Welcome to the Corporate States of America

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The Los Angeles school district, one of the largest and (overall) most cash-strapped in the country, has approved a proposal to allow corporate names to be posted on school buildings, school district vehicles, and other places, possibly including sports fields. Nothing is to be allowed in classrooms, and companies are to be thoroughly vetted so that no age-inappropriate or other unseemly (e.g., alcohol and junk food manufacturers) companies will be approved for participation. The school district spokesperson said that this still would not end the district's financial woes, but it would make it possible to "avoid further cut-backs in services and programs." Nor is Los Angeles alone in this; Milwaukee's school district started a similar program in 2009.

I'm not the only one who sees what's wrong with this picture. At least one of the parents of a Los Angeles school district fourth-grader noted on NPR's "Morning Edition" today that "there's no such thing as free." There will be a quid pro quo.

What is wrong with Americans? We apparently have become so indoctrinated by corporate and right-wing double-talk that we think it's safer to have businesses, each of which has its own agenda, run our school systems than it is to make sure the government has the funds to do what it needs to fulfill one of its most basic missions, to provide high-quality, free, public education to our youth. The right-wing has succeeded in making "taxes" such a dirty word that we have forgotten Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes's profound observation that "[t]axes are the price we pay for civilization."

Yes, government can take our money and spend it in ways we do not like--but WE are the government in this country. We have the power to change what we do not like. Besides, government in this country has systems in place to appeal abuses of the system. If a corporation treats you unfairly and there is no law [read that "government"--Ed.] which provides you access to redress, you are SOL.

I absolutely do NOT understand how so many Americans can mistrust their own government so much that they prefer to turn control over much of their lives to businesses whose sole purpose for existing is to maximize their own bottom line--even if that be at the expense of the rest of us.

But at the rate we are abdicating our duty to each other to make sure we have the best government on Earth, it won't be long before our kids begin each school day pledging their allegiance to "The Corporate States of America."

Yet Another Modest Proposal

(and with still more apologies to Dean Jonathan Swift)

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Mr. Barack Obama
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
Washington, D.C. 20500

Dear President Obama,

You are correct in asserting both that compromise is the heart of our system and that your job as president is to do what's best for all the American people. However, this deal you brokered with Republican leaders in Congress is neither a compromise nor in the best interests of the American people.

It may look like a compromise when people at both ends of the political spectrum in this country are angry about what's been done, but detailed analysis demonstrates that in this case, looks are deceiving. A compromise is typically defined as a "meeting in the middle," but this deal started out so far to the right of center that what in reality is the middle has been moved so far to the left as to seem dangerously radical. Look: the far right is going to be angry at you no matter how much you give, because they are not angry about the substance of the issues--they are angry that YOU, as a black man, are the president. Nothing you can do will change their anger, so you might as well stop trying to appease them. They deny that they are racists or bigots, but if what they say they want about fiscally responsible political leadership is true, they would have voted all the Republicans OUT off office this past November, not voted more of them in. The disconnect between their proclaimed beliefs and their behavior should be telling you something.

Many on the left, however, are angry at you because you are starting to the right of center, which makes an agreement truly embodying the center, by definition, impossible. We all know that progress is slow, that we can't always get what we want, and that real progress in this country typically happens incrementally. Your behavior since you took office has been to start at the true center and move to the right, however, unlike your soaring rhetoric of hope and change promised during your 2008 campaign. By starting where you've been starting in every discussion so far with the GOP, you aren't giving even incremental progress a chance. I know you're in a tough position, and I know you have an eye to history, but as a fellow academician, I also know that your instinct is to expect people to respond to reasonable behavior by behaving reasonably themselves. In politics, however, that doesn't happen.

Your assertion that you got the GOP to concede several benefits to ordinary Americans that the GOP wouldn't otherwise approve may be true, but is meaningless. A "compromise" that gives 13 months of bare-bones sustenance to the millions of Americans who are the long-term unemployed while bestowing additional billions on the already ultra-rich in this country for 24 months (if not longer--it seems clear that in 2012 we're going to have deja vu all over again about what's happened during the past few months)--billions that will be added to the entire nation's fiscal deficit--is emphatically NOT in the best interests of the American people as a whole. Several analyses of the other terms of this "compromise" say that it will actually increase the burdens on the already-strained middle class instead of helping them. And adding nearly a trillion dollars to the long-term deficit by extending the tax cuts to the ultra-rich does not help the 98% of the American people who have seen their true earning power and purchasing power stagnate (if not downright erode) over the past 40 years.

The ultra-rich seem to have forgotten (if they ever knew) that people without secure, well-paying jobs do not spend money, and since spending money is what drives our overall economic growth, you'd do better by giving no more than a pittance (at the most) to the ultra-rich and bestowing the bulk of your fiscal largesse on us "regular" people. When the economic crisis began, back in 2008, I said that a real economic stimulus plan would devote itself 100% to putting people to work on improving our infrastructure and putting money in our pockets, not to giving money to those who did not need it and who would not spend it. History has borne me out--the rich are even richer than they were when the crisis started, the big ("too big to fail") Wall Street firms are even bigger than they were before 2008, infrastructure improvements are not being done on a big enough or fast enough scale, and the rest of us have become in a real way invisible. Indeed, in 2008, if you simply would have handed a million dollars to every single American, you'd have done more to help the vast majority of us than the stimulus plan as passed ever could, while increasing the long-term deficit only about half as must as the actual stimulus plan did. But the GOP would never have stood for that. (Millionaires and billionaires must be kept a small, elite group. The vast majority of Americans need not apply.) And no, I am not saying by this that you should engage in a short-term, unwinnable political fight. I am calling on you to do in fact what you claim you were doing in the first place, to wit: looking out for the best interests of the American people as a whole.

Listen to and study everything Sen. Bernie Sanders said in his most powerful and fact-laden oratory of December 10th. He is exactly right about it all, but the oligarchic few with most of the money have the power to thwart the will of the real majority of Americans at every turn. You said yourself, correctly, that the vast majority of the American people were aligned with you about not extending tax breaks to the millionaires and billionaires. Yet you still gave in to GOP intransigence and signed off on this "compromise" that gives way more to the ultra-rich 2% than it does to the 98% rest of us. The ultra-rich and their allies were playing a cosmic game of "chicken" with you, Mr. President. You blinked first. There is still time, however, to undo the damage this "compromise" has done.

Before I make my "modest proposal," however, let me tell you a little bit about myself, so that you'll understand the strength of my conviction about my idea. I am a life-long non-smoker who got a lung disease; I now must have, around the clock, 6 liters per minute of supplemental oxygen just to function. At that rate, a portable oxygen tank lasts maybe 2-3 hours, so I am effectively prevented from working outside my home. My sole sources of income for the past several years have been approximately 1/3 of my ex-husband's military retirement pay and Social Security disability payments (note that my 3 highest years of earnings were when I lived outside the U.S. to be with my now ex-husband in connection with his military duties, and so my income from those years does not count toward my benefit, leaving me getting less than half the average disability payment). Because of the austerity measures you've already implemented, this will be the second year in a row that I have not had any COLA at all. However, my cost of living has increased measurably over that period, so in real terms, my income is declining, not staying steady.

Nevertheless, I think you should scuttle this "compromise" you made with the GOP and let ALL the Bush era tax cuts expire at the end of the year. Not only will that fulfill the promises that were made at the time those tax cuts were first enacted, it will restore some modicum of fiscal responsibility to the ultra-rich in this country. The Reagan/Clinton era tax rates (which are the ones that will return once the Bush era cuts expire) did not demand from them a true "fair share" of the burdens all Americans bear for their country. Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes himself noted that "taxes are the price we pay for civilization." Thus, letting the Bush era cuts expire would be better than extending them for another 2 years (or more). And if letting the tax cuts for the middle class expire at the same time is the price we must pay, so be it. The cuts never made a huge difference to most of us, anyway, so ending them isn't going to make a noticeable difference in the other direction, either. The only thing that this "compromise" has done is to let us stall getting our fiscal house in order--again. Letting all the cuts expire in 20 days will be the wake-up call we need to start dealing with our real problems now, instead of sniping at each other while the problem gets bigger and bigger and bigger.

Extending unemployment benefits can be brought up as a stand-alone bill. House Speaker-elect John Boehner is on the record as having said--tellingly, before the deal you brokered with the GOP--that not even the GOP would fail to extend unemployment benefits at Christmastime. What would really do this nation good is to scuttle the "compromise," force a vote before the end of the lame-duck session on extending unemployment benefits alone, and talking to the American people about what the true costs to all of us will be of continuing to give in to the GOP's notion of "fiscal responsibility." If you don't, Dean Swift's "modest proposal" about solving the Irish problem may become applicable here.

Sincerely,

A Very Concerned Citizen

The Two Most Basic Errors Of Libertarian Thought

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US Senate candidate Rand Paul has been saying in public since at least 2002 that his Libertarian beliefs mean that while he personally would abhor anyone who ran his/her business by discriminating against others on the basis of race or skin color, the government should not be able to stop them from doing so, all for the sake of the sanctity of private property rights. So even though he says he supports the aims, goals, and passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, if it had been up to him, the title in that act which ended the ability of businesses engaged in interstate commerce to discriminate would never even have come up for a vote, let alone get passed.

And this perfectly illustrates the first basic error in Libertarian thinking [and I use the term "thinking" loosely--Ed.]--for what it does is elevate the rights inherent in property ownership above and ahead of the rights of individuals. That is exactly backwards. Since the earliest days of the English common law, the rights of people have trumped the rights of property. While you are allowed to use deadly force to protect yourself [or someone else--Ed.] against the use or threat of deadly force against you, you most assuredly are NOT allowed to use deadly force to protect your property from someone posing a threat to it. And if you should choose to use deadly force to protect your property, you will be held responsible for the consequences of your actions, be it under criminal OR civil law. People matter the most under the law. Period.

It is also tempting to go into a long diatribe about how that's in essence the same objection to the entirety of "states' rights" claims, but I'll leave those details for another post. And even if my assertion technically were not true, the outcome of the US Civil War decided it contrary to the Libertarian/states'-righters position anyway. I raise the same argument to those who cite carefully selected excerpts from the Federalist Papers to support such views, by the way. Maybe some of the Founders did intend such topsy-turvy interpretations to be the law of the land. Nonetheless, the outcome of the Civil War [including the passage and ratification of the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments--Ed.] changed everything. We no longer live in an eighteenth-century, rural, locality-based world and economy. While the intent of the Founders is important to discern, it is literally impossible to implement 100% of that intent in the 21st century. I, for one, think the Founders would recognize that, were we able to ask them.

Thus the second basic error in Libertarian thinking: they have taken the adage, "the government that governs best, governs least" as their own, but too often have used it to force the government not so much to "govern least" as to "govern not at all." If they were pressed, I think most Libertarians would admit that at least SOME government is necessary. But they seem to have an abiding faith in either the notion that individuals will do the right thing or the notion that whatever anyone does is no one else's affair. The whole of human history illustrates the folly of both those notions.

I confess to having some sympathies favoring the Libertarians' position, at least in regard to an individual's right to privacy, but the absolutest stand most libertarians take against the role of government is impossible to implement in the real world. It would be anarchy. Let's face some facts: governments exist to do the things that people want or need to have done but which they cannot do by or for themselves. Setting out that framework is what the Founders intended in creating the Constitution in the first place. They had tried the much weaker Articles of Confederation, and scrapped that experiment as soon as practical experience with it showed that it was too weak to do what America needed to survive as an independent country.

No one will be in 100% agreement with anyone else 100% of the time. But without some framework that's sturdy enough to say what is to be done when disagreements arise, and to enforce that procedure on those who disagree issue by issue, there is no government but chaos. And chaos is no government. If you doubt this, consider the essential IN-action of the US Senate during most of the past year-and-a-third. Yes, some things, some important things, have been accomplished, but at what cost? In the US Senate, a minority of ONE can hold the will of the vast majority of American voters hostage . . . and for what? To protect British Petroleum from having to pay for the immense damage its own reckless behavior has caused? T'ain't right, Magee.

I confess to fearing I am on the losing, even though correct, side of this issue, the philosophy of governmental power. When I see US Supreme Court decisions such as the one in Citizens United, the campaign financing case, and I see people on all bands of the political spectrum nodding seriously and giving more than due consideration to the concept of "states' rights," I marvel at how such things could have come to pass in America. Have we learned nothing from the Civil War, the Great Depression, the paroxysms of the Sixties, and the other traumas we have suffered throughout our history? America today, with all its emphasis on corporate welfare and the rights of artificial "persons," evokes the melody of "The World Turned Upside Down" and the sarcastic observation in Animal Farm that "some are more equal than others." Yes, George Orwell was railing against communism, but his words are equally applicable to modern corporate power. Control and repression of the individual are the same whether the one doing the controlling is Stalin or Goldman Sachs.

Overshadowed In Yesterday's News

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I watched the president's speech last night. It was excellent. I'm glad he's showing the leadership backbone that those of us who voted overwhelmingly for him expected of him. But there was another story in yesterday's news, overshadowed by the speech, that could result in as much devastation to this country as failing to enact real health care reform assuredly will do.

The Supreme Court, meeting nearly a month before its official opening date of the first Monday in October, yesterday heard arguments in a case that may well result in the overturning of a near-century's worth of election campaign finance laws. Some corporations want to use corporate money to pay for partisan campaign ads. The legal argument is that restrictions on corporate and union campaign spending are illegal and unconstitutional infringement of First Amendment rights.

I almost laughed when I first heard this, for two reasons: (1) unions have lots of money, but not nearly as much as corporations; (2) more seriously, the Supreme Court itself has, since at least the mid-1930s, consistently recognized that corporations do not have the all same rights as do individuals under our Constitution and laws.

Then I realized that the forces of reaction, those who despise the New Deal and all it (and every subsequent advance in civil and real individual rights) means, are not going to try to stop dragging us backwards, to the days where money and privilege meant you got all the benefits of government and civil society without having to share any of the responsibilities that are literally the other side of the coin of being a member of that civil society.

It's called the social contract, people. And it galls me no end that the most strident preachers of "individual responsibility" are the ones who mean "for everyone else" but not for them. As if their money somehow makes them exempt from paying their fair share for the costs of building and maintaining the roads and infrastructure of this country, paying for the military and other mechanisms that allow our country to exist.

This is really sad. There is no First Amendment interest at stake here, period. Corporations are not people. Corporations do not cast ballots in our primaries and general elections. They are business entities. Our government was not created "of the corporation, by the corporation, and for the corporation." The rights contemplated by our Founding Fathers were the rights pertaining to free and unfettered political discourse. Business/commercial speech has never had as much protection under the First Amendment as your or my right to say "the president is a doofus." That's why the government has the authority to keep cigarette ads off TV, for example. And that's why campaign finance laws have never been questioned or successfully challenged in our courts--until, scarily, possibly now.

Americans by and large believe in fair play. That's one of the major reasons the Founders were so adamant about protecting the free expression of opinions in "the marketplace of ideas." Our Founders considered that the best ideas would rise to the top, and bad ideas would sink, and eventually disappear, based on those ideas' own merits. But the infusion of corporate money tilts that playing field, skews it to the point that's it's no longer even close to being level--or fair. People will not be able to tell whether an idea is good and popular because of its merits or because the money behind it has artificially inflated its presence. It's exactly the same reason we decry the presence of steroids in baseball. There's no way to tell whether all the home run and other records were the product of genuine athletic prowess or of artificially-inflated strength.

And the solution, as with steroids, is to keep the corporate money out. If you doubt the skewing effects of the presence of "tons o' dough," consider Fox News. Rupert Murdoch has said flat out that his goal was to promulgate HIS political agenda. Judging from the number of people who buy the crap his "news"papers and TV networks spew, his money is having its intended effect. Also look at all the insanity spit out by the crazy people at the town hall meetings last month. They got attention all out of proportion to their numbers because the opponents of health care reform put their money behind getting those people into position to cause as much disruption as possible. They didn't even hide it--they were wearing polo shirts sporting their insurance company logos as they chaperoned the buses and shepherded the people on them into the meetings.

Yet there is a real chance that, by the slimmest 5-4 margin, the Supreme Court could undo all the good that nearly a century's worth of campaign finance regulations have done. That possibility terrifies me. The amount of noise one can afford to make will drown out the meritorious ideas which do not have rich special-interests behind them. I fear that we are going to forget [presuming many of us ever knew--Ed.] that money does not flow to ideas because of those ideas' merits; money flows to ideas because of the self-interest of those who have the money.

Money is not merit; money is power. And power corrupts. The love of money may be the root of all evil, but the presence of money is the corrupter of all political discourse.

Count Me Among The Somewhat Disappointed

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I just listened to President Obama's prepared remarks and answers to questions at an Organizing For America event that was held in Washington DC and streamed over the Internet. As always, I continue to be amazed at how comfortable the president is in his own skin; how he's not afraid to engage in a little pointed humor; and how he speaks clearly and directly--and gives a straight answer to a straight question. Most of the time.

My biggest concern about the current health care reform legislation is that no reform that passes without including the so-called "public option" will have sufficient teeth to put the bite on the current excesses of the private, for profit, health insurers and the other big industry insiders (like the pharmaceutical companies) which have raked in obscene profits while literally bankrupting hundreds of thousands of ordinary Americans.

But the president will not commit to the public option. He says "it's important" but that it's "only one component of real health care reform." From everything I know about the issue, and presuming that a true single-payer system is not even on the table, however, the public option seems to be the sine qua non, the linchpin, the very foundation for all the other reforms he's advocating.

So why won't he just come out and commit to it? In the past, I have expressed great admiration for his grasp of politics as "the art of the possible." I still hold that to be true. I think, however, that he's being overly cautious in his estimation of what is, in fact, possible. I cannot escape the suspicion that on this issue, the American public is way, WAY ahead of everyone in Washington. I have seen reported the results of poll after poll after poll, all showing that over 76% of Americans support the public option when its terms are described accurately. On the other hand, several other credible polls show that as the dog days of August have come and gone, public support for the "public option," when called by that name, is decreasing.

Maybe the problem really is with the term "public option." Maybe the powers that be, the ones which do not wish to see their profits drop even one red cent, have managed to poison the well. Maybe they've so polluted the waters about what a "public option" is that the president is trying to get away from the term while retaining its substance. Or maybe I'm just blowing smoke--though I doubt it. I'm a lifelong non-smoker, remember?

My own experiences with both the public and private health care industries have taught me that all the alleged dangers of the public option are already occurring at the hands of private, for-profit insurers. And that the public option [assuming that it will be structured similarly to Medicare, as the currently-proposed legislation has it--Ed.], while capable of wrongfully denying coverage, at least will have an appeals process in place--which may be slow, but will be unbiased. Wrongfully denied coverage decisions can be overturned. Furthermore, you can't be held liable for paying for the costs of the treatment(s) in question while your appeal is in process. Nor will you lose your coverage, either because of your condition or because of your appeal.

As it is now, however, if your private insurer drops you, you're dropped. Period. Yes, there are steps to appeal that you can take, but they are not just slow--they are expensive. The insurers can afford to wait you out. Assume that you have something seriously wrong with you that is treatable, but expensive [and note that the longer it goes untreated, the worse and more expensive both it and its treatment will get--Ed.], and your coverage is denied. You can choose to appeal, and spend whatever other funds you have on the costs of pursuing that. Or you can choose to pay out of pocket for the medical treatments you need and forgo any appeal--you will never get reimbursed for what you spent on treatments for wrongfully-denied claims, by the way. Or, if you can't afford either of those options, you can just spend what little money you have on your everyday expenses, and die while that which was dire, but treatable, becomes fatal due to the lack of treatment and care you were wrongfully denied in the first place.

Let's face it: all that insurance is, is a wager. Further, you are betting on yourself to lose, for that's what will trigger the release of funds from the insurer. [Why do I suddenly hear Beck singing "I'm a loser, baby, so why don't you kill me"?--Ed] And the bet is rigged, for even if you lose, the insurer always has tons o' fine print to cite to justify its refusal to pay your claim. We are collectively being had, people. It's not just time for a change; it's overdue for a change.

But is a real change going to happen? I wonder, when I hear the president saying only that the private option is "important." I know his motive is to encourage both political parties to work together to find solutions. And while I agree that bipartisanship is a worthy goal, I also recognize that it isn't going to happen unless both sides want to play. Right now, the GOP seems more concerned with doing everything it can to mess up the Obama administration's efforts for the sake of its own presupposed electoral gains next year than it seems concerned with doing what is really in the best interests of America's citizens--all of us.

I just hope I'm the only one falling victim to issue fatigue, and that there are still plenty of people out there with the health, the strength, the energy, the vision, and the will to see genuine and substantial health care reform enacted. Because if I'm not the only one succumbing to issue fatigue, we're all SOL.

Two Little Words--Thrice

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Whatever happened to "you're welcome" as the proper response to "thank you"? On the now rare occasions when I hear it, I nearly jump with surprise and joy. I am sick of hearing "Thank YOU" as a response to "thank you." It sounds like a Gaston and Alphonse routine: an ever-downward spiraling do-loop of "After you," "No, after YOU," "Please, I insist: after YOU" . . .

Yet another example of how we Baby Boomers collectively have failed our children and our children's children by not teaching them proper manners.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Call the Grammar Police, Part II. The next time I hear or see someone using the words "from whence," I am going to scream, pull out my hair, and run around frothing at the mouth. (Not really, but it's a definitive image of the intensity of my feelings about this bit of grammatical atrociousness, don't you think?)

Since "whence" literally means "from where," to say "from whence" is to say "from from where," which is--unless one stutters [and possibly even then--Ed.]--redundant. "Whence" all by its little lonesome is enough, people! Where's a decent copy editor when you need one, anyway?

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

And now, the question originally prompting my title for this post. I have listened to and read the reporting about the AIG bonuses and resulting outrage with a mixture of resignation and astonishment.

Resignation, because at some deep level I know the "geniuses" [think "Wile E. Coyote"--Ed.] in the financial industry who took the bonuses under AIG's circumstances, along with the idiots who defend them [again, think "Wile E. Coyote"--Ed.], honestly believe that they deserved those payments and that they did nothing wrong, so they have no reason to give the money back. We talk about people "inside the Beltway" in Washington DC as being out-of-touch, but the Wall Streeters and their publicity toadies are just as much in their own little worlds, divorced from any sense of reality.

Astonishment, because two words fundamental to ANY such discussions and reports and analyses have been entirely absent from the playing field. Those two little words? "Fiduciary duty." This one is axiomatic. It's a "taught in the very first day of law or business school" principle. Anyone who takes responsibility for handling someone else's money kas the fiduciary duty to care for it with more diligence than that person would with even his own funds.

The reckless trading behavior of those in AIG's derivatives division didn't just breach their fiduciary duty to AIG's investors--they demolished it. Therefore, they breached their contracts first; thus, requiring them to forego their bonuses would not breach any contracts; therefore, they should not have received the money; thus, the taxpayers should have no trouble getting it--all of it--back.

Why is no one talking about "fiduciary duty"? Or has that, too, like responding to "thank you" with "you're welcome," gone completely out of style?

Gimme Your Hat--I'm Gonna Puke In It

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Hearing about the filthy, rat-infested conditions in the Peanut Corporation of America plants, first in Georgia and now also in Texas, has turned my stomach big time. I am on the verge of swearing off peanut-related products, which will be a major blow to the sales of Reese's Peanut Butter Cups. Where in the world were the regulators and inspectors?

Nowhere, that's where. Under the Dubya administration, the attitude about both business and banking was "we trust you to do the right thing." ["We don't trust everyday working citizens at all," but that's another story.--Ed.] The result? A nationwide salmonella scare that's more than just a scare--it has already caused nine deaths we know about.

Didn't anyone in the Dubya administration ever read Upton Sinclair's The Jungle? Apparently not. Either that, or they didn't take it seriously. Or they drew the wrong lesson from it. The lesson was not that there will always be isolated aberrant business owners and managers. The lesson was that absent sensible AND ENFORCED regulations, the general public was at risk from those whose only concern was making as much money as possible for themselves.

Yet the GOP is still pushing the same tired old agendas. I wonder whether any of the GOP's members listened openly and honestly to President Obama's speech last night at the annual Illinois Lincoln Day Dinner. It was a masterful essay, reminding us that nationwide problems require nationwide solutions, which Lincoln--the first Republican president--knew well. After all, he signed the Homestead Act, the Land Grant College Act, and the Act creating the transcontinental railroad . . . all while other matters threatened to suck up all his time and energy.

I guess it's too much to expect GOP die-hards to shift their attitudes even an iota, and that's a real shame. It is not too much to expect, however, that they get their facts straight. How anyone can claim, as some GOP members have, that FDR caused the Great Depression is inexcusable. The Great Depression started in October, 1929. FDR didn't take office until March, 1933. What made the Great Depression so horrible is that the president in office when it started, the Republican Herbert Hoover, insisted that economic downturns were normal and that the system would eventually right itself on its own. He did precisely NOTHING to help that process along. The upshot? An ever-worsening downward spiral of layoffs, lower sales, more layoffs and business closings, still lower sales, and so on, until eating even The Jungle's hot dogs containing human remains seemed preferable to starving.

Yet some GOP members in Congress now are claiming the current economic meltdown will right itself and we don't have to do anything.

Those who don't know--or who deny--history are doomed to repeat it. But why should those of us who know better be forced to be dragged down with and by them?

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On a related note: for anyone who still claims financial markets are rational, I have the ultimate proof that even those who say so know better. Marketplace, a very pro-business program aired on NPR, has on its web site an examination of how the Dow Jones and other markets have behaved over time on Friday the 13th.

If markets were truly rational, whether the day was Friday the 13th would not matter. Not one whit. So to recognize that superstitions affect the behavior of market traders is to recognize that markets are NOT, at some fundamental level, rational.

Yet in the next breath, the Marketplace toadies are extolling the virtues of Adam Smith's "invisible hand."

Puh-leez!

Correctly Defining The Problem Is The Key To Finding The Real Solution

A report on NPR's "Morning Edition" Monday began a series exploring the explosion in federal government contracting since Ronald Reagan infamously said "Government isn't the solution. Government is the problem." Contracting out government services has increased every year since that 1981 pronouncement, and has certifiably exploded during the Dubya administration. Did you know that there actually are more contractors in Iraq right now than there are US military personnel?

But Reagan mis-defined the problem, and we are now suffering the long-term effects of his error. The reason he mis-defined the problem is that he forgot (if he ever knew) to whom employees, be they federal or be they contractors', are required to answer for their work.

Contractors are answerable to their company's owners, and their first duty is to maximize profit for their owners. Federal employees, on the other hand, are answerable to ALL of us, and their obligation is to do their jobs to the best of their ability for the good of the people of this country.

This is why contracting out government services is a bad idea. Those whose first duty is to make a profit do not care whether they make it by gouging the public. [Indeed, they are the real pigs at the public trough.--Ed.] Case in point: the IRS has been forced to contract out collection services. People who owe back taxes are being harassed by collection agencies--who have a strong motive to make people pay because they get to keep 25% of everything they collect. As the second report in the NPR series (this morning) noted, however, the contractors are hassling even people who do not owe back taxes--nor are those contractors required to tell people why they are calling--resorting in terrible abuses, as demonstrated starkly by the recordings played of several phone calls between a contractor and an individual allegedly owing the IRS money. Furthermore, and inexcusably in my book, the contractors do not have as much success in collecting as do regular IRS employees!

But the money the collection agencies keep doesn't come out of the IRS budget [remember, it comes directly from what they collect--Ed.], so the IRS can cut the part of its budget that used to pay for its own collectors. Everyone can claim that efficiency has been increased and costs reduced, thus trimming "fat" from the budget and giving people the illusion that waste has been eliminated. In fact, we have lesser quality service at greater expense--for if IRS employees made the collections, 100% of what they collected would go into the public coffers.

If all the contractors were required by the terms of their contracts to comply with the same laws and regulations that IRS employees must obey, I'd be less upset with the situation. But all the contracts are set up to benefit the contractors, ultimately at our expense, whether it be monetary or otherwise. This situation repeats itself in nearly every contracted-out situation of which I've heard.

Consider: virtually all of the contracts awarded in connection with the war in Iraq were awarded without competitive bidding. We've seen the terrible results of that in terms of the shoddy work that was done, let alone the work that was supposed to be done that was not. All of it was paid for with your money at exorbitant rates that far exceeded the value given for the price paid. And we collectively have no recourse to get the money back. The entire contracting situation has been set up in fact to legalize looting the public coffers--so where does that save us anything?

Another case in point: as reported widely (I've seen it on several news shows and in several newspapers during the past two weeks), companies who have been contracted to handle Medicare claims have managed to increase the complexity of the paperwork involved, increase the costs of processing the paperwork (hence increasing their own profit), and reduce the amount of services provided by measurable factors averaging 10%. So the contractors are making more money, the government is spending more money, and the public who receives the services is getting measurably less than it did before the services were contracted out to private companies.

I for one would rather spend a bit more to ensure the people providing services we demand are dedicated public servants whose goal is to do the best for the country than I would to pay people to line their own pockets at our collective expense. "Frugal" is NOT synonymous with "cheap." Businesses are in business to make money. Public servants are here to serve the public. Taxes ARE the price we pay for civilization. Let us spend our money more wisely so that we can keep on being "a government of laws and not of men." President-elect Obama's pledge to make the federal government run "smarter" seems in line with that goal. As such, it correctly defines the problem and is an excellent first step in undoing the damage that Reaganomics has done to this country over the past 20+ years.

TANSTAAFL, Baby, TANSTAAFL

There ain't no such thing as a free lunch. --Robert A. Heinlein

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You wouldn't go to a five-star restaurant and expect to walk out after dining without paying, would you?

You wouldn't go to the grocery store and load up your cart and wheel it out the door without paying, would you?

You wouldn't go to your favorite department store, select the clothes and housewares and electronics of your choice and take them to your car without paying, would you?

So why do Sarah Palin and people like her say that it's OK to live in America, taking advantage of all the benefits of being an American, but that paying taxes is "unpatriotic"?

Because they are greedy, that's why.

There's no other explanation [rational or otherwise--Ed.] for their willingness to take advantage of all the benefits of living in American society without contributing their fair share to maintaining that same society.

Remember, in the US Supreme Court case that affirmed the constitutionality of the federal income tax, no lesser a light than Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes noted that "taxes are the price we pay for civilization."

Yes, there are loopholes in the tax structure--most of which allow the very rich to privatize their profits while socializing their risks. That doesn't mean that those who take advantage of the loopholes are less than greedy. After all, most of the loopholes were put into the system at the behest of their lobbyists in the first place. So they get to keep all their profits and they get to take advantage of everything the government does for all of us (including but not limited to things like providing national defense, certifying the safety of the foods we eat, the drugs we take, and the places we work, and maintaining infrastructure), but they don't have to pay their share of the costs of doing these things?

What's wrong with this picture?

Anybody out there ever heard of noblesse oblige? Just in case you haven't, it's a concept not unlike the philosophy given to Spiderman: those to whom much is given are also given great responsibility.

We cannot go on spending billions more than we have while exempting that those who can best afford to help cover the costs from any responsibility to help do the same. That's economic class stratification. It's saying that those with the most money have the least responsibility. It's saying that those with the most money are better than the rest of us. That's what's un-American, not the calls for fiscal responsibility and for everyone to pay his/her fair share of the burden.

[Then again, they probably are hoping that if they spend the government into the ground, the govenrment will stop spending entirely . . . after all, they can afford to pick up the slack. But what about the rest of us, the ones who are actually in the trenches, the ones who fight the wars and do the jobs and who spend what money they have on the goods and services that give the very rich their obscene profit margins? They couldn't care less. This is the twisted end of "rugged individualism," and it ultimately means the end of America. Like it or not, there are times when we all have to put our individual wants on hold for the sake of the nation--just not to the point that the end game is the economic destruction of that very nation.--Ed.]

And they say liberals are the ones whose agenda is to exercise rights without responsibilities!

The Chickens Have Come Home To Roost

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Either that, or the boy finally cried "wolf!" one too many times. Sorry for mixing my metaphors, but let's face it: had the Dubya administration not played the "fear and panic" cards as often as it has over the past 7+ years, maybe someone would have paid attention to Dubya this time when he said we were on the verge of financial meltdown if his Wall Street bailout didn't get passed.

Note that he's finally learned how to compromise, at least a little. Once he realized that the "no review by anyone at any time of anything" the Secretary of the Treasury would do with the 700 billion dollars [talk about your blank checks!--Ed.] was Dead On Arrival, he was willing to attach a few small strings to the money to get the legislation passed. Just not allowing bankruptcy judges to help homeowners rewrite their mortgages along less onerous lines. [Corporate socialism is OK by the GOP, but assisting individuals to keep their homes is unacceptable, evil socialism, I guess.--Ed.]

No one told the House GOP members, apparently. Partisan bickering is more important to them than salvaging the economic future of the country. Even though neither the breakdown of the votes nor the other facts support them, GOP House members are blaming the Democrats for the bill's failure. [George Orwell would love this.--Ed.]

Fully two-thirds of Republicans in the House voted against the bill, sending it to defeat by fewer than 30 overall. The Democrats voted for the bipartisan bill just as they'd agreed to do. Two-thirds of them supported it, even though many had to hold their noses while they did so.

The GOP representatives are also blaming Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi's "partisan rant" for the collapse of the bipartisan agreement to pass the bill. I listened to her speech. She ranted no such rant. All she did was point out--rightly--that the economic deregulation policies of the last 7+ years are to blame for the mess in which we now find ourselves. And that we'd better pass some regulations with teeth to keep it from happening again [or at least to keep it from happening until the next time we forget our history and re-deregulate to assuage the greed of Wall Street--Ed.].

Even if she had ranted a partisan rant, so what? Isn't the economic future of the country more important than such trivialities? Not to the GOP representatives, apparently, since they are the ones who scuttled the bill.

[Anybody notice the irony here? More Democrats than Republicans voted to support legislation proposed by a Republican Administration. Dare I hope that this split within the GOP foretells the end of the rabid right wing? Nah. Wouldn't be prudent.--Ed.]

Not that the bailout is such a great idea anyway. I'm none too keen on giving even more money to the people who screwed everything up to begin with. I'd like to propose an alternative plan: you want to save the economy? Take Dubya's tax rebate program of earlier this year and make it big enough to do some good. You're prepared to spend 700 billion dollars we don't have? If you can give it to Wall Street, how much better to give each and every legal American (all 305 million of us) 2.295 billion dollars apiece?

I'll bet we all could do some serious power shopping with that. Wal-Mart, beware!

Wakey! Wakey! This Is Your Nine O'Clock Alarm Call!

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The New York Stock Exchange lost nearly 10% of its value in the past 2 days due to the ongoing effects of the subprime mortgage meltdown and its attendant effects on the entire banking structure of our country. How could this happen? Deregulation has once again come home to roost.

And now Sen. John McCain, who for the better part of 26 years has called himself a "de-regulator," says HE's the one with the knowledge and expertise to straighten out Wall Street, end unconscionable greed in America and get our economy back on track. And oh, by the way, he wants to privatize Social Security. That means taking all the money currently in the hands of the Social Security Administration and putting it into the SAME stock market.

Talk about your Social Insecurity!

I cannot believe that anyone who is paying attention to the issues is still even contemplating casting a vote for McCain. Are that many people so stupid and self-destructive? Or are America's problems with continued racism far worse than I want to believe? Or some of each?

Never Teach A Pig To Sing

It Wastes Your Time And Annoys The Pig

Mark Twain's observation is just as valid today as it was when he first penned it. The problem is applying it. I am quite sure Dubya and his minions would like to fling it in my direction on occasion. Their problem is that I am armed with the facts, thus am more properly in a position to fling it at them than they are to fling it at me.

This morning, Dubya lifted the executive order prohibiting offshore oil drilling in American waters. He also urged Congress to overturn the Congressional prohibition on same. What's wrong with this picture, you ask? Let me tell you:

IT WON'T MAKE A BIT OF DIFFERENCE TO THE PRICE OF GAS, either now or in the long run.

Why not? Because all our oil refineries are already operating at maximum capacity. You can't refine it faster than the laws of physics dictate. No one can, no matter how much Dubya wishes it were otherwise. Not that he does wish it otherwise. He doesn't. He's an oil man, though he wasn't any good at that, either. His interests dovetail with the oil companies, not with John and Jane Average Citizen.

So why don't the oil companies build more refineries? Because the oil companies (1) aren't interested in lowering the price of gas--they are interested in raising the price of oil, thus increasing their profits (they don't need more refineries to sell their oil all over the world); (2) don't want to spend what otherwise goes into their pockets as windfall profits on the costs of building said new refineries, which would in the short term reduce their windfall profits; (3) find it easier to milk the cash cow they already have in the barn than to spend resources [you know, silly things like time, money, and human endeavor--Ed.] developing alternate energy sources.

Evidently no oil moguls have ever been in on the ground floor of developing a new technology. For sure none of them ever studied history in a serious way. And it doesn't even have to be ancient history. If they'd just take a look at the history of the oil industry's stepchild, the auto industry, they could not help but realize that GM (for one) first got into trouble in the early 70s because the executives were trying to tell consumers what kind of cars to buy instead of building the kinds of cars consumers said they wanted--as the increasing level of sales of Japanese imports illustrated.

I suppose I shouldn't blame them. Too much. They are reacting with typically short-term thinking. They care only about the current quarter's bottom line, not about what fortunes they could make 10 years down the road. They merely reflect one of the hallmarks of collective American thinking: we have an embarrassingly short attention span. Most of us don't know our own country's history, even when we think we do. If we did, we wouldn't have put up with Dubya and his minions and their crap for the last 7+ years. We'd not have elected him in the first place. [And maybe we didn't--remember Florida in 2000, Ohio in 2004? Ed.]

American history has innumerable examples of creative and inventive individuals (often at the government's behest--witness the Manhattan Project, for example) rising to meet a challenge and keeping America ahead of the technological curve. Morse, Bell, Edison, Singer--just to name a few. Heck, even Abraham Lincoln has a patent! But all Dubya can offer us is the same old, tired suggestions that will not work because they are irrelevant to the real problem. However, if we fall for his shtick, we have no one to blame but ourselves. If we, too, decide that lining the pockets of American oil men is more important to us than our own country's future, we deserve what happens to us.

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Privacy, Schmivacy

Maybe the retroactive immunity provisions for the telecoms under the current FISA proposal don't matter so much after all. Personal privacy doesn't seem to matter to most Americans anymore. This despite personal privacy's status as the foundation of all our liberties--"the freedom to be left alone," as one Supreme Court justice once called it.

There's a tangle of reasons for this phenomenon. One reason is social and multi-generational. In a misguided effort to boost self-esteem, we as a society have jettisoned the concept of "shame." We no longer teach children to be ashamed of the bad, dumb, and stupid things they do. Fear of feeling shame used to be an effective weapon in the fight to get us all to self-regulate our behavior. No more. People no longer seem to realize that there's a difference between bad attention and good attention. They care only about getting attention, of any kind, and the longer, the better.

Another reason is technological. Between the ubiquitous presence of cell phones and the proliferation of Internet sites such as MySpace and YouTube, and the ease with which we now can take and disseminate pictures or videos of just about anything or anyone, the norm has shifted from living in privacy to living in a fishbowl. So our expectations of privacy are reduced . . . if not destroyed.

I remember when airports had bank upon bank upon bank of phone booths--into which one could slip to place a personal call on a land line, with little fear of being overheard and no expectation of the call being wiretapped. Over twenty-five years ago, booths disappeared in favor of kiosks, which made it impossible to converse in private--one had to rely on everyone else's willingness not to overhear. Now, with cell phones, people don't think of using kiosks anymore, even if they could find them. Kiosks have gone the way of the buffalo.

But I wonder--is it that people no longer care that they have no privacy, or do they not realize that they have no privacy? Do they just expect people to respect their privacy while they blurt out the most personal details of their lives for all to hear? Or does it not even occur to them that while they are on their cell phones, they can be overheard not just by the people in the same room, but by anyone who has a receiver on the same frequency? I have heard people telling others their bank account numbers, their credit card numbers, and other information not usually so cavalierly bandied about. I try very hard not to listen, or if that cannot be helped, not to remember what I've heard. I am sure not everyone else would be so circumspect.

Still, it doesn't matter whether people no longer expect privacy or expect it in theory but abrogate it in fact by the way they behave. In either case, privacy disappears. Those who don't defend their rights not only don't keep them, they don't deserve to keep them. Alas for those of us who do care. Our attempts to preserve not just our privacy, but the privacy of all Americans, are overwhelmed by the mere weight of those who just don't care one way or the other. So let the telecoms off the hook for their illegal behavior, and let the members of the Dubya administration who encouraged the warrantless wiretaps off the hook, too. None of it matters anymore, and we're all going to die sooner or later anyway.

Here endeth the American Dream.

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Fly Me To The Moon?

Actually, were I needing to fly via American Airlines, I should be saying "fly me to anywhere."

Last week's days upon days of American Airlines flight cancellations certainly was a debacle. I wonder if American will change its slogan to "We know why you don't fly"--or "We know why you fly--NOT!"

American Airlines, however, is not solely to blame for the mess it created. The Federal Aviation Administration bears most of the responsibility. However, my pointing a finger at the FAA is not for the same reason others want you to do likewise.

According to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, the FAA had determined as far back as 2003 that the electrical wiring bundles near the main wheel well of all MD-80s needed to be checked--indeed, the FAA suspected problems as early as 2001. However, no directive to inspect for or correct the potential problem was made till 2006, and even then, the FAA gave the airlines another year-and-a-half to comply!

The rabid free-marketeers will tell you that this shows the stupidity of government regulations, but they are wrong. The real problem here is putting people who do not believe in government in charge of running the government. Such people have NO incentive to make government work. They have EVERY incentive to make government fail, and in the most spectacular ways possible. When people stop believing in government's ability to help them, they'll stop relying on the government, and the government will eventually go away.

At such time, the free-marketeers can run their money-making schemes any way they want, and the rest of us will have no recourse when we are injured by their doing so.

You want another example? How about FEMA's response to Hurricane Katrina? Maybe Dubya knew exactly what he was saying when he said, "Brownie, you're doing a heckuva job." Maybe he was praising him for messing up FEMA to the point that FEMA could be made to go away forever. Thus the relatively paltry sums spent on running FEMA could be diverted into the Iraq War effort, or more likely, into the pockets of Dubya's buddies in the construction industry.

Nah. I can't give Dubya credit for that much intelligence. Dick Cheney, however . . .

In any event, the lesson is that if you allow people who don't like government to run the government, you've put the fox in charge of the hen house. So don't be surprised when you run out of eggs, let alone chicken dinners.

Mark Twain Advised Against This

Despite Mark Twain's excellent advice, a letter writer opened his mouth [so to speak-Ed.] and removed all doubt about his own ignorance in one of last week's Omaha World-Herald's Letters to the Editor. The man expressed astonishment that Warren Buffett is a (gasp) Democrat and that he supports (gasp) a Democratic candidate for President. He was bewildered that Buffett would be so stupid as to give money to people who want only to destroy the free market system that helped Buffett make his billions in the first place.

What's wrong with this picture? Where do I start? First, the man never seems to have entertained the thought for a nanosecond that Buffett knows more than he, the letter writer, does about markets and what makes their worlds go around . . . and that maybe, just maybe, the letter writer needs to adjust his own attitude instead of thinking Buffett is stupid.

Further, the letter writer never seems to have recognized (unlike Buffett) that there are more important things in life than money, and that the Spider-Man philosophy applies to more than just super powers. "Those who have been given great gifts have great responsibilities." Didn't we used to call that noblesse oblige in the old days?

If anyone out there is reading this, you've heard me say it before, but it bears repeating: humans are social beings. We live in societies. We have obligations to one another if we are to have successful societies. No society that has a cadre of super-duper rich at the top, a large population of very poor at the bottom, and a disappearing middle class which is mostly sinking into poverty and not rising to the level of the super-duper rich, can long endure. No society in all of history lacking a stable middle class ever has.

Not everyone wants to be super-duper rich, believe it or not. Not everyone wants to make a symbolic financial killing. Many of us are content to live a modest life, as long as we have enough to cover our basic needs for clothing, housing, food, utilities, transportation, medical necessitites, and a bit left over for fun or to save for the unexpected disasters (like flooded basements) that inevitably occur.

But this letter writer seems to have swallowed the current right-wing Republican party line . . . and hook . . . and sinker. He can't even see that his position hurts his own economic well-being. He just presumes that a very successful man is stupid because his political and social beliefs don't revolve around the grubbing of money (even though Buffett is very, very good at doing so). He senses there is something wrong with the situation as he sees it, but he draws the wrong conclusion. He exhibits all the classic symptoms of someone who has been brainwashed.

Not to make Buffett out to be a saint. Businesses under his control are frequently much more nasty in the ways they treat their employees than anyone listening to Buffett would expect. I have personal knowledge of the circumstances of several people who were laid off from a Berkshire-Hathaway-owned company with no notice, no warning, and no genuine concern for their well-being, financial and otherwise. This includes more than one person with a physical disability--all of whom had given loyal and dedicated service to said company for over 10 years each (and who'd never received a less-than-positive employee evaluation). I guess all that talk about the company being a family and its success revolving around teamwork was just so much hot air.

Not that I am surprised by this. It's no different in kind from the way the present Bush administration treats its soldiers, sailors, marines, and airmen. Just look at the Walter Reed outpatient treatment scandal and also at how Dubya is arguing that a 3.5% pay raise for our troops is too high. He wants to limit it to 3%. That half-percent discrepancy makes a difference in pay averaging only $26 a month if the statistics reported on MSNBC are accurate. That's chump change to the super-duper rich like Dubya, but it's a lot of money to someone in the military who still has to use food stamps to feed his family.

This is one of the reasons Buffett supports the Democrats. Buffett does recognize, in general, that money equals power and power cannot be allowed to reign unchecked, lest it grind into the mud the people who form the basis of a truly stable, successful society. It's just too bad that Buffett's knowledge hasn't trickled down [ironic reference intended--Ed.] to the people he lets handle the day-to-day business of running the machines of his empire.

Shane! Come Back, Shane!

A/K/A Arsinio, come back Arsinio!

Talk about things that make you go hmmm . . .

Everyone in the business community seems to be really up in arms about the Hewlett-Packard "pretexting" scandal. In case you hadn't heard, the Board of Directors was very upset about leaks of confidential Board business to the Wall Street Journal and other news outlets. So the Board authorized a plan to find the leaker(s) by getting the phone records of everyone who was suspected of leaking. [Please resist the temptation to call up a visual image of people leaking. Thank you.--Ed.] "Pretexting" comes in because the investigators pretended to be the very parties they were investigating in order to get the information they wanted.

And yet the business community in general seems to have no problem with Dubya's warrantless wiretapping program.

Weird.

I guess it's simply a matter of who is perceived to be in the cross-hairs of the investigation. ("Leakers" = "Bad." "Terrorists" = "Bad." "Simple businesspeople doing business" = "Good.") Which doesn't make it right, in either case. But for the sake of what makes America "America," I am more worried about warrantless wiretaps than big business shenanigans. Governmental abuse of power is much more frightening to me than business irregularities. Courts can deal with those who commit business irregularities . . . but when the government itself bends its power in an unchecked way against the individual, we are living in a totalitarian state, not the USA.

My country, where art thee?

Da-Do-Ron-Ron-Ron-Da-Do-En-Ron

Jeffrey Skilling and Ken Lay have been convicted (Skilling on 19 of 26 charges--or was it 28?, and Lay on 6 of 6--plus a separate conviction in a bench trial for personal bank fraud) in the collapse of Enron! Hooray! Toss the confetti, toot the tooters, bang the drums! The jury system works.

I never could take seriously Skilling's and Lay's contentions that even though they held positions of great power and authority in Enron, they were clueless about what was going on.

Get real! Anyone could see from their demeanor that they both were "I'm in control" kind of jerks. They knew exactly what they were doing, and did it anyway, because they were arrogant enough to think they could get away with it.

But what really ticked me off was the behavior of their attorneys, both inside and outside the trial. One of Skilling's attorneys made the ludicrous claim that since no one could point to a meeting where a conspiracy was created that no conspiracy therefore took place. I know it was closing ARGUMENTS, but misstating what the law requires to get a conviction on conspiracy is not an argument--it's stupid.

I salute the jury for seeing through it. Justice is not always done in this country, but it's done often enough in the big cases to keep my faith in the system mostly intact. Now if we could only get justice done in the small cases as well as the large . . . we'd be onto something!

No Wonder Our Society Is In Decline

I see that the one of the prosecutors in the Zacharias Moussaouai trial said in his closing argument that Moussaoui could not be a martyr because "if he wanted to die, all he had to do was go and throw himself off the Eiffel Tower." This is such a basic misunderstanding of what martyrdom encompasses that I hope the jury votes to put Moussaoui in prison for life just because the prosecutor's argument was so stupid.

Martyrdom does NOT entail committing suicide per se. It entails either (1) killing yourself while at the same time killing a lot of your enemies, or (2) getting your enemy to kill you--the implication being wrongfully to kill you. And since that is precisely what Moussaoui wants, it should not be allowed to happen. One of the defense attorneys made this very claim in his closing. No wonder Moussaoui thinks his attorneys are out to destroy him--they are! They value his life above what he wants. Good for them.

* * * * * * * * * * *

Dubya's response to the current "crisis" in gasoline prices includes relaxing the clean air standards imposed on oil refineries. La-di-friggin'-da.

He gets to keep his (blind trust) windfall oil profits, he gets to keep the support of the oil companies, he thinks he gets to improve his public standing, he gets to claim that he is "doing something," and he gets to gut the Clean Air Act besides . . . in other words, he gets exactly what he wants, at the expense of the common folk and the air we breathe.

I hope people finally see through this one and excoriate him for his hypocricy. And I hope against hope that the Senate and House finally impose a windfall profits tax on the oil companies. What's been happening lately to gas prices is just as much of a scam as what happened to electricity in California just before Enron collapesed. It's a cash grab by greedy, unregulated corporate interests-- again, at the expense of the people least able to afford it.

I wonder whether we will ever collectively take a good hard look at US history and realize that every time we deregulate some industry, we get this kind of financial rape and pillaging. I do not care what Adam Smith says: the "invisible hand" of economics does not lead to the larger social good. After all, the corporations themselves say their obligations are to their shareholders, and thus that their goal is to maximize returns for same. Why is it not an issue that they do this at the expense of the rest of us? The entire point of being "a society" is that we are united in important and fundamental ways for the common good. Heck, if today's corporate management had been alive 300 years ago, they'd all have been pirates. They would have been outlaws then--they were outside society, preying on its members--and they should for the same reason be outlaws now.

When do we say "enough is enough"? How many millions/billions/brazilians [there's a joke attached to that last that I may or may not iterate later in this screed.--Ed.] does it take to keep the corporate moguls happy? I'd settle for 1/100 of what any one of them takes in a year as my income for the rest of my life--and be very happy indeed.

I don't care what Michael Douglas's character said. Greed is not good.

[OK, here's the joke: Secy of Defense Rumsfeld tells Dubya that there were 3 Brazilian dead in Iraq today. Dubya, visibly paled, asks weakly, "how many is a brazilian?"--Ed.]

* * * * * * * * * *

Paul McCartney turns 64 in June of this year. AARP's magazine has a long cover story on it . . . and I devoured every word. I even scored 10/10 on the Paul quiz and completely solved the magazine's crossword puzzle (theme: Beatles songs). In ink. I am not even eligible to become an AARP member for more than a year yet. I am a totally hopeless mess.

* * * * * * * * * *

If you follow Nebraska politics at all, or even the national news in this case, you no doubt are at least somewhat familiar with the closing shenanigans of the most recent Nebraska Unicameral session. Yes, Nebraska has the only one-house state legislature in the country . . . allegedly because it is non-partisan. Talk about "things that make you go hmmmm . . ."

Anyway, there's been a huge fight over the composition and reach of local school districts in the state, prompted by what can be described only as an attempted money grab by the Omaha Public School district. The OPS board wanted to bring non-Omaha school districts under the OPS umbrella via an obscure state law that hasn't been enforced for nearly a century.

This, of course, horrified the about-to-be-taken-over school districts, which set themselves up to get out of the OPS bailiwick in the first place. Note that there's also a huge racial component here. The districts fighting the OPS takeover are in the predominantly white, western, financially well-off suburbs. OPS, of course, includes the poorer, more ethnically diverse sections of the city proper.

State Senator Ernie Chambers, Nebraska's own gadfly and liberal/radical-about-town, eternal [OK, nearly eternal. Ernie is being forced out in 2008 due to a term limits law the Unicameral passed, largely due to its collective irritation with Ernie, in an earlier session.--Ed] representative of the primarily black North Omaha district, proposed a bill that would instead divide OPS into 3 districts, one for North Omaha (as I said, primarily black), one for South Omaha (primarily Latino), and one for West Omaha (primarily white).

The stupid Unicameral passed the thing. LB 1024 is going to go down in Nebraska infamy.

Chambers said his goal was to return effective local control to school boards, and that he didn't care about integration or segregation . . . what he cared about was "quality education."

And if you believe that, I will sell you a bridge.

What he was really up to was saying to the overwhelmingly white rest of the legislature, "you're a bunch of racists anyway--now go and prove it." And--of course--they did. Now, the western parts of the state voted for Ernie's bill just to stick it to the "evil big city." But they're mostly white, too. Politics does make strange bedfellows.

I hope the bill gets tied up in adjudication for so long that everyone alive who voted for it dies before we finally get the official word that the thing is unconstitutional on its face.

I'd think this was majorly amusing if it weren't giving Nebraska collectively yet another black eye in the national news.

One Ringy Dingy . . .

Lily Tomlin's Ernestine must be waxing rhapsodic. AT&T has just reached terms to buy out Bell South, reuniting virtually all of the old Ma Bell under one corporate roof--and thus undoing much of the judicial decision in the 80s to break up the Bell monopoly.

I, for one, have been on record for years stating my belief that the Bell system shouldn't have been broken up in the first place. "But don't you believe in the Sherman Anti-Trust Act?" you ask. Yes, I do. But I also have always believed that telephones are in fact (though not in name) a utility, not an optional household expense. Try having a medical crisis and getting help without a phone, if you doubt that a telephone is a necessity in the modern world.

Still, I am not sanguine about this merger. I realize the business climate for telephone systems is not the same as it was in the 80s (due largely to the break-up of Ma Bell to begin with) and I know that there are economies of scale that only enormous companies can attain. However, less competition is in general not a good thing. Besides, the tendency lately is for companies to use the cost savings they gain by mergers to improve their bottom line, not decrease costs to their customers.

True, that is not a bad thing from the corporation's viewpoint. The corporation's goal is to maximize return for its shareholders. That's its job. But there are larger societal implications than making the most money possible. There are not-necessarily-tangible gains to be had from running a business with "enlightened self-interest." Maybe the corporation makes a little less money in this fiscal year--but then it also stabilizes its existence and ensures a steady, long-term income stream by maximizing the number of people who hold jobs, and who thus can afford to buy what the corporation sells.

For the same reasons, I have shaken my head in disbelief at (for just two examples) both the proponents of extreme logging and the airline pilots who propose striking Delta right now. Once all the trees are gone and once Delta ceases to exist, none of them are going to have any jobs. What is wrong with giving a little to get a lot more over the long term in return?

Of course, this all goes back to the current political climate. An awful lot of people who hold powerful political positions seem to have forgotten that the genius of the American system is compromise. They all want their own ideas implemented 100% and don't seem to be willing to give an inch. On ANYthing. Which is downright unAmerican, if you ask me.

Have none of you heard of the concept of a pyrrhic victory? What's the point in winning a short-term goal if you all ultimately go down in flames?

How can you tell if a compromise is a good one, anyway? Simple: if everybody is mad, from the farthest right to the far-outest left, you've achieved a workable solution. Not necessarily the best solution, but a workable one. And that historically is what has made America function.

Our collective loss of memory about the viability of compromise threatens our system, our safety, our security, and our whole way of life far more than Al Qaida ever could. We need to relearn why America survived its first two hundred years and get back to implementing what has made America work if we are to survive another two hundred.