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.