Stoopid Stuff

Hard Choices

Barack Obama:

That we are in the midst of crisis is now well understood. Our nation is at war, against a far-reaching network of violence and hatred. Our economy is badly weakened, a consequence of greed and irresponsibility on the part of some, but also our collective failure to make hard choices and prepare the nation for a new age.

I'm not optimistic. I can't share your hope. I don't believe there is any reason to believe, even with this singular human being assuming America's leadership position, that suddenly America will be able to reverse course and do the things necessary to go from doomed to healthy, from unsustainable to viable, from blind plunge to controlled crash.

Obama is right. It is about those hard choices. The question is really does he have the political courage to make them, and will the system allow it? If we thing about what those choices truly need to be, it becomes clear that we, as a society and as a community will continue to cover our ears and close our eyes, running headlong into disaster even while denying that disaster is even a possible outcome.

1. Health Care. The system is broken. The only real, sustainable answer Single Payer, operated as a government agency. As long as for-profit private insurance companies are the primary source of coverage, and private employers desperate to cut costs are the primary buyers of coverage, no amount of tinkering around the margins will serve to make health care for Americans increasingly rare, and increasingly shoddy.

2. Defense Spending. The days of the Trillion dollar American Military have to be over. Now, not next year, not next decade, now. Even with 50 or 60% cuts in military spending starting in fiscal 2010, the skyrocketing cost of veterans benefits coming as the result of the last 20 years of profligate combat deployments will still be a real drain on the American economy. A few suggestions. Cut the nuclear stockpile to 120 warheads. 100 on Submarines. 12 ICBMs in silos. 8 air-deliverable warheads. Period. Destroy the rest, they serve no real purpose. Eliminate all strategic bomber programs, from the B52 to the B1 to the B2. In today's combat environment, they are useless dinosaurs. Eliminate all but 5 Submarines (2 Boomers and 3 Attack), and all but 2 Aircraft Carriers. Combine the Navy and the Coast Guard, eliminating redundancies and waste. There are a lot more, but all we actually need is a means to ensure that an amphibious force doesn't land on American Shores and depose our government, and a means to defend genuine American interests abroad.

3. Domestic Spending. Consider what actually is needed to make American society viable in the for the next 50 years. Education, infrastructure, carbon mitigation, a real social safety net, etc. Now consider what is realistic. What American politics will allow. It doesn't take a genius to recognize that even with Barack Obama standing tall and eloquent in the bully pulpit, courageously willing to commit political suicide to try to put America on a truly sustainable path, that level of courage will be awfully scarce amongst the garden variety pols and pundits that will have to do the heavy lifting if something truly dramatic is to be accomplished.

There are lots more. You can make your own list. The "hard choices" are nothing more than the basic, grownup sacrifices any community has to be willing to make in order to guarantee it's own survival. Choices that can generate some near term pain. Choices that can interfere with getting everything you want and getting it NOW. Choices that America has refused to even consider for decades.

I wish President Obama all the best, and I'll do anything I can to support him. And, I suppose, if America was a Monarchy I'd be more hopeful. But what's required at this point is dramatic action. And once it's all watered down into politically safe little symbolic acts, it will have no more value than it's intrinsic placebo effect. And I'm pretty sure that won't be enough...

posted by mikey @ 3:04 PM 4 comments

What is this I feel? Relief? Anticipation?

I know it's a dreadful cliche, but our long national nightmare is, at long last, over. Now comes the real work. The work of governing a superpower in decline. The work of remaking America in her own tattered, dimly remembered image.

Solve the problems.

End the abuses.

Make the "Hard Decisions".

Sure. We'll see. But for now, it is enough to have competent, honest leaders with values and integrity. Tomorrow comes the serious work of trying to steer the ship of state around all the ice, but for today, a big smile, a few tears, and a contented sigh. It is enough...

posted by mikey @ 11:36 AM 0 comments

Stoopid Economic Analysis

There are a vast number of subjects about which I am ignorant. My ignorance could fill volumes, libraries, indeed, the number of things I don't know cannot even be measured. They are, as articulated by the eloquently pusillanimous Don Rumsfeld, Known Unknowns and Unknown Unknowns.

For me, Economics falls into the known unknown category. Honestly, there is a part of me that wants to question whether there is even a viable science in all of this random sloshing about of money and the greed and fear that drives it. It's Von Clausewitz's "fog of war" without a clearly defined goal beyond "more, more, more". Kind of as if you let Billy Idol write your corporate mission statement.

But after a few months of this meltdown and the obviously venal motives behind not just the suggested solutions, but behind the solution SUGGESTERS, a couple things have begun to become clear.

First, the nature of "financial markets". It's pretty much inarguable at this point that "financial markets" are a parasite that has found a way to live on the blood and health of the host, the International Economy. The International Economy is based on things. Things you can make, things you can sell, things you can send down a fiber optic cable that people might want to buy.

In it's most simplified terms, it works like this. Companies pay people to develop, bring to market and deliver stuff. People earn a living producing the stuff companies sell. They take that money and buy stuff other companies make and sell. It works because there is always new STUFF, and there is always people with money to buy it.

This depends on a lot of fragile, finely balanced factors, but none more important than the requirement that the parasite, the financial markets, take their sustenance from the host, the International Economy, but that they leave enough lifeblood in the host that it can continue to grow and thrive. Now, nothing compels this parasite to behave with moderation and prevents it from eating the host, so we have "regulations", rules and laws and modes of conduct that prevents the greedy parasites from draining more from the host than it can afford to lose and still remain viable.

Post Reagan, in the eighties and nineties, the parasite became much bigger. It began to develop and use political clout, particularly, of course, in the nature of cash, to begin to redefine the rules to allow it to grow larger. A particular political ideology began to be dominant. In this ideology, "The Market" was all knowing, all seeing, and self correcting. There was no long term or systemic problem in "The Market", because "The Market" would correct these problems more quickly and more efficiently than any political entity ever could.

So the Parasite became larger, and it sucked more resources, more value, out of the system. And it began to find itself in a dominant position that allowed it to actually MAKE the rules. Well, if you're a parasite, your job is to grow. Now sure, a carefully evolved parasite would have learned over the millennia to avoid taking more from the host than the host could provide and still stay healthy, but this was a young, powerful parasite that had no sense of it's own vulnerability. And it ate, and sucked and sought more power, and made more, riskier investments, and then it derived even riskier investments out of those investments, again and again, until the huge valuation of the parasite was significantly based on a dense, unregulated and completely impossible to truly understand pile of paper.

Now? Now, the host is sick. With all this worthless paper valued at ridiculous levels, nobody knows what institution is actually viable, and which is nothing more than a dead man walking. Hands out, they come to the very government they've been pouring money into for decades, and pronounce themselves "too big to fail". Suddenly, they find they have stolen too much wealth, stripped too much value out of the system they ultimately depend upon for their existence, and demand tax dollars to prevent them from suffering the costs of their own malfeasance.

I don't know. My government, including a new President I have a great deal of respect for, tells me we just don't have an option. And yet, and still, they hand out BILLIONS without any rules, without any questions, without any requirement that they be able to tell US, you and me, what the fuck they did with our money. I'll be honest, it makes me want to go to the pitchfork and torch closet and start dragging stuff out.

I guess there's really two things I don't know. Was it necessary, and can it work? We'll honestly never know the answer to the first question, but we're going to find out the answer to the second, whether we want to or not...

posted by mikey @ 5:50 PM 0 comments

Pardon Me?

"We have to look forward, not backward". Odd. Nobody ever said that when I was charged with a crime. Nobody ever said it would be unreasonable, shrill, extreme, radical or partisan to prosecute my ass. Tom Ricks called for a "Truth and Reconciliation Commission".

Nope. Not even that is good enough. It seems simple enough to me. Chris Hayes makes the case perfectly:

1) Yesterday, AG designee Eric Holder said, without hesitation that water-boarding is torture.

2) Dick Cheney has admitted authorizing water-boarding.

3) Dick Cheney has admitted authorizing torture.

4) Torture is a felony under US law punishable by up to 20 years of prison.

5) Dick Cheney authorized a felony.

QED, right? Is there any other way to reason through these premises and deductions?

It really couldn't be simpler. Bush and Cheney, among their other enablers, repeated broke both US and International law. They violated statutes the US has prosecuted before. If they are not prosecuted and tried, there is nothing that will ever again compel an American political leadership figure to follow the rule of law, even while we say emphatically that it is our belief in the rule of law that makes us different.

I don't even see how it's a question at all. I mean, imagine if Dick Cheney had actually SHOT someone instead of authorizing torture...Ok, that's a bad example. Imagine if Dick Cheney had robbed a bank during his lunch break. Or raped a tourist. Prosecuting him would not be considered a "partisan act".

If the brave American Patriots who tortured the men in their custody really thought America was at risk and it was necessary for them to break the law in order to save American lives, then they should WELCOME a trial. Because if they could truly make that case, there is every likelihood that they would be exonerated, or pardoned. They should not expect not to be prosecuted, they should expect to prevail in a trial. Somehow, they had the courage to torture, even in some cases unto death, helpless men entirely in their power. Have they not the courage to stand up and take responsibility for their actions?

For heaven's sake, even Stalin's Russia and Mao's China never admitted to torture. They never discussed it as a POLICY POSITION, for gawds sake. You either do it or you don't, but you do it in the dark, secretly, without telling the world you do it. Somehow, as a nation that embraced human rights and rejected authoritarian measures like surveillance and torture, America was able to survive, indeed to thrive, in the face of threats as big as Nazi German and the Soviet Empire. But 800 guys in a cave halfway around the world represented a threat so severe it became necessary for America to become precisely the thing she fought against all those years? I completely reject that premise.

Still, there's this niggling little voice in my head that keeps wondering. Maybe Obama isn't willing to come out and say his administration will investigate and prosecute war crimes in hopes of preventing Bush from preemptively pardoning the primary players in his government. Maybe Obama hopes that if Bush believes there won't be investigations, he won't need to take the unseemly step of admitting crimes by issuing pardons.

Here's hoping, anyway. We'll know the answers soon enough...

posted by mikey @ 2:01 PM 0 comments

A Nation gets the Government it Deserves

Sure. There's a lot of hooting as Bush and Cheney slink away, leaving us to try to repair the damage that, at this point, we still cannot even triage. Comedians make jokes, fake news anchors sneer, events and days are counted down, and the calendar pages flip inexorably toward the changing of leadership.

Bush's farewell speech was a travesty, and tantrum demanding respect for actions and events that can only be ridiculed. He took no responsibility for the harm, indeed, he claimed to have done well, and appealed only to time to recognize the quality of his leadership. While we all languish in the disaster that was his domestic policy, his foreign policy, his hubris, his stupidity.

Yes. We GET that Bush and Cheney, along with a large number of their staffs, have committed crime after crime, murdering, torturing, renditioning, spying, lying, even shooting their FRIENDS. But it must never be forgotten. No matter how you decide to come down on the 2000 election and the criminal fraud perpetrated by the Bush cronies on the Supreme Court, ultimately, it should never have come to that.

At the end of the day, a nation gets the leadership it seeks. It follows the ideology it deserves. It offers power to those it would follow. And enough Americans chose to follow these ignorant thugs. Enough Americans were afraid, enough Americans viewed the world with fear and hatred, enough Americans wanted an autocracy to eliminate this scary democracy and all those people we hate.

We are the ones we've been waiting for. We are also the ones who bear responsibility for the actions of our nation over the last 8 year. We need to do (at least) two things. We need to accept that AMERICA did these things, not George Bush, not Dick Cheney, but OUR tribe. We need to own that, accept that, and forgive ourselves. And we need to begin to hold the responsible individuals accountable. We have to accept our responsibility, but that doesn't mean we have the option not to purge this demon. We are the criminals, and we somebody has to pay.

We can't even begin to turn the page until we accept, understand and embrace two things. First, we are also culpable, and in that context, it can happen again. We have to take much more seriously how people become our leaders. We have to recognize the inherent risks in the system, that we can make very large mistakes that we can't find an easy way to reverse. And second, people who have done this to us, even if in our names, must have accountability. If nobody pays a price, there will be no disincentive to the next kleptomaniac thug criminal ignorant incompetent prettyboy who wants power and can't come up with a downside to its pursuit.

posted by mikey @ 6:23 PM 0 comments

Kristof's Sweatshops - REAL Problem Solving in the 21st Century

Have you read Nicholas Kristof's column on the relative value of Sweatshop manufacturing in raising the quality of life in the poorest nations? If not, go read it now. It's important.

I'm still thinking about it. I'm not sure I agree with the premise, but what's more interesting is that I'm not sure I can challenge it, either. It's important to recognize that we don't WANT it to be true, but that's no basis for making a judgment.

There are no easy solutions to global poverty and wealth imbalance. If there was any actual low-hanging fruit, it would have been picked by now. Every decision is a trade off, a compromise of the first order. You give up something to get something. And maybe, in some cases, you give up a piece of your soul.

It's hard for most of us, living comfortably here in America, to conceive of life in a sweatshop. Hard, but at least possible. We know about manufacturing, we know about agriculture, and it is within our reach to imagine the same jobs without any employee protection, without safety rules, without even a minimum wage. But it's well nigh impossible for us to imagine how people get by without even the luxury of a sweatshop job. Indeed, in a situation where a sweatshop job is nothing more than a hopeless dream.

So we overlay what we know on what we can imagine, and we say, "just pay a living wage, provide for a minimum of employee comfort and safety, and don't poison the community with toxic pollutants". This seems like a reasonable, responsible goal, and as good global citizens we're perfectly willing to support good actors by paying more for their products.

But it's important to remember that the retail price we're willing to pay is not the sole variable in play here. The companies that contract with offshore manufacturers are trying to squeeze as much of the costs out of bringing their products to market as possible, so if a shop that pays a better wage and has higher internal costs due to better practices gets underbid by a sweatshop, the more desirable player loses the order and cannot increase his employment.

As Kristof points out, low-cost offshore manufacturing is a two-tier market. In some cases, better infrastructure like roads, housing and electricity need to be available, so these facilities tend to locate in relatively wealthier nations, while the more labor-intensive manufacturing can be done in the poorest of countries. It is in those countries where it is at least possible that more low-cost manufacturing jobs would provide a very welcome increase in the local quality of life, even if we would consider them, quite rightly, sweatshops.

I don't know the answer. I do know that this is a very timely reminder that the answers to many global challenges are neither obvious nor easy. We need to think about local solutions, and if they seem counterintuitive to us, well, perhaps thats more due to local perception than global reality...

posted by mikey @ 3:04 PM 0 comments

Life gets Tejus, Don't It?

I've just gotten fed up. Still arguing about torture. As if there were two sides to TORTURE! As if there was an honest and righteous and defensible position in support of torturing people. And while we find ourselves still arguing, after years of argument nobody's said anything new in years.

"No one is above the law".

"Ticking Time Bomb".

"Torture Doesn't work".

"24".

No. No more. I just don't want to repeat myself again. Even more so, I just can't listen to the liars lie any more.

Bellicose talk about Iran. Saber rattling over a Nuclear Weapons development program that doesn't exist.

The US Congress voted 390 to 5 to vigorously support Israel's slaughter of Palestinian women and children in Gaza. And if you say "War Crimes", if you question the savage, brutal, horrendously disproportionate nature of the Israeli onslaught, there's still, even today, somebody prepared to declare you an anti-Semite worthy of Hitler.

The US Treasury is still shoveling money into the most greedy, rapacious, incompetent financial firms, the ones who drank too much for too long at the trough of ridiculous, unsustainable business models, while people lose their jobs, their health care, their homes. While poverty and desperation climbs among Americans, the very American Corporations that CAUSED the problem in the first place just keep getting all they need, over and over again.

The same arguments. The same lies. The same crimes. Something new has to be injected into the discussion. Some cost must apply for being wrong, for breaking the law, for violating the constitution, for forgetting who you work for. Because while we have the same argument over and over, while we make the same statements and listen to the same lies, while nothing, not one little thing changes, it just seems like fiddling while Rome burns...

posted by mikey @ 11:17 AM 0 comments

Implacable Enemy? Really?

I have to be honest here. I just don't see where Iran is such an awful player in the game of global geopolitics. I mean, sure, people keep repeating the same tropes, but why don't they ever offer any specifics?

1. Iran is meddling in the affairs of her neighbors. Well, yeah, she is. Pretty much everybody does. The US "meddles" in the affairs of most Latin American governments, and if you want to honestly try to take the position the US hasn't meddled in Cuban affairs over the last five decades I'm sorry, I'm just going to laugh at you. And when it comes to meddling in the affairs of Iran's neighbors, wouldn't you say a massive military invasion and occupation that toppled the previous government of Iraq would qualify as meddling? For that matter, we don't seem to have a terrible problem with Israel's serial meddling in pretty much ALL the middle eastern nations.

2. Sponsoring terrorist organizations. Well, yeah, that would be bad. But then it turns out that they're talking about Hezbollah, part of the coalition government in Lebanon, and Hamas, the elected leadership of the Palestinians in Gaza, a group trying to resist an illegal occupation. And it's at least a little disingenuous that Iran has a problem with a Kurdish separatist organization generally classified as a terrorist organization, and THAT group is sponsored by - wait for it - the United States.

3. Iran is pursuing nuclear weapons. Ah, yes. The BIG one. And people from Dick Cheney to Bill Kristol state with certainty that Iran is developing nuclear weapons, so it must be true, right? Ok, sure, Ali Khamenei says they aren't developing weapons. The US intelligence services says they aren't developing weapons. The IAEA says there is absolutely no evidence that they are developing weapons. Iran is a signatory to the NPT and has agreed to the implementation of the "Additional Protocols" allowing International monitoring of fissile materials. And the very important point that the only nation ever to use nuclear weapons on another in anger is the United States.

4. There's the whole "wants to see Israel wiped off the map" meme. Outside of the US, it is well known, and has been widely acknowledged that this is a mis-translation quotation of

posted by mikey @ 11:51 AM 2 comments