Opinions Unlimited

The Kindle Fire - A Review (incl. a 1-Click fix)

2011-12-07T11:44:00.000-08:00

Updated 12/7/2011, 3pm.

Background:
I've never owned a tablet or e-reader. Apple products have always been a no-go for me because at least 90% of the web sites I visit use Flash. And I've never seen the point in spending $400-$800 for a tablet with limited functionality when I could buy a laptop (admittedly low-end, clunky, unsexy) with more functionality and expandability for the same amount of money.

Why the Fire?
Price, price, price, price and price. When I looked at the price of the Fire, and the one month free Prime, and compared that to the potential advantages of a tablet for me, well, it was pretty much a no-brainer.

iPAD Owners
First, I envy you the disposable income that lets you buy multiple tablets.

Second, if the KF doesn't compare to the iPad, I can only ask if you read the description or purchaser comments before buying. It's smaller and at least half the price. What did you expect?

Third, one word: Flash. At least 90% of the web sites I visit regularly use Flash, often for such mundane tasks as site navigation or text display. I happen to hate Flash for a number of reasons, but a tablet that doesn't support Flash would be essentially useless for me. OTOH, the KF or Silk don't seem to support Microsoft's Silverlight.

Expectations Matter
It should go without saying that expectations matter. If you want a camera, this isn't for you. 3G would be nice - my U-verse DSL/Wi-Fi is not exactly a speed demon - but I'm not willing to pay yet another monthly fee for a modest increase in speed or accessibility.

Microphone: why?

So what did I think a tablet might offer that would make it an attractive alternative, at the right price, to a low-end laptop?

1) The ability to quickly look something up on the web. I turn off computers when they are not in use and even my near-top-of-the-line desktop takes 5 minutes to go from a cold-start to the Windows 7 desktop (via login and loading of startup apps). So when I'm reading a magazine or book (the real kind) and suddenly want to check something on the web, well, it's a hassle. And why turn it on if I'm going to turn it off in 5 minutes?

2) The ability to engage in recreational computer activities from a comfortable location (sofa, lounger, bed). Specifically, I have become interested in a number of free education web sites. But I spend enough time working at my desktop computer not to want to spend any more time there than necessary. But if I could access these sites from a comfy chair? Well, that would be appealing. And it would be nice to be able to play games (yes, Angry Birds), access internet radio stations or otherwise waste time comfortably.

PRELIMINARIES

Criticisms - Caveat Emptor:
Before buying, I read reviews (esp. the negative ones), on Amazon and elsewhere, and checked the forums. Some of the criticisms appear accurate, some are user-specific, and some are inaccurate. I have done my best to verify that my criticisms are based on fact not ignorance or inexperience, but, please, if something I say is a deal-breaker, research it on your own before taking my word for it.

Packaging
Some users complained that the pre-registered (linked to your Amazon account) KFs came in boxes with Kindle Fire prominently displayed (an invitation to theft). I ordered the KF and the USB cable together. Both came in plain boxes inside a larger plain box. (I recently had two different vendors ship a DVR in the manufacturer's box - talk about theft potential.)

If however, you are concerned, you can order the KF as a gift and register it when you get it. NOTE: I'm not sure if it is possible to use an unregistered KF, but at the very least, if you don't register it, you are bound to lose some functionality.

Essential Accessories:
Get a cover! The KF arrives naked as a baby, in a very flimsy, tightly fitting plastic envelope. Even if you are not sure you will keep the KF, get a cover, even a real cheap one, at the same time.

USB cable - if you don't already have a USB cable (USB 2.0 A male to Micro B) and do own a computer, you might want to order one if you have, for example, music or e-books you want to transfer.

USABILITY
This is not for your computer-phobic Uncle Harry whose cell phone does nothing but make phone calls. The documentation, online and on the KF, is minimal. Amazon appears to assume that people know how to pinch, swipe, tap, double tap. The built-in documentaion only describes the icons, doesn't display them.

I think the videos on Amazon's support page (http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html/ref=hp_k6_updatesi?nodeId=200769050) should run automatically the first time one turns on the Kindle. They are, perhaps not surprisingly, more useful than the written documentation.

I'm pretty computer-saavy and yet have spent hours searching the web, the documentation, and Amazon's forums trying to get answers to all kinds of questions.

Power Button
There have been a lot of complaints about the power button being on the bottom where it can be easily and accidentally pressed. True, but all you have to do is turn the KF 180 degrees with the power button at the top. It works just fine for almost everything (only the opening swipe and a few web pages won't turn around) - and I don't know why Amazon didn't make that the default.

Note: If you just press the power button, it goes into a "semi-sleep" state so that pressing it again will bring you to the swipe arrow at once. If, however, you hold down the power button and tell it to shut down, it will take about 30 seconds to start back up. I'm not sure what the consequences for battery power are for the "semi-sleep" option.

Touch Screen Gremlin
I'm convinced there is a gremlin in the touch screen.

When I'm reading a book, the merest hint of a whisper of a touch will turn a page backwards or forwards.

On the web, when I want a double tap to work, it does some times and doesn't other times. On the other hand, when I just want to scroll down a page and not click on anything, something I pass will get activated and off I go to a screen I didn't want. Pages display in desktop mode and then because of something I don't even know I've down get switched to mobile mode. When I want to increase or decrease the size of a page, I may have to double tap or pinch multiple times. When I don't want the page display size or type to change, it does. Obviously, I'm touching or doing something to cause these unwanted actions to occur, but the problem is that I haven't figured out how to control the use of the touch screen so that it does only what I want when I want it.

Navigation
I'm obviously spoiled by years of multi-window displays on wide LCD monitors and the W7 task bar. On the KF, it seems that the most frequent things I do are press the back arrow or the Home icon. To get from one app or book or function to another, you must get the Home icon, touch it, select the option you want on the home screen, then do something with that option. It has become really annoying.

Wireless Connectivity
The strength of the Wi-Fi signal in our home varies significantly on the KF from second to second. It appears that any change in position or even where one is holding the KF can affect the strength of the Wi-Fi signal. It's steady only when the KF is near to the router. It's difficult to say if the problem is with the KF, or if we need to buy wireless access points in order to get the best possible signals for the KF throughout our home.

BOOKS

I'm not a fan of e-books for all the well-known reasons we "real book" lovers give. So I will comment only on a couple of usability issues.

Books downloaded from sites such as Project Gutenberg show up in the Docs section rather than the Books section. That's OK. What is annoying is that they show up on the carousel with just a big blue icon and no title. (For testing, I set up Kindle on my PC. The same big blue icon appears but, importantly, with title.)

I find the KF too heavy to hold comfortably while reading. Now, if I want to read a hardback that's bigger and heavier than the KF, I might consider the KF as an alternative, but since most of my books are paperbacks, that's not likely to be a frequent occurrence.

I generally read while flopped on a sofa or in bed. It is not uncommon for a book to land on the floor with little negative consequences other than, perhaps, a crimped cover. While reading with the KF, it would be only a small exaggeration to say that not a minute passes without my worrying that I will accidentally drop the KF with consequences all too awful to contemplate. In bed, I build pillow "guards" to prevent its falling on the floor.

Minute shifts in position cause the KF to switch quickly from portrait to landscape mode. (While on the Web, it takes time to create the orientation shift.) However, there is a setting in the options at the top that lets you lock the KF's orientation.

No page numbers. That's right. Not supported. Maybe e-readers get used to the location numbers and % completed, but I find it disconcerting. There is also no indicator for how/where to tap to move forward or back. In fact, you can tap or swipe almost anywhere, but a bottom of page indicator would be a nice addition. And I don't understand why the KF can't give one the sense of a 3-dimensional object - as even Zinio's awful reader or The New Yorker's similarly awkward reader can do.

Library Checkout
Works fine but you must have Wi-Fi. You can download directly to the KF or to a computer and then transfer the books to the KF via USB. It's a multi-step process: library to book selection to Overdrive to Amazon but not difficult. Its usefulness will depend on the e-book catalog of the library you have access to and the popularity of e-books. My library has around 500 e-books in various genres and about 2/5 were available for a lending period of 21 days. There were as many as five holds on the most popular books.

OFFICE TOOLS
The KF comes with Quickoffice, but I was surprised to discover that when I clicked on Quickword, I was presented with a screen with two options: Internal Storage and Recent Documents. The app installed on the KF can read existing docs (that you transfer, presumably, one way or another) but not create new ones. For that, you must upgrade.

I simply can't imagine using the KF keyboard to do anything more extensive than tweet 140 characters, so I didn't spend any time here.

Email - you can set up multiple email accounts. Gmail is a snap. To set up an AT&T account, I had to check my Thunderbird to get all the system settings right. I've not spent much time yet with the email since I rely on Thunderbird to manage multiple email accounts.

SILK

Backend
Almost all the attention paid to Silk has been on its backend, its split processing. Technically and theoretically, the model makes sense. The KF has limited storage relative to other tablets, so one doesn't want to waste space on cache. And the idea that Amazon's servers will be faster than local processors & internet connections because web pages will already be in cache on its servers is technically sound. But, the performance depends on a balance of factors: enough, but not too many (probably not an issue unless the KF is astoundingly successful), users accessing the same pages. Users with fast internet connections who visit the less-traveled web sites may do better on their own. To turn off the Amazon "backend", when you are in Silk, click the menu item at the bottom select options and uncheck the "Accelerate page loading" under the Advanced section near the bottom of the page.

Front End
The best that can be said for it is that none, zip, of the existing browsers on the market (inc. IE) need worry about losing market share. It is a disaster in almost every respect and bears about as much resemblance to a modern browser as the Gopher Client did to Mosaic (Netscape's predecessor) .

Note: I do not expect the functionality of Firefox or even the lesser usability of Chrome but really. It takes 3 steps to bookmark a web page. and the default order of display of the bookmarks appears to be either (I've not used it enough yet to tell) the most frequently accessed or the most recently accessed.

You can't order bookmarks alphabetically or group them into folders (categories). This won't matter if the web browsing you do with the KF is limited to a dozen or so web sites. If, like me, you visit a lot more than that, it is painful. (Hint: To go from thumbnails to a list, you need to tap in a blank search box while using Silk. You can speed things up by typing the name of the web site.)

You can't import or export bookmarks. It took me close to an hour to manually enter the 20 sites I most wanted access to from the KF. And then I had to go searching through my documentation to find the IDs and passwords for most of them since, of course, my password manager won't work under Silk. Being able to export bookmarks & then re-import them is important if one accidentally or purposefully unregisters your KF. (See section on security). I've not been able to locate any add-ons for Silk akin to Firefox's enormous library.. Since I visit a number of foreign language sites, I really miss the ability to use Google to translate a phrase or a page.

Opera Mobile is available for the KF. Firefox is not yet approved by Amazon and Ive found no way to get it onto the KF. Easy Installer can't find it even though I downloaded it to the Downloads section. I suspect, based on the Opera Mobile .apk file that East Installer expects the .apk file to be in an sdcard directory which I can't see or access. Apparently one can get Firefox to work on the KF by using an Android smart phone with an SD card. Google for instructions on how to do it. I've seen the process referred to as sideloading.

Tabs
I thought there was no way to open a page in a new tab. But if you press down on the link, a popup window gives you the option. It's slow but maybe there's no other way to do it on a tablet? (I should have watched Amazon's video on using Silk instead of just jumping in on my own.) Go to the Options section to instruct the KF to open the new tab in front or in back of the current tab.

Page display
You can set options for the KF to use its best judgment, mobile or desktop formatting. I prefer the desktop formatting, but even with it selected, some web sites still display in mobile view. There is an option under the Advanced Settings called "Website settings" but it does not seem to have been implemented yet. If you choose to rely on KF's "autoformatting" or find the mobile setting best for most of your web sites, you may find that some web sites offer a mobile/desktop option somewhere on the page (check the top and bottom). This is one area where the 7-inch size works against the KF. It is too large for the mobile setting to be appropriate and too small for the desktop view to be easy to read. I do a lot of pinching and double tapping.

PDF Support
When you click on a PDF link on a web site, the PDF is downloaded. Tap at the bottom of the screen to bring up the menu of options and select "Downloads" to find it. I strongly, strongly, strongly, strongly recommend getting the free Adobe Reader app. I found Silk's default PDF reader inadequate to say the least.

SECURITY and SHARING
The KF is not designed to be shared. There is a "Locked Screen Password" option under More/Security that will limit access to the KF (you are prompted for the password when you swipe the entry screen), but will also add to the time it takes you to get into the KF especially if you choose a strong password.

The KF is tightly integrated to your Amazon account. You register the KF to your Amazon account. You can manage the KF from your Amazon account. Books, for example, that you have on your KF appear in your Amazon "Manage Kindle" section, so if you don't want somebody else to see what you are reading, you are out of luck.

In short, there is no way to set up the KF for multiple users. This is NOT as some critics have suggested an easy thing to fix.

Consider what Amazon would have to do:

Have an "administrator" on the KF who can assign userids and passwords.

Let multiple userids have access to the same Amazon account (say for credit card access) but, in this case, set up the "Manage Kindle" function on the Amazon account to prompt for a KF userid/password and, of course, limit the books and apps available to each user on the KF itself.

In addition, it should allow each userid on the KF to be associated with its own distinct Amazon account.

Then there is Amazon Prime. If you have multiple users on the Kindle, each with a separate Amazon account, would you need an Amazon Prime for each (assuming you want the benefits of Prime)? I've read that Amazon Prime can be shared for shipping but not for videos.

In short, Amazon could develop software to make sharing safe & practical but it is not in the company's bottom-line interests to do so. It wants families to buy multiple Kindle Fires.

I do not know how this compares to the security on other tablets.

AMAZON PRIME
The 1 month free trial was a nice add-on and smart marketing.

Limitations: the free 2-day shipping applies only, as far as I can tell, to products shipped directly from Amazon rather than from 3rd parties. So the value of the $70/year for fast shipping will depend on your shopping habits.
Second, you get some free TV shows and movies with Amazon Prime on the KF but the number is sufficiently small, limited, and, quite frankly, bizarrely displayed (no way to alphabetize that I could find), that it appears to be mainly a loss-leader, designed to encourage you to buy content. (It is more than a little annoying to scroll through the TV section, for example, and see what appear to be multiple instances of the same program but which turn out to be, when selected, different seasons or episodes. OTOH, you get the first 6 seasons of Buffy for free!)

1-CLICK
1-Click for the KF is a different animal from 1-Click for your standard Amazon account.

You can turn your Amazon account's 1-Click On or Off.

Some members have commented that there is a "turn off 1-click for mobile" option, but I found no such option on my account and wonder if by "mobile" what is meant is a smart phone.

You have to set up 1-Click separately for the KF and once you have done that, there is no way to turn it off for the KF. And you cannot set up 1-Click to work with a gift card on the KF which would be one way of preventing a shopping spree.

Unfortunately, you need 1-Click to get even free apps from the Kindle Store and to borrow library books.

According to an e-mail I got from an Amazon rep, this is because those services are available only to U.S. residents and the credit card associated with the 1-Click proves one is a resident. I find this an absurd explanation. The KF is tightly linked to one's Amazon account, and if Amazon can offer credit card options for the KF 1-Click, it can surely ascertain that at least one of one's credit cards has a U.S. address. (Apparently, Amazon wouldn't mind if you had other credit cards with addresses outside the U.S.?)

Re gift cards:if your Amazon account has a gift card balance, 1-Click on the Kindle will default first to the gift card balance before starting on the credit card. I don't know if you get any kind of warning when the gift card balance goes to 0.

This is major security problem. And not, as some critics have suggested, a problem only for families with ill-behaved and untrustworthy children. The KF, by its very size, is designed to be portable. Forget it someplace, leave it lying around and anybody could go on a shopping spree. If you are going to take it away from home, at a minimum set up a "Lock Screen Password" with a very strong password. (This, unfortunately, makes it less easy to simply pick up the KF, turn it on and start using it.)

Workaround

I added a credit card to my Amazon account that I rarely use, then changed the credit card associated with the Kindle Fire to that card. Then I deleted that card from my Amazon account. 1-Click for Kindle disappeared. Apps I had "bought" (they were free but all turned up on said credit card) still worked. This is a pain. But if you have or can get a credit card with a very, very, very low limit, it might be a half-baked solution. If you have only one credit card and have turned on 1-Click for the KF, wait until all your purchases have hit the credit card, delete it, then put it back after your 1-Click for the KF is gone.

I am hoping that Amazon doesn't realize some people are doing this and make it impossible to delete the credit card associated with 1-Click for the KF rather than just switch it to another credit card. If Amazon does something like this, we will learn something important about the company.

Summary:
If you've never owned a tablet, this is a good one to start with - if only because of the price. You're very likely to find it useful or fun in one way or another - provided you understand its limits before you buy - at least enough to justify the price, and by using it, you will figure out 1) whether you really want or need a tablet and 2) what features or functions are important to you.

Bottom Line:
I'll be keeping the KF because, bottom line, the tradeoff between price and functionality is acceptable for my purposes.

Pro-choice needs new slogan

2011-06-15T15:07:00.000-07:00

With increasing attacks on Roe v. Wade and on contraception, the Pro-Choice Movement needs to go on the offensive, starting with a new slogan.

Two Suggestions:
To whom does your uterus belong? You or the government?
Who owns your uterus? You or the government?

Bin Laden - misc. thoughts

2011-05-04T07:37:00.001-07:00

Whether we show pictures or not, we can be sure of two things:

1. He will now become a martyr to the terrorists who took their lead from him.

2. Many will not believe that he is dead. Call it the Elvis phenomenon (where even a body & a burial ceremony did not stop random sightings).

3. They found only 5 computers, 10 hard drives and no internet access? Hard to believe that anybody in charge of an ongoing world-wide conspiracy managed to do this with so little electronic technology.

4. I have no idea what Bin Laden wanted to accomplish when he ordered 9/11, other than to prove that we were vulnerable. But with that one act, he set the U.S. well along the path to becoming a police state. 10 years later, one needs a passport of some kind to travel to Canada or Mexico. Flying means the equivalent of a full-body search, either electronic or manual. Guantanamo and torture are supported by our leaders and way too large a proportion of our population. Torture, thanks to Bin Laden, is now only wrong when other countries do it because they do it without justification while we do it with justification. (Needless to say, those who use it in other countries probably use the same justifications that we do.)

10 years on, we have become a harsher country, a less free country. But Bin Laden only provided the push. As a nation, we did not have to fall off the cliff. We chose to respond to terror with terror. Bin Laden proved just how thin the veil of "civilization" is and how easy it is to breach it.

House Republicans Flexing Their Muscles

2010-09-22T13:07:00.001-07:00

It's clear from several House hearings this week, including today's with Geithner, that House Republicans fully expect to be in control come January.

I'm against Republican control for lots of reasons but most of all for the loss of Barney Frank as Chair. No Republican on his committee has anywhere near his breadth of experience or knowledge and Bachus (?), the current Sr. Rep. is a total loss.

Porteous impeachment trial - more thoughts on perjury

2010-09-18T10:17:00.000-07:00

I don't think Porteous deserved to be made a Federal Judge, but I think these charges smell almost as bad as Porteous' behavior and to non-lawyer me show yet again how dishonest prosecutors at all levels of government use the technicalities of the law to punish people they can't otherwise punish.

What do I mean? First, there is all this talk about what Porteous did prior to being named to the Federal Court. It's obvious that he was part of a crony system not uncommon, I suspect, in various parts of the country other than Louisiana. He was, at best, a moocher. But the Senate - which has been holding up most of Obama's judicial appointments for two years, either didn't bother to study his past or ignored it when they confirmed him.
Second, and to me even more troubling, is the use of the perjury club against Porteous and the related attempt to impeach the testimony of witnesses like Gardner. So Porteous signed a fake name to the bankruptcy petition to avoid publicity and submitted a "corrected" form the next day? To the ordinary citizen, this is clearly a "no harm, no foul" situation. It is being used against Porteous only because some people somewhere decided they wanted him off the Federal bench and this is a valid charge to bring against him. As for his lying on the bankruptcy documents about his income & debts in spite of swearing to tell the truth. I would, quite frankly, be surprised if even 10% of bankruptcy filings by individuals (or corporations, for that matter) were complete and honest. People lie. And people lie most about their income and debts. Think divorce trials if you have no experience with bankruptcy.

Should we expect better behavior from lawyers and judges than from ordinary citizens? Theoretically, yes, But the ethics bar for lawyers has always struck me as being both rather low and rarely enforced. As for judges: if you can prove to me that no other judge on the State or Federal circuit has ever engaged in behavior similar to that of Porteous, than I will concede that the impeachment is justified. I'm willing to bet, however, that he is being singled out for reasons that I don't understand and therefore find highly suspicious. These impeachment charges seem to be the judicial equivalent of the charges brought against President Clinton: motivated by politics rather than justice.

Lastly, I absolutely loathe the way trial attorneys use previous testimony to impeach witnesses, and I loathe the fact that they are able to do so. So Gardner today (Thursday, Sept. 16, 2010) said "no" to the posed question that Porteous was one of his best friends in the world, would only admit to his being a "very good friend". No ordinary person would under normal circumstances have accused Gardner of lying either before or now. Maybe he exaggerated before, maybe he no longer feels quite the same way, maybe he's just decided that his previous description of the friendship was juvenile. Big deal. (As for the bail bondsmen and lawyers who gave the FBI a "thumbs up" on Porteous, come on. How many people asked to give a future employer a fair assessment of a candidate don't, if they like the person, emphasize the good stuff and ignore the bad stuff? If this is a crime or evidence of undue influence, than I think you'd be hard-pressed to find a citizen who isn't guilty of such behavior.)

It seems to me that way too many people are being sent to jail for "lying" in circumstances where ordinary people will lie - even under oath. (How many people who sign off on software license agreements have ever actually complied with all the terms let alone even read them?) It may be legal to use "perjury" charges to send people to jail, but in most* of the cases I've seen over the years, it seems to be used awfully selectively - like charging Al Capone with income tax fraud when the government couldn't get a conviction for any of his real crimes.

*The only exception I can think of would be for people who lie under oath during a trial in order either to convict an innocent person or help a guilty person go free.

Porteous and recusal

2010-09-18T10:14:00.000-07:00

As near as I can figure out, the undelying reason for impeaching Porteous was his refusal to recuse himself from a trial in which one of the attorneys was a friend "with benefits".

If this is grounds for impeaching a judge, then why is Scalia still on the Supreme Court. He, as I recall, heard a case in which his duck-hunting partner, Dick Cheney, was a party.

Yet another example of the selective application of certain standards of conduct.

Porteous Impeachment - Using Prior Testimony to Impeach

2010-09-16T13:35:00.000-07:00

When Court TV first started, I watched it almost endlessly. And the more I watched, the more disenchanted I began with the legal system on show. Instead of trials being designed to find the truth, to reach justice, it turned out that trials were games with bizarre rules and the winner wasthe team that played the game better, that manipulated the rules better. No wonder so many citizens do their best to avoid jury duty.

Future major trials (such as Simpson's and Clinton's) simply reinforced my opinion. And these hearings confirm them.

In particular, I hate, nay loathe, the way prior testimony is used to impeach current testimony. Heaven forbid that your answer to a question today differs by so much as one word or two from one's testimony 5 or 10 years ago. One doesn't need to be an expert on how memory works to know that it is flawed, and this legal fiction that any variation in one's words from one time to another is proof of dishonesty or perjury is absurd, unfair and makes a mockery of the idea that our legal system cares about justice.

Impeach Porteous to Send a Message?

2010-09-16T11:41:00.001-07:00

Turley's basic argument for not impeaching Porteous is not that his behavior is exemplary, but that the misdeeds do not meet the standard demanded by the Constitution - especially since most of the charges date to his time as a State Judge and the bankruptcy issues were both personal and, my reading of Turley's position, trivial.

As Turley points out, the Justice Department declined to prosecute Porteous for his acts while a State Judge - and for lying to the FBI - because it didn't think it could meet the evidentiary demands of a trial. In short, it passed the buck, telling the House and Senate to do what it could not do.

The two main issues with the bankruptcy seem to be that the Judge signed a false name, on advice of his attorney, when he filed and didn't fully report all his income and debts. He did sign a false name, apparently (and there's no reason to doubt this) to avoid the embarrassment of having his name appear as a bankrupt in the local papers. The filing was amended the following day, under his real name. The House argues that he perjured himself. Period. Yes, but. This smacks all too much of how the system uses a technical but non-material matter to punish somebody for some activity that one disapproves of (either with or without substantive grounds for that disapproval). In short, if this kind of legal misdeed, even by a judge, is enough to justify impeachment then any judge who angers the PTB could be removed for some misdeed of some kind since few of us get through life without doing something we wish we hadn't.

The second issue has to do with the judge's failure to fully and honestly report all his income (including an income tax refund)and his gambling debts as well as his incurrence of additional debt (gambling) while in bankruptcy (something he swore not to do). Since he signed the bankruptcy papers under threat of perjury, he is guilty of perjury and therefore deserves to be impeached. My problem with this is that, once again, perjury is being used as a weapon in a situation that, under most circumstances, would not result in any action against the individual. Indeed, in my own non-legal opinion, it seems to me that perjury is used all too often to impose political and legal penalties when the accusers have no other tools at hand.

In other words, if he were not a judge, if he were an ordinary citizen, neither of these acts would, I suspect, result in any legal action against the debtor involved.

Turley's other main, unspoken, argument is that Porteous as a State Judge did not act differently than any other Judge in his part of Louisiana and that the entire impeachment is, in essence, due to a decision the Judge made in a case that angered the PTB. And it would set a bad precedent to impeach a judge because, in essence, of a decision he issued as a judge.

OTOH, the main unspoken argument for his impeachment seems to be that it would send a message to State Judges and potential judicial appointees that certain types of behavior can be expected to be punished - even if they are not disclosed prior to the receipt of a judicial appointment. This is the "long-term jail terms and the death penalty prevent crime" argument.

Quite frankly, I think Porteous should have resigned and it is obvious to me that he didn't because he needs the income of a lifetime appointment - as well as the pension. He is by no means a sympathetic defendant.

So the issue comes down to which is worse: using essentially spurious charges to unseat a Federal Judge - thus considerably lowing the bar for impeachment (like the impeachment of Clinton dud) - or telling the legal community that unethical if not outright illegal behavior is no bar to getting a Federal Judgeship.

Claire McCaskill - Impeachment Hearing - kudos

2010-09-16T11:38:00.000-07:00

I've seen McCaskill often during the past two years and she represents exactly the kind of person one would want a Senator to be: principled, articulate, willing to compromise.

But one of her best characteristics is on view during this impeachment hearing. She is, in contrast to windbags Hatch and Whitehead, direct, no-nonsense, and to-the-point.

Cheers

Impeachment Trial for Judge Porteous - Painful Testimoney on Tues. 9/14/2010

2010-09-14T12:46:00.001-07:00

As of the 2nd day of this trial, the most painful (difficult to watch) witness examinations were those of the bail bondsmen, esp. those by Rep. Hank Johnson of Jeffrey Duhon & Aubrey Wallace. The questions, as have been many by all of the attorneys on both sides, were often needlessly repetitive* - but neither Representative Johnson nor the witnesses (esp. Duhon)were particularly effective speakers - to put it mildly. Indeed, the personal discomfort of these witnesses was so obvious, I felt almost as if I were watching adults abusing puppies. And, yes, this is a question of class. Most of the people who testify in Congress are both rich and powerful or, if ordinary citizens, are people who have been selected for what might be called their "acceptability". I was saddened by the obvious lack of education of these (mainly) men - but, in spite of their illegal acts, the effort they put into their work differed only in quality & remuneration from that of many of the CEOs who we see daily.

I've seen Johnson in a number of House hearings and Floor speeches and his performance today pretty much confirmed my impression of him: a man either of middling intellect or a remarkable, for a politician, inability to express himself fluently.

*a majority of the Senators on the panel are/have been lawyers &/or prosecutors so the endless repetition of the instances of influence peddling so far alleged (free meals, trips to Las Vegas, hunting & fishing trips, etc.) is bizarre to watch esp. since the Defense doesn't deny that these actions occurred but only seems to be questioning whether or not such actions were customary at the time they occurred (almost all, it appears, happened before Porteous became a Federal Judge and a lot go back 15-25 years).

For-profit colleges: This is Private Enterprise

2010-08-17T18:39:00.001-07:00

According to a Wall Street Journal article (Aug. 17, 2010, Page B6), for-profit colleges are upset by proposed new rules from the DOE re government aid.

According to the article, "the DOE in late July proposed rules intended to measure how well for-profit schools train students for "gainful employment" in a recognized occupation."

It turns out that many (most?) of these wonderful examples of private enterprise "derive more than 80% of their revenue from federal student aid. Students attending for-profit schools, in general, are twice as likely to take on debt for an associate's degree and, when they do, they take on nearly twice as much debt compared with students who attend nonprofit and public institutions. While both groups would be entering the same job market, students with higher debt may find it more difficult to repay their loans."

"According to the Institute for College Access & Success, an advocacy group promoting affordable higher education, 98% of for-profit school associate's degree recipients in 2007-2008 had loans in 2008, with average debt of $19,700. At public and nonprofit colleges, 40% of associate's degree recipients had loans, with average debt of $10,900."

The proposed DOE guidelines hardly seem onerous. "Schools would face no penalties if they posted student-loan repayment rates above 45% or if students maintained debt-to-income ratios below 8% of total income."

So, in essence, the Federal Government, i.e., you and me, are giving money - via student loans - to private companies, listed on stock exchanges with, no doubt, highly-paid CEOs and stockholders, to saddle young people who want an education with, probably, unacceptable levels of debt.

Why, exactly, is this kind of government-funded education OK with Conservatives but the more normal direct support given, say, to public universities is criticized as being wasteful?

One could, and should, of course make similar arguments about defense spending. How many so-called private companies that make products or provide services for the Defense and related Departments depend largely or wholly on government money for their profits? Is there any justification, other than Conservative economic philosophy, for assuming that such so-called private companies are any more competitive or efficient or innovative than, say, a non-profit run directly by the government - with no billion-dollar executives or profits that had to be distributed - would be?

Just asking.

Smart Energy Meters - Overrated?

2010-08-10T11:57:00.000-07:00

Well, PG&E installed smart meters on our building, although we still don't have the promised computer access to monitor our usage.

However, I fail to see how more detailed information will help most of us be better energy consumers, especially since the general goal seems to be to reduce usage during the day and time-shift it to the evening.

Consider. If everybody in your home is elsewhere during the day (office, school, whatever), you are unlikely to use much energy during the day which means, logically, that your heaviest energy usage will be in the evening and night.

Conversely, if one or more of you spend most of the day at home, there is a limit to what you can do to reduce consumption. In hot weather, you will need to run fans or a/c and probably won't do a lot of cooking. During the winter, you will need heat during the day as well as at night. Most people at home probably watch TV, listen to the radio or music, use a computer, etc. The degree to which those at home during the day can reduce or limit their energy usage is, I suspect, limited.

I can see that smart meters might identify the most energy-intensive equipment but I suspect the surprises will be few. Most of us know that a/c uses a lot of energy and, if we have dishwashers, washing machines & dryers that they will use more energy than the radio.

So I can see that the meters might affect usage at the margins, and maybe that's enough, but promises of significantly lower electric costs are unlikely to be met.

And, as some people have realized, the effect on personal privacy and safety could be high since anybody monitoring usage by apartment or house would have a pretty good idea not only what the people inside are doing minute by minute but whether or not the dwelling is occupied and when it is most likely not to be occupied.

Microsoft Word 2000 & Windows 7 x64

2010-07-20T12:11:00.001-07:00

For reasons I won't go into, I needed to install Word 2000 (part of Office 2000 SR-1) under Windows 7 (x64). It installed, and Word launched - but there were no icons & it hung.

I found a solution in a PC World Forum (http://forums.pcworld.com/index.php?/topic/73733-microsoft-word-2000-in-windows-7/page__gopid__381736&#entry381736): one person got it to work by uninstalling Windows Live Add-in 1.3 and Office Live Connector.

I didn't have Office Live Connector, but I did have Windows Live Add-in. I uninstalled the latter, which I don't need, and Word began to work.

Next I'll see if I can re-install Office 2010 (minus Live)and get the two to live together.

Worst Committee in the Congress? House Natural Resources Committee

2010-05-27T11:05:00.000-07:00

I've watched a lot of C-SPAN in the past two years, which means a LOT of Congressional hearings, and the quality of our representatives leaves a lot to be desired.

But never have I seen such uniform incompetence as was on display May 26, 2010 when Acting Inspector General Mary Kendall testified to the House Natural Resources Committee about the audit of MMS (Minerals Management Service).

Unlike Neil Barofsky, the Inspector General for TARP, who relishes finding problems, Ms. Kendall seemed determined to minimize their findings. As did all the members of the committee, Republican and Democrat, asking if the problems were really much worse than in other agencies, if the issues of fraternization were not common in other agencies, if proposed changes to ethics rules would be unfair in being limited to MMS, etc., etc.

Worse, when the committee members weren't subtly defending MMS, their questions were uniformly unthoughtful and poorly phrased (to be kind). Half the time, quite frankly, I couldn't figure out what they were asking and I suspect that they didn't know either.

Again, poor questions and demagoguery are not uncommon in Congressional hearings. But there are usually at least a few competent committee members. Not here.

I suggest that the House dissolve this particular committee and find some people with an interest in and real knowledge of the issues.

Congressional Hearings on Gulf Oil Spill & Market Crash

2010-05-11T15:14:00.000-07:00

Sigh. Believe me, I hold no brief for BP (or any of its associates) or for the automated trading systems which buy/sell in nanoseconds.

But one must give the panelists in both hearings (on the Gulf Oil Spill and the market crash) for their patience when dealing with committee members whose general & specific ignorance was on high display.

This is not to excuse the Republican committee members who used their time to opine (Bachus) on how technology really hasn't changed anything important (hard to believe he was the chair of this committee for years; the man is an idiot), to explain that regulation is never the solution, and to harp on how Fannie Mae & Freddie Mac have destroyed the economy.

Are Democrats simply too dumb to use committee questions in their campaigns? I can't believe the average citizen, even in a red district/state, wants to elect somebody who believes that business as usual is good enough.

Lehman Failure - Spencer Bachus & Fuld agree: it's the Fed's fault

2010-04-20T13:02:00.000-07:00

Well, if proof were needed that Republicans have decided the financial crisis was the fault of the government and not of Wall Street, Bachus's questioning of the April 20, 2010 panel (with Fuld, former CEO of Lehman) during the hearing should put any such doubt away.

Fuld's testimony was, in effect, that neither he nor Lehman did anything wrong. The regulators said they did nothing wrong. So they didn't. And if the Fed had opened up its window to them, or backed Barclay to let it buy Lehman, or .... well, you get the idea.

So did Bachus question Fuld's denial of all responsibility? No he questioned a regulator from another government agency, not the Fed or the Sec, to elicit agreement that the Fed, in spite of protestations by Geithner, as former head of the New York Fed, and Bernanke, that it did have the authority to regulate Lehman, to stop its doing bad things and didn't do it.

I simply do not understand how the media let Republicans get away with their continuing defense of the very companies responsible for the financial meltdown.

Also clear from Republican declamations throughout this day's hearings is their belief, in spite of the meltdown following Lehman's collapse, that a "bailout" fund isn't necessary to assist in the orderly shutdown of failed institutions because the market should just let them fail. The market just let Lehman fail - and that caused the world's financial system to go into freefall.

The media, in their continued obeisance to Republican talking points, allow Republicans to characterize a fund to be funded by the financial institutions themselves as a government guarantee or taxpayer-funded bailout when its sole purpose is not to save an institution but to shut it down, fire its management, zero out its creditors, and use the money from the fund to help in the unwinding of positions.

But, of course, that would require the media to do their job, to do actual research. And that, of course, would be too much work. Indeed, since the SEC suit against Goldman Sachs was announced last week, our esteemed members of the press have wallowed, even gloried, in their inability to explain something very simple. Goldman sold a package of securities without telling the potential buyers a very critical piece of information: that the securities had been selected by a hedge fund which expected them to fail.

April !, 2010: Topeka'd

2010-04-01T15:12:00.000-07:00

This is why I love Google, excuse me, Topeka - and why the company is not Microsoft. The former has always demonstrated a sense of humor; the latter, never.

Google changes it's name

BBC News & The Christmas "Bomber"

2010-01-09T15:10:00.000-08:00

Cheers to BBC Reporter Mark Marvel (sp?) on the Sat. Jan. 9, 2010 3PM PST broadcast for his rational analysis of the media hysteria surrounding this failed attack.

If only there were somebody, anybody, in the U.S. media capable of doing something more than repeating shrill right wingers ad nauseum. Campbell Brown may take the cake for cable hysteria, but if so, only by a bit.

Jon Stewart Skewers CNN - Fact Checking? (Oct. 12, 2009)

2009-10-23T09:54:00.000-07:00

Jon Stewart skewered CNN Oct. 12, 2009 (rebroadcast Oct. 22, 2009) although, to be fair, he could have done the same to MSNBC, FOX, or, quite frankly, every news organization on TV. Perhaps the best, and most illustrative, clip comes near the end (around the 8 min. mark), when a CNN anchor asks the reporter if there is any way to check the numbers. The reporter's obvious surprise at even being asked such a question tells it all. Reporting has sunk so low that, today, it doesn't even occur to anchors or reporters that when someone they are interviewing throws out a statistic or says "the American people know" that, just maybe, they should check the facts.

Stewart Skewers CNN

Best and Worst Questioners in Congress

2009-10-22T14:25:00.000-07:00

When one watches House and Senate hearings, one soon notices several different methods of questioning:
1. The question that is a statement worded so that the person being questioned will/can answer only one way. These are generally self-motivated statements that are either thinly disguised praise of the policy or issue in question or even less thinly disguised disgust with the witness.

2. Written
I think everyone I've watched has, at some time or another, read prepared questions. But even here, there are differences. In some cases, Jim Bunning and Richard Shelby come to mind, they seem not to have read the questions beforehand and more than occasionally, don't seem to understand what they are reading.

3. Extemporaneous
The most engaged and brightest people in Congress usually ask questions without notes that demonstrate both their understanding of the issue at hand and their attention to the matters under discussion... which is not to say that a lot of dumb questions don't also get asked.

Best questioner: Dingell in the House. Whether he reads prepared questions or asks them off the cuff, they are almost always short, direct, and to the point. Most hearings could be cut in half if other members followed his lead.

Worst questioner: Emmanuel Cleaver, without question. Mr. Cleaver is one of those who rarely reads prepared questions but ought to because he hems and haws and doesn't seem to know when he starts a question, even if he has been present through most of the hearing, where he wants to go with it. Watching and listening to him is painful. He actually makes George W. Bush look good.

Alan Grayson comes in a close second. On the House banking committee he routinely embarrasses himself. Grayson thinks he knows how to read income statements and balance sheets. He doesn't. And the poor witnesses, usually financial experts of one sort or another, are faced with the unenviable task of trying to answer a question so stupid it is meaningless without telling a member of Congress that he is a blithering idiot.

Best Chairman in Congress? Barney Frank

2009-10-22T14:14:00.000-07:00

I've been watching House and Senate hearings on C-SPAN almost incessantly this past year and while I've probably not seen every hearing, I think I've seen enough to be confident that Barney Frank is, hands down, the best Chair in either House. He may also be the smartest (intellectually and politically) politician in Congress.

Although Frank can be darn difficult at times to understand, he knows his subject, he knows the parliamentary rules, he knows the people on his committee, both Republican and Democrat. There is a limit to his patience with Republican shenanigans, and he has both a sharp tongue and a sharp wit.

Although I don't always agree with him, it is clear to me that often, when he veers rightward, he does so because he knows just how far the Dems can go and still get something passed.

I'm also coming to appreciate Stupak, who chairs a sub-committee for both the way he manages the committee and for the clarity and relative succinctness both of his opening statements and questions.

Denmark - Not Socialism, Civilization

2009-10-21T16:22:00.000-07:00

On Oprah's Oct. 21, 2009, she visits Denmark, Dubai, Rio, and Istanbul. In talking to two Danish women, Oprah commented that although Denmark is a democratic country, it is also socialized. The women responded that they didn't think of it as being socialism but civilization - that taking care of the old and the sick is what it means to be civilized. I like that.

Sen. Jim Bunning (Ky.) - Most Sexist Senator

2009-10-12T17:29:00.000-07:00

OK, it's obvious from discussions of various pieces of legislation that a lot of Senators are sexist, esp. the older male Senators.

But I've noticed something "special" about Bunning. When he questions women who appear before committees on which he is a member, he addresses them by their first names, although he uses titles or full names for the men who appear before him.

Sheila Bair (FDIC) is, thus, "Sheila" (accompanied by a paternal smile). And in an Oct. panel of experts on Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and the mortgage industry, Prof. Susan Wachter (Wharton) became "Dr. Susan".

I'm not sure which is worse: that he does it without knowing he does it or that he does it on purpose to indicate his lack of respect for female professionals.

Alan Grayson - Idiot Representative Gets Media

2009-10-10T05:58:00.000-07:00

Please, before you crown Grayson as the newest Democratic light in the House, watch some of Barney Frank's hearings on the financial mess. Grayson makes a fool of himself time and time again, asking questions about financial reports that prove only how little he understands them. One can see the amazement/distress in the eyes of people like Geithner and Bernanke who, faced with one of Grayson's illogical, ignorant questions, tries to figure out how to answer him without telling him that he's a blithering idiot.

Yes, he does get points for taking down Olympia Snowe - I, too, am damn upset that the health care system for the next two decades may be decided by Senators from Maine, Nebraska, Montana, and North Dakota - but he's a publicity hound who has discovered that politicians who make outrageous statements get air time while politicians who don't, don't.

Keith Olbermann - Hour Long, Self-Indulgent Rant on Health Care Reform

2009-10-10T05:13:00.000-07:00

Wednesday night (Oct. 7, 2009), Olbermann outdid himself with an embarrassing, self-indulgent, hour-long rant supposedly in support of health care reform - brought about by his experience with his father's serious illness.

First off, he surely embarrassed his father with details of how the problem began - just a day or two after a comment that he had missed a number of shows because of his father's illness but didn't want to invade his father's privacy with details.

Second, it was quite clear that his father got excellent care, for which Olbermann is grateful and which, apparently, did point out to him how lucky he was in contrast to the experience of so many others without his financial resources.

That's fine. I would have given him 5 or 10 minutes to let us know why he is so emotional about the issue.

But the hyperbole went on and on and on and on - and he contributed zip to the conversation.

The media, focused as always on the politics of the issue, have been MIA when it comes to informing people about the details of the various bills and the various trade offs (e.g., why a mandate is necessary - to have a large pool in which to spread risk; the difficulties of establishing the "sweet point" for a fine: if the price is too low, it will be cheaper to pay the fine than buy health care; if too high, the risks of non-compliance, effect on employment, etc.).

I had hoped, when I first heard about his plans for an hour-long "special comment", that he might focus on the key issues. Silly me. Just an endless series of hyperbolic statements about health care being about death, speculations about how those less fortunate must feel in similar situations, repeated details about his experience, mention of his sister, more details about his father.

The whole hour was a waste, a self-referential, poorly written, poorly argued mess.

Anybody who truly cares about health reform must have writhed in pain at the thought of what they could have done with a full hour in which they need not interview anybody or present opposing opinions.

Why couldn't MSNBC have given the hour to Uwe Reinhardt, a brilliant speaker on health care reform who knows the facts and how to present them.

Real health reform? Maybe in 2020?. Or 2030?

2009-10-01T19:48:00.000-07:00

What most people don't realize is that even if the Congress passes some kind of weak health care reform package, none of the provisions will go into effect until 2013. (And in at least one version of the bill, the rate reforms will be phased in over 5 years!) That's right - until the start of Obama's second term. Apparently our politicians haven't considered what is going to happen if Obama declares victory in November and in January everybody sees their premiums going up. And people still lose their health insurance for pre-existing conditions. And still can't afford health insurance.

So, what will health insurance companies do between now and 2013? Everything they can, of course, to generate windfall profits so in 2013 they're sitting on pots of money.

Somewhere around 2020, then, Americans will realize that they were yet again snookered, just as they were in the 1990s with the Republican promise that HMOs would solve all our problems.

Luckily, I'll be on Medicare by then.

Jon Stewart - Second Home Run - Wall Street Again

2009-10-01T19:39:00.000-07:00

After skewering the Democrats, Stewart turned his attention to Wall Street's latest method for making billions: high frequency trading. No doubt the Wall Street apologists will insist that these oomputer programs enhance the financial system but this is nothing but monopoly with real money and no assets. Nothing of value gets created.

High Frequency Trading

Jon Stewart Does it Again - On Our Pissant Democratic Majority

2009-10-01T19:24:00.000-07:00

Stewart's September 30, 2009 broadcast hit two home runs right off the top. First, he skewers the Democratic Party, rightly so, for its inability to govern even with control of both houses and a super majority in the Senate.

On the Democratíc Party's Inability to Govern

And more:
How the Democratic Party Thinks

I've said it before: the Republican Party is a more effective Party than the Democratic Party and has been for almost 40 years now. Whether they are in the minority or the majority, whether there is a Republican or Democratic President, Republicans act as if they were in the majority. They don't care if they won the White House with the help of the Supreme Court. They don't care if they are, theoretically, "out in the wilderness". They believe in their principles and use every weapon at their disposal, no matter how outrageous, to achieve their ends.

The Democrats, however, ever since Jimmy Carter, have acted like scared rabbits. They are afraid of their shadows, afraid of being called "liberal" or "partisan". Even when they win, they act like losers.

It's even to drive a liberal insane. What do we have to do to elect people who actually will do what we want them to do?

Baucus - orchestrating defeat of the Public Option

2009-09-29T14:02:00.000-07:00

I just realized that Baucus has orchestrated his committee's hearings to defeat the public option.

How?

First, he put the two public option amendments up before Conrad's co-op amendment. Now, Conrad's amendment has not a chance in hell of passing. It won't get any Republican votes and not enough Dem. votes to pass - but by bringing it up after the public option amendments, Baucus assures a "no" vote from Conrad on the public option amendments.

Second, by bringing them up near the start of deliberations rather than at the end, the proposers can't point to all of the failings in the Chairman's mark because Baucus can always assert that "amendment such-and-such" will solve that problem.

I sincerely hope that his poll ratings drop like the proverbial lead balloon.

Health Care Reform - Blaming the Patient (Only in America)

2009-09-22T10:27:00.000-07:00

One of the many depressing aspects of the health care "reform" process (more appropriately called the "preserve private health insurance profits" process) is the degree to which the patient is being blamed.

Republicans all but assert that Americans use too much health care because they don't pay directly for the services they get. To Republicans, there is no difference between buying health care and buying a car. Insurance company profits? Not an issue. The lack of true competition in most health insurance markets? Not a problem. Doctors ordering tests because they have a financial interest in the labs? Not a problem. No. American citizens are at fault.

But Democrats, too, blame the patient. We don't exercise enough. We don't eat right. We don't get regular checkups.

One can only conclude that Americans belong to a different species, that we are physically and psychologically distinct from Canadians, the British, the French, Scandinavians, the Japanese (who, BTW, visit doctors more often every year - an average of, if I recall the statistic properly, 17 times a year - than any other nationality), etc. all of whom live in countries where the average cost of health care as a share of GDP and per person is significantly less than it is in the good old U.S.A.

CNN's Update Scroll - No So Up-to-Date

2009-09-08T17:02:00.000-07:00

As of around 3PM PDT today (Sept. 8, 2009), CNN's update scroll was still saying that the San Francisco Bay Bridge would be open soon. Unfortunately for CNN, the bridge opened up around 5AM PDT today (Sept. 8, 2009).

It's bad enough that CNN seems to rely on the scroll for all the news (with the programming all devoted to political gossip), and that I have to watch TV5 (France) or RAI (Italy) or Univision to find out what's going on in the world, the network can't even manage, apparently, to update its scroll more than once/day.

Obama's School Speech: Hypocrisy on Both Sides

2009-09-08T15:09:00.000-07:00

The whole brouhaha about Obama's speech to school children is depressing because there is so much hypocrisy on both sides.

The Democrats just "can't understand", it's a speech encouraging students to study and make the best of themselves, we should respect the office of the President even if we don't agree with the positions of the current inhabitant, etc. Now, I don't remember what happened when Reagan and Bush 41 gave similar speeches, but I am willing to bet that liberals didn't much like it and for pretty much the same reason that Republicans object to Obama's speech: because they didn't want their children exposed to the opinions of a President whom they opposed.

Now, Republicans are being quite upfront about why they have objected to the broadcast: they don't want their children being exposed to the opinions of a President whom they oppose. I heard one Republican today, African-American, who said it was an even worse offense from this President because he is so superbly literate, such a great orator! (He, I assume, wouldn't mind half so much if Obama were as incoherent as Bush 43). But, of course, I'm guessing that these same Republicans saw nothing wrong with the speeches by Reagan (also renowned as a superb orator) or Bush 41 and argued that one should show respect for the Office of the President.

Personally, as a Liberal, I'm opposed to all speeches by all Presidents, of any party, directly to school students because I do think it smells a little, admittedly a very, very little, of Big Brother. I might feel differently if, in all 3 cases, it had been the Secretary of Education giving the speech - but, then again, I really like our current Ed. Sec. and can't even remember who they were under Reagan and Bush 41 - so maybe I would have objected in any case.

Barney Frank at the National Press Club

2009-07-27T13:19:00.000-07:00

Barney Frank exemplifies the best of the Congress's seniority system: superior intelligence combined with a deep knowledge of the issues and the political environment which comes only with time on the job (and a willingness to learn and be effective).

He's also just plain, damn entertaining:

Barney Frank at the National Press Club - 7/27/09

Media Missing in Action: Prof. Gates, Cambridge & "Disorderly Conduct"

2009-07-25T13:45:00.000-07:00

While the media have, not without reason, focused on the racial profiling in this incident, I've seen no mention of the reason for the disorderly conduct charge.

Was Gates drunk? Was he destroying property? Was he waking up the neighbors? Or is it simply illegal in Cambridge to argue with, be disrespectful to or otherwise insult a police officer? And if so, what kind of nation have we become when the exercise of free speech, however unpleasant, is prohibited when the object of same is a police officer? (Don't answer.)

Republicans - Inconsistency is a Tool for Killing Health Reform

2009-07-14T16:47:00.000-07:00

One of the most interesting aspects of the Senate's Health Committee hearings on health reform is how Republicans argue all sides of the case in order to kill the bill.

For example: they spend a lot of time asserting that Medicare and Medicaid are monumental failures because they cost too much and because large percentages* of doctors refuse to accept Medicare or Medicaid patients. But, of course, if one increases how much the government pays providers under those two programs, the costs will only be higher. The Republican solution? Obviously, they want to kill Medicare but, during the hearings, the idea seems to be to move Medicaid recipients into the private market (the health care exchanges).

With respect to the health care exchanges, the Republicans are endlessly creative. They argue about who should be eligible for subsidies. One proposal, to move people at the 150% of poverty level to Medicaid, fails their smell test because, first, it is unfair to those who are at 151%** of the poverty level and because Medicaid is a failed system giving second-class care. But, of course, if the alternative is to provide subsidies to those people so they can buy health insurance from an exchange, the cost of the bill goes up. Which is unacceptable.

Then we come to penalties for individuals and companies who don't buy health insurance. The size of the penalties, of course, is a real issue. But, although Republicans admit that it has to be high enough to encourage both to buy health insurance rather than simply pay the penalty, they object to even small penalties ($750 per full-time employee) because they will discourage small businesses from hiring new employees and might even force them to fire employees. Obviously, setting an appropriate penalty is a key to mandates which are key to covering everybody. But Republicans know that if they kill the penalties or make them really small, lots of people and businesses will rationally choose to pay the penalty rather than buy health insurance and that will put an added burden on the system which could lead to its failure - which, of course, is what they want.

Another argument about small businesses came up today. Sen. Murkowski of Alaska proposed that "small business" be defined for the purpose of the bill not as a company with less than 25 employees but as one with 500 employees because that is what the SBA uses as the definition for a small business. Now most of us don't normally consider a 500-person company to be small. And I think it was Enzi, as usual, who pointed out how unfair it would be to the company that wanted to add another employee (from 500 to 501**) because the penalty or requirement to buy health insurance would then kick in. Now, remember, Republicans like our employer-provided health care system; they just don't want to penalize companies who choose not to provide health insurance, no matter what their size.

Paying for the system? Republicans have proposed amendments specifically prohibiting higher taxes or penalties or any other method that might be used to pay for the program in order to, according to them of course, keep Obama's promise not to raise taxes. Without these elements, the program becomes prohibitively expensive. So they could oppose the bill on the grounds that it will increase the deficit.

Republicans are sure that "free market competition" will solve the cost and access problems, but they object to letting the Secretary of HHS negotiate rates for a public plan. Why? Because it will inevitably lead to the Secretary's imposing reimbursement rates which is the problem with the Medi programs. Republicans worry a lot about what may happen in the future because "that's what always happens". One of their solutions is to set the rates of a public plan as an average of the rates in the state. That many states in the country have health insurance markets that are either monopolies or duopolies - where there is, in essence, no market pressure to reduce rates - is irrelevant.

And, of course, they oppose any kind of reimbursement system based on "best practices". So how do they expect to stop the huge annual growth in health care costs? Well, letting the "free market" work. I wish, just once, some Democrat would point out that we've always had a "free market" and it doesn't seem to have held down costs. (They might also point out that Republicans assured everybody back in the 1990s that HMOs would increase coverage and decrease costs.)

And, as usual, the Republicans continue to try to talk the bill to death. Yesterday, Coburn introduced an amendment to replace the entire bill that they have been arguing about for weeks. I think this must be at least the second or third time the Repubicans have tried this. And, each time, they argue their side for ages. (I've lost track of the number of Republican amendments that have consumed a full hour of debate each - and the number of amendments proposed and pending has reached, I think, somewhere into the 400s.) Obviously, a Democrat-controlled committee isn't going to junk a bill they've spent weeks on so the only reason for this kind of amendment is to prolong the process - past the August recess.

Indeed, I am baffled by the continuing efforts of Democrats to accept Republican amendments of any kind since they must know that they will not get a single Republican vote to move the bill from the committee to the floor. Is it possible that Democrats still just don't understand Republicans?

* - this committee, and, for that matter, the rest of the Congress, needs a CBO for statistics. Representatives and Senators on both sides of the aisle throw statistics around willy nilly, rarely providing a source. A lot of time, I suspect the stats come out of their own heads, based on their oh-so-good personal experience. I'm not sure it will help the Republicans who tend to ignore studies that contradict "what they know" (even after the CBO scored a revised bill as costing about 600 billion rather than 1.5 trillion, Republicans continued to use the latter number).

**Democrats can be really dumb. Whenever an issue comes up about what constitutes a small business, or what penalty makes sense, or the percent of poverty or whatever, a Republican will wax eloquent about the poor business or person who just misses the cutoff point (26 employees, 151% of poverty), etc. I keep waiting for some Democrat to point out that this happens whenever one uses a cutoff point for anything. Earning one more dollar in income can move a person from one tax bracket to another. Short of never using a cutoff point for anything, this lack of fairness is inevitable.

Sotomayor - Proving She's Conservative

2009-07-14T14:10:00.000-07:00

One of the things that has struck me about the hearings so far is the Democratic effort to prove that Sotomayor is, if not truly conservative, moderate-to-right. That might be OK as a tactic if they were trying to cover up the fact that she is liberal. Unfortunately, her history suggests that this positioning is correct. She is not, on the evidence, likely to be a strong advocate for the liberal side of the court.

In short, Obama (like Clinton), has gone for a "moderate" judge in the hope of, thereby, avoiding Conservative attacks. Republican Presidents, in contrast, have sought out the most Conservative judges they could find in the hope that they could pass them off as moderate.

This tendency on the part of liberal Democrats to cede ground to the Conservatives even before the battle is engaged has existed now for at least 2o years. What will it take to get us back to 1960s-style liberal courage on the part of Democrats?

The Affordable Health Choices Act Should Be Called the PPIA

2009-07-01T16:09:00.000-07:00

The Affordable Health Choices Act which the Senate's Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee has been struggling with should really be called the Preserve the Private Health Insurance Industry Act or, in its shorter form, the PPIA (Preserve Private Insurance Act).

It is designed to provide access not to health "care" but to health "insurance". If you can't afford health insurance or you lose your insurance because you lose your job, or you choose the wrong insurance plan because you assumed you wouldn't suffer a major injury or a major illness - well, tough luck. You're uninsured and your access to health care has just disappeared.

In no other major industrialized country is it assumed that people have to estimate how much health insurance they can afford against the chance that they will get sick or injured in order to "guarantee" themselves access to health care.

As long as health insurance depends on sufficient income to buy it, and as long as plans have a trade-off between monthly premiums and deductibles and co-pays, millions of Americans will continue to be either uninsured or under-insured ... if for no other reason than the simple tendency for ordinary people to assume that nothing bad will happen to them.

As for the "public plan option", lambert at Corrente has come up with the perfect analogy: The Public Plan Option Explained By Lambert, at Corrente

Health Care Reform: The Health Exchange Myth

2009-07-01T15:53:00.000-07:00

I've been following the health care debate pretty closely, and the proposal for health care exchanges seems to be a cornerstone for individual choice. But it's really just rearranging the chairs on the Titanic.

Consider the following hypothetical situation: a very healthy single 25-year-old man working a minimum-wage job goes to an exchange. Now, after rent and groceries and phone service, he doesn't have a lot of extra money floating around. The only plan he can afford from the "wealth of choices available" is a $50/month premium with a 10K deductible. He gets it. 6 months later, in spite of a flu shot, he gets the flu which turns into pneumonia. He spends weeks in the hospital. He loses his job. His health bills total $20,000. But he has a 10K deductible. And he doesn't have $10K in a savings account. And he's unemployed because the company he worked for doesn't have anything like sick days off. The fact that he had a "choice" of health plans is irrelevant.

Or take another case: somebody has bought a cadillac plan from an exchange, paid premiums for 5 years, then loses her job. Unemployment benefits run out. She has a choice: pay the rent, buy groceries, pay for utilities or pay for health care premiums. She's healthy so she drops the health care. Then she gets really sick. And she can't get help except from an emergency room because she no longer has health insurance.

The central problem with health care exchanges and this so-called health care reform is that everything depends on a person's being able to buy health insurance, pay the monthly premiums and cover the deductible. It is a system designed to save the private health insurance industry not to guarantee health care for all Americans.

No citizen of any other industrialized country has to depend on being employed, and earning enough to buy health insurance, to get health care. Only in the U.S., even under the proposed plans, is health care still to be a privilege not a right.

Gov. Sanford (S. Carolina) and his Mistress - Mistress?

2009-06-30T17:55:00.000-07:00

Mistress? Sanford's "mistress"? Did somebody turn the clock back 100 years? This is 2009. And even if it were not, doesn't the term "mistress" normally mean a woman who is being maintained by a man absent a marriage certificate? Is there any evidence that Sanford has been maintaining a second household with his Argentinian lover?

Who in our irrelevant media began using this word to describe Sanford's lover?

Energy Bill - House Debate (June 26, 2009)

2009-06-26T18:08:00.001-07:00

Well, I caught a couple hours of the debate and as a piece of political theatre, at times it became downright funny - esp. the long Republican inability to locate the "official copy of the bill".

Unfortunately, like most of these floor debates, one hears little or nothing about the contents of the bill itself, simply the consequences of its enactment. And those consequences can be predicted by who is supporting/opposing. Republicans, as usual, assert that it amounts to a huge tax on every American, that global climate change doesn't exist, that this bill won't do anything for our energy situation, and will cost millions of jobs at a time we can't afford to lose even one.

The Democrats defend it as the first step in energy independence and a job creator.

The only thing notable, and typical of Democrats, is that the method of controlling carbon emissions (cap-and-trade) was chosen over a tax on carbon emissions in order to get bi-partisan support - because cap-and-trade is a "free market" solution. I suspect that, as with the stimulus, there won't be a single Republican vote for it. * What is frustrating about this is that, from what I've read, the Republicans are probably right when they say that it won't work and that the system will be gamed.

So what we have here is a "Conservative" solution that won't work being passed by Democrats in the name of preserving the Conservatives' sacred free market strategy as the solution to all problems - that won't get a single Conservative vote.

With luck, I'll be dead before the planet has gone to hell, but what makes me especially angry is that the neanderthal politicians who have been denying climate change for the past 30 years will also be dead so they won't be around for their grandchildren and great-grandhildren to spit in their faces for putting their petty political philosophies and short term profits over the life of the planet.

*Update: I was wrong. 8 Republicans voted for the bill. 44 Democrats voted against it. The vote was very close.

Two Kings, One Fate: Jackson and Presley

2009-06-26T09:22:00.000-07:00

Jackson dead at 50 from cardiac arrest. Presley dead at 44 from heart failure.

It is hard not to think of the two together. Both were crowned "Kings" of the music world. Outworldly, in their early careers, both seemed to share several characteristics aside from their outsize talent: a personable quality that made the fan think they would be nice to know, charm, and a certain shyness. "Nice young men" one might say.

Both of their lives became nightmares all too soon. Presley was around 21 when he made his breakthrough; Jackson was about 10 or 11 (as part of the Jackson 5). Both had relatively short "active" careers followed by years of decline. One can argue about the absolute lengths but Presley had about 10-12 years of enormous success followed by a decade of decline. Jackson's lasted about 20 years followed by around 2 decades of decline. (A bit of me can't help but wonder if Jackson's new tour would have been his "Las Vegas".)

What happened? How did two such highly talented, apparently normal young men spiral out of control?

Such personal disasters are certainly not unknown in the entertainment industry - but one tends to think of the victims as tortured souls (think Piaf or Joplin) whose lives would have been no happier had they not been entertainers. I've not done a study. I don't know if this perception is accurate. And, perhaps, the incidence of lives gone bad in the entertainment industry is no greater than in the general population or in other industries. We simply notice it because the people in question are well-known.

Is the industry basically dangerous to emotional and mental stability? Or is there some link between genius and a tendency toward self destructiveness? Are popular and jazz musicians more susceptible than actors? Is super success, fast success especially dangerous? Or are we looking at some kind of natural burnout, like a firecracker display? There is, of course, no way to know for sure.

Still, it is hard not to wonder if anything could have been done to save these two young men from themselves so that the next time a King is crowned he gets to die peacefully in bed after a long and happy career.

Raymond E. Feist: Rift Saga - Warning & A Reading Sequence

2009-06-25T17:14:00.000-07:00

First, the warning: if you read fantasy novels for the pleasure, among other things, of seeing the good guys win and the bad guys die (ala Eddings), Feist is not for you. This author kills off characters. Indeed, sometimes it seems as if he introduces characters just for the pleasure of getting rid of them. Note: I'm not talking about characters that would logically die of old age given the number of novels and the time period they cover. No. Feist kills characters, characters you like. (I don't think anybody actually gets to die in bed of old age w/ friends and family around.)

Now, obviously, he's not the only fantasy writer who does this. A lot of good people die in Kurtz's Deryni novels - but those deaths, however painful to the reader - seem integral to the narrative. Feist, on the other hand, just kills them off. They rarely even die after multi-page battle descriptions. They're knifed or slashed or bashed. One moment alive, one moment dead. One long-time character disappears in one novel. We find out later on that he was killed and where his body was found. That's it. Nothing more. In another, there's a massacre early in a novel whose only purpose seems to be to get rid of a bunch of characters. No reason. The rest of the novel could have been written with barely a change had those characters not died. So it is the casual nature, the purposelessness (unless it is the only way Feist thinks he can add some "darkness" to his novels) of the deaths.

In short, if you read Feist don't invest yourself in any of the characters unless you are prepared to mourn their deaths.

Now, as for the sequence in which you should read the novels, it's not easy to do because Feist seems to back-and-fill: the publication sequence bears little relationship to the internal time lines. However, based on the series I've read so far and synopses on the Crydee web set, I recommend reading them in the following order:
The original Riftwar Saga:
Magician: Apprentice
Magician: Master
Silverthorn
A Darkness at Sethanon

The Empire [Kelewan] Novels
These stories take place on the other side of the Rift roughly parallel to the events in the original Riftwar Saga. Still, there are enough references to events that occur in the Riftwar Saga that I recommend reading these novels after you've completed the first four.
Daughter of the Empire
Servant of the Empire
Mistress of the Empire

Based on synopses, I think the Legends of the Riftwar novels may fit in here - may even be more or less contemporaneous with the Riftwar/Empire novels (sort of like missing episodes) - but I've not yet read them and will update later this year.
Legends of the Riftwar
Honoured Enemy
Murder in LaMut
Jimmy the Hand

The first 3 Krondor novels (the only ones I've read) definitely follow the Riftwar and Empire series and precede the two "standalone" books (Prince of the Blood and King's Buccaneer).
The Krondor Series
Krondor the Betrayal
Krondor the Assassins
Krondor Tear of the Gods

Krondors Sons
Prince of the Blood
King's Buccaneer - lots of characters die, esp. early in the novel.

The Serpentwar Saga
Shadow of a Dark Queen
Rise of a Merchant Prince
Rage of a Demon King
Shards of a Broken Crown

Conclave of the Shadows
Talon of the Silver Hawk
King of Foxes
Exiles Return

Again, based on synopses, I think these two sequences follow the previous, but I can't guarantee it.
Darkwar Saga
Flight of the Nighthawks
Into a Dark Realm
Wrath of a Mad God
Demonwar Saga
Rides a Dread Legion
** At the Gates of Darkness

The Senate and Debates

2009-06-17T15:08:00.000-07:00

In watching the endless opening statements of the Senate Health Committee (June 17, 2009) and the various speeches on the floor of the Senate, it is clear that the U.S. Senate is NOT a deliberative body. The Senators speak at each other. They never engage with each other.

The Republicans repeat the same phrases over and over (as do, of course, many Democrats). But they just spout, they don't argue or discuss. When a Republican talks about government bureaucrats interfering in the doctor-patient relationship, a Democrat can't ask that Republican about the interference of private insurance committees. Similarly, when Republicans deride Comparative Effectiveness, Democrats can't ask them about decisions made by clerks in insurance companies.

It may make these "debates" more civil, since we don't see the shouting matches all too common on TV, but it also makes them incredibly frustrating because there is no way for the observer to find out if there is any thought behind the boilerplate phrases.

Health Care Reform: Cheers for Bernie Sanders Who Confronts the Elephant

2009-06-17T14:57:00.000-07:00

A huge big cheer for Bernie Sanders for being the only Senator on the Senate Health Committee, perhaps the only Senator or only person in either the House or the Senate who has had the nerve to address the invisible elephant in this debate: the fact that health insurance companies have only one obligation and that is to be profitable.

He had the courage to point out that health insurance profits over the past several years have increased over 400%, that their executives make huge salaries (one ex-CEO left with over 1 billion dollars in stock options), and that they hire armies of administrators to deny coverage.

Sanders is the only member of this committee who has also asked the fundamental question: is health care a universal right? Because one can't honestly evaluate a reform package without deciding if you believe health care is a right or a privilege or just a nice option.

Check Sanders out on C-Span - about the 40 min. mark

p.s. Sherrod Brown, Sen. of Ohio, gave a speech on the floor that was an extension of his comments in the committee. He had the courage to address the competition issues raised by opponents of a public plan. He pretty much made the obvious observation (I'm paraphrasing from memory) that if the private insurance companies can't compete with a public plan maybe it is the fault of the insurance companies.

Not surprisingly, the health insurance lobby has launched a massive campaign to prevent inclusion of a public health insurance option with which they would have to compete.

I guess competition is a good thing, unless they are the ones who have to compete. If you have a public option, insurance companies--the President says repeatedly that the whole point of [Page: S6703]an option is that the public plan will compete with a private plan, which will keep the private plans more honest. We have done that with student loans. Fifteen years ago, the only game in town for students, by and large, if they wanted to borrow money for college, was to go to a local bank, or another service, which were all private and unregulated. President Clinton, in the mid-1990s, decided maybe we should have a direct government program so students could borrow directly from the Federal Government. Do you know what happened? The banks brought their interest rates down. The banks started to provide better service. The banks behaved better. That is analogous to what we will see with the public plan.

The conservatives in this body, who are major recipients of insurance company money for their campaigns, whose philosophies are always that business can do it better, the people who have aligned their political careers with the insurance industry all oppose the public option, the public plan. Why? It is simple. It is because insurance companies will have to cut down their administrative costs, maybe even pay lower salaries to their top executives. Maybe they will have to change their marketing practices, be less wasteful, and maybe they will behave a little better. In that case, the public option was competing with private banks, and everybody got better. A public health insurance option competing with the private insurance companies will make everybody get better. That is the whole point.

With private insurance competition, when it is just the insurance companies competing with each other, funny things tend to happen. We see huge salaries and, second, a huge bureaucracy in the insurance companies and, third, we see all kinds of marketing campaigns, and we see huge overhead and administrative costs--sometimes up to 35, 40 percent.

We also see that the term ``private insurance competition'' is often simply an oxymoron. In Ohio, the two largest insurance companies account for 58 percent of the market. I am not a lawyer, so I didn't take the antitrust course. I didn't go to law school. When you have two companies that have 58 percent of the market, that is not competition. In some Ohio cities--as I assume it is in the Presiding Officer's State of Illinois--the two largest insurance companies account for 89 percent of the market. That is not exactly healthy competition. If we bring in a public option and compete with these two companies, their rates would come down and salaries for top executives would come down. There would be no more multimillion-dollar salaries, and administrative costs would be cut. They would be leaner and meaner, a better insurance company as a result.

C=Span Source

Health Reform: "Affordable, Accessible"

2009-06-17T14:53:00.000-07:00

I am beginning to hate this phrase, used by both Democrats and Republicans. Do citizens in other major industrialized countries ever ask themselves if health care is "affordable"? No. Of course not. Health care is a right. Yes, they pay for it through their taxes but they don't have to ask what the cost is when they need to see a doctor.

But in this U.S. reform movement, the highest goal is to make health care "affordable".

I'm not sure what is meant by "accessible".

But the Republicans are, at least, honest. They don't argue for health care for all. They talk about "access to health care insurance". Think about that. Access to insurance not to health care.

Health Care Reform: Why Should A Public Plan Cost the Government Money?

2009-06-16T15:39:00.000-07:00

I'm baffled by the assumption that a public plan must be paid for by the Federal government.

If private insurance companies are forbidden to "cherry pick" insurees, then a public plan should be able, theoretically at least, to fully fund itself from the fees paid by the people it insures.

In other words, aren't we talking about a non-profit insurance option? Yes, such a plan will probably undercut private insurance companies. It, after all, will have no shareholders to consider, probably won't pay its executives multi-multi-million dollar salaries and won't have an army of employees whose only job is to deny coverage.

But that's a problem for private insurance companies to solve - not a problem for the federal budget.

Obviously, this won't work if private insurance companies are allowed to choose to insure only the young and healthy while all the rest of us flock to the public plan - but if no plan can discriminate against people based on pre-existing conditions (not just in providing insurance but in the cost of that insurance), then a public option should pretty much be able to fund itself with, perhaps, some government backstop for those citizens who simply can't afford health insurance at any price but are not eligible for Medicaid.

Left Missing in Action: Nobody should get between you and your doctor

2009-06-16T15:30:00.000-07:00

One of the GOP mantras re health reform (listen to Grassley et. al.) is that Americans don't want government bureaucrats to come between them and their doctors - which is why we should oppose single-payer and a public option and comparative effectiveness.

The most frustrating thing about this mantra is the almost total lack of response by the so-called liberal media and Democrats.

We already have bureaucrats getting between patients and their doctors. They are employed by private health insurance companies. Thousands (tens of thousands? millions?) of them are employed to deny coverage to patients. Some doctors spend 20% of their time arguing with these people.

Now, I agree with the basic premise. Health care decisions should be between patients and their doctors - but if somebody has to get in between the two in order to reduce overall health expenditures, I'd rather it be a civil servant who can't be fired for saying "yes" (and who may rely on comparative effectiveness research rather than cost) than a private insurance company employee whose salary depends on reducing costs and increasing the bottom line.

Please explain to me, somebody please explain, why this very simple and accurate response to this frequently repeated Conservative canard seems to be almost completely lacking from the health care debate.

Media Missing in Action: Dealer Closings/June 3, 2009 Senate Hearing

2009-06-07T12:04:00.001-07:00

I've spent months watching a lot of frustrating Congressional hearings on various aspects of the financial crisis this past year, but one of the most frustrating was the June 3, 2009 Senate hearing into the closing of dealers due to the GM and Chrysler bankruptcies.

It was an illustration both of the limits of hearings and the wholesale failure of the media to act as news organizations.

The primary failure of the hearing was to get an answer to a central dispute: the dealers asserted that they were not cost centers, that they cost GM and Chrysler absolutely nothing, that they paid for everything they got (cars, signs, advertising, etc.) so, since the two dealers there were profitable, they didn't understand why they would be closed. GM and Chrysler asserted that they had to close dealerships to become profitable.

Now, this seems to me to be an issue of fact, not opinion. But, after listening to all the questions and the responses of GM and Chrysler, I still don't understand the issue. Isn't this something that CNBC or Fox Fin., at the very least, should have been reporting on and explaining?

Nor, during a week of endless commentary about right-wing-nut opposition to Sotomayor, did any of the major "news" networks think it might be interesting to, say, identify which Senators complaining about dealer closings opposed the bailouts, insisted that union employees had to "share" the burden, etc., argued that these companies should be allowed to go bankrupt (what did they think would happen to dealerships during a bankrupcy?). One would think that an hypocrisy watch would be at least as entertaining as debates over whether a Latina woman would be a better judge than a white man. But, of course, that would take research. They'd have to check the voting records, watch the hearing, match up questions with voting records. Gossiping with each other about "racist" statements is, after all, so much easier.

When did "doctors" become "docs"?

2009-05-28T12:58:00.000-07:00

During the various hearings on health care reform, my ear has been assaulted by the word "docs". When, exactly, did "doctors" become "docs"? No, I am not a doctor, but, quite frankly, "docs" seems to me to be rather insulting or, at least, condescending.

Kathleen Sebelius - unwilling to commit to anything

2009-05-28T12:51:00.000-07:00

The other day I saw a rebroadcast (C-SPAN) of a hearing in early May, 2009 (Charles Rangel's committee) on health reform and it was yet another disappointment. The administration has no plan. Sebelius just wants to "work with Congress". Even on the issue of doctor-owned hospitals, which she has elsewhere condemned because they are not cost-effective (there's a real conflict of interest that encourages unnecessary and costly tests), she waffled.

Most of the things she talked about, like "encouraging" hospitals to implement checklists to lower infection rates, are fine - but there don't seem to be any sticks or carrots, for that matter. Who, for example, is going to make sure that insurance pays for outcomes rather than tests?

As with the credit card "reform" bill, all we are likely to see is more tinkering around the edges that will leave insurance companies with huge profits and citizens with too-expensive health care.

Cheney's Fear

2009-05-23T16:16:00.000-07:00

I'm not the first person to point out that Cheney is afraid of a lot of things. Remember his "undisclosed location" while Pres. Bush eventually returned to the White House after 9/11? Then there was his asking Google to "hide" his official residence from Google Earth (no such privilege for the White House).

This fear was on hand again in his most recent speech with his picture of terrorists waltzing into the U.S. with a nuclear weapon (something even countries like Iran and Korea seem to have trouble producing) and the need to do everything to prevent such a thing happening. This is his "1%" theory: if there is even a 1% chance of something bad happening, all measures to prevent (well, non-economic measures: consider the consequences if Conservatives applied this rule to climate change) are justified.

Think about this for a minute. Short of locking up everybody in prison, there is no way to make the country 100% safe. And if Gitmo is any example, our ability to identify potentially dangerous people is rather low. (So far, over s 500 or the some 800+ detained have been released - by the Bush Administration.)

Although I deplore pop psychology, I can't resist indulging in it. Cheney has suffered 4 heart attacks. Is it possible that Gitmo and torture are the price America has paid for a Vice President scared beyond reason of dying?

Terrorists in your backyard jails?

2009-05-20T17:57:00.000-07:00

To listen to both Democrats and Republicans about closing Guantanamo and transferring those terrorists to U.S. jails, one would think that we were talking about supernatural aliens.

Now, I've not made a study of terrorists, but those guys who flew into the World Trade Center weren't super-human. And they didn't take down the towers with other-worldly weapons. And they could have been stopped by ordinary people.

Moreover, there are, I understand, only a couple hundred left of the "worst of the worst" - who have, it appears, been there for years. It is unlikely that they know much of anything worthwhile at this point or, for that matter, would be trusted by their former associates if they went home.

As for our jails: I know Conservatives like to complain about how we baby criminals, but most U.S. prisons today aren't much better than what could be found in Dickens' England - and some do hold prisoners who are every bit as dangerous and violent, I would suspect, as any of the prisoners at Gitmo.

If our top-security prisons are incapable of preventing terrorists from escaping and doing harm, isn't the logical follow up conclusion that maybe they are not sufficiently secure to handle our native criminals?

But, then, that has been the problem all along. Gitmo, the abandonment of habeas corpus, the military "tribunals" were all created by men who fundamentally disapprove of America's judicial system as it exists, who fundamentally still believe (in spite of conviction rates exceeding 90%) that our court system babies criminals and ignores victims, who think that the law unnecessarily hamstrings the police. Gitmo was created by people who still think the Miranda ruling was judicial activism at its worst, who don't think that the accused have a right to counsel.

Isn't it time for somebody, somewhere in the media to confront the fear-mongering and the fundamental disconnect that created Gitmo and keeps it alive?

Obama to the Left: So What Choice Do You Have

2009-05-15T18:46:00.000-07:00

In watching Obama back away from many of his campaign promises, might the Left conclude that Obama is to the Left as Bush was to the Far Right: more lip service than action?

Yes, the Shrub did actually support a lot of the right wing agenda but, to a large extent, Republicans have never given the far right religious component of the party what it has most wanted because, of course, Republicans know that that constituency has no other place to go.

So it is with the left and Obama. Regardless of his poll numbers in 2012, he will be the Democrat's nominee. The Republican is bound to be more conservative. So Obama can break every promise he has ever made and all the Left can do is complain.

The main question, however, is about Obama's continuing tendency to cave in. Remember all those pieces of the Stimulus Package he put in to please the Republicans? For which he got zip?

Then there's health care. He never promised what Hillary did - universal coverage - but month by month his criteria for reform have shrunk until they are limited to "lowering costs" and "improving access". In short, tinker around the edges and call it reform.

Guantanamo is still open. The pictures won't be released. Military tribunals are back. (Military tribunals, for those who don't know, are designed to convict. There is no presumption of innocence.)

His justice department continues, in court, to defend Bush positions.

Torture? Let's just forget the past, shall we? Cheney feels no compunction about attacking Obama, but Obama refuses to attack the Bush administration.

Leftists may ask themselves why. We Hillary supporters know why. Obama, like Bill Clinton, seems pathologically incapable of fighting for anything. Not being a psychologist, I don't know if this is because Bill and Obama simply don't like conflict or because there is simply nothing about which they feel strongly enough to be willing to fight for it. Maybe a bit of both.

The Left wanted Obama. Now they've got him and it turns out that he is, as anybody who had checked into his political history or listened to him campaign would know, Bush Light.

The Media and Dick Cheney - Let Him Talk

2009-05-13T15:11:00.000-07:00

I'm baffled by all this blather, esp. by liberals, about the ethics of Dick Cheney's criticizing Obama.

Cheney's a citizen. He has a right to criticize. I don't care if it's usual or not for former VPs and POTUSes. (Heaven knows, I wish Gore had opened his mouth more than once rather than retreating into a cave.)

Let him talk. Period.

Health Care Reform - And they said Hillary's plan was too complicated?

2009-05-13T12:05:00.000-07:00

Well, I watched another hearing on health care reform yesterday, and it will take a bill at least a hundred pages long, and an army of administrators, to implement everything that is being suggested.

The elements of reform:
1. Build on employer health insurance because many companies support it. (Could it be because health insurance benefits are tax-advantaged and are, thus, less expensive to provide than higher salaries?)

2. Competition (except from a public plan). People admit that the current system is flawed but, when push comes to shove, they do not seem to fully grasp that we have had a free market, competitive health insurance system for 60 years and that is the system that is not working. They insist that this flawed system must be preserved.

3. Require or not that self-insured companies provide employees with choice by somehow associating them with health care exchanges. And what about the companies that offer only a couple choices?

4. Health care exchanges (or not). Weren't these the centerpiece of Hillary-care?

5. Pay for bundled services rather than for individual services. (And just who will implement or enforce this?)

6. Cap (or not) the tax-free status of employer-provided health insurance. Lots of ideas here: regional caps, income caps, phased in caps over x number of years so, eventually, the differences are based solely on different COLs. Grassley thinks this would be unconstitutional. Some witnesses pointed out that COL differences exist even with a single state. Arkansas doesn't want to pay for New York's higher COL (where, of course, everybody's salary or wages are adjusted upwards anyways). Who would design these? Who would be responsible for enforcing these? What kinds of changes would have to be made to the income tax rules? How about the administrative effects for multi-state corporations?

7. Incentives for best practices. Again, great idea - but who sets the best practices and who enforces them.

8. Use health savings accounts.

9. Health IT. Obviously, paper records don't make a lot of sense. But health IT is a lot harder to implement than many seem to think, to say nothing of simply being used (every time I go to Kaiser, I'm asked the same question about drugs I'm allergic to. I've provided that information at least a hundred times.) Data format and data definition issues can be extremely difficult to solve. In addition, as one witness pointed out, hospitals may not want record interoperability because that would make it easier for doctors to move patients from one hospital to another.

10. Put a "tax" on bad behaviors such as smoking or overeating.

11. Tax credits or tax deductions.

12. Rein in costs before expanding coverage.

13. Expand coverage before reining in costs.

14. The Massachusetts experience gets nothing but high marks, but I've read criticisms from Mass. doctors who would much prefer single payer. Not a word about those criticisms.

15. A public plan option? There is some support, but the key seems to be in making it so unattractive that private insurance companies won't lose any customers. (It seems not to have occurred to anybody in power that if a public plan option would attract citizens away from private insurance companies that maybe the problem is with the latter rather than the former. And that it is the insurance companies which should be expected to change their policies.)

16. Preserve (?) the ability of citizens to keep the doctors they like. Again, selective awareness operates here. Employees who lose or change their jobs often lose access to the doctors they have because their health insurance options change.

17. In all of these hearings, I've not heard a single word about the dozens of forms doctors must complete, the army of clerks they have to hire, the hours they must spend on the phone trying to get a procedure paid for. I've not heard a single word about the portion of a health care premium that goes to the insurance company's administrative costs (mainly for denying coverage), executive salaries, or profits.

18. American exceptionalism. Baucus insists that we need a uniquely American solution. (I think he read a New Yorker article). No witness has ever been asked to explain why European nations pay less for health care but get better results. Are Americans a unique species? Is it impossible for us to learn anything at all from the experiences of different countries? Except for some negative comments about Canada and England re those awful wait times, nobody pays any attention to any system outside the U.S.

I've no doubt forgotten some of the other requirements. But the key to all of this sturm und drang seems to be that private insurance companies must be preserved at all costs.

As I said in an earlier post, real health care reform is DOA. We are doomed to lots of tinkering around the edges that will not provide universal coverage and that won't reduce costs (except, of course, by denying coverage).

Health Care Reform - DOA?

2009-05-13T11:57:00.000-07:00

During the past couple of months, I've seen Q&A with Sen. Baucus, Grassley, and Hoyer (on C-SPAN) - and it is clear that not only is single payer DOA but so is a Public Plan Option. Obama himself appears lukewarm in his support (with each new statement by Obama on health care, it appears that his minimum requirements become broader and less meaningful) - but then I don't think there is anything Obama is truly willing to fight for.

It looks as if we'll get the worst of all possible worlds: a mandate to buy insurance based on a poverty level that bears no resemblance to reality with cut-rate policies that probably won't be worth the premiums anyways.

What I find especially frustrating is that Democrats continue to echo Republican insistence that individuals must be responsible for their own health care (lose weight, exercise, etc.) but never say a word about how Insurance company administrative costs (8-14% not including what individual doctors must do to fill out dozens of forms for diff. companies) and profits (all those high executive salaries) contribute to high health care costs.

Oh, Grassley is also dead set against comparative effectiveness; he doesn't want doctors to be reimbursed based on "govt" guidelines. Again, I've heard no Democrat point out to him that insurance companies spend millions (billions?) of dollars finding all kinds of reasons to deny coverage.

Torture - The Questions Not Asked

2009-05-13T09:26:00.000-07:00

One of the most frustrating aspects of the debate on torture, besides the essential point that the United States of America has been for years now debating the fine points of what constitutes torture and what does not, is the absence of what seems to me to be the most basic and logical questions about the logical consequences of the arguments in favor of torture.

Lindsey Graham believes that torture is defined by
1. it's effectiveness. If it works, it isn't torture.
2. the target. If the target is a terrorist (e.g., a bad person), it isn't torture.
3. perceived danger. If Americans are threatened, it isn't torture.

Where do these assumptions leave us?
Under Graham's assumptions, the Spanish and Italian Inquisitors were justified in torturing Jews. They were, after all, heretics and the "killers of Christ". Under his assumptions, Jean D'Arc deserved her treatment. She was a heretic. Under Graham's assumptions, the Germans and Japanese were justified in torturing Allied soldiers and spies who, after all, had important knowledge about allied plans that would directly kill thousands upon thousands of German and Japanese citizens. The Vichy French were justified in torturing French Partisans, for the same reason.

Think about the fire-bombing of Dresden and Tokyo. Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Using Graham's definitions, the Germans and the Japanese would have been well within their rights to torture any person, soldier or civilian (e.g., a spy), who might have had knowledge that would help those nations protect their cities and citizens. (For all we know, had the Japanese understood what an atom bomb could do, they might have surrendered. We didn't give them the chance. We didn't even give them time to contemplate the effects of Hiroshima before we dropped another bomb on Nagasaki.)

If a nation's being in danger is the sole justification required, then every nation in every war, whether conventional or guerrilla, is justified in torturing anybody it captures who may, and I emphasize may, have knowledge that could limit or prevent the loss of life on the side of the questioner. Indeed, followed to its logical conclusion, guerrillas and rebels (such as the Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese) are justified in using these techniques against the people they capture, for exactly the same reason.

If preventing loss of life is the primary justification, why don't we let police pick up potential criminals and torture them? Or use these "enhanced interrogation techniques" against people who have been arrested? The U.S. had and has a number of very violent people who have committed or who might commit horrendous crimes. Shouldn't our police have been permitted to use these techniques on the unibomber? Or on Timothy McVeigh, the Oklahoma City bomber? What is the difference between these people and Al-Kaeda?

Under Graham's propositions, the Russians were justified in torturing Francis Gary Powers. He was, after all, a spy (not a soldier captured on the battlefield). The North Koreans were justified in torturing the sailors of the USS Pueblo.

Another Grahamism: well, maybe we shouldn't do these things but let's not tell our enemies. Excuse me? Maybe I've watched too many World War II movies, but didn't a number of enemy forces surrender to American troops at least in part because they knew they would be treated well?

If any of these "enhanced interrogation techniques" were applied against American soldiers or citizens by a foreign government would we consider them to be torture? Of course. Unless memory fails me, we have routinely objected to even such "mild" techniques as solitary confinement, sleep deprivation, noise, etc. when used against Americans. A definition of torture that is dependent on the target rather than the action is meaningless.

Torture Works?
If torture works, then the confessions of Americans captured by the North Koreans and the Vietnamese were not false, not coerced. They were true. After all, torture works.

Women in Salem, submitted as I recall to "mild" techniques such as multiple pin pricks, confessed to consorting with the devil. I suppose there may be some Christians believe this to be possible, but I suspect that most of us would conclude that these women were not telling the truth.

Legal Opinions
If all it takes is a legal opinion to sanction torture, then perhaps the Allied Forces owe the lawyers and judges convicted at Nüremberg pardons. After all, they were not relying on legal "opinions". They were enforcing the laws, the laws mind you, of a legally elected government.

Enemy Combatants
I loathe this term. Like the redefinition of what constitutes torture, it's only purpose is to remove those captured from the protections they would have as prisoners of war.

It is my understanding that most of the people at Guantanamo were captured on battlefields. We invaded Afghanistan. It doesn't matter whether that invasion was justified or not. Don't the residents of Afghanistan have a right to defend their country? Does that right disappear because they don't wear military uniforms? If that's the case, the British were justified in torturing the American rabble who had the nerve to rebel against the King.

The Definition of Torture
Under the Bush definition that anything short of organ failure isn't torture, where does that leave us?

It means it is legal to batter, break bones, use electric shocks against genitals, rape with or without physical instruments, pull out fingernails and toenails, burn the skin with cigarettes, etc. What would the U.S. government do if a foreign country used any of these techniques against an American found illegally in that country and believed to be engaged in activities which would result in the loss of life? Would we say "fine, as long as there is no organ failure or death"?

The Innocent
Hundreds of Guantanamo detainees were released by the Bush Administration because they were innocent. Think about that. They were imprisoned and subjected to "enhanced interrogation techniques" for years - and they were innocent.

Under torture, the guilty have choices. They can hold out until that mythical "ticking time bomb" goes off. They can issue repeated lies until that mythical "ticking time bomb" goes off. They can dribble out half-truths. They can tell the truth.

But the innocent have no choice but to lie, to create fantastical stories that will stop the pain because they have nothing to confess.

Given the numbers of prisoners released from Guantanamo, it would appear that our ability to accurately identify truly dangerous people is rather low.

I realize this doesn't matter to the supporters of torture. They operate under the 1% criterion. It's OK to torture 99 innocent people in order to get possibly useful information from one guilty person.

The torturers
Tell me, would you like to live next door to a person who spent his or her days torturing? Would you like your son or daughter to marry a person whose job is to torture? Would you feel comfortable having a torturer babysit your children? And, finally, what kind of people are capable of inflicting pain on another human being (OK, dentists and cancer specialists excepted) day in and day out? Would you want to be friends with them?

Am I nuts or shouldn't at least some of these questions be asked by the people who oppose torture?

American "Exceptionalism"
What is all comes down to, of course, on the part of those who approve of "enhanced interrogation techniques" (Newspeak of the highest order), is that Americans are different. Because we are "good", we can torture. Because our enemies are bad, they deserve to be tortured. Unfortunately, I don't know of any nation or group of people who can't defend torture on these very grounds.

p.s. Would somebody please send Lindsey Graham a copy of 1984?

p.p.s. If we put every American male over the age of 10 in jail we would probably reduce crime by what? 95%? Women and children could walk the streets in safety. Almost all physical abuse would end. So would most drug trade (yes women are users but most organized crime members are men). We wouldn't even have to torture them. Just hold them until they are too old to do any harm.

Really Big Feel Good Moment: Susan Boyle - I Dreamed A Dream

2009-04-14T21:16:00.000-07:00

Well, thanks to Anderson 360 I discovered this video of Susan Boyle's performance on Britain's Got Talent

47. Frumpy. The judges and audience expected the worst - and got a flawless, spectacular performance.

You Tube embedding isn't allowed. But listen. And listen.

Media Missing in Action: The 4/14/09 Tea Party

2009-04-14T19:13:00.000-07:00

Just curious. What percent of the U.S. population understands why the Republicans are having a tea party*? My guess: probably about 10%

*The Boston Tea Party was one of the acts that led to the Revolutionary War. It was a protest against a tax on tea imposed by the British Parliament on a people, English citizens living in The New World, who had no representation in the Parliament.

Meida Missing in Action: Obama's 4/13/09 Economic Speech

2009-04-14T19:06:00.000-07:00

Well, even CNBC's "reporters", based on their comments, apparently didn't bother to actually listen to Obama's speech although the network broadcast it live. I guess if you've read the written speech handed out beforehand, there's no point in actually listening.

Then there was the idiotic reporting on CNN: an interview with two people who had been laid off to get their reactions to the speech. The anchor was surprised that $25 more per week could make a difference to some people.

And, yet another of our illustrious "reporters", I think this was on MSNBC, was upset because "all" of the 2000 shovel-ready projects in progress involved small construction jobs which would last only a few months. So they weren't creating "real" jobs. As if a few months' work wouldn't make a difference to somebody whose income was 0. And, as if fixing potholes was not a "constructive" activity. (Don't any of these people ever ride in a car?) Ah, yes. I guess that's why 8.5% of the working population are unemployed. They must have had only temporary work, not real jobs, right?

Media Missing in Action: Presidential Press Conference Mar. 24, 2009

2009-03-24T18:33:00.000-07:00

What did we learn from this press conference? That the members of our media become dumber and more out of touch with every passing year. Before long I suspect that prepubescent children could ask better questions.

It's not just the "gotcha" journalism to which we've been endlessly subjected for the past 20 or 30 years. It is the shear stupidity on display. And that was clear with the first question. The reporter wondered why, given the problems with AIG, the government wanted greater regularity authority. Doh? One could almost see Obama wondering if she were really that dumb or if it was simply a setup question so he could explain about the lack of current authority to wind down non-bank institutions.

I'd say more but, quite frankly, I'd have to watch the whole mess over again to isolate the one or two semi-reasonable questions that were asked and it, quite frankly, is not worth the time.

If you have not yet watched the press conference or have seen only TV excerpts, go to C-SPAN and watch the last 30 seconds or so. Obama's answer to the final dumb question tells you all you have to know about one of our biggest media problems: that they have the attention spans of infants.

Systemic Risk

2009-03-18T16:35:00.000-07:00

It's obvious that Americans do not understand what is meant by systemic risk. Worse, I suspect that most of the members of the various House and Senate oversight committees do not understand it either.

Paulson, Geitner, Bernanke: they all understand it. But the knowledge is so complete, so innate, they simply do not realize that other people do NOT understand what they mean, how it is assessed, what the risks are. Or, perhaps, they know their Congressional overseers do not understand, but they haven't figured out how to explain it without showing that the emperor has no clothes (that a lot of those in Congress have not a clue.)

Worse, the ignorance related to this issue goes further. On Monday, Mar. 17, 2009, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Gretchen Morgenson said two truly idiotic things on Terry Gross's Fresh Air.

First, she couldn't understand why U.S. taxpayers should pay off foreign counterparties of AIG. Apparently the NYT's crackerjack financial reporter doesn't realize that our financial system does not stop at the country's border. We live in a worldwide financial market. Americans invest abroad. Foreigners invest here. The banks are actually rather tightly connected. Nor does it occur to her, apparently, that obligations (treaty, legal, etc.) also do not stop at the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. Further, if there were no legal or self-interest reason for doing this (because massive bank failures in Europe would, and to some extent have, effect us), there would still be a moral obligation.

The worldwide financial crisis (not the recession which probably would have happened anyways) began in the U.S. with our sub-prime mortgages, our inadequate or non-existent, or lax regulatory systems, and our glorious "quants" who invented all these instruments that have come close to destroying not just our financial system but the world's. This mess was made in the U.S. and we have an obligation to help our partners while we help ourselves.

Second, she couldn't understand why the President couldn't just break the employment contracts at AIG because they're no different than the bankruptcy cramdown (allowing judges to force a write-down of first home mortgages in bankrupt proceedings).

Hmmmmm. The President can't do either. He hasn't the legal authority. As a matter of fact there has been enormous resistance in the Congress to the proposed bankruptcy cramdown bill (passed in the House but not, at this date, in the Senate) precisely because "contracts must be respected". Nobody in the Executive branch, including the President, has the authority to abrogate, willy nilly, any kind of contract between willing parties.

Barney Frank, to his credit, admits it is not a good idea for the Federal Government to get in the business of, through statutes, canceling contracts. And I, quite frankly, do not like the idea of using the IRS to punish people we think ought to be punished. No matter how such a law is written, I figure some innocents will be caught. And, again, if the Congress can do that in this case, where there is lots of public support, what if it did it for less universally approved reasons?

Frank thinks it makes more sense to exercise our rights as owners of AIG. I will note, however, that Liddy's lawyers told him that if they broke the contracts, the employees could sue, would probably win and it would end up costing even more. I'm not a lawyer. I have no idea if this is true. But the retention bonuses do seem to be issued on a "pay for performance" basis rather than a just "you're here" basis which makes them more rational than otherwise might be thought.

P.S. As I have said before, I am not an accountant, a lawyer, an auditor or a finanacial analyst. I do not work in the financial services industry. My opinions are based on a lot of reading and hundreds of hours of watching C-SPAN and my own commonsense.

These are not Bailouts; They are Loans or Purchases

2009-03-18T16:30:00.000-07:00

We need different terminology. To me a "bailout" is a gift. I'm sunk in credit card debt, I go to my folks, ask them to bail me out. And they do. At no cost to me. That's a bailout.

That's not what we've done with any of these companies. We've loaned them money on which they must pay interest or dividends. The Fed has acquired assets, in lieu of cash, which they can sell later on when the markets have recovered. We acquired equity via preferred or common stock.

Whether or not you agree with the original decisions, we are now committed and our only objective should be to ensure that these investments, unlike those in our 401Ks, actually generate a profit or, at worst, make us whole some years down the road.

Please remember Chrysler way back when. That loan, too, was widely criticized, but Chrysler paid the load back early and in full and at a profit to the taxpayers. So it has been done before. Not on this scale, of course, but it can succeed.

AIG, Bailouts: Temper Tantrums vs. Commonsense

2009-03-18T16:10:00.000-07:00

OK, I have had enough of these temper tantrums, these "cut your nose to spite you face" Congressional and public rampages.

There are two choices re AIG and the other bailouts. And both are nothing but bets.

1. Let all these companies (AIG, Citi, BofA, the auto companies, etc.) go bankrupt and just hope that the world doesn't collapse. You want to risk a global depression? A stock market down to 0? You think these are exaggerations? If the financial world collapses, not even the full faith and credit of the U.S. is likely to save you. If you're right and I'm wrong, well, you can say "I told you so".

This is what can also be thought of as one side of the "sunk cost" decision. Yes, we've invested multi billions of dollars but that's no reason to send good billions after bad billions.

2. Monitor, regulate, exercise strong oversight and help all of these companies to recover. The consequences? The economy improves and all the taxpayers get paid back. It's possible that one or more of these companies will fail no matter what we do but, at a minimum, the money we've invested will have given us the time to wind them down in a more orderly fashion. Will this take time? Yes. The economy isn't going to recover tomorrow and none of these companies can fully recover until the economy does. But only children should expect things to happen tomorrow. So what if it takes 4 or 5 or 6 years to full unwind everything? In the history of the country, that's about the length of the Revolutionary War, the Civil War or WWII. And it's a lot shorter period than the Great Depression.

This is partly much the other side of the "sunk cost" assessment: I've already put so much money into this hole, I might as well keep going and hope for the best.

Me, I'm the cautious and optimistic sort. I prefer choice #2.

Media Missing in Action: AIG Bonuses and Loans

2009-03-18T11:30:00.001-07:00

OK, Liddy's 3/18/09 testimony has been illuminating - although many of the members of the committee don't seem to be listening.

The Bonuses
These are NOT performance bonuses. They are retention bonuses for people in AIG-FP, the source of most of the problems. The purpose of the bonuses was to pay people to stay until they had wound down their positions. The people who have left, who signed the contracts in Jan. 2008, left because they had wound down the positions they were expected to wind down. And they got their retention bonuses because they had fulfilled their contractual obligations. Those still working are being paid their retention bonuses because they have not yet wound down their positions but are still working to do so.

This division had, at the start of 2008, as I understand it, 2.3 trillion in notational value of positions. Today, 50% has been wound down - so now it's about 1.2 trillion. In short, progress has been made. Each contract is complex and, sad to say, the people who made the contracts probably know more about how to wind them down than somebody new. Think about the effort requried for a new employee, from outside the company, to replace you in your job.

What Liddy feared is that if he failed to pay the retention bonuses, the people required to wind down their positions would simply have walked out the door. And these are positions that must be managed daily. Given the 50% decrease in the value of these positions since Liddy took over, they seem to be doing their jobs.

If you've ever been employed by a company that went bankrupt or was acquired by another company (as I have), you know that people are still needed to wind down the company: to fire employees, to work with the acquiring company to integrate systems, etc. - people who know they will lose their jobs when the integration is completed or everything has been sold (think about Circuit City employees who stuck around to sell every last item they could before they, too, lost their jobs). A bonus can keep them from walking out the door and making the bankruptcy or acquisition that much more difficult.

Yes, the dollar amounts are huge, but so are the salaries at companies like AIG. All you free-marketers out there, all you wealth-defenders out there, shouldn't be upset about the size of the bonuses.

Loans
To say that the American taxpayers have loaned the company 170 billion dollars misstates the case. AIG owes the Fed and the Treasury about 80 billion dollars. There is, I think I heard, a 30 billion dollar line of credit that has not yet been tapped. The rest consists of assets separated off into something called Maiden Lane 2 and 3 which are now assets on the Federal Reserve's balance sheet. These assets were bought for 30-40 cents on the dollar. Today, according to Liddy, their market value ranges from about 30 cents to 75 cents on the dollar. They are all performing assets. When the market improves, the Fed will sell these assets and the money will be repaid. If I understand this correctly, it is the equivalent of my accepting your house in payment of a debt. I pay you less than it is worth based on the conviction that, since I am rich enough to just hold it (and rent it out to cover ongoing expenses), I will be able to sell it some years in the future and make a nice profit.

All of this seems rather reasonable, if unpalatable, to me. But neither the media nor a lot of people on the committee grilling Mr. Liddy (all of whom precede their often vicious attacks with statements of praise for taking on a thankless job for $1/year and no stock options) do not seem to have either heard or understood Mr. Liddy's explanations.

In short, as far as I can tell from Mr. Liddy's statements, the company has made significant progress in winding itself down - in such a way so as not to create financial chaos.

The AIG mess should not have occurred in the first place, but one plays the cards one has to the best of one's ability. And I think that Liddy has done that.

Kanjorski's AIG Hearing - Mar. 18, 2009

2009-03-18T09:49:00.000-07:00

I've been watching these financial hearings for months and have concluded that Rep. Bachus, while perhaps the quintessential Southern gentleman, understands banking and finance no more than I do. But I was impressed by his opening statement for its lucid commonsense assessment of the issue (AIG's bailout and bonus payment) at a time when the media, the talk shows, the web, and, above all, Congress, has been whipping up hysteria equivalent to that which usually precedes a country's going to war.

And if Hypocrisy has a pantheon of heroes, surely Congress must rank at the top. I haven't done a count, but I suspect that many of the Representatives and Senators who opposed the bankruptcy cramdown for first-home mortgages (allowing, for the first time, a bankruptcy judge to write down the principal) on the grounds that mortgages were sacred contracts now consider contracts to be in, I think, Ackerman's words, "legal technicalities".

And, from the part of the hearing I've seen, I was more than a little bemused to see a Republican ask the GAO to investigate the conference committee hearing on the stimulus package which specifically exempted employment contracts from being abrogated. He apparently is unaware of the separation of powers. Or perhaps he thinks the executive branch should routinely investigate Congressional hearings and deliberations.

Jon Stewart vs. Jim Cramer: Takedown Part II

2009-03-13T10:30:00.000-07:00

The Daily Show's Mar. 4, 2009 takedown of CNBC was brilliant, biting, and funny.

Stewart's interview with Jim Cramer on Mar. 12, 2009 was one of the most serious and substantive analysis (if not the most) of the purpose of the CNBC network that I have ever seen.

Jim Cramer was way, way, way out of his league.
Jim Cramer Extended Interview

The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10c

Jim Cramer Pt. 1

Daily Show Full Episodes
Important Things w/ Demetri Martin

Political Humor
Jim Cramer

First, Cramer assumed that he was the only target. Second, he completely failed to understand Stewart's fundamental issue: that CNBC was not giving value to the people who invest in pension funds and 401Ks, that it was, rather, a shill for Wall Street. Worse, it misrepresents itself as being for the former. Cramer simply did not get it.

This was a serious and often uncomfortable interview by Stewart, but it showed just how feckless the MSM (and the blogosphere for that matter) has been when it comes to business reporting.

Tracking the TARP: How Practical?

2009-03-12T19:21:00.000-07:00

Since everybody in the media and in Washington wants to know where the TARP money went, I've been thinking about the mechanics. (Please note: I'm not an accountant or an auditor and, although I am an IT person, I don't know how bank systems are designed.)

As I believe the CEO of BofA told one committee, the government's money doesn't get a color-code. And some in Congress do recognize that money is fungible. This, however, only makes them angrier (as if being angry would make money less fungible or more trackable).

Input
So, anyways, in this thought experiment, let's start on the input side. I assume it is easy to set up a new account called "TARP" and, for all I know, that is what the banks have done. It's the output side that is the problem.

Output
I suppose one could tag the TARP money, but that would mean changing who knows how many computer systems in these banks. It would probably take years and cost a bundle. Not a realistic idea. And this is why, I assume, it is so hard for Treasury or anybody to answer the question of "where did the TARP money go?"

But let's take a very simple, and unrealistic, system. One input account labeled "TARP". All the hundreds or thousands of loan officers in all the branches of these banks are given access to this account. (Practically speaking, programmers would have to add all the controls needed to assure only authorized access and limits and to prevent waste, fraud and abuse. Naturally, the implementation of even this simplified system would take at least months - but for this thought experiment we will ignore this little problem.)

So, what do the loan officers do next? Well, given the mood in Washington and the country, they will be told to make all their loans from this one pot until they have reached their limit. Wonderful. Now we know where the TARP money went. Problem solved.

No, it isn't. Why? Because TARP was supposed to make it possible for banks to lend more than they would have lent without it. But in this very simple case, all we know is that the TARP money was spent. Had it not existed, the banks might have made all of those loans from their own non-TARP money. We would have no way of knowing if that was true or not.

What we need to know and why it's not easy to find out
Basically, we really want to know two things. First, who got the loans. Second, did the bank's lending increase over what it would have been otherwise.

We could answer the first question in my simple system. But I suspect that answering it in the real world is imposssible because of the complexity of the systems involved. (See Input and Output above.)

What about the second question? Well, one could compare loans this year to loans last year and if more are made now than before, we could assume that TARP was the cause.

Not so fast. We're in a major recession. For 4 months in a row, over 600,000 jobs have been lost. (There have been only 10 such months since records began.) An enormous amount of wealth has disappeared (predominantly in homes and 401Ks). People are saving, not spending. And they are not borrowing either. So, total loans could still be down this year - because people are not borrowing or because the borrowers are no longer credit-worthy - even though the TARP money is letting banks make more loans than they would have made otherwise. That is to say, one can't reach any conclusion about whether or not more loans have been made simply by comparing loan rates or amounts because the recession muddies the waters.

No doubt there are ways to track the TARP money (to some degree) that do not require a massive redesign of computer systems and that can take into account reduced borrowing, but I suspect they are not easy to implement and will, therefore, take time to develop and put in place.

Unfortunately, complexity is not something the media or Washington understands.

TARP and the Congress: Neel Kashkari vs. Dennis Kucinich

2009-03-11T21:09:00.000-07:00

Well, Mr. Kashkari underwent another multi-hour grilling by, this time, Kucinich's Oversight Subcommittee on Domestic Policy, and one wonders why he has chosen to subject himself to this continuing abuse.

The more I watch committee hearings on C-SPAN, the more I wonder how our country has survived. Although there are some smart people in the Congress, the number of idiots and ideologues (sometimes the same, sometimes not) surely exceeds their presence in the population (I hope).

First, Mr. Kashkari must deal with the incredible ignorance of the people who are questioning him. They know next to nothing about banking, about finance, about economics in general.

Second, they are like children who want their candy NOW! The stimulus package, passed less than a month ago hasn't worked yet! (The money has only started to trickle out the door). The 1/2 of the TARP given to the banks in the Fall hasn't stopped the recession. (Note: that wasn't its job. Its primary purpose was to stabilize the financial system.) And they don't understand that our financial institutions are in a precarious balancing act: they want to lend but they also have to maintain their capital levels (Tier 1 and, now, TCE)to avoid going bankrupt. Doesn't matter to these financial geniuses. The banks are supposed to do both.

Third, some are still angry because Treasury injected capital rather than bought up the bad assets - no matter that multiple people from the FED, FDIC and Treasury have explained what happened on multiple occasions. They still don't realize that buying up those assets has turned into a hugely complex problem - and Treasury, to its credit, realized it had to do something fast, something specifically authorized by the legislation (capital injection).

Fourth, he is constantly required to respond to conflicting ideological demands between the "free market over everything" and the "throw the bums out" groups.

Fifth, they don't understand that these multinational banks have customers and businesses around the world. They want the TARP money to be used "only" in the U.S. A few recognize that money is fungible, but still want to control how the banks conduct their business.

One of the dumbest questions/ideas came from Issa who thought it would have made more sense for the government to just buy up/renegotiate all the bad mortgages. It didn't occur to this doofus (although Kashkari did his best to gently point it out) that the government would have to hire thousands of employees who knew something about mortgages and those people would have to come from the very industries under scrutiny. Amazing, isn't it? Issa, foe of all government, convinced that the federal bureaucracy is the devil, thinks that same government should have gotten into the mortgage modification business down at the individual level.

The biggest complainer was Kucinich, appalled by the lack of oversight on how the money is being spent. Sure, it could probably be better. But since Sept., a new Administration has taken office, the economy has gone into a tailspin, banks are failing weekly, and the stock market may be headed toward 5000. You'd think it would have occurred to Kucinich that, just maybe, the Treasury has a lot on its plate and expecting penny-by-penny accounting of the money would be impossible under the best of circumstances and impossible given the speed with which the economy has deteriorated.

Media Missing in Action: Small Business and Obama's Awful Tax Increase

2009-03-09T23:28:00.000-07:00

Well, Republicans have been screaming for days about how Obama's tax increase on those earning over $250,000 will kill small business.

It turns out that only 3% of the small businesses in this country would be affected. (Thank you Peter Orszag for this rather important fact that none of our useless media ever bothered to ferret out.)

When faced with that fact, a Republican changed tactics. Yes, that's true. But that 3% employs 50+% of all small business employees. So?

And, remember, we're talking about turning back the top marginal tax rate to where it was in 2000. Less than a 4% increase.

But we are supposed to believe that a 4% tax increase on 3% of the small businesses in this country will cause these business people to ... what? Shut down their businesses? No, I don't think so. Refuse to expand or hire new employees? That's kind of hard to see, too. Don't most businesses expand when there is increased demand for their products? So unless a tax increase is confiscatory - costs the company more than it can earn through expansion - I find it truly difficult to imagine this outcome either. (Any of you small business people earning more than $250,000, please let me know if I am wrong.)

This reminds me of an argument that I haven't heard in a couple of decades:that the progressive income tax on individuals will cause them not to seek promotions. Because promotions come with salary increases, usually, and some salary increases come with increased taxes. Now, I have never known anybody to turn down a promotion because of an associated tax increase. Again, if the increase totally wipes out the salary increase, I suppose a person might refuse the promotion - but being primates, I suspect most of us would still go for the promotion.

Same-Sex Marriage Ban: California Supreme Court Hearing (Mar. 5, 2009)

2009-03-06T15:56:00.000-08:00

Well, I've been watching the replayed hearing on C-Span and, as an opponent of Prop. 8, am utterly disappointed in the arguments by its opponents.

With the exception of Maroko, none of the lawyers seems to have given much thought to the questions they would be asked, especially since they are presenting an admittedly novel argument: that the difference between an amendment and a revision is relevant only when considering the structure of government, not inherent rights.

Their arguments, to this non-lawyer, were weak. Their presentations (Maroko excepted) were weak. Their answers to questions were, to be kind, unimpressive.

Ken Starr (a man I truly despise), on the other hand, was masterful. He was prepared for the questions he got. His responses were to the point.

My guess: the court will let Prop. 8 stand but will not make it retroactive.

Media Missing in Action: The Stimulus Package (If only the Democrats hadn't shut out Republicans)

2009-03-06T13:25:00.000-08:00

I am sooooooooo tired of the endless whining by Republicans that they were shut out of the writing of the Stimulus Package and that, if they had been able to participate, it would have passed with overwhelming support of both parties. Bull.

But our useless media, of course (including NPR), continue to repeat this idiocy, to rail against Pelosi (who has become this decade's Hillary Clinton).

Now, I realize that these blow-dried, 6-figure media figures can't be expected to actually report on anything, but couldn't NBC or CNN or ABC hire an unemployed liberals arts graduate to watch C-SPAN? If they had, they would have learned that Republicans were involved. I watched the mark-up committee; I watched the arguments on the floors of both chambers.

Dozens (maybe a hundred or more)of amendments were offered by both parties. Most, but not all, of the Republican amendments were defeated. But a number of the tax cuts survived solely to garner Republican support - not that they did much good.

What proposal did Republicans think would gain bipartisan support? A $450 billion dollar bill focused almost solely on tax cuts.

The Republican amendments failed not because they were not allowed to participate but because they implemented Republican theories of government and spending. Republicans, it should be obvious to our dolts in the media, lost the election in Nov. 2009 by substantial majorities. They have no right to expect a Democratic President and a Democratic Congress to throw over Democratic principles in favor of Republican principles.

One wouldn't think that this simple fact should need to be pointed out to those self-defined experts on politics. Republicans lost. Lost. Lost. If they want to have some input, they have to be willing to step outside their hard-right ideological base. If they don't, they cannot expect Democrats to move right to join them. That is what elections are about.

To quote Republicans after 2000: get over it.

Media Missing in Action: More on Earmarks

2009-03-06T13:15:00.000-08:00

Does anybody in the media ever read anything, do anything other than gossip with their counterparts and political operatives?

As I pointed out before, the earmarks in the Omnibus Appropriation Bill for 2009 constitute less than 2% of the total. 2 billion dollars. The effect on the debt or the deficit? Invisible. And we are in a major, major recession by any criteria. Government spending in this environment pretty much can't be bad. And if Representatives and Senators want to direct some of that money to projects of particular interest to them, who cares? (If earmarks were 50% or 75% of the bill, I might argue differently although, again, in this economic climate, I'm pretty much for government spending of any kind.)

Two of the earmarks that have gotten special treatment from John McCain and the media particularly irritate me as examples of "unprincipled" spending: the research on hog smells & manure in Iowa, and on termites in Louisiana. I am neither a farmer, nor a Southerner. But I do read widely. So I know that the effluent from factory hog farms (smells and manure disposal) are both major environmental problems that also have significant economic consequences as well. But nobody on TV (or, unfortunately, on NPR) seems to have read Michael Pollen. As for the termites, I'm not up-to-date on the current situation, but I recall reading that termites in New Orleans are especially destructive, hard (impossible?) to kill, and moving north. That isn't good for anybody who lives in a wood building.

Campbell Brown's No Bias, No Bull - Appropriations Bill "Loaded with Pork" - Earmarks: Another Look

2009-03-05T17:46:00.000-08:00

Well, snarky Brown opened up her show tonight with another slam about the "loaded with pork" appropriations bill. And what is her definition of "loaded with pork"? 7 billion out of 410 billion. That's less than 2% of the entire bill. 40% came from Republicans, 60% from Democrats. One wonders how she would describe a bill that were oh, say, 50% earmarks?

Worse, I have recently learned that earmarks are not what I thought they were: spending added to a bill by a Senator or Representative to benefit a special project. That's not true, and it is time that our useless media got it right.

From the Wikipedia:

The federal Office of Management and Budget defines earmarks as funds provided by Congress for projects or programs where the congressional direction (in bill or report language) circumvents Executive Branch merit-based or competitive allocation processes, or specifies the location or recipient, or otherwise curtails the ability of the Executive Branch to manage critical aspects of the funds allocation process.

Attempts have been made to define earmarks in ethics and budget reform legislation. However, due to the controversial nature of earmarks and the effects these definitions would have on Congressional power, none of these has been widely accepted.

Despite the lack of a consensus definition, the one used most widely was developed by the Congressional Research Service, the public policy research arm of the U.S. Congress:

"Provisions associated with legislation (appropriations or general legislation) that specify certain congressional spending priorities or in revenue bills that apply to a very limited number of individuals or entities. Earmarks may appear in either the legislative text or report language (committee reports accompanying reported bills and joint explanatory statement accompanying a conference report)."[2]

In short, this is not new money but the allocation of money already authorized but not directed.

The argument in favor of earmarks that I heard during the debates this week is that Congress has a right, and a duty, to direct spending. The issue is not whether the money should have been appropriated but where it should be spent. So who should decide? For conservatives (one of whom I am not) the quandary could be stated thusly: who can better decide where to spend money? A faceless Federal bureaucrat or the person representing the district or state?

Looked at in that light, maybe earmarks aren't so bad. Yes, some are dumb, from one perspective or another. But Representatives are elected to represent the needs of the people in their district. And Senators are elected to represent the interests of their states. As a Californian, I might think a project in Minnesota is stupid and wasteful while a Minnesotan might think the same of a project in California.

Obviously, our elected officials have obligations to the country as a whole, in addition to their parochial issues, but I can't see any bright hard line telling them when to give priority to their personal morality, their constitutents, or the country.

Bottom line: earmarks do not increase the cost of spending bills, they simply direct some of the spending. One can argue about who should direct the spending (the Federal government or Congressional representatives), and whether specific projects benefit the country as a whole and even whether that kind of test is realistic or practical in our federal system. But it is time that Americans learned that when we are arguing about earmarks we are arguing not about how much money has been authorized but where it is being spent and who has the right or duty to decide where it is spent.

Grunwald's March 5, 2009 Time piece does a better job than I have done at pointing out where the real problem may be.

Jon Stewart - The Daily Show on Mar. 4, 2009 - Roasts CNBC (incl. Rick Santelli & Jim Cramer)

2009-03-05T10:08:00.000-08:00

The Daily Show keeps getting better. Having a liberal in the White House has in no way affected its quality.

Last night's roundly deserved roast of CNBC's coverage of the stock market showed TDS at its best: a stinging montage of CNBC prognostications showing just how often, and consistently, wrong its predictions have been.

The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10c

CNBC Gives Financial Advice

Daily Show Full Episodes
Important Things With Demetri Martin

Political Humor
Joke of the Day

I especially enjoyed the sequences that focused on Jim Cramer. I've been watching Cramer for a couple of months now and the one constant is his inconstancy. His advice varies almost daily and rarely holds up over the long haul. (Only a few months ago, he declared Bank of America, Well Fargo, and JP Morgan Chase to be among the 5 "gold standard" banks.) Yes, I know he was a successful hedge fund manager but as such he could and did trade daily, probably almost every minute. Most of the people who watch him can't do that. He's a lot of fun to watch, but unless you have money to burn and want to buy and sell stocks all day, he's not going to help you.

The Mar. 4, 2009 montage was just one of many that Stewart's staff has put together over the past year. One recent montage I recall contrasted statements by Gibbs (Obama's press secretary) with those from prior press secretaries. Not a word's worth of difference. It takes a lot of skill and research to put together these montages. You must realize that there is something worth looking for, then locate the sound bites or videos that will support your thesis. Google and the other search engines help, but anybody who's used them for serious research knows just how hard it can be to find just what you need.

So, yes, I adore Stewart. But his staff deserve special credit for providing the material. Give Thain's bonus to them.

Bernanke, Geithner, and Orszag Face Congressional Committees Mar. 3, 2009

2009-03-04T13:07:00.000-08:00

Well, I've now seen Geithner and Bernanke testify before several Congressional committees and yesterday I saw Orszag's first budget presentation.

Here's my assessment of the three as performers.

Geithner
Without question, he is the worst of the three. He is simply not a good salesman - in large part because of a number of quirks. First, he has a tendency to hunch over the mike and look up at the committee from under his eyebrows. Second, he has a habit of starting answers with phrases such as "that's an excellent question". Third, he has an Obama-like tendency to repeat the same phrases over and over and over. Fourth, and worst of all, he is defensive. He may be very, very smart. And his plans may, indeed, pull us out of this mess. But he does not give that impression and right now we need somebody who can be seen to be confident, optimistic and in charge. (It also doesn't help that he continues to talk in generalities.)

Bernanke
Calm and respectful. Sometimes, I think, too respectful. Like Geithner, he is smart. And he has acted decisively. But in front of Congressional committees, he comes off as a bit of a mouse. Perhaps he feels constrained because of the position he holds, but he seems to bend over background not to get into any kind of argument with any of his questioners - which limits his ability to sell, to Congress and to citizens, the actions he has taken.

Orszag
Triple A+. His performance yesterday was masterful. His command of budget details was awesome. His answers to the questions posed were concrete and short. No endless justifications of the general strategy, goals, etc. Moreover, he was not intimidated by the Republicans and he was indulgent toward those Democrats whose questions were designed solely to prove how good this budget is in contrast to the Bush budgets. Not only was he never defensive, he seemed to enjoy the give-and-take. Orszag came across as a man who understood the budget, who supported the budget, who was not ashamed of the choices made in creating the budget. Cheers.

Coburn & Education - A Lot of Neurons Short of a Full Deck

2009-03-04T12:40:00.000-08:00

In arguring against Harkin's earmark for repairing schools in Iowa,Mr. Coburn asserted that, of course, our schools only declined in quality after the federal government got involved (out in here in California, it's pretty obvious that schools began to decline after the passage of Prop. 13 rolling back & limiting property tax increases), and that students could learn just as well in a quonset hut as in a high-tech building.

Now, I suppose one could build a quonset hut that would hold labs for biology, chemistry, physics, computer science, etc. And that would have running water and indoor toilets - but after one has done all that, how many students could be accommodated? So, unless he thinks that one-room schoolhouses with chairs and a blackboard provide the same quality education as a high-tech school building (a very dubious claim in 2009), Mr. Coburn must be given credit for one of the dumbest arguments ever made against an earmark.

Further, he argued that to spend money repairing schools in Iowa in today's difficult financial situation would mean placing - yes, you guessed it - a burden on our children and grandchildren.

Although one can argue about the value of earmarks, or the value of this earmark in particular, it seems to me that arguing that improving the educational environment of students who will be creating those future generations could be bad for those future generations is absurd. Educated parents generally raise educated children.

One wonders if Coburn would be where he is today if he had been educated in a quonset hut.

Iraq - One Downside of an Exit Date

2009-02-27T13:40:00.000-08:00

Yes, I want us out of Iraq. The sooner the better. But it seems to me that there is one downside to a fixed exit date that could be summed up in a very old question: "Do you want to be the last person to die in [fill in the blank]?"

I know that soldiers fight to save themselves and their comrades but, surely, from this day forward, and each day that we get closer to that exit date, they can't not be thinking "how do I stay alive until x"? (Obviously the same problem exists for tours of duties that have specific end dates, but this exit strategy must certainly add to the effect.)

Fighting to stay alive is both rational and normal in any war, but when you're told that your country not only wants to leave the field of battle but plans to leave by a fixed date, the nature of the conflict, psychologically, must change, mustn't it?

Just a thought.

Jindal and the Volcano - Media Missing in Action Again

2009-02-26T14:40:00.000-08:00

Good grief. Our media seem to get more useless with every day. (Even progressive bloggers have gotten lazy.) Here's the legislative language:

SURVEYS, INVESTIGATIONS, AND RESEARCH
For an additional amount for ‘‘Surveys, Investigations, and Research’’, 140,000,000, for repair, construction and restoration of facilities; equipment replacement and upgrades including stream gages, and seismic and volcano monitoring systems; national map activities; and other critical deferred maintenance and improvement projects.

Was this hard to find? No. I just went to recovery.gov, followed the links and voila!

Link (Instruction for Russ Limbaugh listeners: use the search function and type in the word volcano.)

Republicans and Tax Cuts (Obama's first budget)

2009-02-26T13:05:00.000-08:00

Well, Obama's 2010 budget has been announced and, as usual, Republicans are apoplectic about the tax increase on the rich which will cause small businesses to fail all over the country, kill entrepreneurship, etc.. And how big is this tax increase? 3.9%. The top marginal tax rate for people earning over $250,000/year will increase from 36% to 39.6% - which won't kick in until 2011. Now, I know that COLs vary a lot around the country and I believe that, once we're out of the recession, we should all pay more for the government services we want. But this knee-jerk Republican hissy fit should be shown up for what it is. And if the reduced tax rates on dividends and capital gains remain in effect, this increase will, practically speaking, probably have even less impact.

Once upon a time, the top marginal tax rate in this country was 94%!* Now, the Republicans think 39.6% is too much. Indeed, during the battle over the stimulus package they wanted a 5% across-the-board cut. Tax cuts are the Republican answer to good times and bad times. It is, indeed, the only government action they approve of (except for defense and legislating morality, of course).

Republicans won't even raise taxes to pay for the one government function, defense, of which they approve - which is why Obama inherited a trillion-dollar deficit. The truth is that Republicans don't believe in government. They want to kill social security, medicare, medicaid, welfare, the NEA & NEH, the CDC, the NIH, the NSF, the FDA, etc. Indeed, if they could, they would kill every non-defense agency. And they figure the way to do this is to starve the government of money. But they know that if they tell the American public this is their objective, they couldn't get elected dog-catcher. They know Americans don't like to pay taxes (who does) but,while Americans differ on which government programs they approve of, all Americans use or want some government services. So Republicans talk about "waste, fraud, abuse" (of which there is nowhere near enough to end the deficit and at least one of which exists in every household in the U.S.). They talk about earmarks (which don't add money to the budget but direct it to pet projects). They talk about individual responsibility. They don't talk about the government programs they want to kill. And our ineffective media let them.

I have a challenge for you tax-cutting Republicans. Give me a tax rate, any tax rate (flat or progressive), which will satisfy you. 20%? 15%? 5%? 0%? And then tell me what government agencies you will shut down to balance the budget.

*Here are three web sites with historical tax rate information:
1.Top tax rates 1913-2003
2.Highest marginal tax rates 1913-2009.
3. Historical bottom and top tax brackets 1913-2000.

CNBC's Santelli: Ignorant & Unprofessional Rant

2009-02-21T15:09:00.000-08:00

CNBC, with the exception of Kudlow and this jerk, has generally had the best, if still weak, reporting on the financial crisis.

But Santelli's rant was both unprofessional and ignorant. The lack of professionalism is obvious. He's supposed to be a reporter on the floor of the NYSE [correction: Chicago Board of Trade].

Ignorant because he obviously didn't listen to Obama's speech in its entirety and because none of us will know the full details of the mortgage plan until March.

But let's deal with his "do you want your taxes to pay for your neighbor's mortgage when that person wasted money on a [fill in the blank]"? (You could use this same argument for objecting to universal health insurance, unemployment insurance, ERISA, welfare, etc.)

Let's assume the worst, that some tax dollars will go to the "undeserving", however one defines that person. That isn't alone reason to object to the plan. No system is perfect, private or public. And, sometimes, people who shouldn't get something do. The objective of any public program should be to maximize the positives and minimize the negatives.

So you still have a job and a 30-year mortgage you can afford. But you could be underwater (owing more than the house is worse). Maybe you don't care. It's your home and you figure it will eventually regain its value. But your neighbor is having trouble making the payments, maybe because one of the partners has lost a job. That person may decide, quite logically, to walk away from a house that isn't worth what is owed on the mortgage. So the house gets foreclosed. The same thing happens across the street or on the next block. All of a sudden, your home's value shrinks even more, and maybe the neighborhood starts to go downhill, too. Perhaps you don't care. Those "other" people didn't deserve any help, no matter what happens to your neighborhood as a result. This is the prototypical case of cutting off your nose to spite your face. Most reasonable people, however, would prefer to live in an intact neighborhood with no foreclosure signs. Obama's proposal will specify rules for reducing mortgage payments and writing down the principal that should reduce the likelihood of mushrooming foreclosure signs in this scenario. This is a social good - even if some of the individual recipients are "undeserving".

As for the details of the plan... I suspect they will pretty much resemble what Baird has done for the Countrywide mortgages. In her program, if you don't have a job or can't afford to pay a mortgage (however renegotiated), you will lose your house. You also have to live in the house - so the program won't help speculators. Allowing judges to force a cram down in bankruptcy is widely disliked (because a first mortgage is a special kind of contract and if you allow this contract to be broken there will be long term financial consequences). I'm not qualified to judge the long term consequences. But, short term, the idea is to have a stick in the wings so the people holding the mortgages will be more inclined to negotiate reduced payments or some kind of mortgage write down. And, finally, as I recall, Baird's program uses a NPV calculation to determine if the changes to principal and interest make financial sense to the owner when compared to the cost of a foreclosure. It it doesn't, foreclosure is the only solution.

In short, the plan won't help everybody. Foreclosures will still occur. And most of the "undeserving" will, indeed, lose their houses. The goal of the program is to help the rest, the ones who are in trouble through no real fault of their own.

But Santelli, like most ideological Republicans, doesn't care about the public good. And he's gotten a lot of press for his rant which he no doubt counts as a personal good.

Roland Burris: Rachel Maddow is Shocked, Shocked, Shocked

2009-02-20T20:47:00.000-08:00

After treating Mr. Burris for weeks as if he were a lovable but somewhat eccentric favorite uncle, Ms. Maddow is now shocked to learn that maybe, perhaps, he isn't quite as innocent as he had appeared. Not that it is Mr. Burris's fault, mind you. He was just caught in the corrupt aura that ex. Gov. Blogojavich spread wherever he went.

But, as I pointed out in January, Mr. Burris was suspect from the beginning. A man who would accept an appointment under the circumstances that existed had either to be corrupt himself, lacking in personal ethics, or so ambitious for the job (after multiple electoral rejections by Illinois voters) that he simply did not care. In short, under the best interpretation of his behavior, Mr. Burris came up lacking.

Bankers vs. the House Banking Committee: Highlights & Lowlights

2009-02-13T11:23:00.000-08:00

Opening Statements
Anybody who listened to the opening statements (Feb. 12, 2009) might have wondered what the fuss is all about. It appears that many of the banks were profitable last year and took the TARP money only as sort of a favor to the Federal government. This got shot down pretty much through later questioning when it turned out that although all the bankers promised to return the funds by 2012, with interest, and would like to do it earlier there was one small hitch: to return it they must replace it with private capital and that they don't have. Still, I give the bankers points for a lack of arrogance and a recognition of the concerns of the Congress.

Republican Talking Points
I almost felt sorry for some of the Republican questioners as they desperately tried to get these Captains of Capitalism to buy in to Republican philosophy:

Are the regulators keeping you from making loans? No.
Is this government intervention destroying the free market system? No.
Shouldn't we step back and wait and think things through before we proceed? No.
Was TARP really needed? Is it working? This question was asked several times in different ways and the answers were a bit more ambiguous. Still, the most favorable to Republicans were still pretty weak: one CEO said he hadn't thought at the time that it was needed but, in retrospect, yes it was. Another, Jamie Dimon I think, said they'd be arguing about it for years, but he thinks it was, and that (at worst) it kept things from getting much worse.
Is a stimulus needed? Yes.
Isn't the idea of a systemic regulator bad? No. In fact, every single CEO welcomed the idea of more government regulation. That must truly have been galling.

Will those answers have changed the minds of the Republicans who asked the quesions? No. These Republicans are almost all ideologues who can't be bothered having their minds changed by simple facts. Indeed, in previous hearings I recall several basically admitting, when presented with facts they didn't like: "I know what I know". These Republicans are, politically, the equivalent of Creationists.

Quality of the Questions
I've watched almost all the hearings broadcast on C-SPAN since the start of this crisis last September and the questions, in general, from this committee were among the worst - to the point of being outright embarrassing. There were the grandstanders, of course. Ever since Ackerman got his 30 seconds of fame last Fall with the issue of private planes when the auto CEOs testified, an increasing number of his colleagues have decided they want their 30 seconds of fame, too. So we got a lot more blustering outrage than is usual - as well as the normal attempts to embarrass as much as possible those who are testifying. But the sheer ignorance of how the banking and financial systems work that was evident in many of the questions was truly appalling. Choosing the dumbest (in the sense that they demonstrated ignorance of how the system works) questions would be difficult, but Gutierrez (from Illinois, I believe) ranked among the least well-informed. It doesn't take much imagination to guess that probably all of the CEOs found themselves asking how they ever got in the position of having to politely answer questions put by such, to be kind, financially illiterate people (and they must have wondered how those Representatives managed to get elected let alone get positions on this committee - a question I was asking myself). On the positive side, the experience may be another spur for these executives to get their companies out from under government intervention asap. I doubt they want to go through a similar round of humiliation again.

My Favorite Comment
My favorite comment came from Emanuel Cleaver at the end of his questions (which fell into the outrage and "shame on you" category) when he remarked that he was "woefully unimpressed" by the diversity of the panel in front of him and for as many rows behind them [presumably filled by their staff] as he could see. Kudos to Mr. Cleaver. With the exception of Pandit from Citi, they were all white men. Otherwise there was not a woman, African-American, Asian or Hispanic in sight.

Overall Impression
Generally speaking, I was impressed by the bankers. These guys, for all the mistakes they've made, know change is needed and know that part of that change is increased regulation. Jamie Dimon, Mack, and Blankfein were especially fine witnesses. Pandit did the worse but then Citi is probably in worse shape than any of the other banks. And Lewis from B of A seemed to find the attacks harder to take.

Finally, I couldn't help but wonder how many years it has been since any of these men has had to raise a hand in answer to a question - let alone been subject to the level of abuse they had to absorb.

The Stimulus Package - What I Wish Obama Would Say

2009-02-09T15:45:00.000-08:00

Instead of relying on the same points Obama has been making for weeks now, I wish Obama would do the following (quotes are my attempt to imitate his pattern of speech).

1. Emphasize that this is a global crisis
"You know, this is not just a U.S. crisis. Countries around the world have been pouring money into their own banks with their own TARPS. Did you know that Iceland, the country of Iceland, the entire country!, has gone bankrupt? And, just as we are putting together a financial stimulus package, so are they. In short, there are a lot of people around the world who believe that what we are doing is the right thing to do. And they're putting their money where their opinions are. "

2. Give a brief economic lesson.
"A lot of you are wondering why your tax dollars should be used to bail out rich bankers who made bad decisions. You wonder why, when you've been prudent and have a mortgage you can afford, your tax dollars should be used to help the person who wasn't prudent. And, you know, it isn't fair. But sometimes punishing the bad guy can hurt the good guy even more. If we hadn't stabilized the financial system, and if we don't continue to work to make it healthier, we could have been faced with a situation like that which occurred in the Great Depression. Thousands of banks failed. People lost their life savings. In today's terms, you might not have been able to go to your ATM or write a check on your bank. And it won't help your financial situation any if half the houses on your block or in you neighborhood or city are abandoned. So, yes, it's not fair that your tax dollars have to be used to bail out the bad guys but, in this case, the alternative would be worse.

"Second, there's an economic concept you need to understand. It's called the paradox of thrift and it works this way. Too many of us have gotten too deep in debt over the past decades. And now we've gotten religion. We're buying less and saving more. And, under normal circumstances, that's good. If you've still got a job, you want to save in case you lose it. If you don't have a job, you have to save. But what happens when everybody stops buying and starts saving at the same time? Companies can't sell enough. So they shut down factories and lay off workers. And those workers spend less because they have less to spend. So companies cut back further. It creates what economists call a deflationary spiral. And that is what we fear. There is almost nothing economists fear more because it is hard, really, really, really hard to get out of such a spiral once it gets in motion.

Now, it would be irresponsible for you as individuals in this economic environment to spend money you don't have. And State governments can't help. They have to balance their budgets. In an economic downturn, their tax receipts decrease, so they have to cut services. And that, too, contributes to this deflationary spiral. The only entity that can spend money is the Federal Government. And, yes, it is borrowed money. But it is borrowed money to buy goods and services that American workers create. To generate the demand that will keep businesses from shutting down more factories or laying off more people. And that's what the stimulus package does.

So, finally, that's why I'm asking you to bail out banks and the auto companies and people with bad mortgages, because if we don't do this, all of you who have been careful, have done the right thing, will get hurt, too. As you sometimes tell your children, don't cut off your nose to spite your face."

3. Focus on the three major parts of the stimulus package:
"Now, I know the stimulus package is big. But it needs to be big because we have a big economy and we need to give it a big kick in the pants to get it started.

And it has the three key components it needs. First, it gives tax cuts to working Americans because we know you're hurting. Second, it helps the people who are out of work by increasing the number of weeks of unemployment insurance - because the people who are out of work aren't responsible for the length of this downturn and it is going to be long - and helping them keep their health insurance by helping them pay for COBRA. Third, and most important, it spends money on things we should have been spending money on anyway: roads, bridges, school, information technology, etc.

Is this a perfect bill? No. It would have been if I had written it, of course, but I didn't. We live in a democracy. The Congress has over 500 members, each representing a district or state. And they all want to do what is best for the people they represent. And they should. That's what you hired them to do. So, the bill's a compromise. That's what we do in a democracy. We compromise. There are tax cuts for Conservatives and spending for Liberals. But no earmarks. None.

So does the bill have a perfect mix of tax cuts and spending? Probably not. Will all of the money be spent in the most effective way? Probably not - although we're going to do our darndest to make sure that most of it does do what we expect. Will it work all at once? No. Will we have to do more? Probably. But we are in the worst worldwide economic crisis in our lifetimes. Make no mistake. This is not an ordinary recession. This is a major crisis. And this stimulus package is a down payment, a critical down payment, on turning the economy around. So call, email, write your representatives and Senators and tell them to vote for this bill. It is time we got started on the road to recovery."

TARP - Give Paulsen a Break

2009-02-09T15:40:00.000-08:00

Everybody, and I do mean everybody (left, right, center, Democrat, Republican) is dumping on Paulsen. The rescue plan didn't work: banks aren't lending. It was all ad hoc with no central planning. It was wasteful (we paid too much). Etc.

Everybody seems to forget a couple of important things.
1. There was a GLOBAL financial meltdown. The U.S. was not the only country pouring money into its major banks.

2. After Lehman Bros. failed, the financial crisis got worse by an order of magnitude over just a couple of days.

3. There was no "bait and switch". Yes, Paulsen asked for the money to buy the toxic assets. But a number of people, in and out of Congress, doubted the government's ability to do that - which is why Chris Todd and Barney Frank crafted the bill to permit other means, especially capital injection (as was being done in Europe). Paulsen, to his credit, realized that they couldn't put together a purchase of toxic assets fast enough to help. And, as the months have gone by and various suggestions have been put forth, it is clear that solving this fundamental problem is not something that could have been devised over a weekend.

4. Only half of the TARP money has been allocated so politicians should stop acting as if the whole 700 billion has been wasted.

5. TARP has accomplished its primary objective: the stabilization of the financial system. Compare it to Sully's landing of the Airbus in the Hudson. The plane's a goner. But the people lived. Maybe if he had thought about it some more, he could have devised a better plan - but in the meantime the plane would have crashed and all would have died. We were in a crisis. Paulsen and Bernanke landed the plane and the passengers got off alive. They lost their luggage, maybe their clothes were ruined. And they had some bruises. But they survived.

So, yes, we need to do better with the next rounds. But the reason we have a chance to do better is because Paulsen and Bernanke gave us the time we needed to do better.

Núremburg Forgotten: No Criminal Action Against Torturers

2009-02-06T14:21:00.000-08:00

Obama and Panetta (in his Senate confirmation hearing) have both asserted that people who committed acts of torture should not be prosecuted because they acted on the belief that what they were doing was legal.

One of the key principles that came out of the Núremburg hearings was that "obeying orders" was not a valid defense. Illegal acts cannot be justified by legal orders. Even judges were not allowed to take refuge behind the law.

But Feinstein and the other members on her committee, to say nothing of the President or Panetta, seem to have forgotten or ignored this historical precedent.

We learned to our horror during the past 8 years that a President of the U.S. can, in effect, give himself the powers of a Dictator. That none of our checks and balances, neither the Congress nor the Courts, can be depended upon to rein in declarations of such extraordinary powers. Our only hope, when it comes to torture, is that the people authorized to conduct it will refuse because they understand that, no matter who has ordered them to do it, they will face prosecution, sooner or later.

The Human Ticking Time Bomb

2009-02-06T14:17:00.000-08:00

Frequently during some of the hearings, most recently for Leon Panetta and David Ogden, the question of the "human ticking time bomb" has come up in the context of the legitimacy of torture as a technique under those circumstances. And, as far I can tell, not one nominee presented with this hypothetical has attacked the logic behind it. Panetta, no doubt feeling pushed into a corner, admitted that he would ask the President for extraordinary authority if necessary.

Perhaps I should watch 24, but may I suggest the following answers to this question.

1. Based on our experience of Guantanamo detainees (to say nothing of our own criminal justice system) where more than 2/3 of the detainees have been repatriated because they didn't represent a danger to the U.S., this argument assumes that the "good guys" really have caught a "bad guy".

2. If the guy is indeed a "ticking time bomb", all he has to do is hold out under the torture until it's too late for his interrogators to do anything, or give them a story that will keep them occupied ("yea, I put the bomb in location X" - when it's really in location Y.)

3. What constitutes a situation of this gravity? This is a slippery slope argument. The possible injury or death of 1 person, 100 people, 1000 people? Does it matter if the threat appears to be a couple men with machine guns, a nuclear bomb, or anthrax?

4, We didn't torture during WWII, after we'd been attacked, when we were suffering enormous losses in the Pacific, at Normandy, etc. Is it really possible that the nation is in so much greater danger today than it was then? Then it was during the Revolutionary War? Do we today approve of what happened at Andersonville?

I'm sure others could come up with more objections to this hypothetical case. And it is well past time that we stopped letting this straw man be thrown at anybody who opposes torture without tearing it down.

David Ogden - Deputy Attorney General - Man Without Principles?

2009-02-06T14:09:00.000-08:00

Watching the confirmation hearing for David Ogden's appointment as Deputy Attorney General may rank as the most frustrating and infuriating of all the confirmation hearings so far.

Either Mr. Ogden has no principles or was so fearful of saying something that might prevent his nomination, not very likely under the circumstances, that he was afraid to say anything that might upset anybody, esp. the Republicans on the committee.

In particular, he did everything but disavow his briefs in favor of libraries fighting the requirements for libraries to prevent access to internet pornography by minors in libraries, in support of a 14-year-old girl's right to an abortion without parental notification, against the death penalty for a man convicted of a murder when he was a minor, the use of international standards when trying to assess cruel and unusual punishments, and even a memo in praise of Harry Blackmun, for whom he clerked, on affirmative action (the U of M/Bakke case).

All of these briefs were, of course, criticized by Specter and Sessions, etc. And in all these cases, Mr. Ogden pretty much said he didn't really believe what he argued in his briefs, that he was acting on behalf of clients. Now, obviously, lawyers do often defend criminals they know to be guilty. But lawyers rarely take on these kinds of issues if they do not agree with their clients. We must thus conclude that Mr. Ogden has no principles when it comes to arguing constitutional cases, as long as he is being paid, or lacks the courage to defend his convictions. His disavowal of his praise for Blackmun's opinion pretty much proves that the latter explanation is the correct one.

Even worse, however, was the softball question from a Democrat about the Bush Justice memo stating that torture could be defined only as an act that resulted in the failure of a major organ. The Senator wanted to know how Ogden would respond to such an argument if it had been presented to him. Did Ogden say he would reject it outright? (Think about it: under this definition, you could beat somebody senseless, rape him or her, break bones, pull out fingernails and toenails, use electrodes to deliver high voltage electric shocks, even put somebody on the Inquisition's rack.) No. Mr. Ogden said he would talk to the lawyer who wrote the memo, try to understand the argument, consult with others, etc.

Mr. Ogden, in short, was unwilling to state, point blank, that torture is wrong. Indeed, he bent over backwards to assure the committee that terrorism was the greatest threat facing the U.S., that he would be vigorous in defense of the country, etc.

What on earth has happened to this country that Democratic nominees (even Leon Panetta in his confirmation hearing) are so afraid of being declared to be soft on terror that they refuse to say torture is wrong, period.

HARRY MARKOPOLOS - HIS OWN WORST ENEMY

2009-02-04T20:26:00.000-08:00

Listening to this man's testimony (Feb. 4, 2009) was fascinating, not just for what he did but for who he is. This is a man who is so close to being your typical web jerk that is easy to understand why he might have been ignored.

He honestly believed that he was endangering his life by reporting on Madow.

He left an envelope for the head of the SEC in a library he thought the man would be at, and made sure he left no fingerprints.

He offered to go undercover (change his name, appearance, leave his family), etc., to expose the fraud for the sake of the country.

He doesn't know the people at the SEC but he is confident that ALL of the senior staff should be dismissed and that all of them are so dumb they couldn't find first base in a baseball stadium.

For anybody who spends much time on internet forums, these characteristics and the sense of self-righteousness, are all too common of a certain kind of net flake. That he supplied the SEC with detailed information backing up his allegations doesn't change this. Indeed, it is typical. There are people on the web who can write pages and pages and pages of complex text and calculations proving that perpetual motion machines do work and the earth does not revolve around the sun. (Pharyngula regularly exposes the "intellectual" diatribes of anti-evolutionists.)

I don't mean to excuse the SEC. They are clearly understaffed. They get hundreds of thousands of complaints and I don't even know if they have a method for logging them into a central database (issuer of the complaint, nature of the complaint, object, documentation, etc.) But Markopolos's personality and his persistence are so typical of a certain kind of internet pest that I can partly understand why he was ignored.

"BAD" GOVERNMENT SPENDING

2009-02-04T20:25:00.001-08:00

There's been a lot of news coverage on all the "wasteful" government spending in the stimulus package - thanks to the Republicans' ability to sell their message, the media's lack of interest in anything remotely resembling research, and our MIA Democratic leaders.

Why the Washington Mall spending was attacked is beyond me. By all accounts, the Mall is a national disgrace. Fixing it up would mean hiring workers, buying landscaping supplies, sweeping, repairing/replacing public bathrooms, etc. This is spending. People get hired. Supplies get bought. And the result is a necessary improvement of a national monument. Yes, it does mean spending money in D.C., which may be the real problem, but unemployment there is high, so why not?

Buying hybrid cars for government employees? Yes, it benefits those terrible government civil servants. But the Detroit 3 are bleeding. January sales were even worse than the worst expectations. I don't think Detroit cares who buys the cars and they sure have cars to sell.

Finally, let's be brutally honest here: the Federal government could spend 40 million dollars buying dog food and handing it out to dog owners around the country and that would be stimulative. It would help not only the producers and sellers of dog food but would relieve dog owners, temporarily, of an expense - and they could spend that savings elsewhere.

In an economic disaster like this one, with a deflationary spiral a real threat, there is no such thing as bad government spending. Yes, ideally, the money should be spent on projects (like the Washington Mall or repairing school buildings) that will have long-term benefits, but in this environment, even Washington pork isn't all that bad.

TAX CUTS - FOR REPUBLICANS, SURPISE, NOT ALL TAX CUTS ARE EQUAL

2009-02-04T20:23:00.000-08:00

It turns out that Republicans don't approve of all tax cuts after all. Those small-dollar increases in after-tax pay don't please them. They assert that they tried it before and it didn't work. Now, what they tried before was a refund which all too many people used to pay down debt or increase savings (normally a good thing but not in this particular downturn). They don't understand that a little extra in each paycheck may be more likely to be spent just because it is so small. Sure, some people will still save it or use it to pay down debt. But if you get just enough extra to buy a latte or a Big Mac, there's a reasonable chance that's what you'll spend it on.

No, Republicans want the usual Republican tax cuts. Two deserve special comment. Cutting the corporate tax rate is not going to create jobs. (Full disclosure here: I am not an economist and barely survived Econ. 101, but that lack of background doesn't stop other people from asserting uninformed opinions so I see no reason why it should stop me.) Companies are shutting plants and laying off employees because nobody is buying. Demand has dried up. These companies aren't going to open up those plants and hire back employees to sell goods nobody is buying just because their corporate income tax rate has dropped.

The other suggestion, the payroll tax holiday, is disastrous on three grounds. First, it is another frontal attack on the funding of the social security system which, of course, Republicans still want to kill. Second, these cuts can mean to many workers a significant (two-three figures) increase in take-home pay. That is sizable enough to risk that much of it will be hoarded (saved or used to pay down debt) rather than spent. Third, it will hurt like hell when it is reinstated.

And that last point is the most important reason for objecting to Republican tax cuts. Those tax cuts, whether for payroll taxes or income taxes or whatever, will have to go up when the crisis is over. And that will give Republicans the club they love to use: liberal Democrats are raising your taxes to pay for all those awful liberal programs. And probably no tax increase would be felt as strongly by ordinary citizens as the reinstatement of payroll taxes after a 6-month or 1-year holiday.

BIPARTISANSHIP REPUBLICAN-STYLE

2009-02-04T20:22:00.000-08:00

Thanks to the fact that Obama, Pelosi and Reid have been MIA when it comes to selling the stimulus package or defending how much they've given in to Republicans, Republicans have managed - with the help of our clueless media - to define "bipartisanship" as doing things the Republican way. It seems never to have occurred to CNN, NBC, ABC, CBS, etc., etc., that "bipartisanship" means BOTH parties have to give a little. None of them is asking what Democratic ideas Republicans have accepted.

Now, I've spent hours watching C-SPAN hearings. There have been a number of bipartisan amendments. But the Republican amendments that have failed have been the same old Republican ideas (you know, the counterpart of the partisan "liberal pet projects"): across-the-board income tax cuts (5%), reducing the corporate income tax, a tax holiday from payroll taxes, tax credits for business, etc., etc. And the projects they oppose are the projects they've always opposed.

But the ordinary American watching cable wouldn't know this. And it isn't all the fault of those overpaid mannequins who pretend to be journalists. Democrats are not doing what they should be doing.

PELOSI AND REID - MIA AS USUAL

2009-02-04T20:19:00.000-08:00

Has anybody noticed how the Republicans have hijacked the debate over the stimulus package? Well, I have. And Rachel Madow has. But Pelosi and Reid? Not so much.

Now, Reid's being MIA isn't so hard to understand. He's a Democratic Senator from the Republican state of Nevada and he's up for reelection in two years. And, oh yes, Tom Daschle, the former Democratic Majority Leader of the Senate and another Democrat in a Republican state (South Dakota) lost his reelection. So Reid doesn't want to upset his Republican voters. (Why Democrats would elect as Majority Leader a man beholden to Republican voters is a matter only a political shrink could explain.)

But Pelosi's inability or unwillingness to fight Republicans is harder to understand. She comes from a liberal district in one of the most liberal cities in the country, San Francisco. Yet, since she became Majority Leader, bipartisanship (read: appease the Republicans at all costs) has for her, as for Obama, been a mantra. She apparently believes, even after an overwhelming Democratic win in Nov. 2008, that the Republicans and Independents who switched parties really still believe in Republican policies. Republicans play to their base. Pelosi not only ignores hers, she is so unsure, apparently, of the rightness of Democratic ideas, that she believes she can't sell them to the very people who voted for them.

What did we ordinary voting Democrats ever do to deserve two such lily-livered Congressional leaders?

Harry Reid Explained

2009-01-15T14:20:00.000-08:00

As I've said before, Harry Reid is quite possibly the weakest Majority Leader of either party in the last half century, at least.

Now I know why. He's not only a Conservative Democrat. He comes from a Republican state where his re-election is not guaranteed. In short, he has to be careful not to seem "too" Democratic if he wants to stay in office.

Fine. I can understand the instinct for self-preservation. But that does not explain why the Democratic Senate first elected him as Majority Leader and then re-elected him. Except, of course, that Senate Democrats (like the equally cowardly House Democrats) are so afraid of being labeled "partisan" or "liberal" by the media that they don't want a "real" Democrat in the position.

I, quite frankly, am not happy with a Democratic President who thinks that partisanship, action on behalf of a set of firm beliefs, is wrong. That both Pelosi* in the House and Reid in the Senate share this view does not bode well for Democrats like me who believe in traditional Democratic values.

*Pelosi's cowardice and weakness, even with a Democratic majority, has no similar excuse. She comes from a reliably liberal district in one of the most liberal cities in the country.

Burris - the new Junior Senator - Media Missing in Action

2009-01-15T14:09:00.000-08:00

One of the things that has most amazed me about the Burris case has been the kid gloves with which this man has been treated.

Everybody, including Harry Reid (not that his judgment means much), insists that Burris is untainted,is a good man.

But Burris ran for Governor 3 times and lost. He also, I believe, ran for Senator and lost. In short, the people of Illinois have repeatedly rejected him.

He knew that the Governor has been accused of trying to sell the Senate seat. He knew that the Senate did not want to seat an appointee of that Governor. But he wanted to be Senator so much that he, apparently (I read or heard this somewhere), put himself forward for the position and accepted the nomination. Think about that.

One can draw only two conclusions about Burris the man, based on this action. Either he is so ambitious, so desirous of becoming Senator that he doesn't care how it looks or how he gets the position or his ethics are so weak (perhaps non-existent) that he simply can't understand why the character of the person appointing him, and the situation under which the appointment was made, taints the appointment. One can't help but wonder what other ethical matters he will be blind to.

Rich & Holder - Missing the Point

2009-01-15T13:57:00.000-08:00

First, in spite of all the ink and air time spent on this issue, I still honestly don't know why the Republicans think the pardon of Rich was the equivalent of a high crime.

Who was this guy? What was the pardon for (what crimes)? Who requested the pardon?

Beyond those important basics, however, Holder's answers appear evasive because he has focused on the fact that the decision "was a mistake". He made assumptions that he should not have made. Etc., etc.

Holder seems to assume that the members of the committee already know all the details (probably true) but the public audience probably doesn't.

What he needs to do and what he has yet to do is to explain how the the process works, how the issue came before him and what criteria he used to approve the pardon. Just saying that he made a mistake or that he made erroneous assumptions, however correct as far as those statements go, simply makes him sound evasive.

I, BTW, believe this is all a red herring raised by Republicans who still hate Bill Clinton and who want to cause trouble for Obama (for whom I did not vote), and seriously doubt that it deserves the attention it has been given (given all the pardons issued by all past Presidents), but it does bother me that Holder seems so locked into planned responses that he is unable to hear what he is being asked and to respond in a way that would explain why he acted as he did.

Sen. Corker - Very Effective and Very Dangerous: My Way or the Highway

2008-12-12T13:11:00.000-08:00

1. Corker will run for President.

2. He has proven himself to be incredibly effective as a politician, both in getting what he wants and in putting a positive spin on it. If only Reid had half his skill, the Democratic minority, and majority, might actually have accomplished something these past years. But Conservative commitment to their goals remains much stronger than Democratic commitments to their values. And Ron Gettelfinger is vastly outgunned and out maneuvered by Corker and, quite frankly, does not know how to sell his case. (He continually talks in generalities rather than in the specifics that would strengthen his case).

3. What makes him effective? He clothes his ideological rigidity in a combination of southern charm and seeming reasonableness.

4. What did Corker do that was so effective? First, he put the blame squarely on the shoulders of the UAW by insisting that only 3 words stood between success and failure. And to him, of course, those 3 words were reasonable. He also lied in his news conference, something easy to do because our media don't bother to watch C-SPAN. In the interview I saw on C-SPAN, he insisted that "any date certain" would have been fine. On the floor, he insisted on a date in 2009. In the caucus, apparently, he had insisted on Mar. 31, 2009. And it was "parity" not "competitive" that I heard on the floor. It didn't occur to any of his interviewers to suggest that if it was "only 3 words", he could have ceded. After all, that's what bargaining is: give and take. There were, to him, three key provisions. The UAW accepted the others. But 2 out of 3 wasn't good enough. So Corker essentially told the UAW that "it's my way or the highway", and he sold it in such a way that nobody realized that he, not the UAW, was even more guilty of refusing to bend.

Corker and his fellow Southern Senators made clear during the hearings, which I also watched on C-SPAN ( again, something that nobody at CNN or MSNBC or NBC apparently ever thinks to do)), that they opposed bailouts in general and this one in particular. Corker was forceful in his opinion that Chrysler was just waiting to be bought (rather obviously true) and that GM was doomed to fail. Give him credit for being one of the few Senators/Reps. in the hearings who realized that Ford did not need a loan but simply a line of credit and, then, only in case the recession was even worse than anticipated or one of the other companies failed.

I suspect that those "3 words" were added specifically so the Republicans could torpedo the legislation and blame it on the UAW. And Corker has pretty much succeeded in both objectives. Which is why he is somebody that Democrats should both fear and emulate.

What else was Corker able to do? He was able to laugh at the idea of a "Car Czar" while at the same time taking upon himself the role of a "Car Czar" and a bankruptcy judge. Corker turned himself into judge and jury. He alone understands the reality and he alone knows the solutions. For a man who, at other times, argues strongly against Government micro-management of business (esp. when it comes to environmental matters), that is exactly what he did. And our useless media, of course, let him get away with it.

One last thing: he managed to hide the fact that his plan required GM and Chrysler to prove their viability in 3 months. Given the state of the economy, that is incredibly unrealistic. It was just another way to ensure that GM and Chrysler would fail - and the failure would be seen to be theirs alone, not something helped along the way by the Southern Republicans.

FDR Didn't End the Depression: WWII Did

2008-12-01T17:43:00.000-08:00

Both liberal and conservative economists seem to agree that WWII ended the Depression. But conservative economists go further. They say that FDR's actions (esp. the WPA programs) were, at best, useless & a waste of money or, at worst, the reason the Depression lasted until WWII.

I see two problems with this. First: the value of the work programs. I'm sure there was some waste, fraud and abuse. But a lot of today's infrastructure, like Eisenhower's highway system in the 1950s, was built under FDR.

Second, they ignore the "why" in the "WWII ended the Depression". I am NOT an economist (I barely survived the basic Econ. courses in graduate school), but, from an economic point of view, what did WWII do?

Well, it took millions of young men our of the civilian labor force and put them to work for the government. Then the government spent a lot of money on all the manufactured goods needed to run the war. It was government money that paid for the planes and tanks and uniforms and food and weapons, etc. And who produced these goods? Well, with a lot of the men doing government work, a whole new class of workers, women, went into the work force. I don't know what the combined number of new military men and new women in the workforce was, but certainly the result was the largest government works program in U.S. history.

So, the Conservatives draw the wrong conclusion. Yes, WWII ended the Depression. But it was precisely because it created an even greater expansion of Federal spending in the private sector. FDR's programs didn't work the miracle because they simply were not big enough.

Bill as Senator?

2008-12-01T17:11:00.000-08:00

One of the dumbest speculations, among the endless CDS speculations, is the current gossip about Bill's being appointed to fill out Hillary's term. Apparently, this would solve some political problems for the Governor of New York and keep Bill "out of trouble".

The precedent? Adams. Would he do it? They say "why not"?.

First, it's unlikely that two Presidents could be more different than Adams & Clinton. Second, I suspect that the Congress in Adams' time was a more interesting place to work than the Congress today.

Think about it (something none of the talking heads talking about this have done): Bill Clinton as a junior Senator, stuck on unimportant subcommittees where he will be given two minutes to ask a question?

And can one imagine Clinton in a Senate in which Reid is the Majority Leader? Bill, one of the best arm-twisters around?

It is ridiculous and illustrates nothing so much as the utter vacuousness that characterizes the media, even the "big" media, today.

It's Always Hillary's Fault

2008-11-20T20:31:00.000-08:00

Surfing into Anderson 360 tonight, I discover that the reason Obama hasn't nominated a Treasury Secretary is that Hillary hasn't made up her mind. Apparently, The Chosen One, the reincarnation of Lincoln and FDR can't do two things at the same time.

And, of course, Obama's super secret, efficient, disciplined, loyal staff are angry because Hillary's people are responsible for all the leaks. I guess they're responsible for the leaks about the Attorney General and Homeland Security Secretary and Commerce Secretary, too?

Now, let me see. Obama, President-Elect, CIC, Leader of the Free World, can't "handle" the Clintons. Because, you see, he can't ask her formally to take the position unless he knows she will say yes (um, so what exactly happened with Pritzker? Did he just sort of hint around, like, um, maybe, do you think, maybe, .... and when Pritzker shook her head "no", that was it?) But, he can still, of course, ask Bill to lay bare his entire financial history - just in case, of course, he decides to offer her the job.

I'm not sure who comes out the worst here. These idiotic talking heads or Obama. Couldn't he, like, you know, just issue a statement that he hasn't offered anybody any position in his cabinet and will issue a press statement when he does? No? Too easy?

Quite frankly, the longer this goes on, the more I wonder why Hillary would even want to be in this amateur's cabinet. It's a dead end job, as far as I can tell. She wouldn't be able to run for the Senate again, unless, of course, she moved to another state. Governor? Maybe.