government by dow 2011

So at work we were discussing some investment things, and it was mentioned that the stock market was down over 4 percent today. That's in one day.

I checked Yahoo Finance just now and yep, it's pretty bad.





'Government by Dow' has been a fun turn of phrase over the past few years, capturing government's capture of the common good by a much narrower set of interests on Wall Street. But when even Wall Street hates your policies, maybe it's time to rethink. Or at least ask, what is going on?

The day the 'grand bargain' a/k/a debt deal a/k/a CYA for cutting popular programs passed the House, the Dow fell from 12144 to 12132. Then on Tuesday, when it passed the Senate and Obama signed it into law, the Dow closed at 11867. Today, the Dow closed at 11384.

In chart form, the past five days look like this:



Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeee.

Enjoy the ride.

But, I know, whocouldanode that idiotic public policy is bad? Or maybe the efficient markets theory is wrong, and The Market isn't right that the debt deal is awful.

Wait, what's that about unstoppable force hitting immovable object again?

welcome to the other america

(PR) Uh oh, I'm ranting about politics...

I obviously haven't been paying much attention because I didn't realize the Clinton blowjob of the early 21st century was an ongoing matter. But apparently, former Senator, Vice Presidential nominee, and Presidential candidate John Edwards has been under an actual, real-life, full blown Department of Justice criminal investigation because he did something absolutely no politician ever does, try to portray a false public narrative about himself that doesn't match his actual nature.

I mean, thank goodness our political leaders (and heck, our business leaders, too, for that matter) are such paragons of virtue and family values.

But what intrigues me most is that the Obama Administration isn't happy with the Usual Punishment* for Being Caught: expulsion from the club (publicly). They actually want a felony conviction.

Quick, name the 10 most important people the Obama Administration has prosecuted.

Okay, I'll give you multiple choice:

a. George Bush
b. Dick Cheney
c. Condoleeza Rice
d. Donald Rumsfeld
e. Alberto Gonzalez
f. ...uh, this might take awhile...

It's almost comical. I only met John Edwards once (I was a pretty big fan back in 2007 of his candidacy). He struck me in person to actually be a lot like his reputation: he felt like a rich, sleezy used car salesman. I don't invite used car salesmen to my birthday parties. I don't go to movies with them. But you know what, I bought my car from one. They serve a purpose. Where the purpose overlaps with your purpose, they are valuable partners.

I ain't lookin' for a saint; and heck, even saints are sinners.

John Edwards made his cheesy sloganeering about poverty. Even today, you can say the phrase two Americas and largely evoke a pretty coherent narrative that Edwards was telling. Now, he's living the two Americas. The problem with our two-tiered justice system isn't that people down on their luck don't break the law. The problem is when the full weight of the law is selectively administered.

If I knew him well enough to call him John, I'd be in position to talk about how his life has completely fallen apart. I'd wonder what Cate, his eldest daughter the same age as me, is going through. But I don't know the family, and like any other family with moral, and now legal, complications, their challenges are for them to face, to decide how they want to come out the other end. His sin is against his wife, his kids, his family, his faith.

What I do know is that this has a chance to remind us what the rule of law means. It means no one is above it. All are equal under it. Technicalities are all the law is. Create exceptions, and what you've got is two Americas.

* of course, even being caught doesn't necessarily do it. Heck, people as varied as Rush Limbaugh and Tim Geithner have broken the law. And no one in the world avails themselves of more drugs and prostitutes than Manhattan and DC.

blunt's website cracks me up

(P) I've been enjoying checking out Representative Blunt's website over the past year as he's the de facto GOP candidate for Bond's Senate seat. What cracks me up is how there will be one news headline that will just completely contradict the headline before it. Do the Congressman's advisors think we're morans? For example, if you're opposed to making the national debt larger, then fine, support policies that shrink the debt.

As a headline from 2/4 states: Blunt votes no on Greatest Debt Increase in American History. Never mind the reasoning behind that logic; let's take it at face value for a moment.

Contrast that with a headline from two days before and a headline from the day before: Blunt Slams President's Tax Hike on Charitable Donations and Blunt Blast's President's removal of C-17s from Budget. Again, set aside the reasoning for why it might be good or bad to reduce the tax breaks that wealthy Americans get for donating to charity and why it might be good or bad to reduce defense spending. Just take the statements at face value.

Within two days, Blunt's office issued statements saying that

1) We should increase the debt, and
2) We should decrease the debt

Or as another example, if you believe in free trade, great. I went to business school to major in management and international business. That's speakin' my language.

So on Blunt's issues page, he talks about

Promoting the free flow of goods, knowledge and innovation around the world

But on the very same page, he talks about

Enforcing our border, standing up for the rule of law

Again, set aside for a second whether you believe we should have free trade or a closed border; both have legitimate arguments backing them up. Rather, consider that the issues section of Blunt's website declares that

1) We should promote trade around the world, and
2) We should restrict trade at our borders

With leadership like that, he's sure to earn a promotion!

Seriously, Republicans support that guy? Democrats have their problems. I'm the first to call them idiots when they're, well, idiots. But Congressman Blunt takes it to a whole other level.

Whose side is he on? The Republicans blasting government spending? Or the commie-hippie-tree-hugging tax and spenders throwing away money on homeless people?

it's finally here

Some people have been waiting all weekend for this! And some have been waiting for months. Some of us have spent the last 8 years in anticipation of today.

And of course, some folks have been waiting for this moment all their lives.

It is good to have things to anticipate. It is also good for those moments to arrive.

We approach today from a variety of angles, of perspectives, of needs, of hopes, of places, but we come to this place united, indivisible, seeking liberty and justice for all.

about time

I would highly encourage reading of the letter the Obama campaign sent to Attorney General Mukasey regarding the Republicans' fussing about 'voter fraud', as if the Democrats are the ones trying to disenfranchise people.

It's pretty fundamental stuff. If people are kept from voting, and if the legal system is politicized, then we lose confidence in the outcome of elections, destroying the very democracy that supposedly governs our society.

It's very exciting to see Obama wading into the discussion.

what's the point of two parties?

(PR) This is definitely both a political post and a rant. I've been good about separating those two, but lately, things are just insane.

I wish I could say that what is transpiring this week is absolutely unbelievable. But really, it's not.

The GOP will use the power of government to help rich friends when they need it ('begrudgingly', of course--they really, truly, deeply believe in the power of markets and the evil of government all the time except for this one horrific case). The Democrats will be split between the rank and file being screwed and the leadership selling them out, whether actively or passively.

And voila. We have terrible public policy backed by a narrative spewed by both Republican and Democratic leaders that has no basis in reality, a narrative that actually damages understanding of the problem and makes it more difficult to deal with the real issues. The problem is not credit. It's not liquidity. We don't need to rescue the gamblers. We need to value work in our economy. You want to make assets worth something? Give money to people who don't have any. We've already spent about $900 billion on various corporate giveaways. With this new fangled idea of having the government buy assets that companies can't sell, the tab appears to go much higher. You know what we could do instead? Spend that money on investments that will earn a return, like infrastructure, light rail, schools, and healthcare. Or give it to people who didn't get filthy rich the past 30 years. A trillion dollars split among 100 million American families is $10,000. TEN THOUSAND DOLLARS! That would make a real impact in the real economy, not a paper difference for companies that purposefully took on risk they shouldn't have, expecting to dump the problem on the taxpayer when things turned sour.

When corporations and CEOs need bailouts, 'time is of the essence' and the President and Congress can get stuff done in a matter of days. But when our soldiers are dying in Iraq, or people are losing their homes, or workers' wages are falling, or somebody can't get healthcare or our schools are literally falling apart, well, sorry folks, you see, it takes a long time to get anything done.

Take a number. Be quiet. Have a seat. No, don't stand up; we might have to arrest you for disturbing the peace.

this is america

(P) America is very good at dealing with crises. They demand action, and we're good at doing something. If it works, we do more. If not, we try something else. In the face of Something Serious, do something is a refrain we all rally around.

That's why the most troubling trends in our society are the ones that creep forward, seeping into us without us ever really acknowledging or confronting them. Or even approving of them. As more and more tax dollars go to more and more people, the system gains a momentum all its own of stakeholders looking for ever more seats at the taxpayer table.

One particularly destructive trend has been the militarization of our society. Our language, our discourse, our politics; the very options we believe to be possible are framed more and more by the perspective of force. Last week's Democratic National Convention and this week's Republican National Convention illustrate the nonpartisan nature of this development. We are acculturated from a very early age to internalize that the people on the receiving end of force must obviously have done something to deserve their fate, to the point that most of the creeping militarization goes on without even being news.

But the conventions give us a time when the envelope is pushed a little farther, and it's at those points when some attention gets paid to this issue. The resources that go into these things are enormous. More 'security' money was set aside for a four day convention in Denver than is needed to cover the whole projected budget shortfall for the entire year for Bi-State/Metro, the St. Louis' area transit agency. Is the threat of a couple hippies really more bad than this? When did we make that choice?

The answer is, we didn't. Until somebody you care about gets on the wrong end of the law, we just don't pay that much collective attention to the expanding prisons and police forces and rush to control what people do. SWAT, special weapons and tactics, is literally military training and equipment for use against civilians. The vast majority of those targeted civilians are American citizens.

So it's worth thinking about. Do we really need to spend $100 million to secure two week's worth of political conventions? Do we need to send heavily armed officers after groups of Americans who haven't broken any laws? Do we want a society where police can arrest solely on probable cause, give no reason for a search, remove items, and lock you up, all without charges? Do we see value in limiting the speech and assembly rights of citizens to make sure Important Politicians and Business People aren't bothered in their plotting to run the country? Is the technical know-how, energy, and expertise of the government servants who designed the system monitoring my blog well-allocated?

There's no one answer to any of this. Virtually no one suggests having no police forces, while virtually everyone celebrates individual rights and the Constitution. Most of the actors in the system, on all sides, are legitimately serving their country and advocating the principles in which they believe. The answer is to discuss this, to have an open exchange of ideas driven more by citizens in public and less by special interests in private. That would be real change in our society. That's the only way to combat mission creep.

Here are some links to what's been going on. Exploring is particularly important if you're not familiar with the reality of government power today.

Star Tribune
Salon
a free speech zone
Colorado Independent

happy fourth of july

I find myself caught today between thoughts of what we have become and what we can become.

How we deal with the people in our government giving terrible, illegal orders will say a lot about whether we're still the revolutionaries, or whether it is we ourselves who are tending toward Despotism and Tyranny, we ourselves who have become the System of Government that must be altered.

What does Independence mean to those who are not free? What does it mean to us as citizens who have a responsibility to ensure their freedom? What does it say about our citizenship if we fail to do so?

Hope is stronger than fear. Tolerance is stronger than hatred. We can make this country better.

Will we?

how much evidence is enough

(P) One of the fundamental issues I am most passionate about deals with the process of voting. Now, it's not particularly exciting in and of itself; in fact, it's rather mundane and boring, when all goes well. But when all does not go well, it throws off the whole system. It's impossible to have representative government when the official tallies don't represent the will of the people. In fact, it's more sinister than that. It's impossible to have representative government when there is the impression that the official results are illegitimate, even if they do accurately reflect the results of an election.

There are a number of ways over the years that American democracy has been susceptable to manipulation, with perhaps the most famous cases being political bosses, or machines, in major cities, whose tactics were basically to persuade lots of people to vote a certain way through less than fair means. What's interesting about the voting issues of the past few years compared to prior periods is that the defining characteristic is no longer trying to manipulate people into voting. Rather, it's about trying to prevent certain groups of people from voting, or, if you can't stop them, prevent their votes from being counted accurately. It's also worth noting that men from New York to KC ended up being convicted and incarcerated for various crimes. Election fraud is a serious issue, and there is much precedent in our history for prosecuting it aggressively. Just like Al Capone, a common tactic was going after tax evasion if the evidence couldn't be collected for a conviction related to illegal election activity.

Now, none of the above will strike anybody as particularly controversial, as it's safely in the past and primarily dealt with urban Democratic bosses. It gets really interesting, however, when we raise questions about current GOP operatives. All of a sudden, it's treasonous, insane conspiracy theorizing to pose questions when something smells fishy (my favorite line from back in November of 2004 from the mainstream media is courtesy of the Washington Post: "spreadsheet-wielding conspiracy theorists"). We all know how irrational accountants, engineers, and statisticians tend to be.

There are lots of places to read about specific problems in Florida, Ohio, New Mexico, Nevada, and elsewhere. The unfolding story about White House political involvement in US Attorney selection certainly will shed additional light on GOP voter suppression tactics. Some people have already been convicted and/or forced to resign their positions in the following years. What's perhaps most suspicious, though, prompted this particular post.

Under state law and a specific court order, Ohio election officials were required to secure results from the 2004 election for further study. Guess what? The documents have been destroyed or are missing from over half the counties in Ohio.

Nothing to see here folks, move along.

stop the clash

(P) I have had some interesting discussions recently about Islam and relations between the US and Middle Eastern countries and differences between public opinion and the people running governments and so forth. And if you remember, I really enjoyed the speech the Executive Director of the Missouri Baptist Convention gave at the annual meeting.

I found this video looking at some blogs, and it is really interesting.

Check it out.