Corporations Are NOT Persons: Why I’m Liberal #3

This should be a no-brainer: corporations are fictional entities created for the economic benefit of individuals. Yet as the recent Supreme Court decision made clear, our nation has made an incredible mistake in granting legal personhood to these amoral institutions. And the legal personhood of corporations is both a cornerstone of the erosion of American liberty that conservatives (and liberals) decry, and a cornerstone of conservative and Republican policy. It is not a coincidence that Bush II's nominees, Alito and Roberts, both voted for corporations at the expense of people and freedom.

While it's obvious that corporate personhood is an emperor-with-no-clothes, the establishment of it has been a long time coming. The 1886 case, Santa Clara v. Southern Pacific Railroad, opened the floodgates. Note in the preamble to the text from the link that corporate personhood was never argued or discussed by the Supreme Court; it was simply an assertion by one single justice, which completely changed the law and the course of history. The author goes on to say:

"The doctrine of corporate personhood creates an interesting legal contradiction. The corporation is owned by its shareholders and is therefore their property. If it is also a legal person, then it is a person owned by others and thus exists in a condition of slavery -- a status explicitly forbidden by the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution. So is a corporation a person illegally held in servitude by its shareholders? Or is it a person who enjoys the rights of personhood that take precedence over the presumed ownership rights of its shareholders? So far as I have been able to determine, this contradiction has not been directly addressed by the courts."

In his book, "Unequal Protection: The Rise of Corporate Dominance and the Theft of Human Rights," (buy it here) Thom Hartmann does an excellent job of analyzing the costs and consequences of this great conservative fallacy, so I won't go into detail here. (I highly recommend reading this book – especially if you vote Republican!) Suffice it to say that the nominations of corporate lawyers Roberts and Alito to SCOTUS were not accidents. Their opinions on abortion were nothing but a sop to social conservatives; their unlimited support for the uber-rich and corporate personhood were the keys to their nominations. This is what makes Justice Sotomayer such a great choice, and is the strongest evidence to date that Obama may not be the corporate flunky his policies usually indicate.

The obvious consequence of corporate personhood is the establishment of an entity that is arguably a slave to a position of prominence over free men and women. It is a tool whereby, by amassing resources, a small cabal of individuals can exert overwhelming influence on political and economic policy. Note the resource base of the huge, multi-national corporations shown in the graph on the link to "corporations" above: what individual has any chance of matching that? Or even group of individuals? Yet these entities – some of them not even American corporations (Shell Oil, BP, DaimlerChrysler) – are granted the protections of personhood – but not the responsibilities. Individuals – persons – are fully liable for their actions; corporations, almost by definition, have limited liability.

The outcomes of this travesty are legion, but just to name a few:

• Corporate censorship: the news media are owned by multi-national corporations, and they choose what news gets printed or broadcast. Regardless of liberal journalists, it is corporate boards who choose content. Thus the appearance of liberalism in the news media veneered over bedrock economic conservatism. The corporate elite don't care shit about the degradation of culture seen in Hollywood, or abortion, or family, morals, justice, etc. They care about maintaining their power and privilege. The news that's printed/broadcast is chosen to protect those specific economic interests. Corporate shill Rush Limbaugh's rants about liberal media are just part of the package, as deeply cynical and hypocritical as you can get. Note that General Electric, a major defense contactor, owns NBC, a major news outlet – an inherent conflict of interest. The Christian Science Monitor is one of the last relatively independent news sources of any reach, which is part of the reason for its good reputation.
  
• Employment of the US military to defend the interests of corporations overseas and extend economic hegemony over the world; to defend American Empire. This is the real issue in the so-called "War on Terror," and the unsustainability of our military budget and adventurism, along with Peak Oil, is the reason we will ultimately lose. The all-volunteer military is part of this package. People who have chosen to sign a contract and make an explicit agreement to obey orders feel it is their duty to do so even when it is contrary to the best interest of themselves and their nation; draftees resist when told to do unconscionable acts.
  
• The degradation of the US military and abdication of humanitarian responsibility and accountability by the hiring of mercenaries.
  
• The inevitable degradation and erosion of American liberty, and growing irrelevance of both the Constitution and the federal government.
• The degradation of our food supply, including loss of topsoil, animal abuse, etc.
  
• The merger of State and Corporate power.
  

To quote Benito Mussolini: "Fascism should more properly be called corporatism, since it is the merger of state and corporate power."

In other words, yes, Virginia, corporate personhood is the key to fascism. By adopting the cause of corporate personhood, the Republican leadership – though not Republican membership – has unreservedly committed to fascism. You won't find any of the Republican leadership accepting this claim, however. That would be political suicide. Instead, they hide their corporate agenda under popular moral platitudes, and extend support for a cynical, perverted Christianity as a means to deceive and manipulate their own political base. In his book "American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America," Chris Hedges explains how this works.

Corporations are not persons, and they should be carefully controlled, granted limited charters, and restricted from political influence. I stand unreservedly opposed to fascism and the continued erosion of American liberty and secular government. I am a liberal.

*Standard note: I value dissenting opinions as crucial to the maintenance of freedom and democracy. While I would like to write convincingly, to influence opinion and sway the balance of power my way, I also consider the conservative viewpoint to be important and meaningful. I do, however, believe that political discourse does not have to be nasty and vicious. I prefer to listen to and respect my political opponents. I ask the same from them.

International Migrants' Day

Today is International Migrants' Day, commemorating the day in 1990 that the UN Assembly adopted the International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families (resolution 45/158). This article by Chandra Bhatnagar is worth reading for background, but suffice it to say that migrants face many human rights abuses right here in the original modern Bastion of Freedom known as the USA.

With that in mind, I call on all US agencies and employers to treat migrants with the humanity and respect that they deserve, simply by being our brothers and sisters born to the same divine Father-Mother as created us. I call on President Obama to direct his agencies to enforce all aspects of national and international law that protect these people from abuse, and to take immediate steps to rectify the situation in Villas-del-Sol, Puerto Rico, including provision of electricity, water, health care, and humanitarian aid as needed (see the article). And I extend my own prayers for all migrant workers in the US, and everywhere.

It is a disgrace for a nation of our proud heritage to continue to allow this kind of abuse, especially in the aftermath of the Hurricane Katrina travesty. If we cannot extend mercy, compassion, and basic human rights to people on our own soil, how can we ever expect to support it as far away as Afghanistan?

Political Science 101

I have a bad habit of going onto conservative blogs and starting conversations. It's my means of breaking out of my own liberal echo chamber and attempting to expand my understanding and horizons, while also pushing others to break out of theirs. Something I've noticed repeatedly on these forays is that conservatives (at least the ones on the blogs I visit) really don't understand political/economic systems very well. Typically they look at the current health care "reform" bill being proposed, and call it "Marxist" or "socialist." So, if any of you conservatives ever come visit me here, here's a short lesson to clarify the issue for you.

Socialism, especially as Marx espoused, is the when the state owns and operates the means of production and distribution. A completely socialist approach to the health care system would be as follows: 1) Nationalize the hospitals; eliminate private ownership of hospitals and clinics. 2) Make all health care providers employees of the state. 3) Nationalize pharmaceutical companies – the folks who research and make drugs. 4) That pretty much eliminates the need for health insurance. Everything's paid for by the state, anyway.

Fascism, on the other hand, allows for private ownership – but ensures that that ownership belongs to a certain class. As Benito Mussolini puts it, "Fascism should more properly be called corporatism, since it is the merger of state and corporate power."

So when Obama and other government officials meet with pharmaceutical and insurance lobbyists behind closed doors to negotiate how "health care reform" will not only be acceptable to them, but will make them primary beneficiaries, that's fascism. When the government requires citizens to purchase private insurance, that's fascism.

In fact, we've been seeing a lot of fascism in this country over the last 30 years or so. Now, it's SOP (Standard Operating Procedure) in Washington for lobbyists to write the majority of legislation, which our congresspeople then sponsor. That's why these bills are so long and complicated – they are designed by and for the wealthiest corporations in the world. And it's completely bipartisan. This is what Reagan did, in things like quietly privatizing the military. (Currently a large percentage of the American military system is composed of corporate mercenaries.) Clinton had NAFTA, GATT, and Hillarycare. Bush had the PATRIOT Act, no-bid contracts, the Iraq invasion and occupation, and so on. Now Obama's signed on with this very fascist health care plan.

Of course, we don't call it fascism. That wouldn't be PC at all. Instead, the conservative media lapdogs (Rush, Glenn Beck, Bill O'Reilly, et al) slam "the liberals" and call it "socialism" when liberals do it, and "conservatism" or "common sense" when Republicans do it – as if the problem were this large liberal section of the American people. And liberal voices retaliate, and a vicious and divisive political discourse cripples any resistance possible from a united grassroots movement of citizens who have a common interest in tearing down fascism in this country.

The irony is that people on both sides think their leaders have their own best interests at heart, and care about liberty for the masses. Not so. The leaders care about maintaining their positions, and because We the People are ignorant, angry, and misinformed, and don't recognize our common interests and humanity, we let them.

I feel sad when I see the vicious rhetoric so common on various blogs, because it ensures that we won't listen to each other or find common ground. Instead, it aids the very people who are bleeding our freedom away. It is deeply self-destructive.

Bibliography:

Bernays, Edward: Propaganda

Johnson, Chalmers: Blowback – the costs and consequences of American Empire

Gatto, John Taylor: The Underground History of American Education

Briody, Dan: The Iron Triangle: Inside the Carlyle Group

Marx, Karl: The Communist Manifesto

Rand, Ayn: Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal

Hartmann, Thom: Unequal Protection and What Would Jefferson Do?: A return to democracy

Omerud, Paul: Butterfly Economics

Singer, P.W.: Corporate Warriors: The Rise of the Privatized Military Industry

Mill, John Stuart: On Liberty

Palast, Greg: The Best Democracy Money Can Buy

Hayek, F. A.: The Road To Serfdom

plus a whole bunch of books on WWII that I read before I started keeping records, and so can't cite individually.

Health Care Redux

The more I consider the health care system "reform" currently being debated and opposed so ardently by conservatives, the more opposed I am to it – though not, I suspect, for the reasons they'd quote. In my last post, I said I was agnostic after looking at all the good things that are being proposed. Many of the things Obama and the Democrats are trying to do are not only worthwhile, but morally imperative. However, the very attractiveness of that led me to miss the key point: it addresses the symptoms of the health care malaise, without addressing the underlying problems that create the symptoms. Because of that, it is doomed to fail.

The problems of our current health care system are as follows: 1. It is an extremely complex system, in a situation where simplicity is proven, all over the world, to be more effective and far more efficient. 2. It allows outrageous rewards for malpractice suits, which drives outrageous costs for malpractice insurance. 3. It prohibits the public payer from negotiating prices with the providers. 4. The payer in most situations is motivated by profit (not need) in a system where profit is maximized by denying (not providing) the services needed – effectively rationing health care and reducing choice far more effectively than even this bill would allow.

This bill actually addresses none of these problems. Instead, it takes a quintessentially Republican approach to legislate better results out of a failing system: Government officials meet with corporate industry officials behind closed doors to craft legislation which is then crammed down the citizen's throats. Benito Mussolini would approve; he'd call it fascism – "the merging of corporate and state power." It is a mystery to me why the folks who supported Bush oppose this plan – it is exactly the kind of thing that he would support and promote.

At the risk of being boring and redundant, the solution is simple: 1. To deal with problems #1 & 4 above, expand Medicare to include everyone, and reform the paperwork process to make it simple, easy, and able to process in multiple ways (digital, hard copy, etc.). (This has the added benefit of increasing everyone's choices on doctors, providers, and so on, because every provider is a preferred provider, and there is no out-of-network unless you leave the country.) 2. To deal with problem #2 above, limit malpractice suit rewards. 3. To deal with #3 above, require Medicare to negotiate prices. 4. To additionally deal with #4 above, cover alternative health care (acupuncture, Christian Science, etc.) and preventative care.

The current reform plan on the table operates from the same assumptions and paradigm as the current system, and merely attempts to legislate better results. But without reforming the system, we won't get better results. As Einstein said, "Problems cannot be solved at the same level of awareness that created them." While doing some things to mitigate the symptoms of our current insane system, this plan will hurt vulnerable populations – small business and the middle class – while providing huge, usurious profits to huge, corrupt corporations. It will delay genuine reform. Liberals should stand side-by-side with our conservative brethren and sistren in opposition to it.

The Health Care Reform Bill

Caveat: I don't have time to research H.R. 3200, the House version of this bill, or any of the others, completely; so this analysis is based on reading the summary, scanning the text, and commentary from other sources. My analysis may have major holes in it. However, a conservative friend asked me to comment on it, so I'll give it a try.

First, this bill is almost 500 pages long. A basic principle I like to go by, articulated by Albert Einstein, is, "Everything should be made as simples as possible – but not simpler." Clearly, this bill fails that simple test.

The bill does have a lot of good points. It eliminates exclusions for pre-existing conditions. It limits out-of-pocket expenses and doesn't limit payouts. It covers preventive services. It provides health insurance for everyone. It requires the rich to pay more than the poor and middle class. It guarantees coverage for everyone. It includes mental health services. And so on.

My objections are as follows:

1. It's way more complex than it has to be. (See comment above.) It establishes a new bureaucracy, the "Health Choices Administration," with additional layers such as the "Health Insurance Exchange." It establishes a new public health insurance provider within this, I think as part of the Exchange. In addition, it seeks to fill the prescription benefit hole with this new insurance, so that people covered by Medicare then have the additional complexity of multiple payers for the same product, essentially doubling the paperwork. Every one of those is completely unnecessary and redundant. We've already got two public plans, Medicare and Medicaid, which is one more than we should have. Medicare has its problems, but it is run very efficiently. In fact, providing insurance is one of those places where government can excel, exceeding the efficiencies and effectiveness of private insurance because it is not motivated by profit, but by service.

2. The Health Insurance Exchange is supposed to compete with private insurers. Big mistake. I'd rather see something like the old-age insurance (Social Security) system: it is available for all, and if you want supplemental financial planning services, go for it.

3. It requires employers to provide coverage, based on payroll, not profitability. Really bad idea. We should be divorcing employers from providing coverage, not requiring more. Almost all other developed nations (those with which we trade) have single payer public health insurance; employers in those nations don't have the added cost of providing coverage. It's just one stupid way to make our own industry less competitive on the global market. Besides, it can really hit small employers hard, especially if their payroll is bigger than their profit. Expect marginal businesses to go under.

4. It doesn't mention "medically necessary." It should. Any procedure, service, or product considered medically necessary should be covered. That includes Sex Reassignment Surgery.

5. It imposes a tax on individuals without a health plan. That's okay, but I'd rather see a single-payer system that basically taxes everyone.

6. If it is true that people will be fined if they don't purchase a health care package, that is a major objection. "Nothing of benefit to the individual is obtained through coercion." (Socrates, I think?) I can think of no way to increase resistance to this bill better than this. People hate coercion, and rightfully so. I hate it. "Give me liberty, or give me death!"

7. Cost is not adequately addressed. (See update and link to Field's post below.) Without giving the public health insurance entity full ability to negotiate prices and without limiting the extent of malpractice suit penalties, cost cannot be adequately addressed. And creating redundant public bureaucracies adds a completely unnecessary level of cost, just for administration. It's stupid and counter-productive.

This health care reform bill is nowhere near as bad as some of the conservative commentary I've seen on it. For instance, one such objection is that it rations your health care. This exhibits the privileged ignorance of those who make this objection. Health care is already rationed, usually by income level. Poor people often have no coverage. Trans people can't obtain medically necessary procedures that are available to others. In fact, private insurers ration by pre-existing condition, exclusions, maximum payouts, preferred provider networks, and every other means they can legally access. This bill may well ration health care, but by eliminating maximum payouts, pre-existing conditions, and income refusals, it significantly reduces existing rationing. Another objection is that a government committee will determine your treatments and benefits. So what? Under private care, you've got an insurance executive, whose paycheck depends on reducing benefits provided to you, making those choices. And guess which one can be held accountable? (Hint: it's not the executive.) Making things better does not necessarily constitute making things perfect, but that's no reason not to do it.

Going back to Einstein's quote, the solution to the health care mess is way simpler than this bill. All we need to do is make Medicare available to everyone, with the following reforms: a) require it to negotiate prices. b) simplify the paperwork – everyone is covered, every provider a preferred provider; list the products and services provided to the patient on one sheet of paper, submit for payment, and you're done. c) limit malpractice suit payouts. d) cover alternative systems, such as acupuncture, naturopaths, homeopathy, and Christian Science treatment. Medicare is an efficiently run, existing agency; expanding it is simple, efficient, and effective. You could fit a far more complete reform package into a 25- or 50-page bill.

In sum, this bill is nowhere near as bad as the conservatives would make it out to be. It's also nowhere near as good as some liberals are making it out to be. It has some major problems, but also some really good stuff. Having looked at the actual bill, however briefly, I've modified my opposition. I'm agnostic. It will make some things better, but it will also create new problems which are obvious and predictable, and leaves other problems unaddressed. Whether there is a net social benefit to the bill is unclear to me – there may be one, and there may not. If it passes, we'll just have to wait and see.

One thing is clear, however: This health care reform bill could be a hell of a lot better.

Update: Field Negro is one smart cookie. When he posts something like this, I tend to believe it - and I agree with his commentary, especially about having each other's backs.

Denial?

I lifted this vid from Long Walk to Green, a blog I found linked from, of all places, Opine. Long Walk to Green titled it, appropriately, "So Sad..."

I'd like to think this guy isn't typical for Republicans. He's griping about a measly five million dollars out of a huge transportation spending bill. Yet how can you get better bang for your buck than with bikes?

Our Xtracycle has made our car almost obsolete. Every day I ride past long lines of cars on my commute, and yet I'm pretty sure 70% to 80% of the commutes in my city are easily bikeable. Bikes use no greenhouse gas, no fossil fuel, and they cause very little wear and tear on roads. They park easily, almost anywhere.

This guy is dissing proven technology that does exactly what is proposed - why? Just because it's been around a long time? Or is it denial? Is his ExxonMobile stock falling?

Socialized Medicine? Let’s Do the Math (or at least make some conservative estimates)

With our health infrastructure crumbling, 50 million folks without health insurance, and a growing sense of urgency, you frequently hear about the evils of "socialized medicine." So I thought, let's take a closer look. Let's do the math, and see just how bad we'll get ripped off if we nationalize health insurance and adopt a single-payer insurance system like what France or Germany or Sweden or Japan or some other backward, socialist liberal country does. Sure and if we do, our health system will go right down the tubes and be like theirs, huh?

Oh, wait. Their systems are all rated LOTS better than ours. Though we do pay about 2.5 times as much, per capita.

For simplicity's sake, I'm just going to figure this as if we expanded Medicare to include everyone. After all, we've already got socialized medicine, which by law is required to try to make itself competitive with private insurance. This is tough, since Medicare operates at about 3% overhead, and private insurers operate at 12% t0 30%. So, by law, Medicare is not allowed to negotiate drug prices, it excludes a huge number of people based on age and ability, and they've got tons of complicated, stupid paperwork that drives health providers nuts and makes them hesitate to accept Medicare patients.

So, my employer pays about $6.35 per hour that I work into private health insurance. Under Medicare, I'd save, conservatively, 10%. (6.35x.1=.635) So, right off the bat, I get a 64 cent raise. Cool.

Then the math gets more complicated. For instance, I know that there will be 50 million more people with health insurance, but how many of them would be taxpayers? I don't know the details well enough – does that number include kids and workers, or just workers? Either way, it's going to spread the premium base, and so bring down the cost. Let's call it another 10 cent reduction in my share. Now I've got a 74 cent raise.

But folks that are uninsured now will have access to regular checkups and wellness programs, so overall emergency room costs will go way down. I don't know how to account for this mathematically, either, so let's conservatively take another 10 cent reduction in my share. And my raise is up to 84 cents.

And what if we allowed Medicare to negotiate drug prices? I wonder how much that would save? I don't know, but it's bound to be significant. Let's say that savings reduces my share another 10 cents. I'm nearing a dollar! (And that's not even counting if we allowed Medicare to negotiate the cost of procedures.)

So what if the paperwork problem were fixed, which should be pretty basic since Medicare wouldn't have to exclude everybody who is young and healthy. That would reduce the costs to providers, so Medicare wouldn't pay as much – say, 6 cents.

Wow! A dollar raise! Just for socializing medical insurance!

What would your raise be?

And how cool would it be if every kid had health insurance? (Real cool, in my opinion.)

Of course, that doesn't account for the fact that the money I pay into Medicare taxes currently goes to cover the oldest, sickest people around – in other words, by adding young, healthy people to the premium pool, my current taxes would go down.

How would this affect health providers? Wouldn't they be totally demoralized by getting paid by a socialized insurance program? Doctors would flock across our borders to work in Canada and Mexico and …

Oh, wait. Yeah, they probably wouldn't. They'd just have an easier time with paperwork. (Believe me, any fix of this nature is not complete without fixing the Medicare paperwork nightmare.) And their liability insurance would probably go down a lot. So their overhead would go down, further reducing costs, and even if their pay got reduced through negotiations, the savings in insurance would likely mean increased take-home.

But you couldn't pick your doctor, right?

Why not? They're all getting paid by the same insurer. Seems like having a license to practice medicine automatically puts them into the preferred provider pool, which means you'd have more choice of which doctor to use.

But there has to be some downside to socializing medical insurance. Right?

Well, it would mean increasing taxes. My share of that would be $5.35/hour (worst case scenario). Which still leaves me a dollar per hour more in discretionary income. I'm actually okay with that. (Some employers might not want to pay out all of their savings on health insurance to wages. So, join a union!) Only Republicans are so anti-tax they'd rather spend lots of money on inefficient private systems and reduce take home wages than surrender their ideology.

For the past 30 years or so, we've been bombarded with the myth that government efficiency is an oxymoron. It's true that government is typically incompetent and inefficient in producing goods and moving them around. But in fact government does excel in certain efficiencies, and one of these is insurance. Social Security, for instance, is an enormous program; yet it operates at under 3% overhead. Medicare is the biggest health care payer in the nation, yet it has by far the lowest overhead of any health insurance company. Continuing down our course of blind ideology to support a myth that the "free market" provides the best service in all situations and circumstances, while the data, both from our own nation and from the rest of the world, proves otherwise is worse than stupid. It's insane. When it means withholding health care from sick people and kids, it's cruel and unjust.

It's also very, very expensive.

Obama & McCain – Debate Dizziness

I listened to the debate between Obama and McCain last night just enough to get thoroughly disgusted. It didn't take long.

First there was the issue of taxes. I was disappointed to hear Obama say that he disliked them. It sounds like he's bought into the Republican meme that "taxes are bad, and everyone hates them." I've blogged on this before. It's true that the federal government misspends a huge amount of taxes (the military budget), but taxes themselves are good things, they're really cool, and every year I enjoy writing out the check to the state (though not the feds – see above). This distaste for taxes, born in the myths of the Boston Tea Party and Republican wet dreams of drowning government in the bathtub, is what got us $10 trillion in debt.

So both candidates are going to cut taxes left and right (though at least Obama would raise them on the wealthiest Americans). And balance the budget. Uh, huh. This Republican fantasy has been around for 30 years now, and it's time to get over it. Try it in your personal finances. It doesn't work. If we want to either "fix the problems" this country has, or create the country we want, it's time to raise taxes and cut spending, and the place to start cutting is the military budget – half of the entire world's. I believe in a strong military. So let's cut the military budget by $300 billion, so that we'll have the biggest, most expensive, best trained military in the world. We can start by withdrawing garrisons from dozens of countries around the world, and eliminating Star Wars.

Second, both candidates are fixated on "solving our problems." I bought into this mindset recently, so I can't criticize too much here, but it's recently become clear to me, through watching people like Kristin create her life, and now reading The Path of Least Resistance, by Robert Fritz, that that mindset will not get us where we need to go. We need to switch that mindset to one in which we ask ourselves, what kind of country would we like – and then set out to create it.

Think about that for a second. How would it be if, instead of saying, "Omigod! Look at this horrible economic meltdown! We've gotta rush around madly and fix it right now!" we said, "Okay, what kind of country do we want to create? Let's figure that out, then we'll look at our current economic meltdown situation, and figure out how to create it from here."

Which mindset do you suppose is going to get a better end result? And have more fun getting there?

As Douglas MacArthur once said, "There is no security on this earth. There is only opportunity."

Of course, even with my disappointment with Obama, my support for him remains unchanged. He's obviously less delusional about taxes than his opponent, he's definitely more creative, and he'll select Supreme Court justices far superior to those McCain would choose. If anything happens to him, his vice president is at least competent. And I would SO much prefer that Obama get that 3 a.m. call on the red telephone!

(As an aside, this quote from MSNBC's debate coverage really floored me: "The financial crisis — an unforeseen and unimaginable event, ..." Anybody who's spent any time studying history - especially the economic policies of Coolidge & Hoover - should have been expecting it. Likewise anyone who's studied economics (at least, who's been reading Krugman instead of Friedman). Lots of us were. A guy named Kunstler wrote a book more or less predicting it a number of years ago, called The Long Emergency. Well, perhaps the writer was stuck in a Fox News information vacuum....)

An Open Letter to Congress

Dear Senators and Representatives,
How are you proposing to pay for this $700 billion bailout to the rich fat cats on Wall St.? Especially since you added $100 billion in tax cuts, and our budget is already in deficit, our national debt over $9 trillion? Are you going to put it on the credit card for my kids to worry about?
The tax cuts make this hurt even worse.
Please read Senator Wyden's statement - he's right on the money in his reasons for opposition, except he doesn't mention how to pay for it. I agree that something needs to be done; but please take the time to get it right, to close the loopholes and regulate the abuse, and PAY FOR IT UP FRONT!
Please don't put any more onto the national credit card.
Sincerely,
Seda Collier

In a Nutshell

Wild speculation in an unregulated market driven by Republican ideology in the 1920's leads to a stock market crash and the Great Depression.

The Republicans are given the boot in the 1932 election, and Franklin D. Roosevelt presides over regulation that goes a long way to controlling speculation.

Ronald Reagan wins by a landslide in 1980, and promptly begins deregulating, talking about how this will help the middle class. A technology boom begins at about the same time, disguising the fact that the deregulation benefits only the top 10%, the financial elite. He also aborts Carter's baby attempts to begin a transition from fossil to renewable fuels, enabled by cheap oil from Saudi Arabia and mortgaging our future to an alliance with the Saudi royal family.

Subsequent presidents continue the Republican policy of deregulation, setting off another wild speculation surge that raises home prices astronomically. Speculators and bank CEO's make out like bandits, and the middle class goes pitifully deep into debt, i.e., gets screwed.

The natural result of unregulated speculation (previously seen in 1929) occurs simultaneously with Saudi peak oil, while the nation is still suckered by a media entirely controlled by multinational corporate interests, Republican economic policy, and George W. Bush's politics of fear.

I give credit to the Bush administration for realizing instantly that something needs to be done. Hoover sat on his hands for over two years, allowing the last banking crisis to balloon into the Great Depression.

But his plan stinks. It amounts to a direct transfer of wealth from the middle class to the uber-wealthy, while simultaneously guaranteeing a complete lack of oversight and accountability.

Any solution to this financial crisis needs to strictly regulate speculation.

It needs to bail out the homeowner and the middle class, not the uber-wealthy.

It needs to identify where the money is coming from, and pay for it – preferably through cutting defense spending by $300 billion and taxing the wealthy who've enjoyed all the benefits of this "boom" since Reagan took office – in other words, folks making over $250 K per year.

I hope the Republican base – evangelicals – look at this closely, and vote this year based on economic policy. Gay marriage and abortion are done deals, and the GOP won't change them because then their base would be limited to really rich folks. Believe me – if the two women next door get married, it won't affect you. If the woman on the other side gets an abortion, it won't hurt you. They're going to do it in any case, legal or not.

But if you let the GOP continue to make economic policy and deregulate, it will hurt you bad.

The 'Financial Crisis' in Plain English

Rachel says it better than I can:



Thanks, Sara

Socializing Risk, Privitizing Profit

I've only got a few minutes before walking the dog and getting ready for work, so I'll make this quick.

This $600 billion bailout of AIG and the financial industry is just the natural outcome of the Republican Reverse Robin Hood economic policy. It's the same stuff that we saw starting way back in the late '80's with the S&L bailout, when John McCain was one of the Keating Five, the corrupt and/or foolish senators who aided Keating in ripping off the American public. Since Reagan came into office the Republicans have been screaming, "deregulate, deregulate, privatize, privatize, free market," blah, blah. But when deregulation chickens come home to roost, it's "help! Bail us out! Quick! Don't stop to think about it, just give us all your money!" It's remarkably similar to the economic policies of the Republican administrations of the 'teens and '20's that so effectively set up the Great Depression.

It's funny how providing universal health insurance, which benefits everyone except the ultra-rich, is socialism, but giving 600 billion taxpayer dollars to reward greed, incompetence, and reckless speculation is just 'the free market at work.' The Republicans talk a great line about individual responsibility and fiscal responsibility, but their economic policies reward exactly the opposite, and ultimately rob the poor and the middle class to reward the richest of the rich. We have individuals in this country who control more wealth than the entire net worth of some small countries.

I don't mind socializing risk, if profit is socialized, too. Whatever works.

This system is not working.

I really hope that our legislators don't get into a big hurry to fix this and pass a bill before the election. My advice to them is, take your time. We don't need a financial version of the invasion of Iraq or PATRIOT Act.

The sad thing is, President Clinton, the one Democrat we've had since Carter, pushed the same reverse Robin Hood economic policy as the GOP. I just hope President Obama shows better sense, and models himself after someone like FDR instead.

Is the US Losing Its Economic Dominance?

Last night I clicked on a link with the title above, only to find that they were measuring the health of respective economies by the number of billionaires produced.

What bullshit. I can think of no worse measure of economic health or dominance than the number of billionaires. (The publication promoting such ridiculous garbage was Forbes Magazine, so it's no surprise.) Perhaps if you wanted to measure the degree of economic corruption, the number of billionaires would be meaningful.

A far better measure of economic health and dominance would be the level of the median income, or average income. How are the masses faring? By that measure, yes, I believe we are falling fast.

It really is time to start taxing the crap out of the rich. Here's some reasonable suggestions: income between $300,000 and $500,000/yr gets taxed at 50%; over $500,000, 70%.

Planting a Seed…

Abraham Lincoln once said, "Am I not destroying my enemies, when I make friends of them?"

In that spirit, when I saw Jim Torrey (ultra-conservative corporate candidate for mayor) schmoozing at the Regional Transportation Planning "workshop" last night, I made sure to meet him. He wasn't too eager to meet with me at first – he's on the record stating that transpeople should have to present medical documentation to use gender appropriate public restrooms, so he knew right off I'm not one of his supporters. He saw me at one of the tables and briefly spoke, then quickly turned away.

A little later, I approached him when he was speaking with two other people, and he couldn't turn away without being rude. He was forced to meet and speak with a transwoman.

Now, I could have put him on the spot about his positions on certain issues near and dear to my heart, like discrimination against transpeople. I've been known to do things like that in the past; at the first all-city staff meeting for the new city manager, I stood up in front of several hundred people and questioned him on just that. And given the fact that I would risking my life or my health to enter a men's room, I think I'd be justified in it.

I chose not to do that to Jim Big-Bizness Torrey, however. I thought about what he needed in that moment, and he needed ease, he needed to look good. Putting him on the spot wouldn't win any goodwill, and it wouldn't do anything to change his judgment of transpeople or his views about us. Instead, I spoke about the price of gas, and how that will affect transportation trends in the city, and so on. I was as friendly and charming as I know how to be when in the presence of someone who has, by implication if not explicitly, avowed himself to be my enemy. He shook hands and said it was a pleasure to meet me.

I hope that's true. I don't expect that I changed his mind last night, but I hope I planted a seed.

Because I really believe that the better he knows me, the harder he's going to find it to discriminate against me.

No matter how much he, or his backers, want to.

The Price of Gas

For all the talk on how to deal with gas prices, I haven't seen anyone mention peak oil. A lot of experts in the oil industry predict world peak oil to occur around 2006 to 2008, though we'll only see the actual peak in the rearview mirror. US oil peaked in the early 1970's. Saudi oil is peaking or has already. Reality is that prices are just going to get worse. Drilling in ANWR and offshore is short term at best - last I heard ANWR has all of 6 months supply for the US, and it's hard and expensive to pump.

As the demand and supply curves of oil grow farther and farther apart, the price will continue to grow exponentially. The only way to deal with it is going to be to find different ways to get to work and move commodities. One idea might be to nationalize the rails and privatize Amtrac, but we'd still need huge investment to make trains competitive with long-haul trucking, and I'm guessing that's too little, too late.

The best thing to do now is to buy a bike and try to find living and working places close to each other, preferably with room for a big garden.

Meanwhile, blame Reagan for the current crisis. One of the first things he did after taking office was to cancel the solar incentives Carter put in place. Blame both of the Bushes and Clinton, and the Republican congress, too. Imagine if we'd been working on developing significant alternative energy sources since 1978.

And remember what Douglas MacArthur said: "There is no security in this world. There is only opportunity."

National Security

"We should cut our military budget by about 75%, withdraw our troops from most of the rest of the world, get out of Iraq, and start an Apollo-style project to change our energy use away from fossil and bio-fuels."

You may ask, how does cutting the military budget by 75% or more support national security?

It does because our current level of spending on the tools of war is unsustainable. Currently we spend about half of the entire world's so-called "defense" budget. If we cut our military budget 75%, we would still have the largest, best-equipped and best-trained military in the world, but we could divert $300 billion or so into balancing the budget and supporting our crumbling civil and civic infrastructures. Every day we continue to pour our wealth and resources into a well of international violence increases our negative karma, delays our transition to a more sustainable energy infrastructure, and makes such a transition less fiscally feasible.

A quote I read recently goes something like this: "I'd rather lose in service to a cause that will eventually win, than win in service to a cause that will eventually lose." I don't remember who said it, and I don't agree in all situations. (I'd rather be on the side that is ethically and morally right, in service to a cause that is just, regardless of who wins in the end.) However, that quote applies perfectly to my concern about national security. Our current course of imperial occupation and unrestrained military spending ensures that we will win any pitched battle against any military anywhere, but simultaneously ensures that we will eventually lose the occupation of Iraq, the "war on terror," and our place in the world.

Besides, it is morally and ethically wrong to dump that amount of resources into the weapons of war – ever – but particularly when children in our own country are going hungry and without health care, and homeless people clog the streets and crowd the bridges (many of them in dire need of mental and physical care), and our leaders are torturing folks they guess might be our enemies.

The Uselessness of Internet Polls

Having an interest in Barak Obama, and not that shy about my support for his candidacy, I occasionally get emails from his campaign. A hazard of careless internet exploration, I suppose. One of these was a poll that indicated it was intended to discover what issues were of most concern to me. Well, fine. I don't have much time for these things, but do want to make my opinions known, probably just because I have a lot of them and people rarely ask what they are. So I cracked open the email and dived in.

A disappointment, to say the least. The poll included a list of issues, and you pick those that are most important to you. No room for comment or explanation. So I pick national security (among others). What does that mean? The campaign knows it's important to me, but they have no idea how. I guess they'll lump my response in with someone who thinks we should increase the size of the military and seal the borders, but what I mean is that we should cut our military budget by about 75 percent, withdraw our troops from most of the rest of the world, get out of Iraq, and start an Apollo-style project to change our energy use away from fossil and bio-fuels. In other words, I suspect the poll is actually more misleading than it is useful.

How do you put that into one stupid internet poll that gives you the option of clicking on a button?

A Question of Privacy

In my work I view the plans of the houses that are soon to be built. I see about a fifth of the new houses built in my city, so I think I've got a pretty good idea of current housing trends. I've noticed, for instance, that almost every new full bath is designed with a little sub-room separating the toilet from the rest of the bathroom.

It's not a style I particularly care for. I find the use of materials for the extra room to be wasteful and unnecessary, and the tiny rooms so created to be claustrophobic and uncomfortable. Besides, I enjoy interacting with my family while one of us is sitting on the can, and when I want privacy, I can always ask for it. My boys aren't shy about that at all. They tell me in no uncertain terms when they want the bathroom to themselves, and for the most part, I find it easy to respect their desires. (I might not find it so easy if they were teenage girls.)

I can't imagine that it isn't even easier in these new houses, which all have two bathrooms, and more often than not, three or more.

It's not that I don't value privacy. Every time I use a public ladies' room, I'm very grateful for the privacy of the stalls – even as I frequently talk with friends on the other side.

The question that does interest me, though, is this: What does it say about our society that we have come to value a standard of privacy from our most intimate family members that is greater than the privacy we expect and ask for from the public at large?

How Much Is Enough?

Last week I reviewed a plan set for a 7000+ square foot house, built across two lots amounting to over 16,000 square feet total. Stretched across the lot in a sprawling mess of gables and hips and intertwined trusses, the house extended from property line setback on one side almost to the setback on the other. It had seven toilets – and only four bedrooms. When I saw the extravagant wastefulness of it, I almost felt physically ill.

By contrast, we live on a 9400 square foot lot, in a 960 square foot house (including about 230 square feet of unheated garage). The house is a little undersized for the four of us, since K and I no longer share a bed – we have plans to add a room – but the house is comfortable and functional, and despite the occasional “pee-dance,” one toilet seems to be enough. Our lot functions beautifully – we have a big comfortable deck, a modest but functional front yard, and two small, functional sideyards (one of which, the “sanctuary garden” is very private and is currently alive with blue and white columbine, foxglove, a climbing rose, and native bleeding hearts, as well as other flowers). Our backyard is large, comfortable, and varied, with a pond, a chicken yard, a circle lawn, berries, fruit trees, and a plethora of garden beds. It seems to me that, despite the modest extent of our living conditions, we live more comfortably, and certainly in a richer environment, than the poor rich folks who will occupy this new monstrosity.

So I wonder – just how much is enough, and when, and how, do we recognize it? Does ‘enough’ meet human needs better than too much? What do we do with the surplus when we do have too much, and how, and why, do we make that decision? What are the moral implications of that decision, for our society and ourselves?

Gift Economy

One of the big things I want to explore, and haven't had much time to do so yet, is the concept of the "gift economy." Kristin got me started in it, and she's taking it to the next level with her NVC work. She put it very well in a recent blog entry: "Our cultural expectation of "what the Earth can do for us" reflects our transactional and monetary-based (time is money) [economy] rather than a need-based, giving economy which includes both short and long term needs of all species and the earth, to the best of our understanding." I've requested a book on it or something like it by a Chilean economist quoted in Marshall Rosenberg's work: , but the book hasn't arrived yet. In the meantime, Kristin pointed me to Tree Bressen's website: , where I found this quote: "According to "Wikipedia: " (which is a fine example itself) a gift economy is an economic system in which participants give away things of value to the shared benefit of the community. Examples include food banks, volunteer fire companies, and giving rides to hitchhikers."

Basically, the concept is that you give your services or goods away for free, from the heart. During the transaction, you point out that it takes an amount of your own energy to provide this, and, in order for it to be sustainable, you need to receive gifts in return. As Tree puts it, "I am currently operating on a gift economy basis, meaning i do not have any set fees for my work. I ask groups to pay me an amount that feels good and right and fair to them, that they can afford, and that they can give joyfully."

This flies in the face of our current economic model, which expends a great deal of energy to assign the price to goods and services that will produce the greatest profit to the producer, assuming in the process that a certain percentage of the people who want or need the product will then be unable to afford it. The implication is that it is not only acceptable, but good and moral, to accumulate far more than you need, and hoard that accumulation in the most wasteful way, if desired.

It seems to me that our current economic model is very self-centered, and in practice it tears at the fabric of our human community and society, while at the same time, it ignores the effects of our actions on the planet's web of life, which we depend on for everything. By placing greater value on competition (power-over) than on sharing, on accumulation than on need, it also encourages violence and frequently makes violence enjoyable. This is not the intent, but competition, but its nature, encourages actions that hurt the other players. It makes actions that provide a short-term advantage despite a long-term disadvantage look attractive. Besides, when one person has way more than she can use, and another person is starving, violence is easily seen as a convenient means to meet needs.

The success of capitalism is frequently seen as making the model of communism obsolete. Now, the gift economy shows real prospects of making the traditional capitalist model obsolete.