they realize that the very essence of their power–Business–will not exist without customers, but who are instead being removed as customers because they can no longer afford the goods and services offered while living on a shrinking family budget and within an increasingly precarious job-market. In fact, business *needs* government to provide access, and enable citizens to become (and remain) customers. Instead, we get the incredibly short-sighted demonization of Government, and the negative consequences that follow.

Regulated capitalism is like pumping iron, it may sometimes hurt, but it works. It works by challenging companies to excellence in business, rather than excellence in private promotion to public servants in order to achieve a minimum statutory burden (ie. less taxes). Endlessly manipulating public policy externalities (industrial and financial deregulation, and tax-code opportunism) results in lazy companies resulting in lazy ethics, lazy corporate boards, and finally, lazy markets and lazy government. America isn’t uncompetitive because the world is taking advantage of us (though it soon might), America is uncompetitive because we waste time questioning things that have long been answered in other countries: What is the purpose of government? What role does government have? What is the relationship between government and citizens as defined by the Constitution?

The latest overview on the districting battles happening across the country:

Battle To Shape Maps And Congress Go To Courts

For those not fully aware, drawing district maps is the game that has largely enabled Republicans across the nation to create an artificially inflated majority in many state legislatures since the 1980’s, causing the federal Congress to be increasingly shifted to the Right politically, in tandem with the ability of those with money to leverage money to influence the entire system.

Much like the financialization of markets was enabled in the 1980’s and ’90s by computer technology executing trades magnitudes of times faster than the older rules governing market transactions were designed for, and had a profound influence on American capital formation, the influence of computers on drawing district maps to reflect population changes has had equally profound implications for American democracy, functionally still operating its electoral system as if it were the 19th century.

Yet this crucial technicality, the mismatch between regulation and technology is, unlike its Wall Street cousin, rarely mentioned. It appears to be a true ‘third-rail’ in American discourse about its electoral system. It remains an obscure topic because, in this privatized American electoral system of ours, those with money to spend, as well as those spending the money, seem to prefer citizens remain unaware of such details of the electoral machinery. When it is mentioned, the computer is talked about in terms of voting convenience and ballot accuracy. Never in terms of enabling politicians to ‘pick their voters’ and to execute that apportionment with map-making at lightning speed, in an environment where there is no law or rules governing this critical piece of the electoral machinery. Even the Times article above gives the reader the inside baseball of electoral abuse, but never mentions the technological context that makes the current situation historically unique from the previous 250 years of gerrymandering.

There is nothing in the Constitution that expresses a federal interest in the conduct of federal elections within the states, and there likely will never be one absent a constitutional amendment. The closest tool available, as the article mentions, is the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Unfortunately, the act is not an ideal method to combat states gerrymandering because its purpose was to correct voting disenfranchisement by states based on race, not politicized map-making. This key distinction is best described from the VRA wiki:

While the title of the Voting Rights Act might imply that it established an explicit right to vote for U.S. citizens to vote in presidential elections, there is no such federal right. However, the Voting Rights Act and three constitutional amendments that prevent discrimination in granting the franchise have established in United States Supreme Court jurisprudence that there is a “fundamental right” in the franchise, even though voting remains a state-granted privilege. However, states are given considerable leeway when it comes to this “fundamental right”.

In fact, the VRA has become a door through which even those engaging in political gerrymandering, have been able to argue against de-politicized redistricting on the basis that minorities would lose representation due to normal changes in population over time, effectively arguing that the VRA *requires* district maps based on race. So far, the Supreme Court has declined to agree with that interpretation of the Act, which is basically an attempt to use racial homogeneity within a district to excuse the larger strategy of diminishing the electoral impact of the opposite party on the federal level, regardless of the total number of votes in a state for the candidates of a given party. This is the mechanism by which a state evenly divided, say, between citizens voting for Democratic representatives to Congress and those voting Republican, can nevertheless appear in Congress with a delegation that is skewed overwhelmingly in favor of one party over the other. The slate does not accurately reflect the voting patterns within a state to send a proportional number of representatives to Washington. And it certainly does not honor the concept of ‘One Person, One Vote’ for the House of Representatives in the US Congress. The political effect of this manipulation can be seen in the abysmal relationship between the parties in Congress, and the sense of disenfranchisement of voters, where national purpose has been replaced with a low and dirty ‘permanent election’ whose only purpose is to win further electoral advantage, rather than compromise and govern according to the wishes of voters.

It is a system that invites the unscrupulous to exercise their dark intentions, and its all in the unregulated ability of drawing those district maps to favor politicians instead of people.

Grouping voters together for the political benefit of a party and its members, rather than to simply reflect changing demographics within a region of a state, is what is meant by ‘politicians picking their voters’ instead of the people picking their politicians in an honest contest of personalities and ideas.

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/video/candidates-occupy-wall-street-14766322?tab=9482931&section=2808950&playlist=2808979

First he says you can’t ‘blame the victim’ (ie the economically disenfranchised protesting @ OWS and elsewhere), but then says we/they should ‘blame government’ and ‘government policies’. As if the perpetrator of the ‘victim’ did not perpetrate its violence through the public institutions of government, by advocating (and getting) the deregulation of finance, decoupling worker rights from trade policy, domestically and abroad, and finding political success in a rigidly anti-revenue stance that will bankrupt the nation in the name of ideological purity. He uses the results of the flawed system to blame the process, instead of the beneficiary that is manipulating the system. He’ll admit that banks were ‘part of the problem’, but that the banks were just doing what politicians were telling them to do. As if decades of politicians didn’t come to Washington with an agenda in their pretty little heads, about what government could do for those banksters that just helped their respective political party to pay off enough Big Media bills to get elected (and then change the districting rules to keep them there).

In America, you get the government of the payee. It does NOT ipso facto follow that government is intrinsically incapable of the task of governing, as Ron Paul and others would have you believe, it simply does the bidding of those that pay for the (political) system that staffs that government with representatives. Ron Paul’s entire Conservo-Libertarian philosophy rests on the premise that Government, by definition, is incapable of fulfilling whatever responsibilities the public deems it should be responsible for. Should we be surprised that government is ineffective, when the entire privatized electoral system is designed to render it ineffective? Capitalism is not a democracy!

And Ron Paul’s notion that we can just dismiss 3 generations worth of New Deal investment in the idea of Government administering a social safety net that still protects tens of millions of Americans *from* the (worst) shortcomings of the market, rather than conveniently making out Government to be the cause of market shortcomings, is hubris at its worst. Yes, politicians passed the legislation. Of course they did. But Ron Paul betrays his agenda by only asking half the question: Who wrote the legislation? What were those politicians saying (or not saying) about Why they were involved in sponsoring a given bill? That would be a truer picture about who, what, and why, our Congress passes the legislation it does, and that gives Ron Paul such fits of laissez-faire simplicity. But he doesn’t. Because it would be inconvenient for his defense of Freedom and Liberty to acknowledge the possibility that perhaps a private presence in our public institutions creates distortions and disincentives that have nothing to do with public institutions being intrinsically incapable of functioning in the capacity the public has come to expect. That is, in my book, intellectually dishonest.

If he did ask the whole question, he’d be forced to acknowledge a corporate presence in this nation’s public institutions. Too often we hear reports of campaign contributors not just asking for favors, but actually drafting the legislation that will affect their business. The idea of a social safety cannot simply be dismissed if we define civilization as ultimately being neighbor looking out for neighbor. Whether he’s next door, or in the next state. That neighbor’s welfare will ultimately affect me whether I like it or not. It demands a responsibility from a citizen that expects a peaceful existence to submit to some minimum collective authority, preferably with his/her consent. From the neighborhood, to the village, to the town, to the city, to the state, to the nation.

If Government is run by those who don’t believe in that mission (as it has been at least under every GOP president since Reagan), why should citizens blame Government for something its not being allowed to do? Don’t ‘get rid of the Fed’, make the Fed do what its charter says it should:

“The job of this bureaucracy is to maintain employment, keep prices stable, and keep interest rates low by regulating monetary policy.”

Who is Ron Paul to question the idea of the Fed as a protector-of-last-resort of the American economy? Absolutely criticize its role in practice, but don’t tell Americans the road to salvation is by wholesale amputation of public institutions.

You talk as if government is an imposition. It’s not. It is a necessary condition of civilization. The question shouldn’t be whether or not government is in our lives, it should be about its quality and purpose in our lives.

And by the way, as long as we’re talking about things ‘in our lives’, we can’t look critically at government, and not look critically at corporations.

You don’t accept government taking away your guns, in order to protect your Freedom? What about corporations taking away your liberty? Ever sign an NDA when taking on a job? If you haven’t yet, you will soon. That’s a legally-inforceable document limiting your First Amendment rights.

To be against the idea of authority, is to be against any authority. In the absence of human authority, there is only nature’s authority. May the strongest–and only the strongest–survive.

So, you have identified one source of authority in your life: the government, or ‘gubmint’ in street parlance.

But getting rid of the enemy you know, and trading it in for the dozen, immortal, limited liability, enemies you don’t know but let into your lives every day, and taking over the one authority you had any control over, is just the dumbest of the dumb things a citizen could do. To willingly turn over the keys to public authority, and give it to the ‘job creators’, who have done nothing but create rising levels of poverty in this country.

Capitalism is based on trust. Trust, in the public domain, must not only be enforced, but be enforceable. Enforcement is the explicit endorsement of, and in, market trust–or any kind of trust (think of the police, building codes, labor laws) by the public–just as the implicit endorsement of trust is between private buyers and sellers in a capitalist system.

The system doesn’t work without the presence of a disinterested third party, representing the interests of those under the temporal authority of private power, otherwise known as Corporations. That third party has no interest in preventing the exchange of private contracts, it simply referees to all players, that all players can bargain with confidence. The absence of a referee means confidence goes to the powerful, regardless of purpose. That is no longer a ‘free market’.

The idea of ‘free markets’ cannot mean freedom from law. And if the law is written by those seek only freedom from the public restrictions of common law, then they advocate lawlessness.

The powerful are becoming lawless, by claiming that the very public institutions that were created to uphold the law, as understood by previous generations, are ‘robbing them’ of their power to do business. And they have managed, under the guise of ‘conservatism’, or even ‘libertarianism’ to convince significant enough numbers of American voters, that the problems they perceive in American life, are the problem of an unresponsive government.

There is, unfortunately, an element of truth in the ‘unresponsive government’ part of that message. But what isn’t said is whose perceptions count, that of American corporations (who fund the electoral system), or that of individual American citizens (the ‘currency’) of the electoral system?

And anyway, bringing Government in alignment with private power is, by definition, elitist, and creates a government by and for the private interest.

Think of it as the Two Minds Are Better Than One theory.

If you believe that two minds are often better, more agile, more intuitive, more flexible, and less given to foreseeable mistakes, then you must agree with the idea that a group of individuals, as a social unit, is more capable and more powerful than any individual, in a society governed by rules of mutual consent. Since we do live in a nominally ‘lawful’ environment, in a constitutional republic, that group of individuals is an intrinsically more capable instrument of human will than an individual could ever hope to become. That is a power over the individual that must be, first, recognized. Then, accommodated in such a way as to encourage useful and socially positive functions in a constitutional republic. That is to say, the private interest and the profit motive are NOT mutually exclusive to the public interest.

They cannot be. After all, we’re talking about the exercise of self-interest and self-interested parties to an interest. The self-interest is, by definition, at the exclusion of ‘other’ interests. Therefore, morality and ethics (always considered in relation to other forms of possible behavior) is necessarily limited in the pursuit of profit. It can’t be the place of a group within many other groups and individuals, to want to be the judge and jury of its own actions.

Firstly, the individuals won’t like it, because they are already less powerful than groups of individuals and will require a means to enter into ad hoc relationships to counteract the potentially destructive actions of groups of individuals that necessarily limit the collective concern with morality and ethics.

Second, since not all self-interested groups are alike, it is in the interest of ALL self-interested groups to accept a degree of greater authority, often in the form of public institutions, to enforce a code of behavior conducive–not just to self-interested, profit-seeking, groups–but conducive to the well-being and sustainability of the individual human beings in those self-interested, profit-seeking groups; that live lives outside of the corporate grouping.

And thirdly, a focused group is the most powerful form of human initiative on the planet. If only for the sake of the survival of the species, it cannot be ignored for its potential to enable human ingenuity to play its part in helping mankind fulfill its destiny in the universe. But humans beings being imperfect (and knowing this to be true), we attempt to build in certain breakers; certain mechanisms, that have the effect of limiting the power of powerful groups of people through forms of public mediation. Our constitutional republic, our government, exists to fulfill that job of public mediation between powerful groups. Groups that have been given such power by the mutual consent of the governed under our constitutional republic.

Such consent is not, and was never meant to be, adversarial–in the absence of flawed human judgement. That’s why its called ‘consent’, and governed by elections, and not ‘coercion’ dictated by decree. It is the job of government to protect the public expression of government from being too limited to be effective for the kind of government citizens expect when they vote for their representatives. That is to say, an individual, with an intrinsically different moral and ethical horizon than the more limited variety exercised by self-interested groups, who nevertheless exist also within these self-interested groups, need public institutions to prevent powerful groups of self-interest to exercise unaccountable power over them as individuals.

But how do we reconcile limited morality on behalf of a self-defined group, with a more ‘universal’ morality on behalf of the larger, constituent, society? A society that gives license to the self-defined, self-interested group, to conduct its business? That, my friends, is the purpose of government. Government is not an imposition. It is a necessary requirement for civilization. If we want to speak of reasonable availability of food, shelter, and clothing, for everyone while maintaining a global environment that guarantees human sustainability; then we need the focused self-interest of corporations to fulfill the material components of that goal, while protecting the individual from the unintended consequences of the limited moral and ethical horizons of the focused, self-interested, yet powerful group of individuals known as corporations.

In thinking about this beginning-of-century mess we’re in, particularly with respect to the US. I began again, as I lately do, to think about the morals and ethics of corporations. And I realized something.

The last tectonic power-shift in Western government were the revolutions of the 18th, 19th and early 20th, centuries. It consisted basically of a newly-minted middle class using ideas of plebiscites and institutional representation to call for democracies ‘by the people, and for the people’, as an alternative to the existing monarchies, or better-put ‘divinely-justified benevolent dictatorships’.

The one thing these two opposing camps had in common came from the idea that each believed in a better version of what the State is, why it should exist, and under whose authority it would function. But they both believed in the State being intrinsic to a functional and distinct society with an interest in the protection of that society from unwanted outside influences.

I posit to you, dear reader, that we are on the cusp of another tectonic power-shift. Only this time, one of the two camps doesn’t care about the State. It seeks to mitigate and usurp the power of the State without an alternative vision for what the State should be, why the State should exist, and under whose authority the State will operate.

It consists of a struggle between the private power of unregulated capitalism (largely an American invention), and the older, public power, of the State.

We know the benefits that were brought about by ending despotic rule in the West over the past two and half centuries. Public institutions, for all their faults, can be held accountable, and have been over that time. Those who, today, seek a primacy of private power, in the name of ‘liberty and freedom’, over the State, need answer, on behalf of citizens, workers, and humanity as a whole, when the ancien regime is usurped, what will you put in its place?

How does humanity live, when governments cease to have power within their own borders?

For that is the logical conclusion when the State, consisting of public institutions, allows the creation of a private social institution that is immortal, shape-shifting, and possessed with limited liability. That is the definition of the modern Corporation. Allowing an immortal, shape-shifting ‘person’ to assume the power of public institutions is guaranteed to fail, for the same reason any autocratic system has failed: unaccountable power–private power–is not, and cannot ever be, perfect. Human beings people those corporations; those corporations and their boards are fallible (even if they are immortal), and venues for private social control, for the legitimate purpose of achieving the goals of the board and its business plan.

But a business plan for a company is not the same as a constitution for a country. A business plan shouldn’t have to care how the transportation networks are built and who pays for it. A business plan shouldn’t have to care how the old, sick, and infirm, spend the rest of their lives and who is going to pay for it. A business plan shouldn’t have to worry about fielding a military, or paying for an intelligence service, to avoid deadly confrontations with neighbors.

But if we give government over to business, that’s what business will be increasingly called upon to do. And it will fail. The most freedom-loving people will find, in the end, that they cannot do for themselves all the things required for survival in modern times. There will always be more children than there are teachers. That requires schools. Goods and services need to be shipped. That requires a transportation network. People will get sick, and will seek out a doctor. That requires education and transportation, for medicine to be administered–even for those who can’t afford it.

It doesn’t matter whether that power is public or private, unaccountable power will fail humanity’s test of consent.

The Corporation is on the verge of capturing the American government. Our elections are already virtual plebiscites on corporate-acceptable candidates. They are already capable of determining which politicians get the ‘best’ votes.

A kind of coup is taking place. Powerful forces are moving to redefine the nature of the State. On one side is accountable, public, power, given by the consent of the governed by public document, and subject to periodic plebiscite. On the other is unaccountable, private, power, that behaves pathologically in pursuit of its private goals, without regard to the public interest of accountability or plebiscite. It merely seeks profit. And in that pursuit, and that pursuit alone, mankind may yet lose His soul.

In his recent EEJ keynote address, Krugman critiques the economic profession, during this economic crisis, as having a form of academic amnesia, brought upon by decades of a kind of badly-incentivized iconoclastic research; a self-reinforcing attitude of promoting ideas and research with strictly quantifiable (and therefore mathematically verifiable) inputs, while ignoring centuries of awareness that real economics must accommodate a kind of flexibility that accounts for the human dimension in market decision-making. Sort of academic navel-gazing at their fancy math and computer models. When the crisis hit, they had forgotten that their profession had seen, and thought about, this kind of problem before.

That got me to thinking beyond economists and the information they sift through, and about education in general. Specifically, education and knowledge in the Age Of Internet.

Its easy to feel like your knowledgeable when ‘learning’ new things is easy, and in fact, for many, even pleasurable. But, just like for academics of the economic persuasion, its not enough to revel in the pleasures of easy access to, or manipulation of, information. It becomes increasingly important to know how to most effectively leverage all that information, by knowing what you’re looking for, and why.

In the computer programming parlance, ‘Garbage in, garbage out’. If you input bad data, don’t expect good results at the output. In a time of information surfeit, of surplus, its not enough to know you need to be able to solve problems. You need to know how to ask the right questions in order to frame the problem correctly and find the right solution for the right reasons. That may smack some as being ‘relativistic’ (ie. exercising relativism) rather than being ‘idealistic’ (ie. exercising an ideology). If so, welcome to the real world, where there are shades of gray in all things. Sometimes its useful to compare the extremes at both ends of the spectrum, but more often than not, our ethics, morals, beliefs, lives, are forced to accommodate shades of gray. Or, better put, sometimes finer distinctions than simply right or wrong, black or white, are necessary to see the real world in all its possibilities. Our ethics, morals, and beliefs, should start from the premise of many valid possibilities, and only from there should we attempt to distinguish the ‘more correct’, or relevant, solution/belief/or value.

For an eskimo, in an environment of scarcity, its enough to know that one needs to find food–just about any food–to maintain sufficient caloric intake for survival. The question becomes ‘whether I will eat today’. For a Yanomami tribesman of the Amazon jungle, its irrelevant–or at least not very useful–to know whether one will eat, as potential food is all around you. The better question is ‘What should I eat?’ and ‘Why should I eat it now?’ Are you eating for sickness? Are you eating for energy? Are you eating for taste? (All questions of a secondary nature for an Eskimo)

The real reason healthcare systems should ultimately be at least single-payer, if not actually a public utility, is because the private sector will never provide the level of commitment to excellence and integrity of character that drive the social dynamic in public institutions. The large majority of government employees, are not doing the job for the money. From scientists, engineers, to middle management bureaucrats, government is routinely lagging the private sector in salaries. But at least as often (if not more so), what you do get is people who love the job for the service. They know who they’re working for, and not least, they pay taxes too, so they’ve got skin in the game. What about those generous benefits, at tax-payers expense? Well, the public-sector union benefits that have accrued over the years could be said to make up for the discrepancy in base salary with the private sector for similar work done, but one could argue that its also a willingness to take less now and more later, in the out years of life. That is a display of character on behalf of the employee that would not be, and is not, expected in the private sector. While there is some concern for a ‘brain drain’ of talent from government to the private sector due to wage disparities, it doesn’t appear to have (yet) reached crisis proportions.

[If the private sector were smart, it would offer ’smart’ salary options that could bring back pensions and benefits lost in recent decades] At the end of the day, a hard-working government employee is serving more than a collection of people in competition with other collections of people to maximize productivity and profit in exchange for a negotiated level of remuneration for self, family, and company. A community, to be sure, but a special type of community. A community on a mission to win. To win at whatever the goal of the community is defined to be–by those in leadership positions within that community.

At first blush, one could say, “Hey, Tom, haven’t you just described the social dynamic of ALL human communities down through time?” In reply, I say ‘yes’, but with a crucial difference. Before the rise of the organized private interest, by which I mean the Western phenomenon of a statutory framework governing the definition and operational mandate of corporations, all organized communities of people were in the service of one of 3 interrelated functions: the physical survival of the immediate community (defence), the nutritional requirements of the immediate community and whatever trade available in the region (food), and the spiritual requirements of the community (arts, religion).

The communal purpose of the modern corporation is much more limited, and some would say self-interested, than the reasons for being a farmer, a priest, or a soldier, all of which essentially guided the lives, thoughts, development, and histories of eons of human generations and the societies they built. We marvel today, at the time and energy previous civilizations put into building monuments; as representations of aspirational attitude, they are all communal in nature, from the pyramids, the walls, the roads, they all served the community in expressing the purpose of a people. A people of what? A people with a common language, a people with a common ethnicity, perhaps a common history. That kind of community of people felt it necessary to define its existence by the pursuit of a common good, not just of families within the community, but of a common good larger than any family. The behavior of individual citizens was circumscribed by the goals articulated by a ruling class (priesthood/military) tasked with establishing and maintaining such order as was necessary to fulfill the goals.

Why should the material well-being of individuals be *solely* dependent (as modern conservatives would have it) on the operation, function, and ideology of a private, non-democratic, social institution like the Corporation? I think that is fundamentally wrong, and the fundamental argument for certain social needs to be fulfilled by public, and not private, institutions. Needs like healthcare.

Just as the military requires trained and committed individuals for the fundamental good of defending the nation, we need the same alignment of interest and means for a healthcare system, which is also in the service of a fundamental good of a healthy community. The limited interest of the private sector is ill-suited to the long-term interest of such a public service. The profit-motive is at the expense of the public good. It is for such needs that all manner of public institutions should be seen as ‘needing’ to exist, rather than simply tolerated, if not outright demonized. Of course, humans do, as humans will, even in the public sector. The idea that the public sector is ‘bad’, ‘evil’, and ‘wasteful’ is a self-serving conservative trope suggesting that private corporations are necessarily better at being responsible actors in society, or stewards of the environment, not to mention of shareholder interests. But open virtually any daily newspaper (or website) and stories of corporate malfeasance, self-serving public relations, and outright mismanagement, are legion.

We’re not talking about a Utopia, we’re talking about the incentivization, the harmonization, of people within both public and private social institutions, for the common good of the community that BOTH sectors occupy. By this, I mean nation-states. As to whether the private sector can have a self-interest that is truly aligned with a public interest, one only has to look at the American military procurement system. In the name of the Common Good of the defense of the nation, private corporations seemingly will stop at nothing–even driving the nation into debtor status–to take every advantage of the public wealth. There is seemingly no thought within the boardrooms of the nation’s defense contractors, of NOT developing novel ways of supplying the military with weapons of chilling efficiency…and cost to the public. And ultimately for nothing more than the self-interested goal of maximizing profits and minimizing expenditures. Good for the corporation, bad for public finances. More broadly, without reasonable public oversight, the corporation is a predator of the public wealth. And to the extent it can manipulate public institutions, it will always seek to maximize its self-interest, even if the cost is of effective public institutions, for that is an external cost. There is no place on the corporate spreadsheet for the maintenance of the public interest other than payment of requisite taxes, even though the benefits to the corporation of a robust public sector is essential to the daily operations of the corporation.

All tripe. Obama’s bailout ensured that people would still be insolvent to the companies that he bailed out. Diversity motors is a good example. His hostile and ignorant attitude towards small business is blatant socialism. May he, and his ilk, be quickly relegated to the dust bin of history.

Obama Nixon

…to which I replied:

“Hostile attitude toward small business”? Where ARE you getting your news from? Tell me how this hurts small business? Tell me how the GOP would do things different? Do you really see Republicans handing out checks to folks like you or me? No, I didn’t think so. So, if you are not for cutting 10s of millions of Americans loose into poverty by doing nothing, and your not for taxpayer-financed loans to stabilize Wall Street, and your not for providing credit to American small (or medium?) business, and you’re CERTAINLY not for handing out government checks to every taxpayer, and you recognize you can’t EVER tax-break your way into consumer demand, just what the ding-dong are you FOR????

I often lament how this administration is perceived. I wonder “where the heck is the Democratic Frank Luntz” if the country’s electorate has proven itself so responsive to Luntzian sloganeering? But recently, I’ve begun to think that the GOP is painting itself into a real corner. Check this:
- The GOP mantra for 2012 is likely to be “Obama has made everything worse with his socialistic policies, we will return to ‘conservative principles’”.
- The DNC response is simply “that’s what we had before; you claim our response made it worse. Your ‘return to principles’ is what we had for eight years under Bush…and you call that a solution???”

Where is this nation gonna go when the GOP finally jumps the shark with its supply of demonizing emotionalizing infantilizing demagoguery on behalf of the top tenth of one percent of wage earners? Private institutions are by definition undemocratic. Our public institutions are the only thing we have left. We must make our votes count and fix the electoral system that determines our representation in the nation’s Congress. No more gerrymandering! No more politicians picking their voters to create a manufactured majority!

A friend of mine brought me to this pic of Obama with the takeaway headline of a speech given in Indonesia as a typed tagline.

OK, I thought, I’m not going to make it my profile pic (as some FB flack suggested in a text box), I don’t wear my politics on my sleeve like that, but its too bad FOX will pump that clip for all the jingoism a Glenn Beck rant can rally, “It SOUNDS like the President is waving the white flag! It SOUNDS like–since bin Laden is Muslim–we’re no longer going after bin Laden!! The terrorist of 9-11, given a free pass by a President that MIGHT? not even be an American?!!! Is Barack Obama a Muslim? I don’t KNOW. But I DO know his middle name is Hussain. Can anyone point me in the direction of a Christian parent that would give their child a name like Hussain? Or Barack for that matter? Can you? Didn’t think so.”

And so on…

So, idly checking my day’s email, I came across a foreign policy article in the Times entitled “In Curt Exchange, U.S. Faults Israel on Housing” In the ninth paragraph it says “Mr. Netanyahu was in New York, meeting business people”. Just that evening I was told about a Black Empowerment forum where guest speaker Amiri Baraka apparently chastised those of color on Wall Street being part of the machine that seeks to bring down President Obama. “Sure, they voted for him”, Mr. Baraka said. “But what have they done to support him since?”

And it clicks. Recent headlines about the ‘antagonism’ between business and this administration, between Wall Street and this administration, and how some of the richest people in America are bankrolling the modern Know-Nothings into the halls of power, with their coats being held by the GOP leadership. It starts sounding like a win-win for the GOP:Whip up the “Barack just doesn’t get business” angle, discouraging those minority Wall Street employees and stakeholders from bucking the Wall Street Establishment, start funding GOP PACs to outright lie about everything this administration has done in the past two years and give those business school grads a reminder about which master they serve. Is it the people’s business? No. Is it Wall Street’s business? Yes. So shut the hell up, get with the program, and get Business back in the driver’s seat in Washington. Presto, the ‘Change President’ becomes the ‘Changed Presidency’. The GOP wins a historic ’swing’ election and gets to redistrict its way to a partisan electoral advantage in 2012.

Meanwhile, back in New York, ‘Bibi’ Netanyahu is meeting with the kinds of people who bankrolled the most vicious and misleading election campaign in recent memory. I mean, Democrats were accused of every sin but eating babies for breakfast. I can no longer believe there isn’t ’sotto voce’ support in the Israeli leadership for eliminating this inconvenient President; one who says things like “America will never be at war with Islam”. The same crowd funding AIPAC, the GOP’s favorite Jewish banker and indispensable for directing wads of campaign cash their way, and that won’t countenance a word about American lawmakers defending the legitimate interests of two million Palestinians living next door to Israel, as being equally–and fundamentally–in the long-term interest of Israel’s survival as a nation.

These are not people for whom the distinction of a religion as being separate from individuals who kill in the name of a religion, is particularly important. The one because of a fundamentally racist attitude toward the ethnicity of their citizens, and the other because it strengthens the currency (pardon the pun) of political power in America. Never mind any legal and rightful Palestinian claim to land within and surrounding Jerusalem. [One wonders, looking at AIPAC’s current homepage, with its headline article titled ‘Lawmakers Raise Questions on Saudi Arms Sale’, whether they understand the dilemma they are leading the world into: We question sending arms to the world’s largest energy supplier, who is requesting them in the name of defending itself from the world’s (likely) newest nuclear power, Iran, who gained that capacity, power, and prestige when America followed AIPAC’s last siren call to ‘bring democracy to the Middle East’ and topple the dictator Saddam Hussein! You can’t have it both ways. You can’t question why America seeks to protect its Mideast gas-station, the Saudis, while you want us to go all-out medieval on your latest arch-enemy Iran, while you play games with the American political system and bankroll the GOP thugs who don’t really give a rat’s a** what Jews and Muslims want over there, as long as the GOP keeps winning over here. Winning elections, that is. Even if it means kneecapping a sitting president actively engaged in getting peace talks restarted between Israel and Palestine.]

The GOP, supposedly the ‘party of business’, also presided over the gutting of American public institutions and their ability to focus public opinion on public problems. [What we have now is corporate opinion on public problems. Wall Street by and large signs off on what DC wants to get done] Things like ‘how do we educate the next generation effectively?’, or ‘what kind of mix of an economy would be good for America’s future?’, or ‘how do we put Americans back to work?’ are all slogans that headed political attack ads instead of policy papers in this past election cycle.

There didn’t seem to be anything the GOP wouldn’t say to demonize Democrats. In a quiet moment, we might wonder why we can’t buy eggs anymore without fearing death by salmonella contamination, or why energy companies can go for years racking up violation after violation, with no penalty to speak of until they spill nearly 200 million gallons of crude into the Gulf of Mexico, but during election season? No, no, the consequences of twenty years of corporate and industrial deregulation will NOT be mentioned. Instead, we’ll scare voters to put us, the GOP, the ultimate insiders and good ‘ole boys, back in power, and this time we PROMISE to make government small but without all that pesky spending of tax dollars that you Tea Party-ers seem so passionately against. “We can get with that”, the GOP is saying, with a nod to Wall Street, and the hey-I-don’t-mind-helping-out-the-leader-of-the-Jewish-homeland-of-those-bankrolling-our-political-system crowd.

How convenient. Take the money, lie through your teeth about what this administration has done in the last two years to prevent all economic hell from breaking loose, knock down a President you made unpopular, give Iran a big stick in the bargain by allowing Bibi to torpedo any progress toward lowering the temperature in the Middle East (nevermind the 30,000 American troops still in Iraq who will be holding the line if Iraqis can’t put a lid on their Iranian-backed Shia insurgents) and continue where you left off in 2008, following the most destructive economic policies since the 1920’s and follow that up with the most contractionary policies since the 1930’s.

Heck, if the paradigm holds, we should have another World War on our hands by the middle of the next administration. I’m just sayin…

Anything that is sought to be ‘pure’, involving human nature, is bound to be a disappointment. Experience and history tell us that. If it is nothing else, capitalism exists because of the mix of human psychology and empirical data for the purpose of pricing products and services. As such it is a social institution with the implicit purpose of providing a common exchange for said goods and services. Therefore there ought not be any more an idea of ‘pure’ or ‘unfettered’ capitalism than there should be regarding a ‘pure’ democracy that would be a Good Thing in all circumstances, or as history shows ‘pure’ socialism, or a ‘pure’ race ever could be. In the latter case, given the realities of human nature and its tendencies toward violent responses to excessive social boundaries, or in the former case, when social vacuums exist where boundaries are expected but non-existent. So too the market. Advocacy of a ‘pure’ or ‘unfettered’ capitalism for its own sake is in fact a call for a socially-destructive paradigm.

Capitalism must, by its very nature, be seen as a human institution, and as such, like any human institution, it must be managed by the society that allows it to exist in the first place, through legal title to private contracts and equity. Managed with the same respect and equanimity as the idea of a balance of powers–the checks and balances–of American institutions as described in the American constitution. The idea of managed capitalism should not be assumed to be anti-capitalistic. It is in fact pro-capitalism. It implicitly accepts and seeks to nurture and grow private equity coupled with the rule of law. But that law has to mean something. It cannot be an empty sop to a politically–and now economically–disenfranchised public.

What does the public interest have to say about its capitalist society? Much is said in the name of making things ‘easier’ for the business interests participating in our economy. Lowering the tax ‘burden’, deregulating industry to make us ‘competitive’ with our industrial peers. And yet, after 25-30 years of having the lightest regulatory regimes, the lowest tax burdens, and indeed unprecedented access to the principals of the public sector, with their ability to create legislative priorities while creating much of the mechanism governing what we today consider ‘global finance’, anywhere in the industrialized world, we are left with a society heading towards poverty, with a shrinking middle class, growing political polarization, and major actors of our economic system decoupling their economic activities from American society.

But we look across the ocean, sometimes to our erstwhile enemies, and we find a healthy, robust form of democratic capitalism. One that recognizes organized labor as a legitimate partner in setting and fulfilling long-term goals; one that recognizes its responsibilities not only toward its customers but to the very public institutions that give it license to operate within the commercial arena and with the protection of the law of the land; one that can take on a regulatory challenge and turn it into a commercial advantage over its competitors; and above all, one that doesn’t just pay lip-service to the word ‘competition’ while using it as an excuse to extract ever-greater relief from its fair share of taxes, and ever-greater legislative exceptions and concessions from our government while operating perfectly well under similar circumstances in other countries.

The US customer should not be the customer where corporations make up the profit-margins they feel they’re not getting elsewhere in the world. Germany is a prime example of a capitalist democracy that works. Why does Germany still have a significant manufacturing sector? Why does Germany still have a significant social safety net? Why is Germany considered the powerhouse economy of entire Europe?

Because its capitalism is managed.

It is managed to provide three basic goals: to maximize profits, long-term growth, and maintain overall employment with reasonable living standards for the next generation of workers. That requires planning, and that planning comes with significant input from all across German society. From its academic institutions, from its work-force, from government, as well as the boardroom. Is it perfect? Of course not. But it is robust, acknowledging and incorporating the ideas and aspirations of Germans from all segments of society as legitimate inputs to an on-going debate that begins with the question: What is the role of the Individual with respect to the State? What is the role of the Individual with respect to the Corporation I work for? And finally: What is the relationship between the Corporation and the State?

From a corporation’s perspective, the way these questions are answered can often be challenges to the bottom line, but over time working those challenges demands innovation at all levels. Innovation in its thinking as a collective, corporate entity. Innovation in thinking about how its business is structured and run. Innovation in providing what its customers want and still make a profit. In Germany, as elsewhere in the developed world, taking on a challenge is not seen as a burden but often as an opportunity. As the saying goes ‘what doesn’t kill you, makes you stronger’. And so too, is it with private corporations.

In stark contrast, it could be argued that the entire ‘laissez-faire’ American capitalist system is being run on a ‘tails I win, heads you lose’ paradigm. The idea that ‘less is more’ is not making corporate America stronger, its making it lazier. In this country, if you don’t like an inconvenient idea bubbling up from the grassroots, or suggested by a congressional committee, throw some money at a PR campaign to delegitimize, denigrate, demonize, and if that fails, emasculate it…before killing it outright legislatively, should it even come that far.

Corporate America is flabby with getting its way most, if not all the time, with our political institutions. It is protectionist in its thinking for itself, while demanding ‘open markets’ from others. American companies operate perfectly well in regulated Europe and Japan because they simply don’t have the access to politicians and their public institutions as they do here. They are forced to being ‘one among many’ having input into public policy. They have a voice, but it is bounded, unlike here in America where the electoral system and its representatives are very much open to financial ‘incentives’ that exploit the need for a responsive government to have expertise that comes from learning and experience. But instead of allowing for learning and experience to occur on behalf of good governance and the public, it occurs on behalf of what can happen if a public servant doesn’t have the financing to compete in the commercial media markets come the next electoral cycle.

Only in America are proposals for greater oversight or partnership by the public sector met with hysterical claims of ‘job-killing’ policies, common-sense reforms met with claims of un-American ’socialistic’ attitudes, and the idea of taxes being ‘all bad all the time’. We strip our mountains, pollute our air and rivers, rather than partner with the public sector and innovate new methodologies and products the rest of the world would seek to emulate and purchase at a premium. So we decline, as a nation and a people, unwilling to confront those shibboleths to our old ‘way of life’ as being increasingly irrelevant, if not downright harmful, to our future. American capitalism should not, and cannot ever be, ‘pure’. There is literally nowhere we can look in the world and claim an example where that is true AND a healthy, vibrant, peaceful, middle-class society with a future has taken root.

Claiming ‘American exceptionalism’ as a virtue while it operates in our daily lives as vice, is simply a paean to cheap pride. It has no purpose other than to make its purveyors feel good at the expense of actually doing any good. Its time this nation grew up, dusted itself off, and got back to the people’s business, rather than just what the boardroom wants. Those interests are often not the same, and it is high time we recognize that as a polity and a people, and that corporate boardrooms recognize that the public desperately wants them to succeed as engines of employment and growth, but not at the price of public poverty. A middle way must be found.

Our subversive weapon against the tactic of terrorism, which requires intelligence to fight, is the rule of law. Theirs is the tyranny of blind faith, ours is the tyranny of reason. We follow the law to leverage the better instincts of less-indoctrinated associates and relatives, by showing lawful due process, no matter the severity of the crime. What father would turn his jihadi son in to the authorities, if he was convinced his son would be tortured in American black sites?

By treating terrorists as ruthlessly with the law and law enforcement, as they ruthlessly indoctrinate young minds to become fervent weapons in a religious war, we will isolate and stigmatize them socially within their own communities to such a degree, that they can be marginalized to a lunatic fringe, no matter the background culture of a jihadi cell-member. But that requires information from any and all parties associated with that individual over a lifetime. If we expect to get into the mind of a potential jihadi-terrorist through those closest to him or her, it won’t be done if those closest to them think their son or daughter will be abused in a dark cell at a secret location. We need to understand the psychology of the enemy within the context of THEIR culture, not ours, in order to better profile security threats and the law enforcement (including judicial sentencing) response to those threats.

We need to demonstrate for all to see, that the consequences are predictable, reasonable, and (preferably) non-lethal. Non-lethality is particularly important in our current efforts against Muslim jihadis, which are often clan-based, and lend themselves to retributative, or revenge, responses that can motivate families and clans for generations after a perceived injustice has occurred. If we’re really serious about increasing national security and reducing the threat of international terror by EEH’s (Embedded Explosive Human), we have to get serious about being non-ideological, and culturally un-biased not only in our threat assessment, but in the punishment meted out to those caught and convicted of jihadi terror. Breaking this cycle of revenge-justice early, by using life-sentences instead of death sentences for terrorism convictions of certain faiths and cultures, would have long-term security benefits. Therefore a life sentence should be the severest form of punishment for crimes of jihadi terror.

Obama and Gates (Sec Def) have already announced major cuts in defense spending for Cold War weapons systems. Totally exciting. Historical. An attempt by the public to grab control of government away from the military-industrial-congressional complex which spends over 50% of the total US budget, and has dominated budgetary priorities since the end of 1945. This is gonna be titanically fascinating to watch! My guess is they are going to answer right-wing charges of economic dislocation by getting defense contractors together with a newly-focused automobile industry. Crisis as the handmaiden of opportunity. Yes we can. Smart government. Focused action.

And if they can swing that, I find this to be a remarkable statement by a US president:
[excerpt from Obama In Prague, 4-5-09]

“The existence of thousands of nuclear weapons is the most dangerous legacy of the Cold War. No nuclear war was fought between the United States and the Soviet Union, but generations lived with the knowledge that their world could be erased in a single flash of light. Cities like Prague that existed for centuries, that embodied the beauty and the talent of so much of humanity, would have ceased to exist.

Today, the Cold War has disappeared but thousands of those weapons have not. In a strange turn of history, the threat of global nuclear war has gone down, but the risk of a nuclear attack has gone up. More nations have acquired these weapons. Testing has continued. Black market trade in nuclear secrets and nuclear materials abound. The technology to build a bomb has spread. Terrorists are determined to buy, build or steal one….

Some argue that the spread of these weapons cannot be stopped, cannot be checked -– that we are destined to live in a world where more nations and more people possess the ultimate tools of destruction. Such fatalism is a deadly adversary, for if we believe that the spread of nuclear weapons is inevitable, then in some way we are admitting to ourselves that the use of nuclear weapons is inevitable…

So today, I state clearly and with conviction America’s commitment to seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons. I’m not naive. This goal will not be reached quickly –- perhaps not in my lifetime. It will take patience and persistence. But now we, too, must ignore the voices who tell us that the world cannot change. ”

Interesting Politico blog-entry on European trip:

Obama The Rationalist

[I found this essay recently-actually, its a response, written in May of 2007, to something written by a Rick L along with a number of commentators on an original topic. I can’t remember who, what, or where I stumbled across the topic I end up writing about, but reading my response nearly two years later, I find it continues to be a fine summation of my thinking on comparative religious and anthropological issues–tl, 3-15-09]

To Rick L…you make some interesting points, finally suggesting that perhaps the fact that Jesus is equated with God is at the root of the confusion between the idea of an omnipotent being and evolution. In fact, history tells us about the beginnings of that doctrinal dispute in early Christianity, that finally was ‘decided’ in favor of the Holy Trinity (I guess two theistic equalities weren’t enough, we settled on three).

But there’s another angle that I take issue with, and that is with a method of your argument. You write “what we are actually arguing is the role of Christ, since without Eden, Jesus’ death was not really for our salvation”.

For the sake of argument (and a fairly reasonable one at that) lets assume Jesus was at very least a historical figure, not requiring an act faith to believe he walked, taught, and lived. However, assuming Eden was an actual place, and Adam and Eve historical figures, populating that place is much more an act of faith. It is not unreasonable to think of it (and them) as metaphor; a time and place before Man became self-conscious, when he was at one with the animal kingdom, with Adam and Eve symbolizing an emergant consciousness leading to morality, ethics, and finally, religion.

To argue that the meaning of the death of a historical figure, Jesus, is invalidated because he can no longer atone for the original sin described in a metaphor, I find unnecessarily patronizing of Jesus’ message. Jesus’ message is far more powerful than its dependency on whether Eden, Adam, and Eve actually existed or are metaphor. I am personally not a follower of organized religion, or a ‘believer’ in Biblical prophecy, preferring to look at the Bible as epic myth with much to tell us about ourselves. But looking at Jesus as a philosopher, his message is transcendant. The absolution of ’sin’ by following the teachings of Jesus does not require, in my view, a corresponding faith in the allegedly historical nature of the place and people of the ‘original’ sin.

Furthermore, and outside of my previous comment to Rick L, I was surprised that none of the other comments here [the now-unknown blog that this was posted to] referred to any non-theistic belief systems. They may be considered ‘morally relativistic’ or even ‘evil’ by today’s standards, but we just can’t ignore the fact that many - if not most - were equally crucial to building human civilizations that lasted hundreds, if not thousands, of years. Can such cultural complexity, as exhibited by Pharaohonic Egypt, or more extremely, the Central American Maya, simply be dismissed as irrelevant to the notion that we are perfectly capable as a species in finding spiritual guidance and social harmony with belief systems containing rituals we would consider brutal, if not horrific? Is it right to use our horror as an excuse to diminish their achievement? I think we are being morally relativistic ourselves by dismissing such civilizational accomplishments with a quick judgement based on what we today define as ‘revealed truth’.

In fact, it is only by studying non- or poly- theistic societies in comparison to ours, that we can truly appreciate not only the nature of current belief system(s), but the essence of our nature as human beings. Obviously, neither the Maya nor the Romans had all the answers, because they were not able to overcome inherent limitations and contradictions. They were unable to build sustainable societies. But some of them nevertheless achieved civilizations that have lasted far longer than ours. To paraphrase an adage: “We build on the shoulders of those who come before us…” I would add, ‘no matter our moral quibbles with their methods.’

I think Christopher Hitchens is making a fundamental point: to the extent that modern humanity is different from all those who came before, it is in removing the now-unnecessary flotsam and jetsam of historical or doctrinal particulars of religion to get at the essence - not just of the purpose of humanity and its constituent individuals - but also the means by which we seek to distinguish ourselves from the universe around us as an emergent property of matter. There is something miraculous in that, that doesn’t have to be explained by ‘a’ God. It may be momentarily convenient to do so, but it is not inherently necessary. Religion seeks organizing principles of a supernatural variety to explain the believer’s existence, and by extension, how to manage that (fleeting) existence in the context of our consciousness of things larger than ourselves. Yet we are increasingly becoming aware, thanks to our technologically-heightened sensibilities, that from simple beginnings, great complexity can arise.

In fact, resorting to supernatural explanations is not only becoming increasingly unnecessary, but is the heart of the dispute between religion and secularism. Faith, as such, is becoming unnecessary to explain material existance to anyone willing to make the effort to understand the principles involved. Principles that describe the affinity of certain atoms to others, creating mechanisms of energy storage and distribution, to the formation of organisms perpetuating themselves around such activities, to the symbiotic relationships between organisms that create ever-greater complexities, up to and including the brain and, in its apotheosis in Homo sapiens-sapiensis, its transcendant self-awareness.

It may be convenient to insist that such wonder cannot possibly be self-directed, but who (or what) are we to say that with our puny 100-year lifespans? Can we really conceive what is and isn’t possible for self-organizing physical processes to achieve in the timespans of billions and billions of years? And if an explanation by the faithful demands attention on its merits, how can alternative explanations by the faith-less not be equally demanding of attention - particularly when it is rigorous in its method and comprehensive in its scope? Do we deny science a voice simply because it is seen as faithless, or because it is factually wrong? And by ‘facts’, is it fair for the supernatural to pass judgement on the merely natural? Is it not a greater achievement to reason out natural methods to arrive at the same result the all-powerful supernatural methods would appear to? To deny science due consideration is, in essence, to deny reason itself. And if we’re going to be in the business of denying reason, then the faithful have an obligation to explain the whole of modern civilization that surrounds them, and that they happily utilize, while simultaneously denying the power of reason - the splitting of the atom, the exploration of the solar system, the invention of the integrated circuit based on an understanding of quantum mechanics.

When I read Jesus as a philosopher, what I take away from him is the beginnings of a moral order that transcends the natural order, not by denying it, but through understanding, accepting it and mankinds place in it, and finally, moving beyond it and out to the stars. Just as he broke with Judaic law to touch on the transcendant truths relevant to his time and era, he calls on us, along with other great moral philosophers, to consider what is transcendant about the human condition, its nature and its relationship with the great expanse beyond.

What is the purpose of religion when a rock of sufficient mass can end all of human history in an instant? Can there be any legitimate argument for why religion shouldn’t be at the forefront of a new focus of human ingenuity and purpose following on that most basic of animal instincts: Survival? To the extent we heed Seneca’s famous nostrum about religion (’Religion for common folk is true, for the wise, false, and for rulers, useful’), instead of a Crusade against enemies of the Word, the Pope/Imam/Patriarch would call for a crusade against complacency and a complete loss of humanity along with any material evidence of its existence or ‘His Story’. To protect Him and our faith in Him, so religious authorities might say, we would protect ourselves as a species, a human tribe, and no longer simply as this particular Chosen people, or this particular chosen religious order. In concert with secular, and other religious authorities, the Holy See would set in motion an inter-faith dialog that might produce a codex, a document that would set the moral, ethical, and perhaps even doctrinal agenda necessary to raise the consciousness of all men and women of faith to see the purpose of requiring scholarship and sacrifice in the pursuit of mastering our traditional differences.

We must overcome ourselves by visualizing not just the possible, but the necessary things for our survival as a species. We need to discuss too, the moral and ethical obligations of that understanding within the context of a harsh and unforgiving interstellar environment. This in order to create a human community, on planet Earth, capable of mastering its immediate environment in the cosmos, in order to lead the Word that is humanity in all its faiths, if you will — a beacon of light in that cold dark night, and onto new pastures, challenges, and benefits. It would be the declaration of an epic journey, on a par with the books of Exodus and Kings, taking generations to complete.

If religion serves a purpose, as it aspires to, surely it must at its core be for survival. Just as the first crusades a thousand years ago were an exercise of faith translated into action, a new ‘crusade’ would focus all of Man’s ingenuity in engineering and science away from idle, controversial, or non-productive pursuits, and toward the preparation and planning of a sustainable future, here on Earth, but also thinking about beyond the Earth-Moon system. This inter-faith dialog and resulting codex would not be incompatible with current global financial trends and political realities. It would simply be an expression, endorsed by the Church and allied faiths, to encourage a spiritual priority that fosters cooperation among nations, faiths, and tribes. Cooperation for what? For the survival of all races and faiths on planet Earth. A religious codex for a United Nations, if you will.

We are not unlike, in our Earth-based system, those nomadic tribesmen in the wilderness, jungle, and savannah that was humanity’s past, who after a while might commune with the shaman, or priest, and come to realize that it was time the tribe must risk a known environment and move on to new foraging areas or else risk certain penury and eventually, death.

In our case, Plan A could be the attempt to save our world from ourselves by emphasizing the metaphysical through the practical means to accomplish such a task, not unlike the call to arms of past crusades. But there should also be a Plan B for the eventuality that we either: won’t succeed in our time as we face an extended period of social chaos and information loss - a new Dark Age, if you will - or that a natural event beyond our control could very well end the story of Mankind on Planet Earth. Either way, that journey to new horizons begins now, and it starts with acknowledgement and planning. More thoughts on this topic to come.

Recently, I’ve been thinking about the intersection of law and entertainment as expressed in copyright and trademarking. It’s not the first time I’ve written on it here, but a recent comment by an aunt in Switzerland, where she paraphrased a quote - possibly by the composer Fortner - saying something like “the only way true composing can occur would be to destroy completely every music that came before” brought the issue to my mind again. The idea being on the one hand, that all existing works obstruct every trace of real creativity by an individual, and on the other, that there is no such thing as true creativity since we are all necessarily influenced by the world around us, and our experiences in it. And with respect to the widespread commercial ownership of what is essentially our visual and auditory environment that surrounds us on a daily basis, together with machine-enabled IT, this will likely have consequences on the nature of Art in the coming cyber-centuries unless this relationship between Private and Public ownership can be mediated at a more equitable level. <more…>

If the bailout of the car industry doesn’t finally kill the idea that ‘free markets are self-regulating’, where the public interest should have no (or as little as possible) say in the rules, regulation, and taxation of the business and financial environments they operate in, I don’t know what will. <more…>

There’s talk this week about Wachovia (a medium-sized bank) failing. But its a big ‘if’ for Wachovia to fail. I can’t say it Won’t Happen, (and with the way things have been going these past months…?) but never count out the desire to avoid pain if at all possible. The more US assets are being bought by sovereign wealth funds, the more likely they’re calling the policy shots in Washington. That means unusually serious talks with China (what, we’re in bed with Socialist-commies??), a large chunk of OPEC (what, we’re in bed with terrorist-financiers??) and half of ASEAN (what, they not only took our jobs but they own our banks??). Its not only what kind of pain *we’re* willing to bear (or will be victims of) but what kind of hit they’re willing to take with us. Its significant that the published minutes of the Fed this week indicated a discussion to *raise* interest rates. That seems to indicate that some important people are beginning to think they’ve run out of options. <more…>

We are only ever going to be able to approximate God in the manipulation of nature. Its time to stop believing in the Perfectability Of Man, as expressed in the interminable moralizing of so many American politicians (usually of the ‘conservative’ stripe), and start believing in the management of his imperfections. Our species inhabits the center of a resource-management system whose purpose is sustaining a civil society with minimal needs generating maximum benefits. The material output of our society is piloted by the natural efficiencies of human instinct married to situational information. In effect this is the essence of capitalism, and it has to be managed to work properly. No oversight of markets is not a substitute for managing - through policy - the independent parts of a global economic whole. Neither are no markets a substitute for the redistributive tendencies of populist political movements. Restricting information stifles innovation, and that drives down quality and finally, production itself. Too much information reduces value which leads to collapsed markets. Therefore, rules-based systems, such as the managed capitalism of the West, are so far seen as those best suited to create a ‘balance of averages’, by divorcing markets to some degree from the vicissitudes of the political moment or, conversely, its reigning personality. Creating distance between markets and public institutions is necessary to prevent individuals (and their institutions) from having the power to overtly influence, or for that matter eliminate, markets. More to come on this topic.

As if the consequences of fundamentally flawed leadership at home and abroad weren’t enough for BCR (Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld, and also standing in for that entire myopically moralistic cabal of foreign and domestic policy wonks that followed them into the bureaucracy) to have to handle, I perceive a dangerous collision of interests between the US and Iran in Iraq.

Up until now, the paradigm governing Iran’s attitude toward its neighbor Iraq, and its current occupying power, the US, was that Iran seeks stability on its borders. Its economy is suffering, people are concerned for their future, and the power struggle between the Khatami reformers, and the Ahmadinejad hard-liners was consuming the attentions of the leadership.

Recent elections in Iran suggest that, by hook or crook, the debate has been settled: the hardliners have rigged the system enough to guarantee majorities in parliament (aka the Majlis). Ahmadinejad and his governing party were able to thwart the democratic process with the assent of the Supreme Council (of Religious Leaders) in part by appealing to nationalist sentiment over the attempts by the UN (and the US) to restrict its uranium-enrichment program.

Meanwhile, in the US, citizens are beginning to agitate for some kind of resolution to the mess in Iraq, in order to reduce the American military presence there. The Americans, by their commitment in Iraq, as well as Afghanistan, are now also vulnerable to a similarly jingoistic message that views Iran as a threat, by many of the hangers-on of the BCR-cabal still embedded in the Washington bureaucracy and supporting institutions. Where is this all headed? <more…>

A Gas Tax Holiday?

Either we’re for a free market, or we’re not. If we start carving out exceptions to a classic supply and demand issue, we are decidedly not for a free market economy.

Sure its painful, politicians and presidential candidates should say, ‘but this is the bill coming due for the bad policy-making of the past 20 years’ on many of our top priority issues facing the United States. The cost of energy being one of them.

If we start fooling around with the mechanism of supply and demand, and begin incentivizing a counter-productive consumer response to that mechanism with ideas like a consumer gas tax holiday, we will not only be complicit in a great hypocrisy of values, but we will demonstrate for all the world to see, that our pain at the gas pump is more important than all our rhetoric on green energy, and global warming, and quite possibly risk the future of mankind.

That’s about as selfish and irresponsible as you can get.

John McCain implicitly endorsed torture today. Oh, he tried to hide behind the fig leaf of not wanting to ‘tie the hands’ of the CIA, but who is he kidding? He’s been tortured, for chrissakes! He has spent a political lifetime advocating more benign forms of interrogation. But John McCain has made his bargain with the Devil. He apparently will do anything to be president. I take it seriously when a man who has been tortured, endorses the potential for torture by our security and intelligence services. By implicitly allowing for coercive interrogation methods, in supporting President Bush’s veto on legislation requiring the CIA to limit itself only to techniques in the Army Field Manual of interrogation, John McCain, victim of five years of torture at the hands of the Viet Cong, ends up legitimizing torture. And since we purport to be the leaders of the free world, we legitimize torture for everyone else. And for what? So John McCain can be president? <more…>