I’m not generally a fan of TIME magazine, but they did something good in their Feb. 13 edition. They had a segment called “What is a Conservative?” and invited a few “prominent” folks to sum it up in a few paragraphs. The reason this intrigued me is the current paradigm of alleged “conservative” principles, like endless war, super-low taxes for wall-street bankers, pension raiders and CEOs, and dismantling the entire social apparatus of government, don’t really seem that conservative to me. In fact, that all seems wasteful and short-sighted, which should be the opposite of “conservative,” right?
Anyhow, we will look at two responses. One is from Grover Norquist. With his signature ‘to-death-do-we-part’ no-tax pledge signed by some half of all Republicans in office at the federal, state and local levels, Mr. Norquist wields an enormous amount of clout. Even if he is not officially in charge of a super PAC (I am not sure), which is essentially gigantic legalized political money laundromat, he is up to his eyeballs in GOP political intrigue at the highest levels. The other writer, Ramesh Ponnuru, I had never heard of before.
Mr. Norquist just wants government to leave him alone. He doesn’t want government to “take money from his neighbors and give it to him,” and he wants taxes “lower and lower.” Ok, so you don’t want things like police and fire protection, which are paid for by taxes. I don’t know what kind of car he drives, but I guess it doesn’t need roads, which are paid for by taxes. And I’m pretty sure he doesn’t want money taken from him and his neighbors and going to folks in poor neighborhoods for things like food stamps, or housing assistance, or condoms.
Mr. Norquist says conservatives “want to be in charge of educating their own children.” We could and should have a public debate about the value of public education. I doubt the vast majority of true conservatives want to home-school their kids; I even doubt they oppose schooling poor-people’s kids. I guess in the perfect Conservative world, you would spend your tax savings on a Christian school, conducted on a tax-exempt campus where your child does not have to learn uncomfortable things like sex ed or evolution. Anyway, in the Norquistian world, a core conservative value seems to be dismantling public education.
“They wish to practice their own faith and transmit it to their children without government help or interference.” Great, here is something we agree on: No government help for religion. So the giant tax loophole for mega churches and other spiritual enterprises goes away, and they pay taxes like any other business. As for interference, I concur. People should be able to worship as they please. That includes muslims, rastafarians, and anyone else. If Grover can name even one instance where the Obama Administration busted in on a religious service and shut it down, then game on, otherwise this is a non-issue. Fox News may love a “War on Christmas,” but that doesn’t mean it is actually happening.
I could rebut every point, but I want to get on to the other fellow. Indulge me in just one more hypocrisy, please. “Conservatives oppose government growing so large and intrusive that it becomes destructive of human liberty. That is why conservatives respect and support the American military and police.” I am not making this up. First of all, he doesn’t want to pay taxes and wants to dismantle public pensions, so how exactly is that support? Second of all; Really? In two sentences you combine building up the military/police state and protect human liberty? That takes some big balls, and Mr. Norquist does have em. I say fan educated citizenry and an effective social safety net are more protective of our liberty than a prison-industrial complex with beds that need to be filled, and endless wars in distant lands that deplete the treasury and fuel global terrorism. Don’t get me wrong, our soldiers to the best job possible for the circumstances. Probably in the history of the world, there has never been a more professional military force. Ditto for most of our law enforcement, doing ever more with ever less. But their jobs are impossible. An increasingly poor and desperate populace is not easily subjugated. And it is time for our soldiers to come home: and when they do soldiers need and deserve healthcare and jobs, which will cost a lot of money. Grover Norquist and his cronies wanted these wars, and now we all have to pay for that.
So what about Mr. Ponnunu? His response was even more concise, so I will just type it in.
“American conservatives aim to conserve our political inheritance from the founders. The past few years have seen a revival of interest in the Constitution and Declaration of Independence as documents that should guide our political life. The the conservative defense of the country’s founding principles is complete as long as it fails to apply them to the challenges of our days, to show rather than just say that those principles amount to timeless wisdom. Conservatives have barely begun to outline a plausible alternative to Obamacare. Our economic ideas too often seem like well-developed answers to the problems of 1981. We have failed to persuade black, Hispanic and Asian citizens that our philosophy promotes the interest of the whole nation. And none of us are quite sure what to do about the intolerable fact that in our society, family stability seems increasingly to be a luxury good. Conservatives may be able to defeat Obama without meeting these challenges, but we will not be able to achieve the more profound objectives to which that defeat is only a means.”
Mr. Ponnunu, who actually hails from Kansas, seems more profound, and reasonable. Worshiping the Constitution without truly applying its meaning to current affairs is just another religion. And perhaps the conservative philosophy, as currently practiced in the USA, lacks minority appeal because it truly does not promote the interests of the whole nation. Government has a role to play in this society, and that is to protect the liberties that Mr. Norquist claims to hold so dear, but in fact does not even understand.
Mr. Norquist has never been elected to anything. He has no real political substance, and his15 minutes of fame should be long over. I repudiate him for masquerading a shallow, cheapskate mantra in place of a philosophy. Grover you dickwad, you have done more to polarize our politics, and weaken American liberty and strength, than almost anybody alive. The sooner thinking Americans come together to directly counter the Norquistian dystopia of unlimited guns, endless “wars” at home and abroad, no taxes, no public schools and a public sector forever just coming up for one gasp of air, the better off the nation will be.
Much hay has been made lately about Barack Obama being “the Food Stamp President” and “putting more people on food stamps” than anybody else. If we can ignore the overtly racist overtones, there is something here speaking to the heart of some of America’s key problems.
Unfortunately, the Dem/Obama response was typically tepid. The “we don’t put people on food stamps, they apply” or the “more people actually went on food stamps under Bush” arguments uttered by Obama totally miss the larger point that many low-income Americans already know. People are on food stamps because they are friggin’ hungry and they cannot not earn enough money to eat. Obama has everything to gain and nothing to lose from talking about this every day.
As of last November, 45.8 million folks were on food stamps, about 15% of the total population, or around 1 out of every 9 Americans. If you count all the other friends and family who chow some of this food, it’s higher than that. The numbers have risen around 30 percent since the so-called end of the Great Recession. The Obama Administration says the increase is at least partly because they advertise and run the program better; and let us all hope that is so.
The core-core problem is that the hollowing out of the middle class and the shipping of manufacturing and other good jobs overseas to low-wage, low-environmental-protection areas has left many Americans without the skills or education to compete for the ever dwindling number of high-paying high skill jobs. They have other bills to pay besides food, like rent, power, telecoms, clothes and what not. God forbid they should have a mortgage payment. Anyhow, the point is, it is very, very hard to raise a family at the salary of the proverbial Wal-Mart greeter, especially if you are a single parent. Let’s not forget at least 8 million Americans work half time and want to work more, and some other percentage works more than one job. All of these folks are potentially on food stamps.
In terms of the way the Government could potentially spend money, buying food from farmers and giving it to hungry people is actually pretty high up on the list of good things to do. So let’s not disparage that. And as a form of economic development, it is also fairly potent. You have created a job for the farmer, the food processor, the folks transporting the food and your friendly neighborhood grocery store. Food stamps is really just another form of infrastructure, and we need more of it not less.
So how do we square this with the fact that some fairly large percentage of low-income Americans are obese; that they seem to be eating too much, not too little? And is there some way we can move the needle on that? As it turns out, the food stamp program is not terribly discriminating on what it will pay for. Alcohol and tobacco are out, and that’s about it. You can buy all the Pepsi and ice cream you want, and if you don’t want to eat fruits and vegetables you don’t have to. This is linked to our second core problem; healthcare. Because everybody knows that you are what you eat.
So this comes down to choice, and people do make certain choices which might one day leave them with several children, no spouse, and no good job prospects. None of us always makes good choices. Some times too many choices is a hardship, not a blessing. Some folks make a lot of really bad choices or never had many good options, and they still need to eat. Some times they make bad choices about what to eat. America is all about choice, just about any store you can find is a testament to that.
Maybe it is time for food stamps to help people choose a healthier diet. You should not be able to buy all of the Pepsi and ice cream you want, and never eat your vegetables. The health care costs down the road from that behavior are simply too high, and the quality of life implications from those choices should not be ignored. Companies looking for new workers do not generally seek out individuals with diabetes and high-blood pressure. We have a health care crisis and a hunger crisis and a jobs crisis, and they are interconnected.
The simplest way to solve the problems is to have two food stamp programs, one for fresh fruits and vegetables and whole grains. The other, existing program for everything else. Over time, decrease the amount of support going to the existing program, and increase the other program. This will get more people eating fresh, local produce, boosting little farm economies all over America. It’s an infrastructure, jobs, and healthcare program, all rolled into one. We might have to teach some people how to cook healthy, and there could be jobs involved in that.
We could brush the GOP’s latest attacks off as desperation politics, but why miss a good opportunity to focus on the core issues? If the Republicans had their way, hay would be the only staple of many Americans’ diet.
Special shout out to Newt this week for validating my earlier posts. He’s paying a 31% tax rate on his “work.” Rich old Uncle Mitt is only paying around 15% on the millions in interest he is making on the billions he made as a State Street vulture capitalist. Newt’s miffed at Mitt, but what he–and all hard-working Americans–should be miffed about is that this country taxes labor at a higher rate than capital. Working stiffs who have any sort of valuable skill pay more than double the nominal tax rate than the country club types who let their money do the heavy lifting. Poor Newt, with his invaluable “history” skills, is tired of seeing bad ol Uncle Sam suck up more of his dough. Well, waaaahhh. Good thing history pays so well.
I’m more sympathetic to garden-variety working stiffs, who are paying a higher tax rate than Mitt even though we earn much less at our full-time jobs. The bottom line is that people who work for a living should pay a lower tax rate, not higher, than those who by grace of god, Lady Luck, or birthright can live off of their investments. How about a 35% tax rate on capital, and 15% on labor, instead of the other way around?
And how exactly did our tax system get so skewed, anyway. Oh yeah, all those rich folks paying 15% taxes or less (if they are hiding their money in Switzerland or the Caymans) used a small portion of their fortunes to lobby Washington for fat tax breaks for their fat dividends.
Fortunately, there seems to be something of a groundswell of grassroots support for efforts to change some of the fundamentals of our corrupted political system. There are some good groups and good people out there making inroads. For example:
My favorite legislator, Vermont’s Bernie Sanders, has introduced a constitutional amendment to reverse corporate personhood, prevent corporations from donating to elections, and allow Congress to set limits on campaign contributions. Sign on here.
Americans Elect is proposing a whole new way to select presidential candidates, and will put forth a ticket where the candidates must not belong to the same political party.
Getmoneyout is a new group dedicated to a constitutional amendment that will get money out of politics.
Let’s face it, a constitutional amendment is a tough way to go. The last successful one was in 1971. (Not counting the 27th amendment, which sat in limbo for 200 years.) But given last year’s Citizen’s United decision, there is really no recourse. If you believe that money in politics is the root of all evil in our political system, and that no issue great or small can be successfully resolved until this one issue is resolved, then the time to act is now.
dbunker has overcome some severe lifestyle disruptions, primarily an ongoing home remodel project, and has figured out a way to offer more uncommon insights from wherever I may be, in this case, at the in-laws. So much has happened, that any one column will be lost in a sea of information, inadequate by itself to explain our bewildering times. My goal for the next year is to be more timely, to blog more regularly, about the things that really matter. Things that matter this week:
Huge shout-out to Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) for his amazing speech on the floor of the U.S. Senate regarding the war being perpetrated by the wealthy elites of this country against the poor and the “collapsing” middle class. Watch it here. Senator Sanders is currently filibustering Pres. Obama’s tax “compromise.” Thank goodness there is one man of integrity left in the Senate. We know who is winning this war.
Our president has an odd strategy, which goes something like “capitulate, then negotiate.” That didn’t work on health care, not working on Israeli settlements, and looks like a loser on taxes. With regards to the Bush tax cuts, Obama actually has a very strong hand, he can simply let all tax cuts expire. There is nothing the Republicans can do; they do not have enough votes to override his veto of any plan he does not like, and they do not have time. So why give in?
If Republicans want to get serious about the debt, there is plenty of time to talk, after all the budget-busting Bush tax cuts have expired. We can talk about additional taxes on Wall Street fraudsters, about ending the many absurd tax loopholes for the wealthy, and about ending the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. We can even talk about taxing consumption instead of labor. But we cannot have a serious talk about budget deficits when we are talking about huge tax breaks for the richest 1% of Americans, who do not feel the pain of the embattled middle class. Repug talking points always throw in the reference to an “adult conversation,” as if the people who follow the infantile Glenn Beck know that that is. Congressional Republicans are only ever serious about one thing, sucking up to the rich folks who put them in oriface!
President Obama needs to take a calculated risk here, letting all cuts expire means taxes will go up for middle-class blokes like me. Many will not be happy. It will hurt, but I will live. He can drive a much harder deal on unemployment benefits, middle class relief, and tax loopholes for the wealthy once the frenzy expires. And he can rebrand the tax cuts as his own, instead of Bush getting the credit.
Now, more than ever, this country needs a principled stand to get wealthy bankers and corporadoes to pay their fair share. To do this, our president will have to grow a pair, as they say. And that, my friends, would be hope and change that I could believe in!
The battle cry for this week, call your congress-critter: Let em all Expire!
Another day, another oil rig explosion in the gulf. This one doesn’t appear to have spawned a gusher, but it goes to prove a point made in earlier posts: drilling for oil in the ocean is tricky business. Maybe the hurricane will help put out the fire. Hopefully, the event will be reported widely enough to make all Americans pause again in the rush of their daily lives to consider energy, where it comes from, and how we use it. We still don’t have a coherent national energy plan in this country, and Republicans are doing all they can to make sure it stays that way. That is criminal behavior, and benefits only the oil companies and Saudi princes.
It’s not that solar, or wind, or biofuels, or waves and tides are the answer. They all are. There is no single magic bullet, we’ll need all of them to replace our massive petroleum addiction. Extremely concentrated fuels like oil and gas are a relatively rare find in our earthly realm. We’ve been lucky to live during the age of cheap oil, zipping around in our cars and running our air conditioners and refrigerators full blast. But if we want to leave anything for future generations, if we want some reasonable semblance of our current lifestyle to survive, we need to wise up fast. Yes, build carport photovoltaics and efficient houses and all of that, but we’ve also got to stop throwing away highly processed resources, like plastics and cardboard and the massive quantities of food that spoil before being eaten. There is where Northern Europe is eating our lunch, and where a targeted public investment could really help. Plastics and fibers can be burned in controlled environments to produce power while producing very little pollution, and our food can be digested by micro-organisms at low temperatures to produce natural gas or electricity and heat.
The first of these processes is called either gassification or pyrolysis. The difference between the two terms has to do with how much oxygen is allowed into the burning environment. From the synthesis gas produced in the gassification/pyrolysis chamber, other clean fuels can be made. The technology is tricky, and in the United States, viewed with suspicion. Environmental groups tend to try and brand such facilities as an “incinerator,” which is not entirely accurate, but enough to get otherwise reasonable people fairly worked up. There is a waste product from these processes, a char material, which could possibly be used as a filler in cement and other materials. Metals can be removed from the char for re-use.
The second of the technologies is even more innocuous, rarely even getting as hot as a good compost pile. Anaerobic digestion uses microbes to break down fatty acids into methane. Food and excrement both have fatty acids. In the U.S., digesters are mostly in use at public sewage treatment plants and at dairies. That works ok, but bio-solids or manure are not that potent as fuels. Attempts to mix manure or sewerage with other items like waste fats and oil, and even spoiled soda, can dramatically increase gas production. The food processing industry is beginning to discover anaerobic digestion, and other synergies will form with time and money. Anaerobic digesters not only produce valuable gas, but if you run an internal combustion motor with them–whether a conventional diesel type motor or a turbine–you can make a combined heat and power source.
So it seems a little more investment in these technologies is warranted, but at some point these types of facilities need to be rolled out on a large scale. All of this is investment that creates high paying jobs and valuable infrastructure for our future generations. The amount of energy embodied in our food when it spoils, and when we’re done with it, will be valuable to future generations. We need to get past the NIMBYs and BANANA s (Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anything) and get these things built before energy prices go through the roof and our country is on its knees.
Regulators are now considering the questions of how to permit and site these facilities, big or small, but it is taking too long. Clear national direction is needed.
I’d like to see a future where all neighborhoods have a compost facility and an anaerobic digester, but that’s probably not the vision of most public planners and the waste industry. These folks envision large facilities capable of handling massive quantities of waste, located far away from the easily offended noses of the populace. Indeed, such large facilities are easier to finance, tend to be better run, and are easier to regulate. But large facilities long distances away make communities less self-reliant, not to mention the enormous amount of fuel needed to collect and deliver the materials.
A coherent national energy policy is badly needed; Congress has dithered on this, but the latest explosions in the Gulf or in Baghdad remind us that time is short. A national energy policy which specifically calls out investment in waste to energy processes, and one which carves out a clear regulatory niche for these facilities, is one of the smartest investments we can make in our country.
The answer to the old riddle, of course, is to stop digging. But looking at the holes we’ve dug in Iraq and, especially these days, Afghanistan, it seems like ending the excavation will not be enough. Sure, candidate Obama told us he’d get us out of Iraq, and he’s even set a timetable for getting outr brave troops out of that “graveyard of empires” known as Afghanistan. But all those timetables keep slipping even before they are due. This is much to the chagrin of the Left, and even some of the middle, who elected Obama at least in part due to a growing weariness of war.
Add to this the growing outcry from both sides about deficits. One cannot honestly talk about reducing deficits without talking about reducing military expenditures, and that means ending the wars. Sure, superfluous defense spending programs can and should be cut, but at the end of the day it is the endless wars that force us to spend as much on military as the rest of the world combined. The cost of the two wars since 2001 is more than $1 trillion–that we know about– by one estimate, and more by other credible estimates. The final cost will actually be far higher still, because the cost of caring for wounded warriors and interest on the additional debt to finance the war will be humongous. Tea-bagger arguments that we can’t afford $23 billion to hire more teachers for our schools seem disingenuous when they consistently fail to look at bigger-ticket items like war.
Anyhow, the devil certainly does lie in the details, and the details of bailing out of an impossible military obligation are rather daunting. How do you pull yourself out with at least a modicum of grace? Let’s examine at least a few of the difficulties.
If we abandon Afghanistan and the Taliban take over again, for instance, all of the people who ever helped our coalition, everyone who ever cooperated, are as good as dead. They will probably be tortured, or at least die a horrible death. Their families may also be murdered. We certainly don’t want that to happen; many of these people are extraordinarily brave and took a great chance by joining our side. Not to mention the fact that, if we do let them go, then no one in a similar situation may ever risk helping us again. If we opt to save our friends, then we get into the uncomfortable task of separating our real friends from those just pretending, and many fine folks who started out on our team could easily wind up feeling quite bitter about the outcome. There would most certainly be a few terrorists in the pool of potential refugees that we or our allies might feel obligated to extricate from a collapsing Afghanistan.
And then there’s the women. If past is any prologue, females will fare badly following a Taliban takeover. The repercussions for bold women who ran for office, or started a business, or even just got an education, could be severe. At the least, the next generation or two of Afghan females will likely forfeit any chance at a better life. That’s not what we fought for.
So what are the potential solutions, then? The Cold-War concept of containment might be one solution. Build a giant wall around Kabul, let all our friends in there, and all the women, and help defend that. This strategy would be cheaper, and much safer for our soldiers. Not very graceful, true, but not a total loss, either. We can still send out a predator missile strike if we notice another Al Queda training camp. There is a certain irony in this strategy: We lock the Taliban in their
mountain and village strongholds, but take away all the pussy. That would certainly
serve them right, now wouldn’t it?
Early on in the Iraq conflict, some fairly sane minds suggested we partition the country into three pieces; Sunni, Shiite and Kurd. The vice president was among those voices. Even if Iraq seems quiet now, once we leave that old sectarian
violence is likely to flare up again. The partition will happen one way or another. Kurdistan is pretty much a country right now, anyway, complete with its own tourism department. Anything we can do to facilitate the rest of the dissolution with a minimum of violence would be worthwhile.
So yes, we need to get out of both of these wars, and quickly. Not only for the budget issues, but for the moral issues: we’re killing innocent people and making new enemies every day. But getting out won’t be without additional horrific consequences for the people unfortunate enough to be born in these places. For that, all of us can thank the Bush administration. Despite what the pundits say, neither of these are Obama’s wars. He didn’t start them, and he may not be able to finish them. I’d like to think that 9-11 would never have happened on his watch, but that can never be proven. I think we can say that had 9-11 happened during his first term, the response would have been different.
In a recent Rolling Stone interview, Osama bin Laden’s fourth son stated that his father’s strategy was to draw the United States into Afghanistan so that it would expend blood and treasure in a futile war which would ultimately bankrupt and destroy the empire. When George W. Bush was elected in 2000, bin Laden was gleeful. He was confident that this buffoon of a new president and his war-monger advisers would fall for the bait. Boy was he right. Not only did we invade Afghanistan, Bush doubled down on Iraq, taking out bin Laden’s old enemy, Saddam Hussein, in the process. As Bugs Bunny might say, “What a maroon.” If Osama bin Laden is in fact still alive, he might even be smiling. If he is buried at the bottom of some cave in a pile of rubble left by a bunker buster, or was asphyxiated by one of those bombs that devours oxygen, then at least he will never get the satisfaction of knowing just how well his plan worked.
BP will pay, the president says, and they should. This is a company which has been cutting corners on safety and the environment for years. It’s no accident this happened to BP and not Exxon. In addition to the current debacle, and the huge blowout at their Texas City refinery in 2005 that killed 15 more workers, BP is on the hook for nearly $3 million in OSHA penalties for repeated and willful safety lapses at one of its refineries in Ohio. In fact, BP is responsible for a whopping 97% of all “egregious and willful” violations and U.S. worker safety laws, according to the Center for Public Integrity. And let’s not forget the spill from a badly corroded BP Alaska pipeline in 2006 which has been blamed on “draconian” cost cutting and management solely focused on the bottom line.
No, the Gulf catastrophe was no accident. BP consistently fails to uphold the public trust, regularly putting profits before people and the environment. This is a company which deserves to be liquidated. All of its assets should belong to the people of the Gulf Coast, who can use it to clean up their shattered environment and the livelihoods which have dissipated faster than the oil ever will. So go ahead, Mr. President… kick their ass. And let the people have a ring-side seat.
But let’s not miss the moment. The time is NOW to push through a coherent national energy strategy which weans us off of oil. The centerpiece of this strategy should be a new tax on gasoline and diesel fuel. Start at five cents per gallon this year, and add five more cents in each of the next ten years. That’d raise about $8.75 billion in its first year, based on 2006 fuel consumption statistics, and would go up by a similar amount every year. We can use the money to fund investment in public transit, high speed rail, electric vehicles, fuel cells, and anything else which gets people from Point A to Point B more efficiently. If there were to be an exemption for anything, I’d say maybe farmers. If your car has a 20-gallon tank, which is a biggie, that’d cost you about an extra buck for each tank; hardly noticeable.
People who oppose new fuel taxes seem not to notice something that happens every year, right before summer, when gas prices mysteriously rise by between 25-50 cents per gallon for no reason at all other than a projected increase in driving. Just a few months ago, gas prices here were in the range of $2.79/gallon. The other day I paid $3.09. Where are the tea party protests? No, Americans just suck it up and pay, and the money goes straight to Big Oil. But economics says Big Oil will be forced to lower their prices if we increase taxes, because a reduction in superfluous driving will exert continuous downward pressure on prices.
So let’s not waste this moment on a carbon cap-and-trade program which will only benefit Goldman Sachs and the smart young whippersnappers who frequent carbon conferences. I have no problem with smart young people, but these efforts will not reduce carbon emissions by a meaningful amount quickly enough to make a difference. A carbon tax is simple, clean and will immediately provide the impetus for us to change our world-destabilizing fuelish ways. We can use that money to build critical infrastructure, put our neighbors to work,
and bring our troops home from the oil wars waged to support our
addiction..
Today we learn that foreclosures have reached an all time high in the U.S., about one in every 387 homes in the U.S. was repossessed IN ONE MONTH, April 2010. More than 333,000 homes in all. So why do people keep saying the recession is over? As long as we keep reading about layoffs in our local paper, foreclosures will follow, and you can feel free to ignore the premature and wishful thinking of the corporate-backed pundits who proclaim the economy is getting better. They remind me of a bunch of kids in the back of a car screaming “Are we there yet?” No, we are not there yet, so sit down and shut up. A screw-up of this magnitude takes time.
This “jobless recovery” is no recovery at all, unless you happen to work on Wall Street, and most of us don’t. Main Street and Wall Street are more disconnected than at any time in our history because factory output in places like China and India fuels profits on Wall Street. Many American-based companies simply don’t need American workers any more, except to buy their products. What they apparently haven’t figured out is, without good jobs, we can’t buy doodley squat. Perhaps the burgeoning middle class of China and India can help out with that.
The various government stimulus packages rely too much on tax breaks for corporations. Investments in infrastructure would create more, better jobs. Energy efficiency is a clear winner. Improving the performance of the homes and offices we still own is just smart. We need to break our dependency on foreign oil, now, and efficiency is the way to do it. High-speed rail and the “smart” electric grid will also give us a bigger bang
for our buck in the long run than repaving roads. Transit infrastructure in this county sucks, and our trains are the worst.
We were recently in China for a family trip. We rode a train from Shenzhen, on the Hong Kong border, to Guangzhou, a city of some 12 million people. This was not billed as a high-speed train. However, it happens to be faster, smoother and quieter than any train in this country, effortlessly reaching speeds of about 130 mph. Cost was about $12 per person. In Guangzhou, we used a subway that was cleaner and more modern than any I have seen, very much like the wonderful subway in Hong Kong, but newer. We were able to easily navigate the system without reading a word or character of Chinese. Guangzhou also boasts a bus rapid transit system that was simply packed to the gills with riders. http://www.gzbrt.org/ . This is good investment. Where are the bus rapid transit systems in this country?
I think it’s very telling that the first magnetic levitation train was deployed in China. They are moving ahead of us in many ways. But they too have a housing bubble coming. Will they bail out their greedy bankers and developers, or will they simply execute them? Maybe we need to take a cue from them.
My advice for American losing their homes whose mortgage has changed hands often: Demand your current lender prove they own your home. These mortgage-based securities were packaged and sold with less care than lots of cattle. It’s a mess. Does your lender have a deed? If not, then squat.
So Warren Buffet thinks Goldman Sachs is all good. Let’s get this straight, folks: Goldman was packaging and selling complicated securities to its customers, and then betting millions on its own account that these securities would fail. They did… fabulously. Goldman made billions, at their customers’ expense. That reminds me of the old stockbroker joke: A stockbroker is down at the marina showing a customer his fabulous boat. The customer asks, “Where are your clients’ boats?” A stockbroker’s basic job is to take money in your account, and somehow get it into theirs. Goldman is quite skilled at this. I don’t know about you, but if I had a stockbroker who was recommending a stock, while secretly selling it short, I would fire them instantly. If that’s not a breach of responsibility, I don’t know what is. Is is illegal? I don’t know. But it is unethical, and it should be illegal. Now Warren Buffet is one of the few investment gurus that appears trustworthy. He stays far away from Wall Street; he seems genuinely uninterested in the lifestyles of the rich and famous. All of which allows him to keep his head mostly on straight. Until now. I’m wondering if the Goldman Boys put something in the water in Omaha.
Speaking of Goldman, latest polls out here in Cal–eey–fornia have Steve Poizner gaining on Meg Whitman in the GOP primary to be the next Governor. Meg was on the Goldman board for a while and participated in a few schemes that are no longer legal. She made a bundle. Meg’s campaign seems to be the biggest stimulus project on the West Coast. She is pumping millions of dollars into local television coffers. Hopefully she can spread some dough to the newspapers; they are really hurting. I love to see millionaires and their money parted, but she’d get more bang for her buck by joining Warren and Bill Gates in eradicating malaria in the third world.
Poizner says Whitman will be Arnold’s third term. Like Arnold, Meg is a moderate Republican with no government experience. Both did quite well in business. Being Governor, however, is not like being in business. Just ask Arnold. There are pesky things like laws and legislators. It’s very annoying when folks don’t do what you want them to do. You might have to throw a hissy fit. See how well that has worked for Arnold. His own party hates him and has wrecked any chance he may have had to fix anything in this state.
My father in law is registered GOP and received a copy of Meg’s glossy 30-page policy manual. I took a look. It’s more like a comic book, actually. It’s full of stuff that Meg is gonna do once elected. Some of it I actually agree with. But most of it is stuff that only the Legislature can do. Basic civics, Meg: governors don’t pass laws! Either she doesn’t know that, or she hopes the voters won’t know the difference. Neither one is good.
Poizner has a guy named Tom McClintock schilling for him on TV, saying he’s the only real conservative. What a hoot. Tom McClintock is a huge hypocrite and one of the biggest pieces of shit to ever get elected. Here is a guy who rails against government, but has done nothing his entire adult life other than hold elected office. He’s like a teenager nursing on his mama’s teet while kicking her in the belly. He has zero legislative legacy despite his years in office; he’s mostly known for blocking things. He’s never won a statewide election, and he never will. When he termed out of his State Senate and Assembly seats down south, he carpet-bagged to a reliably gullible GOP district in the North, and squeaked into Congress, replacing an even bigger and more corrupt piece of shit named John Doolittle. Nominating Poizner is a great way for the Republicans to seal their complete irrelevance in California for at least four years.
Actually, California is so messed up, anyone who wants the job of Governor is probably insane.
Today I read that our governator, Arnold, has reversed his stance on off-shore drilling. Any hope for new rigs off the California coast have been terminated. On the one hand, Arnold has been one of the strongest environmental governors of any state at any time. He deserves credit for that. Arnold tracks about as close to the middle of American politics as anyone out there. On the other hand, this is the same hypocrisy we’ve enjoyed in the U.S. for years. We have off-shored our off-shore drilling to far off lands, so we can foul up somebody else’s environment. Much of the petroleum fueling the US is coming from places like Colombia, Venezuela, New Guinea and Nigeria, where the common people get nothing out of oil development but filthy rivers, filthy air and ruined land. Why do you think so many of them have taken up arms?
Americans will continue to drive their fancy and over-sized cars as they please, without a care, because our views are never tarnished by some nasty ol’ drilling rig, our beaches are clean, and petroleum products in this country still don’t reflect the true cost of their production. Frankly, I think people in the U.S. need to see oil rigs, refineries and the associated pollution every single day of their lives. Maybe we will think twice about driving behemoth vehicles everywhere if we had to live with the consequences. People in far off lands live with these consequences every day, and most of them don’t even own a car. We are spoiled. Our environment is much too clean compared with the demands upon the Earth of our lifestyles.
Another point regarding drilling rigs; this recent blow out, and the one last year in Australia (didn’t hear about that one, Yank?) should drive home the point that deep-water drilling is tricky business. When something goes wrong a mile under the surface of the ocean, it can be very hard to fix. Most of the world’s major new petroleum finds in the past couple of years have been in deep water. These finds are supposed to replace the easy oil of the past, pushing our peak oil date out into the future. First of all, these finds are comparatively small compared to the big oil finds of the past. Second, and more important, this is a recipe for continued environmental disaster.
More expensive oil can’t come soon enough. Arnold, build the rigs where EVERYBODY can see them. Then let’s see how much opposition we have for the gas taxes which are the proper way to finance decent public transit. Like the heroin addict who wakes up in the gutter, we need to see the truth about our habit.
I will use this blog to read in between the lines of today’s headlines, and to discuss the things that really matter, instead of the garbage that passes for news on most of TV. There is a lot of reporting going on today, but not enough insight. 24 hour newsrooms bombard us with information, but much of it is useless and even counterproductive. There are many analysts, but they never stray far from the common “wisdom,” which, as it turns out, is not always so wise. And of course, there are a lot of corporate whores trying to act like they are for the common people. We will do our best to expose them. This blog will cover local, state, national and international news. Business, health, politics too. This is a blog without borders. We tell it like it is, call it as we see it, let the chips fall where they may,