Category: politics

politics

Left versus Right

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Joseph Stiglitz, professor of economics at Columbia University and winner of the 2001 Nobel Prize in Economics, has a great article in the Guardian about how in contrast to the right, the left has a coherent agenda. It’s one that offers not only higher growth, but also social justice.
One part that I found damning was that it is estimated that within a few years, America will have more people working in the security business than in education and a year in prison can cost more than a year at Harvard.
That is one scary stat but the article overall isn’t a scary one, rather it is a very good argument for the left’s agenda.
Via Neu

politics

Gasoline is an addiction

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The first gas crisis happened before I was born but cars today are less fuel efficient than they were in the 70’s. I usually try not to curse on my blog but seriously what the fuck?! We as a nation have done a lot of amazing things: put a man on the moon with less computer memory (64k) than is in your current mobile phone, invented the Internet, sequenced the human genome – I can go on and on – but some how a fuel efficient car escapes us. Seriously?
Ten years ago in 1998, I lived in England and gas was the equivalent of $8 a gallon. Some of my classmates had cars and their response wasn’t a huge public outcry. They simply made sure that they bought smaller, more fuel efficient cars! Whoa. A mind shattering idea, right? Since i got back, I have been in the minority in believing that gas should cost more that it does now. I had a car from 1999 – 2000 and felt that way when I was paying $1.20 a gallon even though I was a poor college student. I am not Casandra but the handwriting on this wall was pretty clear to me then and it still is now: the problem we have isn’t with the price of gas. The problem is gas, period.
As Thomas Friedman puts it in his recent op-ed piece, “When a person is addicted to crack cocaine, his problem is not that the price of crack is going up.His problem is what that crack addiction is doing to his whole body. The cure is not cheaper crack, which would only perpetuate the addiction and all the problems it is creating. The cure is to break the addiction.
To that I say “Amen!” I wrote about this topic in 2005 and so did Mr. Friedman but 3 years later we are still in the same stupid place: buying oil from dictators and/or Russia with no better plan in place. What a lovely situation to be in.
Sure, you may say that as a walker, subway and train rider and cab passenger living in Manhattan I never have known what it was like to own and operate a car. Well, I just joined the car class – I have an 09 Matrix that gets 21 city and 29 highway which still isn’t good enough for me but unfortunately, a hybrid is super expensive and leasing one really isn’t an option.
To be honest, I wish I was paying $6 – $8 a gallon for gas as it would be better for the planet that my daughter is inheriting from me one day.

politics

From the "You've Got To Be Kidding Me" Department

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One thing that really bothered me about Hilary’s campaign was how time and time again it did not pay for the goods and services it used from very same people it supposedly was “fighting for” – small business owners. Here is just one example:

Dakota Pizza, a restaurant owned by Stephen Bledsoe in Wynnewood, PA, fed Clinton, her campaign and the press corps that traveled with her more than $11,000 worth of grilled shrimp, sandwiches, “hand-crafted” pizza and salads leading up to the April 22 primary. He received a partial payment, but is still owned $5,933. “I can’t believe that someone of her stature will not have the ability to repay what they owe,” he said.

I have been following this trail of unpaid bills all over the country and always figured that Bill would just have to give a weeks worth of speeches once she dropped out to handle the damage. Therefore, I almost spit up the coffee I was drinking when I read an email from the Clinton campaign which featured the subject line, “Keeping my promise.” In this missive, Hilary had, to borrow one of Obama’s words, the audacity to ask and expect her supporters to help her resolve her campaign debts. I mean, for fuck’s sake she raised $237 million (!) yet still had more than $22.5 million in debts as of the end of May. That includes $12 million that the New York senator loaned her campaign.
Is this the person we want trying to balance the budget?! If anyone has a debt after raising almost $240 million, it because of one simple reason: grossly negligent financial management. I for one never reward anyone for that type of behavior, least of all a former first lady and current U.S. Senator.
If you you think I’m kidding unfortunately I am not – please see the image below that I grabbed from the email:

box_hrc.jpg

After getting sufficiently angry, I have started to think differently about this situation and have sort of come full circle because Hilary has truly inspired me in my approach towards my household finances. I think I’m going to send an email to all my friends and family asking them to help me “retire my debt” (aka pay off my mortgage) so that “we can keep fighting together” (whatever the hell that means – it sure does sound good though). In fact, I might actually carry a balance forward on my credit cards starting now. Who cares that I’ll get hit with 22% a month in finance charges: I can just get my “supporters” to retire my debt for me! Thanks for the swell idea HRC!

politics

Terrorist Chic

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For the past few months I have seen a very noticeable up-tick in the amount of Arab keffiyehs being worn, especially the white and black style worn by so many Palestinians. While there are tons of Europeans walking the streets of NYC these days due to the weak dollar (and Europeans tend to support the Palestinian cause much more than Americans), that doesn’t totally explain the phenomenon.
It turns out that one of “the” fashion looks this season is to wear a scarf around your neck in a fashion that will make you look to many people either like a Palestinian, a Terrorist, or potentially both. Rachel Ray wore one of these scarves in a Dunkin Donuts ad and now there are lots people who now think that both Rachel Ray and Dunkin Donuts support terrorists.

I know one could consider “Don’t Mess with the Zohan” the first “Terrorist comedy” but does this scarf / keffiyeh look make terrorism “the new black” of the fashion world? And if so, more importantly, why is this cool?
UPDATED ON 5/29: DD has pulled the ad and Amahl Bishara, an anthropology lecturer at the University of Chicago who specializes in media matters relating to the Middle East, said “complaints about the scarf’s use in the ad demonstrate misunderstandings of Arab culture and the multiple meanings that symbols can take on depending on someone’s perspective” and “to reduce their meaning to support for terrorism has a tacit racist tone to it.”
As “Avenue Q” sang, everyone’s a little bit racist sometimes. Did I just prove that point? I’m not so sure. I feel pretty strongly that at least in the West, for whatever reason, if you see a keffiyeh, you think of not so good things…
Via Jessie

politics

Baracky

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My friend, who has been working on Obama’s campaign for the last almost two years now, sent me the video below which, while being Pro-O, is definitely entertaining.

Via YLFO

politics

When Bureaucracy Kills

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I’m currently reading a book titled Curveball: Spies, Lies and the Con Man Who Caused a War by Bob Drogin which is making me even more angry than the NYT piece about Afghanistan I posted about yesterday. I cannot believe that America went to war with Iraq over such totally and utter bullshit – in case you were wondering, 3973 Americans have died thus far. Don’t even get me started on the civilian fallout.
I would like to quote page 160 where the author refers to the grand UN dog and pony show that our lovely senior government officials (we pay their salary keep in mind) put on in 2002:

[Sr. BND (German Federal Intelligence Service) official Werner] Kappel had expected to see photographs, hard evidence. [U.S. Secretary of State Colin] Powell’s illustrations weren’t proof. They were hearsay. Kappel couldn’t get over it. Powell had used artists’ conjectures based on analysts’ interpretations of Arabic-to-German-to-English translations of debriefings reports of a manic-depressive defector the Americans had never talked to.

Please re-read that passage and tell me you feel good about paying taxes right now. The book details all the people who knew the intelligence being used to go to war in Iraq was bullshit but no one really did anything to stop it. Some people covered their asses but for the most part no one did anything.
If you pay taxes like I do you are culpable – you pay into this system like I do. You pay for the government, which includes petty people who would rather protect their pension than admit a mistake. I’m embarrassed, again.

politics

The "Dollar Auction" In Iraq

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Economics professors have a standard game they use to demonstrate to their students how apparently rational decisions can create a disastrous result which they call a “dollar auction.” As you read on, keep the whole Iraqi war debacle in mind.
Here is how the “dollar auction” works: a dollar is offered for sale to the highest bidder, with only one wrinkle – the second-highest bidder has to pay up on their losing bid as well.
Initially, almost every student gets sucked in. The first bids a penny, looking to make 99 cents. The second bids 2 cents, the third 3 cents, and so on, each feeling they have a chance at something good on the cheap. The early stages are fun, and the bidders wonder what possessed the professor to be willing to lose some money.
The problem surfaces when the bidders get up close to a dollar. After 99 cents the last vestige of profitability disappears. The highest bidders now realize that they stand to lose no matter what, but that they can still buffer their losses by winning the dollar. They just have to outlast the other player.
If this strategy is followed, the highest bidders usually run the bid up several dollars, turning the apparent shot at easy money into a ghastly battle of spiraling disaster. Just like the war in Iraq. Hmmm. Has anyone in the current administration taken Econ 101?
This isn’t my original thought: Oliver R. Goodenough wrote about the dollar aution in the Rutland Herald, but I liked it so much that I thought I should share it with y’all.
Via Neu

politics

Food, Or Should I Say MRE, For Thought

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I’ve been catching up on old Thomas Friedman columns and getting nice and angry about what is taking place in the good old USA. Here is the last part of his recent Charge It To My Kids column:

Previous American generations connected with our troops by making sacrifices at home — we’ve never passed on the entire cost of a war to the next generation, said Robert Hormats, vice chairman of Goldman Sachs International, who has written a history — “The Price of Liberty” — about how America has paid for its wars since 1776.
“In every major war we have fought in the 19th and 20th centuries,” said Mr. Hormats, “Americans have been asked to pay higher taxes — and nonessential programs have been cut — to support the military effort. Yet during this Iraq war, taxes have been lowered and domestic spending has climbed. In contrast to World War I, World War II, the Korean War and Vietnam, for most Americans this conflict has entailed no economic sacrifice. The only people really sacrificing for this war are the troops and their families.”
In his celebrated Farewell Address, Mr. Hormats noted, George Washington warned against “ungenerously throwing upon posterity the burdens we ourselves ought to bear.”

I once again have started to day dream about moving to Canada…

politics

On Democracy

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Stanley Fish was asked 10 questions about democracy by the BBC. Two questions are related to one another: “What is the biggest threat to democracy?” and “Can terrorism destroy democracy?” and I thought I would share his responses I thought they were not only insightful and sum up how I feel:
The answers depend on what you think democracy is. I tend to resist romantic definitions that feature phrases like “noble ideal” and opt instead for something more analytic: democracy is a form of government that is not attached to any pre-given political or ideological ends, but allows ends to be chosen by the majority vote of free citizens.
What this means is that democracy is the only form of government that, at least theoretically, contemplates its own demise with equanimity. Democratic elections do not guarantee that the victors will be democratically inclined, and it is always possible that those who gain control of the legislative process will pass laws that erode or even repeal the rights – of property, free expression and free movement – that distinguish democracies from theocracies and monarchies. (Some would say that this is exactly what has been happening in the past six years.) Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes captured the fragility of a form of government that can alter itself beyond the point of recognition when he said that if his fellow citizens want to go to hell in a handbasket, it was his job to help them, even if he deplored the consequences. Democracy, then, can be said to be its own biggest threat.
Terrorism presents a parallel threat from the outside. The danger is not so much that terrorists will defeat democracies by force as it is that, in resisting terrorists, democracies will forgo the procedural safeguards (against warrantless detention, censorship and secret surveillance) that make a democracy what it is. (Again, some would say that is already happening today.) If terrorists can maneuver democracies into employing tactics indistinguishable from theirs, it could be argued that they have won no matter what the outcome on the battlefield.
For more on this topic, check out www.whydemocracy.net

politics

Thou Shalt Prove A Point?

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Straight from the “you can’t make this stuff up” department is this bit of news about how Nebraskan State Senator Ernie Chambers is suing God. While Ernie says he is trying to point out how frivolous lawsuits can be, I pray that he does not believe in a vengeful God after reading the suit’s language.  If God exists, he, she or it might very well be pretty pissed after reading it.
First off, the lawsuit accuses God “of making and continuing to make terroristic threats of grave harm to innumerable persons, including constituents of Plaintiff who Plaintiff has the duty to represent.”Second, it says God has caused “fearsome floods, egregious earthquakes, horrendous hurricanes, terrifying tornadoes, pestilential plagues, ferocious famines, devastating droughts, genocidal wars, birth defects and the like.”
Third, it also says God has caused “calamitous catastrophes resulting in the wide-spread death, destruction and terrorization of millions upon millions of the Earth’s inhabitants including innocent babes, infants, children, the aged and infirm without mercy or distinction.”
I wonder who will win..