Taibbi's Take on UC Davis

The whole post is worth reading, but Matt is as succinct and as eloquent as ever:

These people are weak and pathetic, and they’re getting weaker. And boy, are they showing it. Way to gear up with combat helmets and the submachine guns, fellas, to take on a bunch of co-eds sitting Indian-style on a campus quad. Maybe after work you can go break up a game of duck-duck-goose at the local Chuck E Cheese. I’d bring the APC for that one.

I should know better by now, but it still surprises me that those who decried this during Bush/Cheney have been all too quiet about the continuation - even expansion - of these policies under Obama. A sign of the times. Politics(winning) at all costs. My guy can do no wrong, the other side's is evil incarnate.

Words of Wisdom from AZ Sheriff

Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik:

"The anger, the hatred, the bigotry that goes on this country is getting to be outrageous. The vitriolic rhetoric that we hear day in and day out from people in the radio business and some people in the TV business ... This has not become the nice United States that most of us grew up in. It's not unusual for all public officials to get threats constantly, myself included. That's the sad thing about what's going on in America: Pretty soon we're not going to be able to find reasonable decent people willing to subject themselves to serve in public office.''

The New Plutocracy: Now, With More Pluto!

I resolved to myself recently that I would try to limit new entries related to our beloved federal government & politics, and today's Supreme Court ruling that strikes down a lot of campaign finance limits, makes me feel so much better about that decision. I honestly don't know that it makes much sense to vote - in national/federal elections - anymore.

Not that corporations always have it wrong, or are inherently evil. Far from it. But once again, how is the Constitution interpreted so that corporation (legal entity) = citizen (human)? James Fallows is correct: our government, stagnated by corruption, dysfunctional as hell, is simply not keeping up with the rest of the nation. The only worthwhile national voting left is with our money - to appeal to those that really run the show, purchase (or abstain from purchasing) products and services that reflect the direction in which you'd like the country to go. Unfortunately, Congress & the Executive Branch are just middlemen now. You get the best deal by cutting out the middleman, right? Too bad that the private sector is really not that efficient/cost-effective/honest when it comes to providing some services (see: health care / military spending / Wall Street, respectively).

Lockerbie Ugliness

We know how the release of the convicted Lockerbie bomber is playing here - understandably, not well at all - but how's it look from the other side of the Atlantic?

This BBC article hints that the whole thing could be about oil. There's a shocker.

This piece in The Scotsman refers to a "Deal in the Desert" meeting in 2007 between Gaddafi and Tony Blair, but doesn't elaborate.

Most importantly though, there seems to be quite a divide between the U.K. and U.S. victims' families as to whether Megrahi is actually guilty. The trial was apparently controversial for a number of reasons.

Still, the whole thing looks really bad. Megrahi dropped his appeal when, due to a legal issue, it stood in the way of his "compassionate release". Scotland's justic system screwed up; they should have heard his appeal properly or kept him in prison. His release carries the stench of a minister who was swayed by prevailing U.K. opinion that the convicted got a raw deal. That should have been for the courts to decide during the appeals process. Sure, there would have been outrage from victims' families if he had won his appeal, but unlike the apparent capriciousness of his release, it would have carried some legitimacy.

Another Perspective on Health Care

This article from The Atlantic is certainly thought-provoking. Now, I can't vouch for the veracity of the author's statistics or other claims, but at face value it's a compelling article. A few items that I zeroed in on while reading it:

• This excerpt below reminded me of Bjorn Lomborg's take on global warming, that's it's really not so bad, when compared with all the other bad stuff that we could be spending money trying to mitigate:
  

  As a nation, we now spend almost 18 percent of our GDP on health care. In 1966, Medicare and Medicaid made up 1 percent of total government spending; now that figure is 20 percent, and quickly rising. Already, the federal government spends eight times as much on health care as it does on education, 12 times what it spends on food aid to children and families, 30 times what it spends on law enforcement, 78 times what it spends on land management and conservation, 87 times the spending on water supply, and 830 times the spending on energy conservation. Education, public safety, environment, infrastructure—all other public priorities are being slowly devoured by the health-care beast.
  
  By what mechanism does society determine that an extra, say, $100 billion for health care will make us healthier than even $10 billion for cleaner air or water, or $25 billion for better nutrition, or $5 billion for parks, or $10 billion for recreation, or $50 billion in additional vacation time—or all of those alternatives combined?

• Why does health insurance work so differently from every other form of insurance?:

  Health insurance is the primary payment mechanism not just for expenses that are unexpected and large, but for nearly all health-care expenses. We’ve become so used to health insurance that we don’t realize how absurd that is. We can’t imagine paying for gas with our auto-insurance policy, or for our electric bills with our homeowners insurance, but we all assume that our regular checkups and dental cleanings will be covered at least partially by insurance. Most pregnancies are planned, and deliveries are predictable many months in advance, yet they’re financed the same way we finance fixing a car after a wreck—through an insurance claim.
  

  Insurance is probably the most complex, costly, and distortional method of financing any activity; that’s why it is otherwise used to fund only rare, unexpected, and large costs. Imagine sending your weekly grocery bill to an insurance clerk for review, and having the grocer reimbursed by the insurer to whom you’ve paid your share. An expensive and wasteful absurdity, no?

  Is this really a big problem for our health-care system? Well, for every two doctors in the U.S., there is now one health-insurance employee—more than 470,000 in total. In 2006, it cost almost $500 per person just to administer health insurance. Much of this enormous cost would simply disappear if we paid routine and predictable health-care expenditures the way we pay for everything else—by ourselves.

• We hear a lot about how other nations' citizens have it better-off because of universal coverage. That might be true, but evidently they're struggling with rising costs too (of course, their care costs, on average, are still much cheaper than ours):
  

  Whatever their histories, nearly all developed countries are now struggling with rapidly rising health-care costs, including those with single-payer systems. From 2000 to 2005, per capita health-care spending in Canada grew by 33 percent, in France by 37 percent, in the U.K. by 47 percent—all comparable to the 40 percent growth experienced by the U.S. in that period. Cost control by way of bureaucratic price controls has its limits.

So what does it all add up to? Should we ("we" being the government, in theory, anyway) not even bother to attempt any incremental fixes, since they probably won't work? Will this round of supposed reform set the stage for a future, more positive round, or leave the public too frustrated or indifferent to try again?

The author's proposed solutions (on page 6 of the article) are attractive and certainly seem to make sense, but I suspect that we're already stuck too far down in the system; if people are up in arms about relatively modest changes, how would we ever succeed in so fundamentally changing the way that health care is paid for?

Health Care Town Hall Hysteria Goes Local

Ben Cardin held a "town hall" meeting on health care in Towson last night, with predictable results. Yes, the polarization of this country continues, with lobbyists and interest groups pulling strings (on both sides) and opponents of reform - any reform - hoping that volume alone will win the day.

O.K., so maybe you think the government plan is socialized medicine. Could even be true, depending on which form the final plan takes, but is that the best you've got, roll out the specter of scary socialism and hope that it sends everyone running for the hills? Now go one step further, and tell us why that's so terrible. Can't do it? Words escape you? Too hoarse from shouting down your senator/congressman recently? How about you make an actual argument or shut up. There's enough real data out there to argue for or against health reform, but if you're too lazy to do so, by all means continue shouting. Eventually though, you'll lose your voice, so it's win-win either way; a meaningful discussion, or blissful silence.

A Modern McNamara?

With the death of Robert S. (for Strange! seriously) McNamara, I've seen a few online pieces comparing the Iraq War's own Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, with the infamous "architect of Vietnam". In the future, will Rumsfeld be universally reviled, as McNamara evidently was? I don't think so. Sure, there are similarities: both presided over wars that were seen as disasters of planning and of execution, both were notorious micro-managers, both had put their stamps on war plans. But whereas Kennedy and Johnson were never able to sell their quagmire (sorry, but I'm legally obligated to use that word, since this is about Vietnam) to a skeptical and eventually outraged public and press, Bush, Cheney, and the neocons did a fantastic job of duping a complacent public and a lapdog press corps.

Sure, there will be moments when Rumsfeld feels the wrath of the public [aside: explain to me what a multi-millionaire is doing riding the bus? Part of me is impressed that he's willing to take public transportation, part of me wonders if he's really just incredibly cheap]. But I think that those moments will be few, compared to the many public excoriations that McNamara faced. And while I admire that this father confronted Rumsfeld at that bus stop, I wonder how much good it does, other than making the guy feel better (after his blood pressure returned to normal). Rumsfeld was already an old man, long-bereft of any idealism or sense of justice after various roles in government, when he assumed his last government post - very different from McNamara, who was 44 when he became Secretary and was, by all accounts, broken by the War.

Olbermann Turns Critic, Positive Developments

Keith Olbermann is generally viewed (rightly so) as a big Obama supporter/cheerleader, so it's a bit surprising - but very gratifying - to see him smacking the administration around on its continuation of the Bush Secrecy Doctrine.

At the same time - and since I've been so negative towards the Prez on his economic policy and the above constitutional issue - he's kicking ass on plenty of issues:

• Gates' Defense budget - it actually makes a lot of sense! Never mind that it has no chance of getting through the House; too many districts are home to weapons-making factories. But it's refreshing to see. Next, any chance of getting cuts across the board, and shrinking the war industry in general?
• Obama is reaching out to Iran, both in his recent video to the Iranians, and his decision to become involved in current nuclear talks. And there are no signs that he asked Israel's permission! Quite to the contrary, actually.
• The government's long-standing (an largely ineffectual) policy of isolating Cuba might be coming to an end.
  

Dirty Larry

Sure, there was plenty of corruption and likely war profiteering in the Bush administration. But we figured Obama's presidency would be different, right? Well, I certainly did.

Wrong.

Creeping Doubt

So lemme get this straight - Obama and his financial wizards give Wall Street how many hundreds of billions, with few real strings attached, and then go after Detroit and G.M. over a few billion in loans? They must still believe that Wall Street is the economy, they're too spineless to stand up to the money lenders and High Lords of Finance, so they're going to act tough by interfering with an industry that actually produces things! Mr. DeLorenzo, putting aside his ever-present hyperbole, sums it up well in his March 29th entry. Does Wagoner deserve some blame? Sure. And nobody's going to lose sleep because a multi-millionaire is out of a job. But the double standard is certainly troubling. It's yet another depressing example of insiders cashing in, while the political sleight-of-hand directs the public outrage over all of these bailouts towards an appropriately hapless target. The truth is that if GM was one of the favored Wall Street brokerages or investment banks, Wagoner probably would be working for Obama at Treasury instead of getting fired by him.

Coupled with the administration's adherence to some of the previous administration's bad habits regarding secrecy, detention, and the surveillance state, and my disillusion is beginning to spread.

Update: This blog post might convey my meaning better than I did (although my post was first!); not that Wagoner didn't deserve to go (I really can't say, since I've never run a car company), but that this administration is guilty of gross inconsistency/hyprocrisy in its dealings with Detroit and Wall Street. [Elected officials inconsistent and hyprocritical? In other news, the Sun will rise in the East tomorrow.]


Update II:A few more thoughts (from various perspectives) from the Electronosphere about Obama, Wagoner, U.S. industrial policy, et al:

• http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/31/opinion/31holstein.html
• http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123846388674472223.html
• http://www.salon.com/tech/htww/2009/03/31/rand_lenin_and_obama/index.html
  

He Means Well, But...

...Mr. Obama's stimulus plan strategy looks like it relied to much on the goodwill of Republicans - you know, the minority party that, politically speaking, has an interest in seeing his presidency go down in flames - and now the plan is that much poorer for all this "cooperation".

Panic In Detroit

(Apologies to Bowie for the title. It's a reach, but I like the song and wanted to use it.)

Why is there so much vitriol directed towards Detroit over their potential government bailout, so much scrutiny of their recovery plans, when Wall Street - whose bailout is at least thirty times more expensive, and still counting! - gets off without any demands for recovery plans or ridiculous harping about their CEOs' modes of transportation? After all, the automakers actually produce something, it's not just money and paper changing hands. Maybe (call me cynical) it can be traced back to campaign contributions; there was a lot more money on Wall Street, some of which naturally found its way down to D.C. Maybe it's simply a question of bad timing - "bailout fatigue" on Capitol Hill - the Big Three are last to the window, so they have to beg for the leftovers. Or maybe they're simply easy targets. These companies obviously don't have the best reputation over the last 30 years. So even though they have, by all acounts, cleaned up there act a lot in the past five years or so, they're still being punished, fairly or not, for past mistakes and shortsightedness. Not that fairness has anything do do with this economic mess at this point - after Bear Stearns, AIG, Citigroup, et cetera, "fairness" hasn't been spotted around here in quite awhile.

But how did Detroit really get into this situation? Well, I'm not the biggest Malcolm Gladwell fan, but this article by the pop-statistician from The New Yorker two years ago explains the long history of the troubles in Motown (and for American industry, in general) better than anything else I've read recently.

More of the Same?

To anyone that expressed optimism (delusion?) that the forthcoming Obama administration would actually bring "change" to Washington, this is not a good sign. Yes, it looks like Joe keeps his committee chair despite his very active campaigning against his ostensible party's nominee. And like Obama himself said, there will be Republicans serving at high levels in his administration.

Did I miss something? Didn't the country, on the whole, vote for Democrats over Republicans at every federal level? Why do Dems seem to have this bi-partisanship fetish? They WON! That means they can select people from their party who should share a progressive viewpoint and support a progressive/liberal agenda, and then..they can go out and enact that agenda! Holy shit, it all seems so easy! But that's not what's happening. Greenwald, as usual, sums it all up nicely:

Our political system is afflicted by many, many problems. A lack of bipartisanship hasn't been one of them. At least during the Bush era, the Beltway political establishment has been fueled by trans-partisan cooperation and internal allegiance far more than by any ideological differences, policy debates, or partisan warfare. Do the last eight years -- defined by George Bush's virtually unimpeded political agenda -- leave any doubt about that?

That's why the outcome of this Joe Lieberman "controversy" is anything but surprising. Having Democrats overlook Lieberman's extremist views and reward him is anything but "change." That's perfectly consistent with -- not a departure from -- how Washington works: political disagreements can be expressed on the rhetorical level but they're virtually always subordinated to the far greater imperative of bipartisan harmony within the political class.

If this is how the next four (or eight) years is going to be: spineless Democrats enacting a half-baked, flaccid agenda with the help of all of their bi-partisan Republican friends, count me among the seriously underwhelmed.

Update: It's official! But I don't think Kos' comment about a tone-deaf Senate is entirely accurate; the Senate is quite aware of the political tone of this decision, it just realizes that ignoring the current tone will have absolutely no repercussions. Until Greens poll at more than one or two percent nationally, progressives are stuck - with Harry Reid and the Democrats.

Word Games

It's one week before the election, but is it 2008 or 1950? The dreaded label of Socialist has been hurled at Barack Obama so often in the past month, it's difficult to tell what year it is. Is this Palin-McCarthy - um, sorry - McCain-McCarthy versus Obama-Marx? Maybe it's a good sign that the hugely succesful demonization of liberal has run out of gas, and the Right has to reach further back in time to when their candidate was still a teenager...and Obama's mom was 8 years old.

A new Red Scare is just what this country needs, isn't it? It's not like we have any other problems to worry about at the moment. Plus, Capitalism has kicked ass lately, hasn't it?

Palin: Scarier Than Cheney?

I know, what a crazy thought, right? Still, her interview with Katie and some of her mayoral policies make me wonder; her cluelessness versus Cheney's diabolical evil? It's a closer call than I would have thought:

A few clips of her interview with Couric, surrounded by some discussion by Mr. Greenwald (second clip is worse).

Billing rape victims in Wasilla?!?

Brian Drain (aka Gordon Gekko Lives!)

This is the second time in the past few months I've seen this topic broached in our newspapers in the past year, but it seems more relevant now than it did back in February:

In his February 20 column, Steve Pearlstein of the Post railed against how the Finanical Industry operates at the top:

Wall Street's hypocrisy on this topic is nothing less than breathtaking. When times are good, its champions will claim that their brilliance and hard work account for the spectacular returns. But when markets turn and investors lose their shirts, these same brilliant managers are sent off with golden parachutes and invariably scooped up by rival firms that are only too willing to chalk up their mistakes to bad luck.

It would be bad enough if the consequences of this excessive pay were confined to Wall Street. Unfortunately, it has not worked out that way. For the prospect of earning untold wealth also has attracted an enormous amount of young talent that could have been more productively used in science, engineering, medicine, teaching, public service and businesses that generate genuine long-term value.

Is it not fair to ask whether the United States can remain the world's most prosperous and innovative economy when half of the seniors at the most prestigious colleges and universities now aspire to become "i-bankers" at Goldman Sachs?

Now Roger Cohen visits this same territory in his Wednesday column in the New York Times:

When I taught a journalism course at Princeton a couple of years ago, I was captivated by the bright, curious minds in my class. But when I asked students what they wanted to do, the overwhelming answer was: “Oh, I guess I’ll end up in i-banking.”

It was not that they loved investment banking, or thought their purring brains would be best deployed on Wall Street poring over a balance sheet, it was the money and the fact everyone else was doing it.

I called one of my former students, Bianca Bosker, who graduated this summer and has taken a job with The Monitor Group, a management consultancy firm (she’s also writing a book). I asked her about the mood among her peers.

“Well, I have several friends who took summer internships at Lehman that they expected to lead to full-time job, so this is a huge issue,” she said. “You can’t believe how intensely companies like Merrill would recruit at Ivy League schools. I mean, when I was a sophomore, if you could spell your name, you were guaranteed a job.”

But why do freshmen bursting to change the world morph into investment bankers?

“I guess the bottom line is the money. You could be going to grad school and paying for it, or earning six figures. And knowing nothing about money, you get to move hundreds of millions around! No wonder we’re in this mess: turns out the best and the brightest make the biggest and the worst.”

According to the Harvard Crimson, 39 percent of work-force-bound Harvard seniors this year are heading for consulting firms and financial sector companies (or were in June). That’s down from 47 percent — almost half the job-bound class — in 2007.

These numbers mirror a skewed culture. The best and the brightest should think again. Barack Obama put the issue this way at Wesleyan University in May: beware of the “poverty of ambition” in a culture of “the big house and the nice suits.”

39% of Harvard seniors going into the financial sector, down from 47%? I don't know what's more depressing, that some of the very best and brightest only want to make money, or that they're doing such a poor job of it. Sure, there's no guarantee that, had any of these people gone into medicine or engineering, they would have found a cure for cancer or developed a car that could be powered by mayonnaise. Who knows, maybe they'd be making weapons for our massive war machine (there's plenty of money there, too) or inventing less-weighty items. But I'd sure like our odds for a better world if they had chosen those careers. Too bad that it's just about the (obscene amounts of) money.

Legalizing the Surveillance State

It's done, the new FISA bill has passed in the Senate. No, this doesn't plunge us into 1984. But it does bring us a few steps closer.

I think Obama's stark reversal on this issue is oddly reassuring - having a principled, honest person running for president is way too suspicious, but now we know he's just another politician. Will I still vote for the guy? Sure! (as if I'd vote for McCain). But he's not the Second Coming, as his hard-core supporters like to imagine. He's just another poll-driven, broken-promises, triangulating candidate. Much more appropriate behavior for someone running for president.

Why The Left Runs To The "Center"?

Here's an insightful post that builds on Greenwald's latest and asks why Weakness is Strength for Dems. The answer is intriguing, although I'm not sure I buy the entire premise; I guess I have a hard time believing that today's media stars are that influential with voters, but then again for the premise to work, they only need to be influential to candidates and their advisers. The concept of "moving to the center" is summed up nicely with this line:

The entire construct is based upon Democrats distancing themselves from their most ardent supporters (which is quite convenient for Republicans.)

The Problem with Democrats

[Note that the post is the problem, singular, not problems; I don't have all day!]

Over the past...30 years (?), it seems to me that Republicans have been very successful in moving the accepted political spectrum farther and farther right - what was Right is now Center, Far Right is now just Right, Left is now Far Left, you get the picture. Don't ask me why that is, or how it came to happen, but I think there's ample evidence. Even in Clinton's eight years in office, this process was going on; look at welfare reform and the SEC during that time, as a few examples.

Democrats have been in charge on Congress for a few years, and stand in opposition one of the most unpopular presidents in history. But are they actually in opposition? Not really. Even the party's presidential nominee has fallen into an all-too-familiar Democratic trap: the fear of appearing weak on national security, which of course leads to actually becoming weak in defense of one's principles. Congressional Democrats, as a block, only allow themselves token, symbolic opposition to Bush policies; Glenn Greenwald is calling this The New Republic Syndrome. I'm glad our congressman, John Sarbanes, voted against the latest bipartisan disaster, and plenty of other Democrats did as well. But what to do when the House "leaders" are in opposition to the majority of their own party? Either try to change their minds, or remove them from these leadership positions. Too bad it's so difficult (read: expensive) to run against an incumbent. It's a sad time for Democrats when both Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Majority Leader Steny Hoyer can't be relied on to protect the Constitution. At least the sprinkler system at the National Archives is still on the job (I hope!).

The merits of the FISA bill or other Bush administration positions can be argued, I suppose - you won't read me defending them, but one could make a go of it, I guess. But without any meaningful opposition, no substantive defense of those positions is even required; proponents can throw the flag around this bill (or a potential war with Iran, or a morally and intellectually bankrupt energy policy), question the patriotism of those in genuine opposition without addressing their real concerns, and be home in time for the summer recess.

War Machine

I don't recall how I made my way to this link, but this gargantuan graphic of the 2008 United States budget is...interesting, in a maddening kind of way. Yes, we pay 67% of our discretionary budget (non-entitlement programs such as SS, Medicare, et cetera, which are funded separately) on military and national security. That's over $700 Billion, out of $1.1 trillion. And what do we have to show for it? World peace and prosperity? Not so much. Economic dominance? Seemingly slipping away; we were just passed by China as the #2 exporter (in case you're curious, #1 is a country of 82 million people that sits in the middle of Europe, has a high standard of living, and makes some nice cars too).

Do any of the three (OK, two) presidential candidates even talk about military expenditures? No, not really. Unless it's about an increase in said expenditures, perhaps. Nobody wants to sound like they're soft on the bad guys. Plus, they probably suspect that the big military contractors will do their best to scuttle any campaign that even thinks about substantially reducing the Pentagon's budget, and they're probably right. Remember how quickly Howard Dean was shouted down four years ago when he had the temerity to suggest that we wouldn't necessarily always have the world's biggest military? As if the third-largest country in the world has the God-given right to the biggest military force on the planet.

While plenty of things are broken in this country, things that tax money could really go a long way toward fixing, the military-industrial complex will continue to devour the lion's share of the budget, until someone residing in the White House has the courage (and congressional majority) to start a draw down. I hope that person comes along soon, but I'm not optimistic. I don't think it's impossible; dust off Eisenhower's farewell address, tell the people where the money would go instead (health care, infrastructure, tax cuts), then sit back and watch the proponents of the war machine as they attempt to defend sinking almost 70% of income taxes into weapons and troops. But whoever decides to tackle it must realize that it's a signature issue that will dominate their administration's agenda. It's four-year fight worth having though, the sooner the better.