Thoughts after President Obama's Afghanistan War speech ...

President Obama trapped himself with his speech double-downing on the war in Afghanistan as a war of necessity on August 17th to the Veterans of Foreign Wars no less. He couldn't reverse course without bringing all his rhetoric (his main strength?) into repute. What would he have left? Whenever he said anything, we would all say let's wait and see what he does, and ask, has he thought this through or committed himself to a course that he later might wish he hadn't?

The main point is, as Frank Rich makes in his column—Obama’s Logic Is No Match for Afghanistan—today, Sunday, December 6, on the OpEd page of The New York Times, we are not willing to pay for this war AND we can't afford it ... not in treasure or horribly in the lives and blood of some of this generation's best and brightest, selected to go to war because they are. 

The shear incongruity of the cost to us vs. the cost to Al Qaeda is insane. Al Qaeda is bleeding us dry, bringing us to our knees as a great nation and our leaders can't see it? One hundred in the tribal areas of Pakistan costing what? $1000 dollars a year each? ... against 100,000 in Afghanistan costing $1,000,000 a year each?

While our infrastructure crumbles as we fail to modernize our nation, educate our children, or take care of our sick and elderly? When the real "war" for global supremacy is waged in economics and by the example of building a modern nation, educating children, and taking care of the sick and elderly ...

Just one statistic, over 2,100 suicides among our military since the latest Iraq War began, should give our leaders pause.

While suicide bombers continue to blow up themselves and their victims around the globe.

A new iteration of the company store

When high rates of interest--usury--became legal the working class became entangled in a new iteration of the company store, a continuation of slavery and feudalism whereby an elite siphons off the wealth labor creates.

The financial services sector is the new company store and because the workers of this country are among the most, if not THE most--productive of the world, there is a huge amount of wealth to rip off.

It simply shows how brainwashed we have become, to accept the greed of our current elite -- as vile as any communist cadre -- as the will of God, or the working of The Invisible Hand.

It's absurd. And when future historians look back on this post-Reagan era, they will shake their heads over our collective gullibility.

The Obama administration is not going to curb the financial services sector's excesses

The Obama administration is not going to curb the financial services sector's excesses. They front for them.

The Democratic Party mollifies the left while the Republican Party mollifies the right in a Tweedle Dee-Tweedle Dum political dance as a front for the financial services sector. It is the latest and arguably most sophisticated system -- in the continuum of slavery, feudalism, and fascism -- for an elite to siphon away the wealth labor creates.

It should be clear by now that we do not have a political party that represents the interest of labor ... and "labor" is NOT synonymous with "union" as in "labor union" ... IMHO.

History is the story of political/economic structures (and belief systems to support those structures) that siphon off the wealth created by labor by an elite: slavery, feudalism, fascism. As an aside, Hitler's contribution was to convince a whole ehnic group that they were "the elite" and could live off the labor of "lesser peoples."

The current elite -- the financial services sector's gurus -- siphon the wealth through forward-leaning instruments of debt. They use our money to create these instruments at obscene multiples called leverage, thereby tightening the stranglehold on future earnings. If they had to suffer the consequences of their actions in creating an unsustainable debt-hold into the future, they might not do it ... but there is the point that the individual guru (banker) can get his/her money up front in pay and bonuses, no matter what the future to the "bank" ... and then when we, the taxpayer/worker, turn around and bail the bank out for ripping us off ... well, it's absurd on the face of it, don't you think?

The Obama administration is the fox in the hen house ... clearly.

Posted to www.huffingtonpost.com/social/hglindquist

age-old political structure of controlling the economics -- a comment on HuffingtonPost.com

It's the age-old political structure of controlling the economics of an elite living off the labor of the workers: slavery, feudalism, fascism ...

America grew to the greatest society with the concept of a fair share for workers out the of wealth their labor helps create.

"Trickle down" is absurd. There aren't enough "elite" to support the services of a broad and vibrant middle class -- the teachers, doctors, lawyers, master craftspersons, etc -- that is the strength of our -- the greatest ever -- society.

It has to be "percolate up" from workers earning a living wage as the bottom rung of the wage ladder and needing those services.


Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/10/25/independent-voters-shifti_n_333168.html?show_comment_id=33428037#comment_33428037

Lackeys of the high priests/gurus pf financial services — a comment on HuffingtonPost.com

How the U.S. Blew Trillion-Dollar Trade of Century: Mark Fisher
Commentary by Mark Fisher

Oct. 26 (Bloomberg)

"Unfortunately, our leaders in Washington lacked the shrewdness required to guarantee taxpayers a permanent ownership stake in the banks their money was being used to save. An innovative investment solution could have secured some of the necessary funds to fix our disaster of a health-care system or Social Security mishap."

They didn't lack the shrewdness required, rather they were (are) lackeys of the high priests/gurus of financial services, the new elite siphoning off the wealth created by the labor. This is the age-old continuation of slavery, feudalism, fascism ... a political structure supporting the economics of some form of slavery: robbing the workers.

America beccame great on the promise of a fair share of the wealth our work — mental and physical effort — helps create.


Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/10/26/how-the-us-blew-the-trill_n_333330.html?show_comment_id=33426985#comment_33426985

Support peace! — a comment on HuffingtonPost.com

It is time to invest in the strategies for peace. "Support peace!"

By bringing an end to our nation's strategic objective of controlling access to Middle East oil.

Everyone, please read "A Plan to Power 100 Percent of the Planet with Renewables" by By Mark Z. Jacobson and Mark A. Delucchi in the November 2009 issue of Scientific American:

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=a-path-to-sustainable-energy-by-2030

We can do this! As the authors point out:

"During World War II, the U.S. retooled automobile factories to produce 300,000 aircraft, and other countries produced 486,000 more. In 1956 the U.S. began
building the Interstate Highway System, which after 35 years extended for 47,000 miles, changing commerce and society."


Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-brenner/obama----really-the-afgha_b_332655.html?page=2&show_comment_id=33422082#comment_33422082

Percolate up, a comment on HuffingtonPost.com

As fijisailor wrote, "The prosperity of America has always been based on a large middle class."

What the elite believe is that "trickle down" feeds the middle class. It doesn't. "Trickle down" feeds a banana republic.

"Percolate up" from the working class earning a living wage for an adult worker is what feeds a vibrant middle class. Only a viable working class is large enough to need the number of teachers, doctors, lawyers, craftsmen, etc. to create the kind and size of middle class that produced the greatest society in the world.


Read the thread at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/huff-tv/arianna-talks-about-bailo_b_333132.html

A so-called "free market" is a "free-for-all" where bullies win

Let's get some phrases that we the people can understand.

A free market is a free-for-all where bullies win. Do we really want to give up standard weights and measures and speed limits? Are we REALLY that dumb? I certainly hope not.

Do you really want me to make a profit no matter what it costs everyone else? Like, shouldn't I pay for the damage I do to you? See, if you or I are buying something in a fair market transaction, we are getting something we normally view as of equal or greater value. But what if you have to pay for your cancer caused by pollutants I dump into the environment? We already know the answer to that, you can sue me. Now what about the damage done economically by the toxic assets dumped into the economy?

Why should corporations earn profits no matter how much it costs society in real damages for the corporations to earn those profits?

Why then would anyone devise a scheme that rewards folks that caused so much damage? We -- the taxpayer -- are paying the costs of the corporations short-term profits that got distributed in bonuses and salaries in a classic Ponzi scheme that we're paying off ... it's like we made Bernie Madoff whole instead of sending him to prison.

That's an "ism" that I call "Corporationism" (I define as "protecting corporations "right" to earn a profit no matter what it costs society), AND in its current viral form, it's pretty damn evil ... speaking of evil "isms".

"Why our nation is falling apart"

The Forbes 400 Shows Why Our Nation Is Falling Apart
By Les Leopold
October 1, 2009

I emphatically agree with and applaud this post by Les Leopold on HuffingtonPost.com! We have caught a viral form of corporationism: protecting corporations "right" to earn a profit no matter what it costs society.

Would we allow a free-for-all in sports? Of course not. And every time we let the so-called brilliant financial gurus talk us into a so-called "free" market we get snookered in Ponzi schemes. (Who said the Fed is a Ponzi scheme? IMHO they are right.) Because the corporations at the top of the pecking order do not pay the costs they impose on society ("externalities" anyone?) there is no such thing as a "free" market, and we have known this even in economics theory for quite some time.

Besides, who would want a market without standard weights and measures? A market without regulation is absurd on the face of it. And we have listened to these "brilliant" idiots spouting the nonsense of "free" markets and deregulation for 30-plus years?! When it is a simple matter taught to us millennia ago, "The love of money is the root of all evil." This tragicomedy played out over the past 30-plus years leaves me wondering if I should laugh or cry ... or get mad as hell and not take it anymore.

Originally written as my comment on HuffingtonPost.com under my real name: hglindquist.

Full employment with a living wage for the bottom wage rung

Its all about jobs where the BOTTOM rung pays a living wage for adult workers ... with FULL employment. This nation is wealthy enough with enough work to do. (Also -- just for those who are always yelling "communism" -- fair wages are NOT equal wages.)

We learned that the greatest society with great universities, great art, great thought, plus, plus plus ... is NOT dependent on slaves or vassals supporting an elite, but on a vibrant middle class built on an adult living wage as its foundation -- a wage that pays for food, clothing, shelter, medical care, education, and recreation for a family of four -- and a market based on rules of fairness (standard weights and measures anyone? pay for the damage you cause? ... as examples.)

And you know who confirmed the worth of a vibrant middle class from the lessons he learned in the WWII economy? It was Ike. Born in Texas in 1890, brought up in Abilene, Kansas, President Eisenhower with his Federal Highway System put us to work on INVESTING in infrastructure that would pay off in multiples ... and selling it to the rearward-looking on the far right as necessary for the defense of the nation.

Yet the Evangelical Christian right has become followers of the anti-Christian elitism of ancient Athens and "God is dead" Nietzsche. Proving god is dead ... I surmise.

Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/09/29/first-public-option-amend_n_303228.html?page=3&show_comment_id=31906482#comment_31906482

Obama is wagging the dog!

The Wall Street Journal reported yesterday (September 26) that "U.S. Knew About Site for Years".

Obviously the firestorm created by Obama wavering in his heretofore unwavering support for winning the Afghan War needed a firebreak, a controlled burn to stop it.

Obama is a Chicago politician, woefully out of his depth in the Presidency, fulfilling the Peter Principle in having risen to the level of his incompetency.

Fair labor practice - posted on Huffpo

The basic political question is how to FAIRLY divide (NOT equally divide) the wealth human labor — our mental and physical effort — creates. And ALL wealth is created by human effort.

Oligarchs want to drive the cost of labor down to that of keeping a mule: food, shelter, harness, sustaining rest, and medical care for the breeding stock.

We the people have learned that allowing workers to have a fair share (again, NOT an equal share) from their labor produced the world's most advanced civilization ... and proved once and for all that a vibrant community, rich in arts and thought, is not dependent on a elite class supported by vassals or slaves.

It's simple, full employment with the bottom adult labor rung paid a living wage for a family of 4: food, clothing, shelter, medical care, education and recreation. We are still a wealthy nation with plenty of work to be done, work that would lay the foundation for creating the wealth of tomorrow ... Much as Eisenhower did with the Federal Highway Program.

Watch Krugman on the American dream.

Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/09/24/michael-moore-calls-out-a_n_298605.html?page=15&show_comment_id=31585305#comment_31585305

Leaders of both major parties are adherents to corporationism: protecting corporations "right" to earn a profit no matter what it costs society. Externalities anyone? (What ever happened to the responsibility to pay for the damage we do?)

Inherent in the elitism of corporationists is the believe and active support of the doctrine that slaves produce the wealth that supports their elite status. This doctrine is carried out in the reduce the cost of labor to that of a mule: food, harness, shelter, training ... and medical care for breeding stock.

A labor/progressive consideration should be the working out of a fair distribution to workers of the wealth their labor -- mental and physical effort -- creates.

A fair distribution of this wealth rests on two principles: (1.) the bottom rung of wages for an adult worker is a living wage -- enough for food, clothing, shelter, medical care, education, and recreation for a family of 4; and (2) full employment whereby every adult worker able and willing to work can get a job.

Our nation is more than wealthy enough to provide full employment with a living wage as the bottom rung. This should be the economic barometer for us, not the Dow Jones Industrial Average.

Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/09/30/michael-moore-mocks-whiny_n_304033.html?page=5&show_comment_id=31928988#comment_31928988

What the hell is going on, Mr. Obama?!

Didn't you increase the troops in Afghanistan by 21,000 just last March? Didn't you just give a speech in which you said "that a stable Afghanistan is central to the security of the United States"? —http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/23/world/asia/23policy.html

Here's what Obama said as recently as August 17th. Please note the strong reference to the "comprehensive strategy" he announced in March of this year ... and now he wants to rethink it? He's going to turn himself into a right-wing whipping boy ... either way he comes out of this. This is so bad it is almost unbelievable. He gives a great speech ... but he is proving over and over again that his words are disconnected from his actions to come.

By moving forward in Iraq, we’re able to refocus on the war against al Qaeda and its extremist allies in Afghanistan and Pakistan. That is why I announced a new, comprehensive strategy in March. This strategy recognizes that al Qaeda and its allies had moved their base to the remote, tribal areas of Pakistan. This strategy acknowledges that military power alone will not win this war—that we also need diplomacy and development and good governance. And our new strategy has a clear mission and defined goals—to disrupt, dismantle and defeat al Qaeda and its extremist allies.

In the months since, we’ve begun to put this comprehensive strategy into action. And in recent weeks, we’ve seen our troops do their part. They’ve have gone into new areas—taking the fight to the Taliban in villages and towns where residents have been terrorized for years. They’re adopting new tactics, knowing that it’s not enough to kill extremists and terrorists; we also need to protect the Afghan people and improve their daily lives. And today, our troops are helping to secure polling places for this week’s election so Afghans can choose the future they want.

These new efforts have not been without a price. The fighting has been fierce. More Americans have given their lives. And as always, the thoughts and prayers of every American are with those who make the ultimate sacrifice in our defense.

As I said when I announced this strategy, there will be more difficult days ahead. The insurgency in Afghanistan didn’t just happen overnight. And we won’t defeat it overnight. This will not be quick. This will not be easy.

But we must never forget. This is not a war of choice. This is a war of necessity. Those who attacked America on 9/11 are plotting to do so again. If left unchecked, the Taliban insurgency will mean an even larger safe haven from which al Qaeda would plot to kill more Americans. So this is not only a war worth fighting. This is fundamental to the defense of our people.

Going forward, we will constantly adapt our tactics to stay ahead of the enemy and give our troops the tools and equipment they need to succeed. And at every step of the way, we will assess our efforts to defeat al Qaeda and its extremist allies, and to help the Afghan and Pakistani people build the future they seek. (Note: Emphasis added)

—From the Full Remarks of President Barack Obama
Fulfilling America’s Responsibility to Those Who Serve
Veterans of Foreign Wars
Phoenix, Arizona
August 17, 2009

Love is ...

Love is the human emotion of feeling good about wanting a positive outcome for another human being and actively helping to make it happen. When we are willing to forgo our own positive outcomes for another's — and we still feel good about it — it is true love.

We also "love" something when it makes us feel good about what we consider is a positive outcome for ourselves. Music that puts us in a good mood — joyful, peaceful, exhilarating, exciting; chocolate that elicits a warming sense of sweetness; anything that awakens a our senses and emotions positively.

So ... when we say we love someone ... is it because that person makes us feel good? ... or because we want to make them feel good? ... or both?

If loving someone is solely because of the other person making us feel good with the only concern about our making the other person also feel good motivated by enticing them to make us feel good ... well, you can see how convoluted "love" can be.

Because we have a positive emotional response to helping those we love have a positive outcome, "love" is a positive evolutionary force. It pulls/pushes us to help those we truly love, and most assuredly when we love ourselves.

And to deepen the discussion, we are taught whom we can "love". We come into awareness out of our existence learning identity markers for family and tribe. School colors and mascots, anyone?

Then Jesus came along and taught us that all humans are our family ... oops! We are still trying to learn how to ingrain THAT — human being — as our identity marker for those we are allowed to love.

And now that the only remaining barrier to the sharing of sexual pleasure is age ... the providing of sexual pleasure as a "good thing" to another person will be confusing for many ... for awhile.

What else?

A sense of fairness is an universal ethic

I suggest that a sense of fairness is an universal ethic, not what is fair for everyone, but that I consider what is fair for me in the circumstances of my own existence.

And primary to "the circumstances of my own existence" is my being a member of a group, and then my status within that group.

I believe the basic political question is "What is fair?".

Because we have a positive emotional response to a sense of being treated fairly, and a negative emotional response to a sense of being treated unfairly, "fairness" is an evolutionary force. It pulls/pushes us to find fairness in how we are treated.

Fairness is not equality.

I believe a sense of fairness stems from the biological basis of human society as members of hunting tribes — or packs, if we were wolves — in which the kill was divided by the alpha leaders of the hunt.

Corporationism protects the absurd

Dumping the mine detritus from mountaintops into pristine river valleys below is absurd. Allowing it is insane.

It is like as if in our national game of baseball any hit ball would be fair, no matter where it landed.

Or the Yankees could move the home run fence in whenever they were up to bat.

It isn't fair and we all know it. It's absurd and those who allowed it would clearly be nuts.

So when Glenn Beck says — as Frank Rich writes in his NY Times OpEd piece, Even Glenn Beck Is Right Twice a Day —

“Wall Street owns our government,” Beck declared in one rant this July. “Our government and these gigantic corporations have merged.” He drew a chart to dramatize the revolving door between Washington and Goldman Sachs in both the Hank Paulson and Timothy Geithner Treasury departments.

... he (Beck) strikes a chord in we the people over the absurd unfairness of the current and still evolving economics of corporationism.

And America was founded on the fairness of opportunity for all ... even if that initially meant all non-Irish Northern Europeans in many minds.

Geithner, Summers, and Bernake running the financial rules sector of the Federal government is like having Pete Rose, Mark McGwire, and Barry Bond on baseball's rules committee.

Get real. Should I laugh or cry?

Obama does not know HOW to lead

Let's face it, President Obama does not know how to lead.

Leadership requires rewarding your supporters and punishing your detractors. He doesn't do that.

Leaders understand that there are a whole bunch of folks out circling, waiting to knock the leader off the pedestal and take his/her place ... even if in come-up-man-ship only, like a star on a sports team challenging the coach or manager, and getting away with it.

Obama, apparently, has always been mentored into his next higher position ... because he is a great campaigner. He fits the mold of the charismatic politician, and like every other media star does not have to be anything other than out of prison in real life. He is the person others put forward as their "man".

He's never DONE anything except fulfill assignments from others and win elections.

Health care reform is a prime example. First, he has not driven a stake in the heart of rising health care costs by doubling down on any plan that would. And doubling down means having the "chips" to make his opponents pay to stay in the game AND using them. He doesn't have the chips BECAUSE he doesn't think he needs them ... and if he had them, there is no indication that he knows how or when to use them!

Obama gives a good speech. He doesn't know how to knock heads. In fact he never will. It's too late in his career path to learn how, and his choice of financial gurus boxes him out from trying. Geithner, Summers, and Bernake are the foxes for the financial services industry in our hen house. I don't see how it could be worse ... because if the coming crash came faster (in response to those saying the slowing of the spiral downward is a good thing) we maybe then would have the political will to change. As it is, we are descending into Banana Republic status with the financial services elite sucking up the wealth by printing paper instruments of debt ... is there anything nuttier than that?!

Republicans hope - and Democrats fear - that a politically significant percentage of voters will come to see the federal government under Democratic control as redistributing tax dollars to "elites" and to the very poor, as the broad middle class is left on its own to face high unemployment, sharply reduced home values, and gutted retirement savings.

- Angry Populism Could Save The GOP
By Thomas B. Edsall

And — IMHO — whenever we haven't had a president with the interests of we the people and the nation at heart AND with the clout to knock heads in the US Senate, we the people have fallen prey to the elite with the economic power to have that kind of clout.

Corporationism: The corporation as the new tribe in human evolution

The corporation is the new tribe in human evolution.

What is the CEO's — played by Tom Wilkinson — line in the movie, Duplicity, about the struggle between corporations as the current arena for evolutionary progress? Note: When the script is published, I'll quote it.

The economists are the high priests, the witch doctors of the business arena where the hunt is conducted, the battle is fought, the competition is played out for guiding the tribe according to the Golden Rule of Corporationism: "Distribution of profit based on ownership is the foundation of the common good." Tribal members? The shareholders of the corporation ... not the workers. The managers are the tribal leaders. The workers are the wage slaves.

Think back to the dawn of civilization when humans roamed as hunting groups, and the leader of the hunt distributed the kill to the members. There are enough genetically inherited patterns from that period evident in today's business patterns to start me researching the subject. Note: As with Duplicity, I am certain this idea does not originate with me, although it looks like I get to coin "corporationism" in the sense and meaning that it is branch of Capitalism much like Calvinism is an offshoot of the Protestant faith. And I expressly use the religion comparison here for what should be obvious reasons ... to invite the examination of parallels.

This new tribal "structure" with its religion of greed fits the concepts of social Darwinism on both the left and the right of the political spectrum. The "Left" tries to get the corporation/business to pay all the costs of producing its goods and services before declaring a profit. The "Right" says maximizing profit in itself is a legitimate — or sanctioned — act.

For example, looking at health care through the lens of Corporationism, President Obama reveals himself as a true believer in Corproationism as the economic structure to funnel wealth to the top tier of wealth gathers.

The basic political question is, "How is wealth to be distributed in a society?" Remember slavery or feudalism with its lords and vassals? We now have Corporationism as the new form of economic elitism in which the contribution of labor is undervalued for the benefit of whatever new elite has garnered economic and — the resulting — political power. Today we have the “priesthood” of academic economists constructing their “holy bible” to justify this new belief structure … even the god of “The Invisible Hand.”

I happen to believe that the fair distribution of wealth produced by a society to the people who create that wealth is the foundation of the common good for a progressive society. I am anti-slavery, anti-feudalism (with its lords and vassals), anti-monopoly, AND pro-fair labor practices with a living wage for the bottom rung available to anyone able and willing to work in jobs protected by humane health and safety regulations.

A fundamental role of our — the people's — government is to develop and regulate the economic environment that provides the fair distribution of the wealth created within that environment ... including efficient markets to facilitate the exchange of goods and services while paying the costs of producing those goods and services. Note: Money and other pieces of paper having "face value for the bearer" are NOT real goods or services. These financial instruments facilitate the efficient exchange of goods and services across the broad regions of our nation and the globe.

The right of corporations to earn profits is (should be?) bounded by — contained within — the requirement to fairly distribute the wealth they create. For example, costs of environmental pollution should be paid by the corporation creating the pollution. Likewise, costs of injury to workers due to unsafe work practices should be paid by the corporation using such practices. Note: And this is at the heart of the health care debate. Do we fairly distribute health care to all or just to the elite who are defined by having received enough wealth through adherence to Corporationism to be able to afford health care?

And the wealth of our society should be the basis of the guarantee that all participants who are willing and able to work have an opportunity to work at a job that pays a living wage, in other words, a job that provides enough for food, shelter, clothing, education (including child care), health care, and recreation for the worker and his or her family whenever that worker is ready to assume the role of an adult worker in our economy.

What is the point in having a society if its citizens are not provided for? It has been our general view in this nation that the needs of citizens and their families are provided for through the wages and benefits they earn on their work, their jobs. Then it follows that citizens should be given the opportunity to work at jobs that provide for their basic needs ... at a minimum.

And if corporations along with other businesses cannot meet the demand for jobs that pay a living wage for adult workers ... then we need some other market "mechanism" to fill the gap. Typically this has been the "government" (the legal organization of "we the people") contracting with corporations and other businesses to produce goods and services related to infrastructure that improves the business arena for all citizens in the long-term, past the corporate business model's profit cycle for justifying an investment ... such as President Eisenhower and the Federal Highway program.

And so ... President Obama reveals through proffered policy for reforming health care that he is limiting his political solutions to the boundary of the corporate business model's profit cycle — Corporationism — rather than what should be an outer boundary of mechanisms to fairly distribute a nation's wealth ... wealth that is created by that nation's economic environment in which we all have a stake.

We the people need economic principles to live by ...

We the people need economic principles to live by, principles we can understand ... principles that actually apply to the real world.

And we should know and understand the history of how these principles evolved out of our experience.

Like labor laws including those against children working in coal mines at the age of twelve. Did you know about that? Did I say twelve? How about seven and eight?

How about the 40-hour work week, lunch and rest breaks, weekends ... did you know that the concept of the "weekend" was given us by the labor movement?

And then there is the history of imperialism and other economic structures to funnel wealth upward to the top tier of wealth gatherers. Take salt. Take India. Take the British. Take Gandhi.

The Gandhi Salt March
1930

In 1930 in order to help free India from British control, Mahatma Gandhi proposed a non-violent march protesting the British Salt Tax, continuing Gandhi's pleas for civil disobedience. The Salt Tax essentially made it illegal to sell or produce salt, allowing a complete British monopoly. Since salt is necessary in everyone's daily diet, everyone in India was affected. The Salt Tax made it illegal for workers to freely collect their own salt from the coasts of India, making them buy salt they couldn't really afford.

http://www.thenagain.info/webchron/india/SaltMarch.html

There it is. All spelled out in black and white for us. If we have a necessary (without it our basic well-being, health, life itself is threatened directly by not having it) "commodity" that we actually could have in abundance, and some "market force" (in the case of the salt in India, "a complete British monopoly") creates what is quite clearly an artificial price (in this case, a tax) for the purchase of the "commodity" ... and the British do this on the basis of a law ... What do you think?

Life-saving medicines that are beyond their patent-life are what? And what if the law actually says that the market forces of negotiation cannot be applied ... as in the case of Medicare?

This is becoming so convoluted behind the smoke screen of a "free market" that without some common agreement on principle, we are doomed to failure ... or until we the people start our own march to the sea.

The Salt March started a series of protests, closing many British shops and British mills. A march to Dharshana resulted in horrible violence. The non-violent satyagrahis did not defend themselves against the clubs of policemen, and many were killed instantly. The world embraced the satyagrahis and their non-violence, and eventually enabled India to gain their freedom from Britain.

-Ibid.

It's really simple ...

The core political issue is developing the economic structure for a fair distribution — NOT equal distribution — of the wealth produced by the efforts — physical and mental — of working men and women. It has become obvious that current market "forces" do not distribute wealth fairly.

Let's face it, a fair distribution would provide jobs for all able-bodied adult workers and a living wage for the bottom rung of the labor ladder.

AND a living wage would provide for the basic needs of the family: food, shelter, clothing, education, healthcare.

This should be the primary plank the platform of a political party looking out for workers' interests.

AND — IMHO — neither the Democratic Party nor the labor unions in these Unted States of America adequately represent the interests of the workers on this core political issue.

Cameron Todd Willingham: Texas executed an innocent man ... IMHO

The arson didn't happen. The execution did.

Texas executed an innocent man ... IMHO ... for a crime that wasn't committed.

Read David Grann's TRIAL BY FIRE in September 7's THE NEW YORKER magazine

Dr. Gerald Hurst, an acclaimed scientist and fire investigator, concluded:

"... based on the evidence, he had little doubt that it was an accidental fire—one caused most likely by the space heater or faulty electrical wiring. It explained why there had never been a motive for the crime. Hurst concluded that there was no evidence of arson, and that a man who had already lost his three children and spent twelve years in jail was about to be executed based on 'junk science.'"

That man, Cameron Todd Willingham, was in fact executed for the crime that didn't happen, and for sure he didn't commit.

What is outragious, Mr. Cheney, is ...

What is outrageous, Mr. Cheney, is your thinking you were above the law on something as morally obscene as torture.

It seems you have the false bravado of despicable cowards. That is my impression after listening to Senator John McCain, a true hero, and then you ... IMHO

On anonymous liberty

I am so very glad that for at least my lifetime, freedom for the ordinary person such as myself has been prevalent enough to let me have the satisfaction and joy of anonymous liberty.

- From previous post

One of the first things that should be said about liberty is the worn cliché that the freedom to swing my arms ends at another person's nose.

And — from what I have observed in my 70+ years — too many "freedom" advocates fail to compensate or even note the impact their actions have on others. Most often we simply seek avoidance of these costs through the accepted anonymity of so much of our public freedom. No one pays attention to most of what we do, as long as it is within the limits of acceptable behavior. A mild "tsk, tsk" is it, if anything, as a negative response within these boundaries.

But when the molehill of the detritus of our individual lives becomes a collective mountain of putrid garbage, fouling the ground on which we nest ...

When the lack of there being a law against it becomes the right to ruin rivers ... and even the oceans become threatened ...

Or, for that matter, mothers and children go without adequate medical care ... or education ... in a wealthy nation?

When do we begin to examine the real cost of what is hidden behind the cloak of "anonymous liberty"?

We should have figured it out a long time ago ...

We should have figured it out a long time ago to have a plan for the disposal of anything and everything we create. It's too late now. We are way past the tipping point in stuff like plastics. The biosphere is compromised with no end in sight. In fact we haven't even started to turn around. We are still going deeper into the swamp.

With all these so-called geniuses running things, you would think at least one of them would have been awake enough to ask, "What the hell are we going to do with it after we've made it and we can't use it anymore?" It's pretty damn obvious with nuclear waste ... somebody should have connected the dots on the other toxic stuff.

And that is not the only simple concept that seems to escape these great minds. But why bother? It's all about greed and the power it brings. And if you believe there is an Invisible Hand, a God in charge ... then it's not our responsibility, is it?

What absurd fools these geniuses are. I am so very glad that for at least my lifetime, freedom for the ordinary person such as myself has been prevalent enough to let me have the satisfaction and joy of anonymous liberty.

Learning to use market forces to distribute a fair share to workers - Part I

"Market forces"?

"Distribute a fair share to workers"?

How do we start talking about the issues that affect us, the workers of the world?

And even that brings to mind the negative "issue associations" with a label like "workers of the world".

We have to both clear the decks of false assumptions AND prepare the ground for discussion of the issues of the day.

Let's start with some basics. Just because a discredited historical figure (discredited in our humble opinion, either yours or mine) supported a concept does not make the concept wrong. Like the saying goes, even a broken mechanical clock is right twice a day. So when we attribute the concept "religion is the opiate of the masses" to Karl Marx, we should still examine the concept if for no other reason then current religious beliefs have been used to justify such obvious evils as slavery and the taking of aboriginal peoples' lands. We should at least question the relationship of religion to the fair distribution of the wealth our — the workers — efforts — mental and physical — create. If we can't get past the idea that an all-powerful God has established the lines of authority for this life here on earth and our true reward will be given by "Him" in the "after-this-life" place called "Heaven" ... well ... what can I say? You are already pissed off at me.

In any case, what we are witnessing today is the defining of wages as a cost of doing business in which separating the individual worker from any form of collective bargaining based on the real contribution of his or her labor allows the cost of labor to be reduced below the cost of keeping a slave alive. A living wage is no longer required. Is that an argument for the return of slavery? No, it is an argument against the immoral absurdity of the current trend in wages.

To be continued ...

Distribution of wealth is the basic political question

The trouble is -- IMHO -- we still have the plantation owner mentality holding sway among powerful elements ... that of driving the cost of labor down to keeping a mule ... food, water, harness, stall, and medical care for breeding stock.

The basic political question in a system of democratically elected representative government is the fair distribution of the wealth created by labor -- human physical and mental effort. And fair distribution is NOT equal distribution, certainly not the absurd "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need." There is no progress without a reward for labor, however when the reward accumulates to the slave-owner ... and the nation becomes a banana republic with gated communities ...

The distribution of wealth created by labor is a political issue because markets do not always distribute earnings and costs fairly at the time of the transaction due to at least one simple fact: while the transaction "price" is known, the "cost" is not. The externalities of
smoking, of mountain top mining, of ghettoizing a city (the "cost" of the loss of labor) ... the list goes on and on.

Also, a huge factor in monopolistic capitalism augmented by financial instruments of debt -- further clouding the current transaction – is that markets stumble in determining the cost of a stable environment for the acquisition of wealth. Do we really want to lose our middle class and devolve into the current madness of Mexico? And if this is caused by the transfer of future wealth (through these financial instruments of debt) to the current market ... further distorting current prices because the future costs of servicing that much debt are beyond the ability of the current market to determine ... and it keeps getting out of whack ... bubbles anyone?

And the absurdity of mathematical models to "impose" constraints on chaos, the zillions of individual transactions – without understanding the limits of the models -- is like pouring sand through a funnel on the beach below the tide line ... then saying it is an
Invisible Hand that shapes the cone of falling sand ... and the tide is no longer a factor in building sand castles.

But even more basic, we do not have a political party that represents the interests of labor in our nation ... and the unions don't either. The results are obvious ... and so is our future course until we get a labor party to represent us in determining the fair distribution of the wealth we create.

Note: First written as a comment in response to a Paul Krugman column on the New York Times OpEd page.

Let's get real about the economic recovery

As Paul Krugman writes in his OpEd column in The New York Times today, Monday,July 13, Boiling the Frog, that we are boiling two frogs simultaneously, economic recovery and climate change. And because of current policy we are killing the frogs. Things are not looking good.

The irony is that by harnessing what is required to "stop boiling the frogs" in a dynamic synergy we could reverse our disastrous course for both.

Let us remember that WWII got us out of Depression of the 1930's by putting people to work at jobs that paid wages that supported a middle class. And we can think of the products they produced for the overseas wars as being taken to the water's edge and dumped in the ocean. What if we had a WWII mobilization that produced green infrastructure right here?

It's almost a no-brainer.

Bubbles are criminal conspiracies as cancerous for labor in a society as slavery

Bubbles are criminal conspiracies as cancerous for labor in a society as slavery, sucking up ""the useful, deployed wealth of society."" (Note: Read read Matt Taibbi's article on the financial history Goldman-Sachs since 1920's in Rolling Stones Magazine. Is this fraud writ large? http://bit.ly/P6uvP) Another quote from Taibbi's article:

"The bank's unprecedented reach and power have enabled it to turn all of America into a giant pump-and-dump scam, manipulating whole economic sectors for years at a time, moving the dice game as this or that market collapses, and all the time gorging itself on the unseen costs that are breaking families everywhere - high gas prices, rising consumer-credit rates, half-eaten pension funds, mass layoffs, future taxes to pay off bailouts. All that money that you're losing, it's going somewhere, and in both a literal and a figurative sense, Goldman Sachs is where it's going: The bank is a huge, highly sophisticated engine for converting the useful, deployed wealth of society into the least useful, most wasteful and insoluble substance on Earth - pure profit for rich individuals."

The dynamic motivation of United States-style liberty is that individuals will be fairly rewarded for their efforts. And it is when the opportunity to do so is available widely that we thrive. There are a whole bunch of caveats to that, but we know it is productive work — labor that produces goods and services that have value in the marketplace — that builds a strong people.

If we give the highest rewards to individuals who devise ways and means to literally steal for themselves the wealth our labor creates, rather than those who devise ways and means to fairly distribute that wealth ... then we have what we have.

That being said, the evil inherent in the financial services elite gurus' design and use of instruments of debt to suck up the wealth labor creates, should be outlawed as a criminal conspiracy as cancerous in a society as slavery.

This whole charade of the new highly leveraged instruments of debt is philosophically supported by the age-old concept that the best society is one where an elite is able to pursue the "good life" by living off the labor of others ... the masters and slaves, lords and vassals, imperialists and their colonies, financial services sector gurus and their instruments of debt. They figure out a way to suck up the wealth produced by labor.

This is the concept of an elite and is the antithesis of our revolution and the birth of our nation. It is traitorous to our ideals — these self-evident truths; "that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness" — while it ultimately saps our strength, dragging us down to banana republic status.

Is anything going to change until enough people who matter start going hungry? Was it Karl Marx who surmised that the people don't revolt until the belly hits the backbone? But because I mention a communist guru, does not mean I sympathize with communism. I believe firmly in fair market capitalism.

And, how can we believe this crap that calling for fairness in wages is calling for equal wages? Of course, that's one of the "values" of religion, to get the people to accept the status quo of whatever elite is in charge ... even to the point of accepting slavery, or sheiks and mullahs in the Middle East, or ... financial services sector gurus on Wall Street ... as greed becomes our god.

Doesn't anyone get it? It's really the same old story.

Michael Jackson replaces Iran for the attention of we the people? And we wonder why the new elite — the financial services sector gurus — can steal the wealth labor creates right out from under our attention span ... instruments of debt, exchanging our future earnings for immediate consumption of more than we need ... so we can deaden the pain of our dead-end lives as consumers rather than explore the cosmos as doers, creators of the future ... rewarding ourselves fairly.

And when the debt became too big to sustain, it came crashing down around us ... and we gave away any hope of real recovery ... which would have required us to become the doers, the creators of the future ... we gave that away in exchange for rescuing the financial services sector gurus, allowing them to go back to being the current elite, sucking up the wealth our labor creates.

Doesn't anyone get it? It's really the same old story. It just has a different caste of characters. Instead of the citizens of Athens with their slaves, instead of the feudal lord with his estate with vassals and fiefs, instead of the plantation owner and his slaves ... we now have financial services sector gurus and we the people.

The basic political question is "How is the wealth created by human labor to be distributed?"

It is fundamental because all wealth is created by human labor. Even commodities from the ground have to be harvested, mined, pumped, or otherwise processed for consumption. And human labor is all human effort, both mental and physical.

The basic political division is between allowing the greed of the elite to suck up whatever wealth it can regardless of their actual contribution in effort on one hand, and a distribution based on the principles of "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity" with rights encoded into law governing everyone equally on the other.

Let's be perfectly clear, greed is never satisfied. If greed is left unchecked, the elite will continue to gorge themselves until they have destroyed their society and themselves in it.

Today that society is our own. And the greedy elite are going to get off virtually unchecked ... and this will virtually ruin any chance we have of real economic recovery — with jobs that produce goods and services that have value — as we sink to a new low level of economic recession or depression.

Let's face it, Cheney is so bad it's comical ...

It would be comical if it weren't so bad for the rest of us.

Cheney's lies and deceptions are now so obvious only the most blinded ideologue could still believe he is credible.

And think of the damage those lies and that deception have done to our nation. They certainly have diverted us from the path of our greatness guided by the simple principles that all are equal under the law and that we should always be struggling to become what we believe we ought to be — believing we can be better than what we are.

Let's be clear about our history, starting with the Magna Carta, we reined in the elite — the nobles, the barons, and the king — and gave protections to the people. This is the great watershed of Western Civilization, when the idea that the masses were the servants of their rulers, that the wealth the people created accrued to the accounts of the elite — the lord of their castle or domain — was rejected.

And this is the great political divide even today. To whom do we give our allegiance and allow to take our treasure? To ourselves as a great nation, with everyone treated fairly? Or to the elites who govern us in some manner — ordained by a Higher Power to lead, and thereby set apart from the rest of us and treated differently?

The politician decides: "Should I be in service to the people, or to the elites?" The predominate posture during my lifetime has been lip service to the people and real service to the elites.

Yes, President Obama has all the markings of an "elitist". He's just moving more people under that tent, but preserving the special treatment for those who make it there. So Cheney will walk free, spouting his lies, stoking the egomania in his deceptions, at least a little longer.

If people refuse to become educated enough ...

If people refuse to become educated enough to figure out what is going on, and simply follow the braying of slogans by the ideologues of their ideology ... whatever that is ... we will never progress ... which seems to be the goal of the religious set, particularly the right-wing Christian Fundamentalists.

Let me be frank, if you still believe that stuff after reaching 30 then you are in a mental straight-jacket with blinders. Your sexuality alone should have informed you that Christian Fundamentalism is totally bogus. Didn't you pay attention to what was going on in your own body? Was that the work of Satan? Give me a [suitable expletive] break!

Christian Fundamentalists are toadies for the elite who want to rip off labor. That's my starting point for discussion.

We get the justice we can afford ...

The case of Troy Davis, sentenced to death for killing a police officer in Georgia, is another happening in these United States that begs the question of equal justice for all.

I am not going to go through a litany of legal history or even of the evidence in Mr. Troy's case. After 70 years living in this country of ours, I know that justice is so flawed that it mocks our founding principles. If you can't afford to pay for your defense, you have little or none ... virtually and effectively.

And those who continue to mouth the platitudes evoking those founding principles without putting their shoulder to the wheel of history, to turn it towards what we ought to become ... well ... that is also what the seven decades have taught me. Most of us hide behind our words, giving lip service to ideals and seldom if ever putting them into action ... especially if it exposes us to any risk.

Even those who say the wheel should turn, hardly ever push.

Most of us know that we are not trying to move our country toward the oughtness of our agreed upon principles. We are trying to earn our fair share of the wealth we help create.

And that — earning a fair share for our labor &mdash is where the elite — those who want and conspire to receive more than their fair share — have us — labor — by the short hairs IF we have given up the effort to base our way of life on our nation's principles.

Let's get some simple things affirmed. Wanting a fair share for the worker isn't socialism or communism. It is anti-slavery. Here in America it was called "middle-classism". Slavery is all about the elite slave-owner getting the slave's share.

Any system that conspires to withhold fairly earned wages from the workers is a form of slavery. And just to be clear, an economy in which the aggregate wealth is increasing while the elite are getting more and the workers aren't ... is headed in the wrong direction no matter how you slice it ... unless you believe in having an elite living off the workers.

Another thing, these concepts do not impinge on the concept of a market economy. But ... we the people have been so poorly served recently by our political leaders and theorists, that we have lost our way. And when you scratch the surface of these leaders you find the resources of the elite.

Maybe it is because so many of us aspire to become an accepted member or toady of the elite — and the rewards — that we don't question what is happening?

Obama gives a good speech ...

It's looking like we have an intelligent politician in the White House. The change is the intelligence. The politics are the same.

The elite bankers are trumping the workers, and still sucking up the wealth labor creates. The elite generals are trumping the grunts, and avoiding court martial for their policies that the enlisted carry out.

We are selling out our underlying principles of fairness and justice for all in order to pass health care and green earth legislation.

It's so simple it hurts ... it's another 3-shell street Monte game faking us out. And we are once again selling our birthright for porridge.

Guess the whole thing is going to have to crash once again for the people to wake up to what is happening.

Obama is proving to be a run-of-the-mill politician

President Obama is fading fast on principles and choosing political expediency with an eye to 2012 and an 8-year presidency.

But we should have seen it coming with his earlier reversal on FISA http://blog.washingtonpost.com/44/2008/06/20/obama_supports_fisa_legislatio.html

Now with the reversals on the detainee photos (http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/05/13/white-house-wants-a-delay-in-the-release-of-detainee-photos/) and detainee justice (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/15/us/politics/15gitmo.html) ...

Progressives still have something to hope for in Supreme Court appointees ...

But the FISA, photos, and justice reversals pierce our heart as a nation.

It's simple, pursue truth ... and be honest in our pursuit.

So Cheney says ...

So Cheney says President Obama is making our nation less safe by rescinding intense interrogation policies of the Cheney/Bush 43 administration... while the military honchos are begging Obama not to reveal the evidence of the results of the Cheney/Bush 43 intense interrogation techniques lest our soldiers really become less safe ...

There is a disconnect here. Or am I missing something?

Cheney's offensive defense of his crimes

Ex-Vice President Dick Cheney is trying to keep himself out of prison by going on the offense against President Obma's release of the torture memos. It looks to me like Cheney has violated the law by authorizing specific acts of torture. If the call for justice gathers steam, he would be in the legal crosshairs.

The idea that we should not prosecute these heinous crimes because they are somehow in the past ... is absurd on the face of it. All crimes we prosecute have occurred in the past. We don't yet convict individuals of future crimes. Is there anything more absurd in a nation of law?

The one good thing that should come of Cheney's taking to the soapbox, is that the issue will arouse the people to cry out for justice, to punish — according to our laws — the leaders who thought they could get away with torture.

The Tag Teams: Geithner & Summers vs. Krugman & Stiglitz

Tim Geithner's and Larry Summers' and careers and personal wealth benefited from the recent derivatives bubble. They are up to their armpits — again, career-wise — in support of the bank bailout plan. They are connected, you might say ... in several dimensions.

On the other hand, Paul Krugman and Joseph Stiglitz, Nobel Prize-winning economists, say the bank bailout plan is not so hot.

Krugman writes in his column America the Tarnished in The New York Times:

In an article in the current issue of The Atlantic, Mr. Johnson, who served as the chief economist at the I.M.F. and is now a professor at M.I.T., declares that America’s current difficulties are “shockingly reminiscent” of crises in places like Russia and Argentina — including the key role played by crony capitalists.

In America as in the third world, he writes, “elite business interests — financiers, in the case of the U.S. — played a central role in creating the crisis, making ever-larger gambles, with the implicit backing of the government, until the inevitable collapse. More alarming, they are now using their influence to prevent precisely the sorts of reforms that are needed, and fast, to pull the economy out of its nosedive.”

Stiglitz is quoted in Stiglitz Says Ties to Wall Street Doom Bank Rescue in Bloomberg.com::

All the ingredients they have so far are weak, and there are several missing ingredients,” Stiglitz said in an interview yesterday. The people who designed the plans are “either in the pocket of the banks or they’re incompetent.

If it's tag teams, Geithner & Summers vs. Krugman & Stiglitz, we know who should win ... but in wrestling, you go by the script ...

Let me put it this way ...

Let me give you an example to explain my view of money or "financial instruments".

I have end stage renal disease and I am being evaluated for a kidney transplant. In the evaluation process — looking forward — they told me that if I had a volunteer kidney donor who was not a good tissue match for me, I could participate in a multiparty transplant group where my volunteer would give her/his kidney to someone else and the other person's volunteer would give her/his kidney to me. This could involve as many participants as could be efficiently — in medical terms — handled.

Let's call the agreement between the parties a "transplant agreement" or "transplant instrument". It is quite obvious that the agreement is only worth more than the paper it is printed on IF there are enough kidneys to go around. And if — for example — twice as many agreements come in play as available kidneys because transplant hospitals "sold" more transplant agreements in the short term simply because they could earn a huge profit from selling the transplant agreements ... and then a need for kidneys from individuals holding transplant agreements exceeded the number of actual kidneys available ... Dah! The market would collapse, wouldn't it?

The same is true of money or "financial instruments". They make the exchange of diverse items in multifaceted transactions over time and distance possible ... but only if I am able to get something I want for a price I am willing to pay when I want it ... for the money I have ... unless I can borrow some ...

The Obama (Geithner?) bank bailout plan ... is a swindle

In today's Op Ed piece published March 31st in The New York Times, Obama’s Ersatz Capitalism, Joseph E. Stiglitz lays out the the problem with the Obama (Geithner?) bank bailout plan. It's a swindle of taxpayer money to benefit the banks that helped get us into this mess.

And when we start thinking about the government coordinating the auction of banks' toxic assets ... for the purpose of recapitalizing the banks ... so they can start lending ... so we can start borrowing and spending? What's wrong with this picture?

Geithner seems to believe these toxic assets have real value, and by getting them priced "realistically" it will put the financial system back on its feet.

He probably hasn't visited many ghost towns where the buildings are still standing because they are worth less than the cost of their demolition.

Financial gurus lose sight of the fact that money and other financial instruments have no value in themselves. Their value derives from adding efficiency in making transactions in the market between seemingly diverse elements, including the guarantee of future events ... allowing us to pay for something such as a home or auto over its use life, instead of up front. (However ... when you start paying double-digit interest on groceries bought on a credit card, or lose the means — a job — for making the payments ... dah!)

At the end of the day — as in, "at the end of the bubble" — if there aren't other real goods or services to put up to back up whatever financial instruments are in play ... well, golly gee whiz ... why DO bubbles keep happening? And aren't we watching the Obama financial team repeating the basic "borrow to invest more than we will ever be able to repay (or get back)" of the bubble syndrome?

The new bailout for banks ...

So ... let me get this straight ...

We package these toxic assets ... and put them up for bid ... in an auction where the bidders only have to put up 15% of their winning bid? And the government will match the private money of the bidders dollar for dollar, up to 15%? And the government will loan up to 85% of the purchase price — the winning bid — in a non-recourse loan? (Isn't that one that doesn't have to be paid back?) And this is supposed to provide a market to properly value these assets? Are you kidding me?

A nonrecourse debt or non-recourse debt or nonrecourse loan is a secured loan (debt) that is secured by a pledge of collateral, typically real property, but for which the borrower is not personally liable. If the borrower defaults, the lender/issuer can seize the collateral, but the lender's recovery is limited to the collateral. If the property is insufficient to cover the outstanding loan balance (for example, if real estate prices have dropped), the lender is simply paid out the difference. Thus, non-recourse debt is typically limited to 80% or 90% loan-to-value ratios, so that the property itself provides "overcollateralization" of the loan. The purpose of non-recourse debt is to require lenders to underwrite their loans on a sustainable and prudent basis since the lender is in the first-loss position with these loans, not the borrower.

wikipedia.com

B-b-bu-but the government is simply going to underwrite whatever the winning bid/purchase price is. How is that sustainable or prudent?

In this auction the only thing determining the bid will be what 15% dollar amount are the banks willing to lose to gain the 85% remainder? Gee, I wonder.

See, the banks are going to get paid off at 100% of the purchase price. Now, if a bank loaned the 15% for the private equity in this deal to some type of limited liability company that used the toxic asset to balance whatever liability it carries on their books ... then if the LLC goes belly up when the toxic asset defaults ... well, all the bank would lose is its 15% ... and if Bank A loans the 15% to X LLC that purchases the toxic assets from Bank B, and Bank B loans the 15% to Y LLC that purchases the toxic assets from Bank A ... so it all looks impartial ...

Are you kidding me?

And Geithner or Bernake or Summers are going to coordinate this for the banks?

Are you kidding me?!

Oh ... and check this out: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3036789/#29875591

Variations on a Ponzi theme

Harvard economist Kenneth S. Rogoff, who with Carmen M. Reinhart of the University of Maryland has analyzed 800 years of banking crises. “You can study all the financial crises, and there is a common pattern, that the faster you mark down the assets in the financial system and recapitalize the banks,” the sooner the economy recovers, he says. “As long as you leave the banking system sick, you’re not going to have sustained growth.”

Macroegonomics by Virginia Postrel, an Atlantic contributing editor

There you have it. The financial gurus create the illusion of wealth with variations of Ponzi schemes and other manipulations of the velocity of money and leverage aka borrowing against assets until the bubble they are blowing up can no longer be sustained by the market value of the underlying goods and services we actually need and want ... and the whole thing explodes, forcing the pricing of these goods and services at real market value ... what people are really willing to pay for them outside the illusion of increased value created by the financial schemers aka bankers.

It isn't so much about curing the banks, as it is about getting their excessive illusory wealth wrung out of the money supply, and returning money to its useful place of facilitating the exchange of goods and services that do have value ... their real market value.

Anyone who still thinks the cure is to get the banks to start lending again for the purchase of this generation of goods and services rather than the production of the next generation of goods and services that will in turn create demand ... is out of their ever-loving mind.

Obama picked the wrong players for his economic team

Hey, of course the coach has to take responsibility for the team ... but if you're losing with the players on the floor, shouldn't you be thinking about making some substitutions? Or, is this the best you can do? And what does that say about you?

As Frank Rich writes in his NY Times OpEd column, Has a ‘Katrina Moment’ Arrived?:

"We must have governance to match the message."

We have a ways to go before we reach bottom ...

Together with other Fed programs, the aim is to lower borrowing costs for consumers, businesses and the government. More borrowing and spending, in turn, would bolster the impact of the fiscal stimulus package passed in February.

Unfortunately, there is no guarantee that this will work. With unemployment rising, debt loads high and household wealth falling, consumers may be reluctant to resume spending anytime soon, no matter how low rates and prices go. And even if consumers and businesses want to borrow, banks — stung by their own losses — may not be willing to lend.

The Fed Does Battle, Again
The New York Times Editorial
Published: March 20, 2009

Is the Fed crazy? Borrowing and spending what we borrowed got us into this mess. Somehow the financial sector brilliant idiots still think that their pieces of paper actually create wealth ... and not the illusion of wealth ... the bubble.

Until folks are working at jobs that actually create wealth — the goods and services that have value in a transparent and well-regulated market (everyone uses the same weights and measures, for instance) — and are paid a fair return for their labor — the mental and physical effort used in creating that wealth with its historical investment — there is not going to be a turn around.

And as we are still losing jobs faster than we are creating them ... we still have a ways to go before we hit bottom.

Is Obama's credibility now DOA?

If Secretary of the Treasury Timothy Geithner and Larry Summers, Director of the White House's National Economic Council for President Barack Obama, aren't gone in 60 days then the credibility of Barack Obama's presidency is permanently DOA ... before the end of the initial 100 days of his presidency.

IMHO ...

A few things about us ...

Let's get a few things straight.

We are a tribal animal. How do I (we) know that? We cannot survive as an individual nor as a family. With a solitary human being the future is obvious. The future ends in that person's death. With a family we now know that the gene pool is not robust enough to perpetuate the species.

We are a hunting animal. I would suggest that the biological basis of our human society is caught up in the alpha person leading the hunt ... and then fairly dividing the spoils of the hunt according to tribe's "rules".

Those tribal rules that increased the success of tribal activity led to a more successful tribe.

America's political genius was giving everyone in the hunt a fair reward out of the spoils of the hunt ... the counterpoint to slavery and indentured servitude.

No matter how complex things seem to get, they really stay pretty simple ... if you pay attention.

The lesson of these United States of America is simple

The lesson of these United States of America is simple. Reward the individual fairly out of the material wealth his/her labor creates and the dynamism created in the agrregate of individual motivation within our society will create (created) the greatest society known to the human race.

Some thoughts on the subject ...

Material wealth for human beings is produced by the mental and physical effort of human beings.

The mental and physical effort of human beings is what we define as labor.

The primary economic concern of a just society is the fair distribution of material wealth for the labor that created it.

If in a given society the material wealth contained in the assets of production — the land, buildings, and equipment — becomes more and more centralized in their ownership among fewer and fewer individuals, creating a classification of stored wealth separated from the labor that produced those assets, then that society is no longer just in relationship to a fair distribution of material wealth based on the labor that produced that wealth.

And ... if the centralized accumulation of the assets of production attenuates the fair distribution of material wealth, then the dynamism of our society will also be diminished.

Dah!

On labor, liberty, and the common good

Defining "Labor" as the aggregate of human effort — physical and mental — that produces something of value ... then ... what is wrong with "Labor" that we withhold our labor as human effort from ourselves when the larger economy in which we live and work cannot employ us? "Labor" needs to form something like a "collaborative labor corporation" to employ Labor when the larger economy doesn't ... for whatever reason. Why do we only work to create wealth for others, and consider this — a form of slavery — the primary legitimate or substantive economic structure to use in harnessing the wealth creating potential of human effort? Isn't time we learned from communities like the Amish and the Mormons on how to generate wealth for the common good?

I propose that we explore the development of economic organizing structures that I call "collaborative labor corporations" (CLC) — both profit-making and nonprofit — to create the economic environment where everyone able and willing to work can find work that creates value for which they are fairly rewarded.

All wealth has been produced by human effort — our labor, physical and mental.

That is the underlying fact of any economy.

Human labor is the synergy of our creative imaginations — ideas — and the physical ability to produce the concrete embodiment — products — of our ideas in the time and space continuum of our reality.

The machines and energy that we use to replicate the products of our ideas are also products of human labor. Energy is our product in the sense of our inventing ways to harness it to our directed use.

The organizations, tribes, natons, societies cultures that maximize the output of human labor, the integration of our creative imaginations — think cerebral cortex — and our physical ability — think hands with thumbs — will win the economic race, not as a zero-sum game, but as a collaborative engagement.

The American ideal is (was?) to reward individual effort fairly, relative to the wealth that person's effort creates, regardless of the social status of the individual. Our collective effort then creates our progress. Whenever our progress is guided by liberty in individual choice in a well-regulated market that maximizes the efficiency in transactions derived from trust and transparency, the American economy outpaces anything else known to us and we benefit — not equally, but collectively — if each of us is rewarded for his or her labor fairly. The maximization of human labor collectively is due to the maximization of motivation individually. That is the basic tenet supporting freedom and fairness.

What I call the British Imperialist Model (BIM ... and it's adherents, BIM-bos) is built on the concept that human labor produces wealth for an elite class of individuals who are then free to create the progress of the world. However, when this elite class is allowed to impose its sense of entitlement — its greed — on a society, extracting the wealth of labor to its own purposes — what worked in a feudal society or a slave-based society for some period of time— in a modern economy cycles through boom and bust. Its limitations in maximizing human labor collectively and, hence, the creation of wealth are obvious. However, because it maximizes the wealth of the elite for a time, if they usurp economic power through strategies like the creation of the Federal Reserve Bank, they can and will use their economic power to impose their model.

The only antidote to BIM is democracy, wherein the people can gain a countervailing political power to an elite's economic power. However, democracy devolved into mob rule is the precursor of socioeconomic chaos by being able to disrupt orderly markets.

Again the U.S. has created the most rational form of government yet known to us with the constitutionally guaranteed rights of the individual in a form of federal government with its power divided between the three branches — executive, legislative and judicial — with additional checks and balances in the conduct of elections to elective office.

Addendum: The key to getting us out of the current economic mess the BIM-bos have gotten us into, is not to get the banks working, but to get the American people working. With Americans at work we will once again benefit from the tremendous wealth creation of our human labor. The mantra should be: Every person willing and able to work will be given a job to do, a job that creates value in a market economy.

And this time, let's make sure that those who create the wealth through their human labor, get their fair share of the wealth they help create.

And finally, it is the responsibility of the larger society to actively pursue fairness in the distribution of the wealth our human labor creates. AND it is the responsibility of the individual to participate in the larger society in determining that distribution BUT TO ALSO creatively explore ways to contribute his or her individual human labor to the benefit of the common good.

The reward follows labor. Where we might withhold our human labor from a given organization, we have no right to withhold it from our communiy. We can clean the common areas in our neighborhood. We can volunteer at our local church, synagogue, temple, mosque, food bank or homeless shelter. Whatever we can do to improve the socioeconomic environment benefits the common good of our community. It is only when those of us who are able to perform human labor don't, that we go downhill.

Our mantra requires us to participate in providing work for each and every individual whereby that individual can perform his or her human labor to the benefit of the common good of our community. We then must participate is providing a fair reward for the human labor thus performed. However, the fact that there is a lag at times between performance and receiving the reward, should not deter us from doing the work. We are, after all, embedded in our community, and our human labor benefits our community. It gives us the dignity of doing our part for the common good.

The bailout is a bust!

With a "$2.9 trillion gap between what the economy could produce and what it will actually produce. And $800 billion, while it sounds like a lot of money, isn’t nearly enough to bridge that chasm." -Paul Krugman, Failure to Rise, Published: February 12, 2009, NY Times OpEd.

Then David Brooks chimes in with: "Between 1990 and 2007, the total mortgage debt held by Americans rose from $2.5 trillion to $10.5 trillion." -The Worst-Case Scenario, Published: February 12, 2009, NY Times OpEd. That's $8 Trillion we have to absorb.

What the hell is going on?!

Do the Republicans also believe the bailout is a bust and are positioning themselves to be the political party of "I told you so!"?

And we wonder why the Taliban are willing to destroy the tranquility of their nation for an ideological belief?

THE TALIBAN WING OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY.... From time to time in recent years, liberals have identified the "Taliban wing" of the Republican Party -- those conservatives who reject church-state separation, taking marching orders from James Dobson, and wonder why the government doesn't do more to promote and endorse their vision of Christianity.

The phrase is generally considered offensive by most Republicans, and it's easy to understand why. Indeed, no U.S. political contingent wants to be compared to the Taliban.

It came as something of a surprise, then, to see a leading House Republican make the comparison unprompted.

Frustrated by a lack of bipartisan outreach from House Democratic leaders, Rep. Pete Sessions (R-TX), chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, said House Republicans -- who voted unanimously last week against the economic plan pushed by President Obama and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi -- will pitch a "positive, loyal opposition" to the proposal. The group, he added, should also "understand insurgency" in implementing efforts to offer alternatives.

"Insurgency, we understand perhaps a little bit more because of the Taliban," Sessions said during a meeting yesterday with Hotline editors. "And that is that they went about systematically understanding how to disrupt and change a person's entire processes. And these Taliban -- I'm not trying to say the Republican Party is the Taliban. No, that's not what we're saying. I'm saying an example of how you go about [sic] is to change a person from their messaging to their operations to their frontline message. And we need to understand that insurgency may be required when the other side, the House leadership, does not follow the same commands, which we entered the game with."

He added that if Democrats don't give the minority party more "options or opportunities," Republicans "will then become an insurgency."

- Political Animal
by Steve Benen and Featuring Hilzoy,
February 5, 2009
WashingtonMonthly

Geithner is the fox in the henhouse!

From today's — Tuesday, February 10 — NY Times front page:

Geithner Said to Have Prevailed on the Bailout
By STEPHEN LABATON and EDMUND L. ANDREWS
Published: February 9, 2009
WASHINGTON— The Obama administration’s new plan to bail out the nation’s banks was fashioned after a spirited internal debate that pitted the Treasury secretary, Timothy F. Geithner, against some of the president’s top political hands.
In the end, Mr. Geithner largely prevailed in opposing tougher conditions on financial institutions that were sought by presidential aides, including David Axelrod, a senior adviser to the president, according to administration and Congressional officials.

Mr. Geithner, who will announce the broad outlines of the plan on Tuesday, successfully fought against more severe limits on executive pay for companies receiving government aid.

He resisted those who wanted to dictate how banks would spend their rescue money. And he prevailed over top administration aides who wanted to replace bank executives and wipe out shareholders at institutions receiving aid.

Because of the internal debate, some of the most contentious issues remain unresolved.

That says it all about the Obama team. They are in the control of the global financier mindset that got us into this economic mess.

Brilliant idiots like Secretary Geithner —running the Federal Reserve Bank of New York while we descended into economic chaos — value their financial acumen over the worth of a tool and die maker ... to the detriment of our modern economy.

It isn't the Republicans we the people have to worry about. They were defeated soundly in the last election. It's the global financial gurus embedded in the Obama administration ... and obviously calling the shots. Do I see feathers in Geithner's smile?

Obama is screwing up the recovery bigtime

It's all over but the shouting. (See What the hell is going on?! below.)

Why? It's simple. Frank Rich lays it out in black and white in his column today, Slumdogs Unite!:

The new president who vowed to change Washington’s culture will have to fight much harder to keep from being co-opted by it instead. There are simply too many major players in the Obama team who are either alumni of the financial bubble’s insiders’ club or of the somnambulant governmental establishment that presided over the catastrophe.

-Frank Rich
Slumdogs Unite!
Ny Times OpEd
Sunday, February 8, 2009

This is going to get ugly ... all because the major players are beholden to the global financial model that got us into this mess in the first place.

Note: I call this the British Imperialism Model or BIM ... and folks like Geithner, Summners, and Rubin (and their ilk) BIM-bos. (See The Republican's plantation mentality ... below.)

Monday, Feb 9, update: Paul Krugman writes in today's column on the NY Times OpEd page, The Destructive Center :

So has Mr. Obama learned from this experience? Early indications aren’t good.

For rather than acknowledge the failure of his political strategy and the damage to his economic strategy, the president tried to put a postpartisan happy face on the whole thing. “Democrats and Republicans came together in the Senate and responded appropriately to the urgency this moment demands,” he declared on Saturday, and “the scale and scope of this plan is right.”

No, they didn’t, and no, it isn’t.

Religion as the ground for growing the individual

Some background first ... I attend the West Village Salon Conversation Group. Last Tuesday — the discussion was about the selfishness of being unselfish — to paraphrase from my point of view.

During the discussion two of the members brought up two examples of how small individual contributions to the collective good can keep a "community" functioning for the benefit of the individual. One example was theoretical. The other was a concrete example. Though the concrete example came second in the discussion, I will start with it first.

The coffee serving area at the woman's office was in constant disarray until she set up the "rule" that each person do at least one housekeeping chore whenever they entered the coffee serving area: clean the coffeemaker, make coffee, put any trash in the wastebasket, empty the wastebasket, wipe down the serving area, etc.

They haven't had a problem since.

In the second example, the salon member told how a friend of his — a graduate student in complex systems at a West Coast university — had built a model relating to the mess of dirty dishes that accumulated in the kitchen sink in the students' living area.

In his model he worked out how often each person would have to clean up a given number of extra dishes than their own, to keep the area clean.

As these examples were laid out, I had an epiphany. This was the core value of religion: giving us the rules to keep a community not only from descending into chaos, but establishing the "ground" out of which the individual grows a productive life.

Even as we get our sustenance from our community — the ground of our existence — we have to fertilize/nurture — give back to — the ground. Our basic set of rules not for only giving back but for our expectations of receiving is our religion.

Is a basic rule of the Christian to give without consideration of receiving something in return directly in the reciprocity of the transaction? That I should not give to the powerful and wealthy, expecting favor, but give to "the least of these", as in "Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done [it] unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done [it] unto me." -Matthew 25:45 KJV

I think it a basic rule. It is why I call myself a Christian existentialist.

I believe life itself has established an order in the cosmos that dictates that nurturing the ground out of which I grow benefits me in ways that are not — necessarily — directly related to my immediate act. Is this not also the concept of karma?

This concept completes the mind wrap that we expect the reward from our "God", so it is a selfish act.

In this we define ourselves by whom or what we believe to be our "God".

After thought: Those who believe the sole pursuit of self-interest brings the greatest collective good have chosen greed as their "God". Existence repeatedly proves them wrong. It is a short-term illusion.

The Republican's plantation mentality ...

A plantation mentality has taken hold in the Republican Party. It is all about keeping labor costs low. Slave wages (like having a mule) are best, and indentured servitude is next. Note: Is it any wonder the GOP has such a strong base among Southern whites?

This is the carry-over of the British Imperialist Model (BIM) with Lords of Castles and their fiefdoms as the optimum socioeconomic arrangement ... thereby allowing an elite to focus on enriching the culture ... supported in their efforts by the masses producing the wealth the parasitic elite (bim-bos?) feed on.

The American model is the antithesis of both this — the BIM — and the communist model where the "state" dictates the distribution of wealth. We hold to the right of the individual on an equal opportunity basis to receive a fair return for his/her contribution to producing the wealth of our socioeconomic arrangement that includes a basic safety-net for all. We understand this to be the energy/motivation behind our — the greatest ever known to the human race — richly productive economy.

For some reason the currant crop of Republican leaders simply doesn't get it. I think it is because they are caught up in the Biblical model of God rewarding the righteous, so if they have been rewarded then it is their divine right to keep it ... no matter how they got it.