the defeatists!

Arithmetic and History

 Many years ago, I was taking a course at one of the more advanced Army schools. Due to the nature of the material, the ability to use a calculator and do some relatively basic algebra -- plugging numbers into formulas and hitting enter -- was critical. Some of us were very capable, most of us were capable, a few were pretty hopeless. I was in a study group for one of these things, and prefaced the explanation of something with "It's algebra..." My buddy's response was "I can do algebra. That's not a problem. It's all these Xs and Ys..."

So, it strikes a note with me when I read a piece from the Kennedy School of Government that provides the best explanation of why Reagonomics can't work and why the deficit cannot be reduced by cutting spending. Jeff Frankel is a MIT Economics PhD over at the Kennedy School, and he sees the problem as lying at the intersection of arithmetic and history. Because of history -- poorly understood history poorly remembered -- we are incapable of having rational discussions with the Tea Party faithful and their captives on Capital Hill. Not only don't the numbers work, the numbers can't work...without some shared sacrifice and significant increase in revenue. How do you get revenue? You get it by taxation. How do you get money from taxation? You get it from the people who have the money to tax...

Frankel's explanation is so simple, and shows some of our government accounting problems. Remember Al Gore and the "Lock Box" for social security. Didn't happen. Social Security payroll taxes come in, they get processed and they get paid out. The difference between what comes in --rougly 15% of payroll nationwide -- and what gets sent to the recepients goes into bonds. The money gets spent as part of general revenue. It's been that way for a long time -- T-Bills are the safest investments you can find, unless you're some clown like Glenn Beck, envisioning a barter system based on freeze-dried food, .308 ammunition, and gold. Without that source of revenue, bad things happen. You could increase the revenue here by increasing the percentage or increasing the amount of income that gets taxed. Most of us don't ever really see ceiling on this; but, if we were to raise it to $200K, the trust fund would be solvent for a long time. And, since it's solvent now barring Beck's various prophecies coming true until 2050 or so, things would be fine for most foreseeable event horizons. 

If you think Beck and his ilk are not demented, stop reading this, write a comment to the effect that I'm obviously a Jew-loving liberal tool of the Israelis and the Commies, and save yourself some irritation. However, Frankel does the best job I've ever seen in laying out the problem. If you either don't think Beck has access to some revealed wisdom or you're willing to be persuaded, Frankel's piece is more than worth your time.

Total federal spending is $3 ½ trillion in round numbers.    That spending number minus tax revenue left a budget deficit of $1.3 trillion in fiscal year 2010.   Putting aside a very small number of genuinely sincere libertarians like Ron Paul, most Republican congressmen want to exempt defense spending and senior-related spending (Social Security and Medicare), and to make all the cuts in non-defense discretionary spending.  (That was their official platform in November’s election.)     How much would you have to trim non-defense discretionary spending to balance the budget?   Start — as many people would like to – by eliminating all foreign aid.  Contrary to what they think, foreign aid is of course only about 1% of total outlays.  Next imagine zeroing out all of veterans’ benefits, all federal spending on education, and all federal spending on transportation.   That includes programs so popular with their beneficiaries that the congressmen voting for them would be virtually certain to lose re-election.  But some of the freshmen say they are willing to pay that price, so let’s go full speed ahead.   We are only up to 6% of total outlays.   Now eliminate every dime of non-defense discretionary spending: parks, weather service, food safety, SEC, FBI, border patrol, politicians’ salaries… everything.  Do you think that closes the gap?    It only gets you half way there!   Domestic discretionary spending is not where the big bucks are.

The arithmetic in fact works out quite simply.    Of the $3 ½ trillion in federal outlays, just under 1/5 is non-defense discretionary spending.   Another 1/5^th is defense.   Social security is the third 1/5^th.    Medicare is the fourth 1/5^th (slightly less now, but far far more in the future).    The last 1/5^th is interest on the debt (which will also grow enormously in the future) plus other entitlements.    Numerically speaking, we would have to eliminate not just all non-defense discretionary spending, but also all defense.  Or else all social security spending (but we would have to continue somehow collecting the payroll taxes that are supposed to fund it!).   Or else all Medicare spending.   The unmistakable implication is that a solution to our long-term fiscal problems will have to involve some sharing of sacrifice among each of these five categories.    And increased tax revenue as well.    

Admittedly, the Republican leadership’s goal for the current fiscal year was to reduce domestic spending by “only” $100 billion.   But the freshmen’s position is that this goal is not enough.  (At the same time, they are unable to come up with that much in specific cuts that they are willing to put their names to, for the same familiar reasons.  Domestic discretionary spending is not where the money is.)

A reasonable medium term goal might be to raise taxes as a share of GDP at least to 18%, what it was during the Reagan administration, and to lower spending to 23%, what it was then as well.   Of course these two numbers still leave us with a deficit of 5% of GDP, which was Reagan’s record.  It will take us much longer to get back to the fiscal rectitude of Clinton.   It is not possible to eliminate the need to borrow, in the short run. 

Very simple. The numbers don't work without some sort of new revenue. The ideas floating around Capital Hill and the various statehouses that don't include some increase in revenue from increased taxes are silly. Add some more revenue to the pie, and you'd be amazed at how quickly everything gets back to something sustainable for the long run.  

Not sure or want to play around. Frankel has links to a site at the NY Times and The Program for Public Consultation.  I've played with both, and the results are interesting. If we went back to the Clinton Tax Rates, we'd have money for a lot of things we need to do while paying down the deficit and the debt. However, spending cuts alone don't get there.

Paul Krugman is another of the smart people that I look to when I'm trying to understand economic issues. Krugman's column today makes the point that cutting spending is just a bad idea...we're nowhere near recovery, job numbers are awful and the economy is fragile. The worst idea is to pull money out of the economy but cutting government spending. Increased federal spending has been offset by the disasters happening in state and local government.There's a net loss in jobs, which means there is a net loss in consumer spending. What's about to happen in Wisconsin is being played out in lots of places across the country -- not the boneheaded union busting, but the layoffs and impoverishment of the middle class. Krugman slashes and burns through the Republican argument, but he does it with a rapier and a laser. What they're saying is empirically wrong and doesn't work -- outside of that, great idea. Sounds good on Fox News. This is, of course, the sort of silliness that got us here and threatens the future.

The clear and present danger to recovery, however, comes from politics — specifically, the demand from House Republicans that the government immediately slash spending on infant nutrition, disease control, clean water and more. Quite aside from their negative long-run consequences, these cuts would lead, directly and indirectly, to the elimination of hundreds of thousands of jobs — and this could short-circuit the virtuous circle of rising incomes and improving finances.

Of course, Republicans believe, or at least pretend to believe, that the direct job-destroying effects of their proposals would be more than offset by a rise in business confidence. As I like to put it, they believe that the Confidence Fairy will make everything all right.

But there’s no reason for the rest of us to share that belief. For one thing, it’s hard to see how such an obviously irresponsible plan — since when does starving the I.R.S. for funds help reduce the deficit? — can improve confidence.

Beyond that, we have a lot of evidence from other countries about the prospects for “expansionary austerity” — and that evidence is all negative. Last October, a comprehensive study by the International Monetary Fund concluded that “the idea that fiscal austerity stimulates economic activity in the short term finds little support in the data.”

And do you remember the lavish praise heaped on Britain’s conservative government, which announced harsh austerity measures after it took office last May? How’s that going? Well, business confidence did not, in fact, rise when the plan was announced; it plunged, and has yet to recover. And recent surveys suggest that confidence has fallen even further among both businesses and consumers, indicating, as one report put it, that the private sector is “unprepared to fill the hole left by public sector cuts.”

Arithmetic and history; empirical facts and context. Worth keeping in mind...

Bad news travels like wildfire and good news travels slow...

Sweating in the ghetto with the wetbacks and the poor
The rats have joined the babies who are sleeping on the floor
Now wouldn't it be a riot if they really blew their tops?
But they got too much already and besides we got the cops
And I'm sure it wouldn't interest anybody
Outside of a small circle of friends.-- Phil Ochs

The problem becomes, of course, being able to tell the difference between the two, good news and bad news. Or, becoming aware that they exist in the face of cultural degradation and silliness. This is a day of universally WTF important stories that we are missing because of the Charlie Sheen phenomonon. We've got years of reruns of 2.5 Idiots and there's always Hot Shots and Navy Seals. Stop worrying about Charlie, oh great media machine and pay attention to the things that are going to get the rest of us killed. Oh Tempora, Oh Mores! as that great Italian defense attorney Cicero said in about 64 BCE. Of course, he was talking about viciousness and corruption; we need to add stupidity, greed and the inability to connect the dots. Caesar, Pompey, Cicero, Cato, Crassus, Brutus -- they could all connect the dots. Our politicians and our leaders - not so much.

First of all, there's the latest debacle in Afghanistan. Now, the Afghans are big on blood feuds, revenge killing, pederasty and goats. So, the accidental killing of a bunch of kids herding goats and getting firewood is not just a tragedy, it's symptomatic of everything that's wrong with this war...

Look, it's a low tech place, and kids play while they're doing choirs. See the helicopter and run around -- and, some door gunners think, "Oh shit, Taliban..."  and ratatattat. We've ruined the lives of Afghan families, which will piss off extended families and result in payment of blood money and probably American blood. Shoot my neighbor's kid from the sky while he's doing the equivalent of raking leaves, and I might be predisposed to not want to help you do anything but get the fuck out of my country...Inshallah! If we're worried about Psyops, well, this kind of shit that happens entirely too often is why we can expect no real results from Psyops. It a low tech place, in tough terrain, with a warlike populace who are pretty good at not going along with strangers. It's noble of Petraeus to go and apologize but to the Afghans invovled, he's just another outsider. It's his fault...they may understand that. They won't get accidents happen; collateral damage is inevitable.

I'm all for orderly withdrawals, since the alternative is a fighting retreat, but it needs to happen now...not in two or three or ten years.

The German magazine Der Spiegel reported on its Web site that the suspect was carrying a large amount of ammunition when arrested. The police said they could not confirm that report.A man whose office is near the site of the shooting, speaking on condition of anonymity to protect his business, said witnesses told him that before opening fire the gunman shouted “God is great” in Arabic. --NY Times

Then, there's the murder of two Airmen on their way to Afghanistan as they're getting on a bus at Frankfurt's international airport. The Politzei haven't identified the guy yet,but it appears that the guy works there. The Times points out that there have been no major terrorist attacks in Germany but states that they've been on alert for a while expecting some. The media claims that the guy is a Kosovar who was born in Germany...citizenship in Germany not being easily available to non-Germans. There are about a million Turks, Armenians, and every other type of non-German living in and born in Germany legally who have no citizenship rights. Supposedly the guy got into an argument with the GIs...ok, I can see that. What I don't see is why or how the guy had a gun...Germany has really stringent gun control laws. This non-citizen would not have come close to getting a pistol permit. Hell, he'd have had trouble getting a permit for a sword...I wandered all over that country, and never felt nervous. I stayed away from the docks and red light zones, and saw no evidence of street crime. I recall being on "Courtesy Patrol" -- an oddball Army thing where some NCOs or Officers would put on their Class A or B uniforms and go someplace that soldiers might go and get drunk and in trouble, so they could exert a calming influence at best and at worst haul the bastards back to the barracks. Normal vehicle was a jeep with radio, driver and two NCOs. When I did it, I told the senior guy  to man the phone/radio, and we took a five ton truck so if there were drunks, we'd have room to carry them. Anyway, this particular adventure was at a major Beer Festival in Wurzburg, my favorite city in, oh, the universe. We were standing around over by the main Politzei area, and some belligerent German drunks were dragged into the shed that the cops were using. A huge cop came out, smiled at us, and shut the door, standing against it and bracing his back against the door. Bodies proceeded to slam against walls for a few minutes -- I am not exaggerating to say the walls seemed to bulge. Next, the cop opens the doors and helps drag the drunks, now docile, out and away...I also was involved as a witness and as a translator a couple of times when the Kriminal Polizei were involved. Guns were drawn, and people were very cooperative. Whole Miranda thing not an issue over there. So, while I'm not naive enough to think that there were no guns in the hands of thugs when I was there, I am pretty sure that this indicates that they've lost the bubble on arms trafficking there. Expect more. Why exactly are we flying people into Frankfurt to move them on to Ramstein AFB before flying them to Afghanistan anyway? The piece mentions that we've downsized a lot in Europe, that there are now only 50000 total Army, Air Force, Marines and Coast Guardsmen there. I guess my thought is "Why are there any beyond essential liaison with our allies?" And, if our allies really want us there, why aren't they paying for it? I know that there are overcrowding issues at some US installations, but unmothballing a few and putting soldiers there would make more sense than not. And, create jobs here, by the way. Turning the Yakima Firing Range into an Afghanistan style joint readiness training center would work great...it looks like Afghanistan, and has basically the same sort of weather...hellish.

Then, there's Dr Doom and his merry Gang of Tricksters. Nouriel Roubini sent me this today... Download Gmail - Fwd RGE's Wednesday Note - Fallout From the MENA Days of Rage - March 2, 2011 - [email protected] The good doctor and his think tank are pretty expensive to subscribe to, but I do get some of his newsletters, and his team sent one today that was just marvelous to behold. Here's a bit...MENA is Roubiniese for Middle East-North Africa, by the way.

As RGE Chairman Nouriel Roubini examined in a recent piece, the economic costs of MENA unrest extend far beyond the region, with rising commodity prices the most significant linking factor. A further increase in oil prices would pose a significant downside risk to global growth. We expect demand destruction for fuel products to occur at lower oil prices than in 2008, as U.S. and EU consumers are more stretched. Fuel importers will suffer from higher prices, and global central bankers will face a more difficult job in setting policy. Countries like Turkey and South Korea with extensive goods and services exports to MENA countries could face two challenges from the region’s disruption: a stall in their projects with the countries and a deterioration of external balances from an increase in oil prices.

Beyond food and fuel security risks, the waves of unrest are washing up on the European continent in the form of increased numbers of migrants to southern EU nations. Already, Italy has reported an increase in Tunisians in Lampedusa, and some of the 100,000 Libyans flooding into Tunisia and Egypt may well try to make their way north. An increase in illegal migrants and refugees could stress the broader EU, which is still suffering from high unemployment rates and fiscal austerity...

Here's my problem. Austerity has been proven to not work, to drive down GDP and to screw things up in general. Yet, we have an entire Republican party devoted to saying "we're broke...: Well, not really. What we have is a revenue problem -- we need higher taxes at the state, county, municipal and federal levels. And, the immediate return to the Clinton Tax Rates for the richest makes sense, but we actually need a lot more. As the Wisconsin debacle has shown, we've got issues with reality; nobody likes to pay taxes and have government waste; however, we kinda like things like schools, libraries, roads, sewers and bridges. It takes money to build those things...I suppose we could anticpate our inevitable downfall and institute an annual corvee but that would be incredibly stupid. Expect the Tea Party to immediately endorse it...

Now, Robert Rubin has pointed out repeatedly, that the concentration of wealth at the top end does a disservice to the top end. The Koch Brothers probably think that their ideology makes sense and we're just dealing with hiccups, but not distributing money from the people who have money to do the things that need to be done in society while trying to take it from those who do not have so much money is pretty damn stupid. Now, I'm not rich enough to squirrel away a lot of my money in municipal bonds or state bonds. These are generally tax free, if you can afford to buy them. Earnings from Munis or State bonds are not tax free if part of a mutual fund. Hedge fund managers and portfolio managers love these things for salting away excess wealth -- no risk and the lack of tax makes them more attractive.So trust funds, pension funds, insurance agencies, low risk mutual funds and so on love them. They're considered almost as safe as T-Bills and you get better returns.

So when Doctor Roubini and his band of gypsies tell the Wall Street Journal that Municipals will probably drop about $100 Billion in defaults this year, that's hardly a good thing. It appears, from the Journal's piece that they regard this as being good news that at some level we've got disaster fatigue. The loss of a $100 billion worth of wealth will shaft investors, but will do a number on any municipality or state that happens to have to default. Or, appears threatened. Interest rates will shoot through the roof; when Texas state bonds are accorded junk bond status along with California and a few other places, what the hell, over? Pensions will go under, investors will go crazy, and some one will come up with the great idea of bailing out Hedge Funds...we can't let a trillion dollar industry go south, can we? Think of the children!

And, of course, the hits keep on coming. The Dems cave on this two week funding thing, everybody with any credibility tells the House Republicans and the Tea Party and the General Public that their economic plans are based on bad math, lousy economics and general ideological paralysis of the insane. And, we continue to go merrily down the road...

To Reverend Phelps and his church. Frankly, I tend to almost always side with the Bill of Rights. Free speech should be protected at almost all costs. But, the Founders would be dumbfounded by no constraints. They tolerated a lot, because they had faith that society would punish those who went too far. Hamilton died because he said things that he'd probably said before, possibly to Burr, but this time to someone who published them. The same reasoning that brought us Citizens United and the best Congress the rich can buy has now found in favor of the Westboro "Fag-Hating, Jesus-loving" Baptist Church.

“Westboro’s funeral picketing is certainly hurtful and its contribution to public discourse may be negligible,” Chief Justice Roberts concluded. “But Westboro addressed matters of public import on public property, in a peaceful manner, in full compliance with the guidance of local officials.”

I spent my life dedicated to the cause of free speech among others. This one bothers me...a lot. The only reason that these damn things have not degenerated into blood, mud, fire and riot is that we're far too disciplined in the military and veterans communities, and far too tolerant on the left. Idealism doesn't get in the way of Clarence Thomas or Scalia. I interpret this to mean that cross-burning, which is hate speech by definition, is probably protected speech. Yea! More fun ahead...

Meanwhile, Charlie Sheen has been spotted walking down the Vegas Strip with a gun, a speedo and a feather sticking out of his ass. Oh, half the men in the US have HPV. Which, since the virus is largely assoicated with women, means that a higher percentage of women have it. Which means that maybe we should be vaccinating everybody for it, since the virus itself is not so bad, but the cancers are. Or, maybe we should just skip it. Quick -- shoot Tiger Blood Charlie with a tranquilizer gun using the Siberian White Tiger dose and test him for it!

 

 

 

Everything is fucked up and nobody goes to jail...now you know the story

Matt Taibbi has a new piece in Rolling Stone that discusses why we've yet to see anyone go to jail as a result of the various pieces of nonsense leading up to the financial meltdown. It's an interesting piece because it points out the difference between Main Street and Wall Street in a very important way -- the more harm you can do to more people, the less likely you are to be punished. Brother Schmedlap sells someone a half ounce of dope in Utah and goes to jail for six months; BOA continues to not play nice with and actually screw with it's customers and pays some fines. Nothing to see here, just move along.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

The only big money guy to get sent to jail is Madoff. Chris Matthews had a segment with Jim Cramer of CNBC this afternoon, trying to figure out why Madoff has taken to claiming that the banks and investment houses had to know what he was doing. Well, to my mind Cramer whiffed on this one...he pointed out that there was a lot of speculation about how Madoff could be registering the results he was claiming, and that Barrons, among others, discussed the possibility that he was running a Ponzi scheme. However, the SEC supposedly kept giving him a clean bill of health. Again, I'm not an economist or a banker or an expert on regulatory affairs, but if the SEC kept giving him a clean bill of health, somebody at the SEC needs to be in jail next to Madoff...

Now, I've been reading the various books about the debacle, and there have been a number of them -- well researched, well written and well documented. If I were to sum up what I've read, the problem began with the whole concept of derivatives. These investment instruments are hard to explain because they can be impossible to understand, between the jargon and the general murkiness of the effort. The general conception in the sub-prime derivatives -- the Credit Default Swaps -- was that while most of these mortgages were lousy mortgages, a very small percentage would default and result in foreclosure.  The demand would stay high, if not continue to grow exponentially, and therefore prices would continue to rise. When things started to fall apart, well, they fell apart quickly. Lots of people on Wall Street knew that the emperor was wearing no more than a striped loincloth; just nobody wanted to do anything about it.

If you listen to Barney Frank, one of the things he's proudest of is the regulation of derivatives that was included in the financial reform act. Even Jim Cramer thinks that there needs to be effective regulation and an amped up SEC. He says in his interview with Matthews that without a strong regulator, a crook can get away with just about anything. Yet, the Republicans in the house want to cut the funding for the SEC and for the Consumer Financial Protection Agency in half...as well as cut the IRS enforcement budget by half.

Ok, without strong regulations and strong enforcement, in this Ayn Randian world created by Laffler and Greenspan and Reagan and friends, the country is screwed. There used to be a concept of civic duty. Organizations and individuals were expected to share in the maintenance of the public good. We've learned that corporations --those soulless approximations of human beings with the rights of the individual with none of the risk -- have no problem dodging their responsibilities. We know that people cheat on their taxes. The Republican Party has made the screwing with the tax rules their moral equivalent of standing in front of a tank in Tiannamen Square. So, if we are going to tax at a lower rate, shouldn't we be collecting all the damn money owed? If there's no chance of being caught, lots of folks will do whatever they can here.

At some point, revenue has to increase. The states are really in a bad way of course, and it appears that the best idea the new Moses, Chris Christy of New Jersey has that is sweeping statehouses is to piss, moan, insult and condemn public employees. Ok, there's a gaggle of miserable pricks in DMV, say, and we all want to bitchslap those bastards. But, EMTs? Firefighters? Cops? Teachers? Really? That's the solution...

Anyway, Taibbi is right one target as usual, and the screaming match between Cramer and Matthews -- who appear to agree -- is illuminating and interesting on several levels.

When Brooks gets it right, it's very right indeed...

"Ideologies are for theoreticians."

Alexander Hamilton and Edmund Burke walk into a bar. Hilarity and intelligence ensue...

Every Thursday my gurus, Mr. Burke and Mr. Hamilton, get together at the Heavenly Rest to drink and talk politics. Mr. Burke prefers a whiskey and water, while Mr. Hamilton likes a good strong Sex on the Beach. This week, they ended up talking about President Obama.

David Brooks column this morning is about the internal conflict in the ranks of thoughtful conservatives and the problems inherent in our economy. I think Burke gets the last word, and Alexander Hamilton comes off as the tea party tin-foil hat wearer. But I could be wrong...

If the revenue is not sufficient for what you have to do, you grow the revenue or fail. I don't care if you're a family, a global corporation, a religious movement or a goddamn country -- you can't make money by counting it. You need money to do things...so get the money. If it requires tax increases, fine -- increase them. User fees are a way of shedding the pain. Want to cut back on the number of SUVs on the road? Tax vehicles by weight when it's time for license renewal. $25 a ton...the Suzuki Swift owner pays about $20; the HUMMV owner pays about $80. Why not?

Excess profit or windfall profit taxes work as well. Koch Industries has net revenue equal to 25% of costs. Establish a reasonable amount as reasonable income, and tax the rest at 50%. You're not taxing income, you're taxing revenue. Add a 2% VAT on luxury goods or socially interesting goods like, oh, guns, sportscars, alcohol and tobacco, clothing items over $100, sex toys, pornography, fast food,  whatever.

You know what would really help? Requiring politicians and lobbysists to tell the goddamn truth...but, that's crazy talk. Both Hamilton and Burke thought politicians were supposed to tell the truth. Hamilton's inability to tell a polite lie and eat a little crow with Aaron Burr when he knew that he'd been wrong to call Burr a variety of bad things got him killed. I find that admirable, particularly in an environment where people feel fine about just making shit up. Outside of bringing back duels, I don't have a solution but still...

Not Atlas Shrugged but Lord of the Flies...

now i was 15 in 1973, and as the years went by it dawned on me, as it dawned on a lot of folks, that there wasn't going to be a revolution. also it is a bit hard for an anarchist to contemplate the actual mechanisms and results of actual revolutions. none of the twentieth century revolutions eventuated in anything that resembled the rhetoric of the revolutionaries. and every successful revolution of the twentieth century eventuated in a totalitarian regime. and i got sidetracked of course: love, poetry, philosophy, drugs. i remained committed to the ideas, which i found in emma goldman or developed for myself, and i have tried to express them or stay true to the anti-authoritarian impulse, of which i have found over the years that i have an inexhaustible supply. but i also made some sort of peace with some sorts of authority (even my own: the hardest task).

Crispin "Bowties and ee cummings are cool" Sartwell, 12-15-2010

Way back when we first started this thing, one of my bros found a political-social index that ranked you on a left-right, libertarian-statist matrix. We all were various combinations of left-libertarians...I believe that I was the furthest to the left, and Mr. Fun was furthest to the right although more libertarian than I. Of course, that calls into question the real meaning of Libertarianism.

Well, Christopher Beam in New York Magazine has a great article on just that topic. It's kind of anti-libertarian, but only in so far as the more radical and Objectivist types push it. Reading it, I realized  that the most conservative of the founders, Hamilton and Adams were probably the most statist; Jefferson and Madison would have seemed far more liberal, in all senses of the word, as well as the least statist. Intersting how that happens...When Ron Paul accuses the Federal Reserve of covering up Roswell or whatever other nefarious doings, he is the spiritual heir not of Hamilton but of Jefferson and Andy Jackson.

The thing about libertarianism is that it's really not a left/right thing but a high/low thing. Someone who is totally libertarian is...well, possibly Crispin "Snakewalk" Sartwell, who is in fact an anarchist, a professor of Philosophy at Dickinson and owner of an extremely large and disturbing collection of pictures of John Mayall. (He also is the Stig on Top Gear -- the real one in England, not our phoney version. And a practicing Druid...) However, Crispin is far too generous and kind -- except to his students where he channels Nick Lowe and Dave Edmunds by being cruel to be kind -- to fit the extreme social libertarian mode. Crispin, as a philosopher, knows that when you carry thing to their logical extreme, they tend to warp and become illogical. Light bends in atmospheres, and ideas bend in connection with reality. Pure light and pure ideas are interesting concepts, but what mainly of Platonic importance; we can argue about the essence of libertarianism or of light in the abstract -- however, getting things done and maybe getting some ambient lighting in the cave would be more illuminating. We can argue about Orcs all we want, but it's of little practical use unless you're an animator, a writer or a fan of Atlas Shrugged...Crispin, far more articulate than I, puts it well, as he always does even when (or perhaps especially when) I disagree with him.

 

The New York Magazine article nails that aspect of libertarianism really well --

Consider the social side of Libertopia. It’s no coincidence that most libertarians discover the philosophy as teenagers. At best, libertarianism means pursuing your own self-interest, as long as you don’t hurt anyone else. At worst, as in Ayn Rand’s teachings, it’s an explicit celebration of narcissism. “Man’s first duty is to himself,” says the young architect Howard Roark in his climactic speech in The Fountainhead. “His moral obligation is to do what he wishes.” Roark utters these words after dynamiting his own project, since his vision for the structure had been altered without his permission. The message: Never compromise. If you don’t get your way, blow things up. And there’s the problem. If everyone refused to compromise his vision, there would be no cooperation. There would be no collective responsibility. The result wouldn’t be a city on a hill. It would be a port town in Somalia. In a world of scarce resources, everyone pursuing their own self-interest would yield not Atlas Shrugged but Lord of the Flies. And even if you did somehow achieve Libertopia, you’d be surrounded by assholes.(AXE Emphasis Added)

Beam earlier makes the point that a radically libertarian reading of the Constitution probably is closest to the original intent of the Founders. However, that original intent or idea had all sorts of provisos about the common good, the general welfare, justice and so on. Thus there was room to evolve, and the government has expanded in order to establish justice, ensure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense and promote the general welfare. Does it go too far at times? Yeah...but, in a libertarian world, a truly libertarian world, there is no agency to really do those things. Beam points out that out and does it exceptionally well...Citing a former Cato Institute Wonk who left because he was either too intellectually pure or not pure enough, Brink Lindsey, who says that "The dominant strain of libertarianism these days is—and I’m not using these words in any kind of pejorative sense—radical and utopian,” he says that mainstream libertarianism is pretty far out there.

Libertarian minarchy is an elegant idea in the abstract. But the moment you get specific, the foundation starts to crumble. Say we started from scratch and created a society in which government covered only the bare essentials of an army, police, and a courts system. I’m a farmer, and I want to sell my crops. In Libertopia, I can sell them in exchange for money. Where does the money come from? Easy, a private bank. Who prints the money? Well, for that we’d need a central bank—otherwise you’d have a thousand banks with a thousand different types of currency. (Some libertarians advocate this.) Okay, fine, we’ll create a central bank. But there’s another problem: Some people don’t have jobs. So we create charities to feed and clothe them. What if there isn’t enough charity money to help them? Well, we don’t want them to start stealing, so we’d better create a welfare system to cover their basic necessities. We’d need education, of course, so a few entrepreneurs would start private schools. Some would be excellent. Others would be mediocre. The poorest students would receive vouchers that allowed them to attend school. Where would those vouchers come from? Charity. Again, what if that doesn’t suffice? Perhaps the government would have to set up a school or two after all.

And so on. There are reasons our current society evolved out of a libertarian document like the Constitution. The Federal Reserve was created after the panic of 1907 to help the government reduce economic uncertainty. The Civil Rights Act was necessary because “states’ rights” had become a cover for unconstitutional practices. The welfare system evolved because private charity didn’t suffice. Challenges to the libertopian vision yield two responses: One is that an economy free from regulation will grow so quickly that it will lift everyone out of poverty. The second is that if somehow a poor person is still poor, charity will take care of them. If there is not enough charity, their families will take care of them. If they have no families to take care of them—well, we’ll cross that bridge when we get there.

Of course, we’ll never get there. And that’s the point. Libertarians can espouse minarchy all they want, since they’ll never have to prove it works.

It's also worth noting that we basically tried to do all the stuff noted above and none it worked. When every bank printed money, it didn't work. My "Bank of AXE" fifty dollar bill might not work so well in Orange Country where they're mainly using "Bicycle Sites Bank" money. If I say I have a bank, I can print money...yeah, didn't work in the 1800s, and won't work now. Private Toll Roads as opposed to public roads? Didn't work. Private charities -- with a severly weakened government safety net, they're in trouble. Eliminate it, and have you seen Angela's Ashes recently? One can argue that privatization of natural monopolies is an example of extreme libertarianism, and I think that -- if we consider Enron as a great example of this kind of thinking -- one would be right and establish Beam's position of true minarchy would result in being surrounded by greedy assholes.

Government should provide that which can not be provided equitably or adequately by the private sector. For example, the Food and Drug Administration outsources the responsibility to review research proposals for human subjects in clinical trials to Institutional Review Boards. That works reasonably well, except that the people paying for the review are...the people who are trying to get the trials done. I used to work for one of those boards, and frankly, I found there to be a serious disconnect between the idea of making money reviewing the ethical standards of a research proposal and then taking money from the people you're reviewing. In no way do I question the integrity of the organization -- far from it. There was a motive in making certain that the research proposal conformed to and that the research was then conducted in strict accordance to the rules -- nobody likes to be sued for gross negligence or go to jail for corruption. Since the airwaves are now crowded with commercials for various law firms that talk about suing for serious side-effects, the big Pharmaceutical companies don't want anything to screw them down the road; approval of shody proposals would result in bad research, risk to subjects and possibly huge damages.

By basically outsourcing this responsibility -- approving research as meeting FDA requirements -- the FDA was putting responsibility for that piece of the approval process  in hands that made sense and that had a strong economic motive to do a good job. However, if you outsource operations of a major airport to the private sector or even sell it to the private sector you are guaranteed problems if there is a crunch between regulation and requirements versus profitability. If you like spending days with the several thousand of your closest strangers waiting for someone to get the runways cleared and the planes deiced, then such an arrangement would be right in your comfort zone. However, if you're not insane, you want the people making decisions to allocate resources to be primarily driven not by profit for shareholders but services for stakeholders. The focus of the constituencies is different -- and, the common good in this place should outweigh profit.

 

Hop aboard the dipshit express and fall in the pit full of vipers...

My brothers are all pretty much convinced that the absurdity of the last election was no big deal -- the Republicans are idiots, the Democrats are idiots, most Americans are idiots and what the hell, AXE, go play some guitar and drink so coffee and chill out, a little, ok? Well, some of my brothers in the Defeatists and assorted associated Malcontents have children. The spouse and I will leave behind...cats. If that. If I wake up in ten or twelve years and find myself spouseless and catless, I'm setting fire to everything and heading for the nearest ice flow. There's some dignity in that...I'm not killing myself, I'm just going to go watch the scenery.

However, if you've bothered to have kids, you probably care about what their future is...or, what the fuck is wrong with you? Seriously, if you aren't interested in the future of the country, the economy, the world why are you having children? Trust me, condoms are cheaper than kids. If you're going to make that sort of investment in the future, you probably ought to care about the future.

Once again, Paul Krugman who plays David Hume to my Immanuel Kant so often, provides a bit of clarity on his blog. The Republicans are proposing rules changes in the house that will make it easier to vote legislation to cut taxes while harder to add programs and far more difficult than at present to raise taxes. In other words, they're saying that so long as the deficit grows through generosity to people who don't need it, things are fine with owing all that money. The only way to cut the deficit is to cut spending...In other words, the deficit hawks are really lackies and pigeons for the nonsensical ideology of starve the beast. Krugman call them frauds. I think he's generous...being a fraud requires that you have the sense to pour piss out of a boot and not all over your own feet and rug. You pour it over some other guys feet and rug. Since most of these guys and gals aren't that rich, they're pouring it all over their own feet, their own rugs, and their children's cots.

In addition to the rules issue, the Republicans are floating the idea of passing a law to allow the states to declare bankruptcy, with the requirement that the bankruptcy judges will be prohibited from raising taxes or requiring the states to do so. The theory appears to be that being required to cut expenditures will result in the necessary re-negotiation of things like union contracts, pension agreements and so on. This will reduce the burden of those things -- the good faith and credit of the states -- on the state governments. Of course, the pensioners of New Jersey and Florida will find themselves destitute...however, as Antony says of Greeks in Rome, "Fuck 'em."

I expect that I will head off tomorrow to get the car serviced and while I wait, I may wander over to see the Coen Brothers version of True Grit. I was kind of indifferent toward it -- I always considered the Duke Wayne version a less than wonderful experience, and while I'd enjoyed the novel, I wasn't going to spend the money. However, Stanley Fish's column in the Times this morning has made me want to at least consider the argument, especially in line with the Krugman column. While Fish begins with and sees a meditation in the movie on the disconnect between heroism and virtue, I found the conflict between the issues of fairness and grace to be key in exciting my interest.

Mattie gives a fine (if terrible) example early in the novel when she imagines someone asking why her father went out of his way to help the man who promptly turned around and shot him. “He was his brother’s keeper. Does that answer your question?” Yes it does, but it doesn’t answer the question of why the reward for behaving in accord with God’s command is violent death at the hands of your brother, a question posed by the Bible’s first and defining event, and unanswered to this day.

In the novel and in the Coens’ film it is always like that: things happen, usually bad things (people are hanged, robbed, cheated, shot, knifed, bashed over the head and bitten by snakes), but they don’t have any meaning, except the meaning that you had better not expect much in this life because the brute irrationality of it all is always waiting to smack you in the face. This is what happens to Mattie at the very instant of her apparent triumph as she shoots Tom Chaney, her father’s killer, in the head. The recoil of the gun propels her backwards and she falls into a snake-infested pit. Years later, as the narrator of the novel, she recalls the moment and says: “I had forgotten about the pit behind me.” There is always a pit behind you and in front of you and to the side of you. That’s just the way it is.

The pit, for Mr. Boehner and friends, is the disconnect between what they're saying and what they're going to do. I don't know if they will be able to totally fuck up the tax code or overwhelm the Senate and the President. I suspect not -- John Boehner is too much of a politician to want to have eveything go totally south on his watch. Because, he wants another watch. However, he's at least proposing a score to march to that has traps for him. If he's able to pull the trigger, utterly slash spending while cutting revenue from the only people who will be able to afford to pay it, we're fucked. And, he may not have any choice...assumming the Democrats can overcome the tendency to move toward the middle of the divide, then we will have two years of nothing. However, if they do what is in fact natural in negotiations and in governance -- grant a concession to get a concession -- we'll have chaos. I already expect to see no infrastructure, no education funding, no increase in benefits for the 99ers, no jobs bills, no further aid for Veterans. Expect programs for seniors, children and infants to be slashed. If States are allowed to declare bankruptcy, expect greater and greater problems. These people are threatening the nation, so that their constituency of nutcases and uberrich can buy more crystal chandeliers. If the states, in some pattern of randomness start declaring bankruptcy, what exactly happens to the good faith and credit of the United States? The idea that a bankruptcy court will not be able to force a state to increase revenue -- another idea floated in this bankruptcy thing -- is just irrational nonsense. If you have a deficit that you are concerned about, you try to control your spending and to increase your income. Slashing spending is actually easier than increasing your income, because increasing income requires thought and making smart choices.

If John Boehner and Eric Cantor and Michelle Bachmann decide to do something totally nonsensical, we will be forced to depend on the good sense of the Republican Senators in conjunction with the Democrats and the courage of Barrack Obama as president and the wisdom of the Supreme Court to prevent it.

See why Crusader AXE is worried? Well, the Huntsman family and the Koch brothers will all get to buy more yachts and collections of pornography...and hell, human organs. Why not? Let the rich stockpile livers and kidneys from cops, firemen, teachers, librarians, farmers, and soldiers. What the hell -- they're not rich, and they're not needed for these people.  Boehner will be able to afford some Merlot to swill while the Capital goes up in flames while Jeanne Schmidt and Michelle Bachmann play canasta in the Lincoln Monument and shantytown...

The No Labels thing is a non-starting way to confuse things

I happen to think that people who put country first over ideology are called Democrats, for the most part. However, the meeting headlined by Bloomberg and Crisp and a guy who's Rachel Maddow's favorite Republican strategist in NYC was based on a slightly different twist. The left and the right should find ways to talk to each other. English might be a start; fact-checkers in all congressional hearings is another. However, the fact is fairly simple -- the left is more than willing to talk; the non-crazy right is more than willing to talk, but risk excommunication and loss of visitation rights if they do. There is no equivalence between Democratic "intransigence" and that of the Republicans. Nor is there an equivalent sense of entitlement. The Dems in the Bush years filabustered half as many bills in 8 years or so as the Republicans have in 2 years of the Obama Administration, which has been pretty mainstream. Actually, anchored in the absolute middle of the stream, moving neither forward nor back, nor left nor right. Well, stability and standing firm in place is good for an oil-drilling rig; it's not however a tool for survival or success in the constant firefight that contemporary politics have become.

One of the folks interviewed on the news yesterday was a Republican Congresswoman from Colorado who was wearing a Reddish Orange Cowboy hat and bore a surprising resemblance to Lucinda Williams. Maybe to Sheryl Crow on a bad day...however, she said something really interesting; the extremes of the two parties are like everybodies' doped, deranged and drunken crazy relatives who come to Thanksgiving and embarass everyone by saying outlandish things and yelling. She thought this was a bad idea.

Well, I'm trying to figure out the equivalent Democrat to Jim DeMint. John Kyl. Michelle Bachmann. The various troll dolls elected in Ohio and South Carolina. Steve King...they don't fucking exist, and if they did, they'd be marginalized very quickly as crazy. Democrats remember crazy -- 1972 was crazy. We had some insane candidates. In 1976, we had some crazy candidates. Hell, we had the first southerner since Woodrow Wilson actually win an election for President. But after that, they toned the nuttiness down a lot. Dukakis a radical? Be serious. Mondale?  A Hubert Humphrey clone. Bill Clinton? Al Gore? John Kerry? The only thing not absolutely normal about the folks who've carried banners for the party and most of the candidates in 2008 was skin color. Ideologically, Barrack Obama is to the right of John Kennedy and the left of Dwight Eisenhauer. The left has moved somewhat toward the center...and, polticially the center shifted. Barry Goldwater would be a good benchmark for the Republican left -- today's establishment Republican lines up ideologically with the historic Republican sans-coulettes. So, while I like the anology of the Lucinda look-alike, it's just not reality based. Things are worse than that...

Political parties are probably inevitable in a democracy. They consist largely of people who kind of think and want to see the same things. However, Washington in his Farewell Address warned against entangling alliances with foreign powers and the danger of faction. The authors of the Federalist Papers argured about the danger of factions. Jefferson spoke against it as did John Adams. Political Parties, whigs and tories, were bad things. Bad, Bad, Bad things. And then, low and behold, the authors of the Federalist Papers, and the 2nd and 3rd Presidents went off and...started political parties.

But, the No Labels folks do have a point...there should be a way to govern from a reasonable middle. However, the problem with moderation is that in argument with the nutcases, the nutcases prevail more often than not, because moderates tend to move toward the middle. Try it sometime in a discussion -- stake out some absurd position on an issue you don't really care about and defend it to the death -- watch the effort to placate and accommodate the extremes. By the middle. Nobody is willing to call the question and say, "You're fucking crazy!" Politics are now focused on the last quarters results; it is amazing.

I've been reading Mark Twain's Autobiography, and am amazed. Twain didn't go to Harvard or even the University of Missouri -- it didn't exist. He was educated in schools in Hannibal Missouri. He read, and he talked to people who were smarter than he was. His edited introduction to a biography of Joan of Arc makes up more than a little of the first part of the book. Dear god, the guy was like all the nuns who taught me English -- precise, nitpicking and obsessive compulsive about grammar. You have trouble reading the text because of the proofreading marks and annotations. 

Today, it's ok for people to call Barrack Obama a Socialist -- in Twain's time, anybody making the equivalent remark, calling Teddy Roosevelt a Monarchist, say -- would have been laughed out of the bar, and tavern and employed only by newspapers that appeared weekly, in towns so cut off from civilization and learning as not be able to have fish to wrap in the damn paper.

Today, they're on Fox. And, in the interest of fairness, NPR.

Sleepy old Dublin Town...oh wait, getting their Irish on!

If my cousins across the sea can get their act together and do this, maybe there's hope for us. Notice that the demographics of the people angry at the banks and rest is the same as that of the Tea Party in the United States. Says something about having good schools and making people learn math...and, note the anger at the interest rate.They've done the math...and why the hell should Greece get a better rate than Ireland? Of course, the link should take you to the Guardian's page that also has the interest rate for 30 year mortgages through the Royal Bank of Scotland...we've been robbed.

Builder Mick Wallace, who has had to lay off 100 of his workers due to the crash in the construction industry, said it was time the Irish became more militant. "We are far too quiet. We should be more like the French and get onto the streets more often. Because our politicians go over to Europe and tell the EU that our people do not demonstrate, they don't take to the streets. It's time we changed that and openly opposed what is going on," he said.

Jimmy Purdy, 77, from Dublin's Ringsend area, was at the demonstration outside Dublin's GPO – the scene of the 1916 Easter Rising. "I have lived through three recessions and I think this could be the worst one yet," he said. "I'm here because I'm angry that the EU are telling us to cut euros off the minimum wage and boss Irish workers around while the people that caused this crisis get off scot-free."

Now, Ireland has a parliamentary form of government; we do not. We're not where we are at because of Barrack Obama; we are where we at because of Alan Greenspan, Phil Graham and the election of 1994. Clinton supped with the devil and as perhaps the most sophisticated politician of the 20th and 21st centuries, used a long enough spoon that we didn't hate him as much as we should for rubbing brass cleaner on parts of the safety net. However, Obama is a political science savant -- he gets the governing part, he just doesn't get the political part. He'd be great in a Parliamentary system. He'd be like Churchill, clawing his way back into power when the other side overreached while doing the Tony Blair thing when in office. But, in our system, he forgot about the political reality -- as President, the world goes topsy turvy every two years when the Congress changes. Instead of audacity and thinking big about politics, he decided to focus on a three corner offense and a zone defense. And, he's where he is not because of Nancy Pelosi -- he's where he is because of himself, and Harry Reid.

Of the two houses, it was more critical to maintain the House than the Senate. The House is where the action is; the Senate is not. While more involved than Lords versus Commons, the filabuster and general rules of order in the Senate favor the minority unless there's a super majority. But, the House can create all sorts of havoc, and then the Senate has to stop it. Or the President has to veto it.

In a Parliamentary system, a vote of no confidence is pretty simple -- start defeating bills and the whole mess gets redone in six weeks. The Irish can go to the streets, cause panic and dismay, and something will happen. Remember that the roots of the IRA and the roots of the struggle in Ireland has a strong anti-capitalist branch...here, we've been stupid most of the time. The Republic feel in Rome not because of the populares but because of the overreaching of some of the optimates. Caesar and the boys of the XIII Legion just found it all ripe for picking, kicking and rolling over on its back...

So let it be written, so let it be done

Except, of course, that nothing is that simple...what I find interesting in this game from the Times is that it really indicates how badly the Bush tax cuts and policy fucked us all over. I'd be curious to see how those of you who are not robots or confused thinking that this is a blog about gerbils would do? Hell, the gerbil bloggers might have some reasonable ideas...

Out of the park...

  Thirty six years ago, realizing that the study of philosophy and liberal science had alienated me from the real world, I joined the Army. One would think that Barrack Obama would have had more than enough exposure to the real world to be fully grounded in it. Instead, his abstract and post ironic approach to everything has resulted in where we are at the moment. I'm all for Socratic Self-Examination and living the examined life, but Socrates refused to act and had to drink the hemlock. Plato, faced with the same problem later, left Athens, not wanting them to sin against philosophy again. Or, was it Aristotle? No real matter...

Obama channelling Grace Kelly. Since the election, I've been watching and listening to lots of people on the left whimper about how unfair life is; however, some commentators have been wondering what the hell? Jon Stewart gently scolded the President in advance, suggesting that the voters might have expected audacity instead of comity. At times, Obama has reminded me of Grace Kelly in High Noon -- there are other Quaker references available, but the whole "let's not be unpleasant, let's all try to get along, none of our concern," approach of this administration has pissed me off. It's not as if we couldn't see it coming...

For example,  Paul Krugman has chosen to once more lay out a strategy for politics as a contact sport-- explain what went wrong and what could work in the future. I have no reason to believe that this administration will do what he suggests, although if Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi have any sense and don't want to see another debacle in 2012, they should be slamming dancing the guy, with Joe Biden pogoing on his ass to get him to remember something...

When Obama won, the Democratic National Committee was run by the Vermont madman, Howard Dean. Dean famously said when asked whether he was from the liberal or the conservative wing of the party that he was from "the Democratic Wing of the Democratic Party." The party in 2008 seemed to understand that; this year not so much. I'm not going to vote for a moderate Republican unless my choice is someone like Ben Nelson. In fact, in that case I'll write in the name of one of my brothers in the Defeatists, or maybe a Malcontent from Area 51 like Cultureghost. I don't drink diet coke, I never liked light beer, and I truly dislike non-dairy creamer. IF I AM GOING TO VOTE FOR SOMEONE, I WANT THE BASTARD TO STAND FOR SOMETHING. Maybe even, something I believe in. Most Americans are the same way.

Another Democratic leader was Harry Truman. Truman was famous, according to Dylan Ratigan anyway for saying "People say I give 'em hell. I don't; I tell the truth and they call it hell." Krugman has a formula going forward...and it's worth paying attention to. In response to the complaints that the administration didn't focus on jobs, Krugman points out how the Republicans were allowed to capture the narrative. No reputable economist was satisfied with the size and scope of the stimulus...but, compromise and sweet harmony overcame good advice and facts. It is not wise to seek accord with rabid dogs, scheming slimesuckers and the insane or, Chris Matthews put it so well, the "hypnotized." Krugman has pointed out in other places that neither Geitner nor Summers were really Keynesian economists --Obama, to steal a line from Animal House trusted his frat buddies, the Deltas...he fucked up. Then, he began to endorse the thinking of the Omegas -- the Boehners, the McConnells, the Greenspans. If the Democrats thought they had a Blutarski, they were wrong...in fact, they may have had a Marmalarde running things. Krugman gets it right...

So where, in this story, does “focus” come in? Lack of nerve? Yes. Lack of courage in one’s own convictions? Definitely. Lack of focus? No.

And why would failing to tackle health care have produced a better outcome? The focus people never explain.

Of course, there’s a subtext to the whole line that health reform was a mistake: namely, that Democrats should stop acting like Democrats and go back to being Republicans-lite. Parse what people like Mr. Bayh are saying, and it amounts to demanding that Mr. Obama spend the next two years cringing and admitting that conservatives were right.

There is an alternative: Mr. Obama can take a stand.

For one thing, he still has the ability to engineer significant relief to homeowners, one area where his administration completely dropped the ball during its first two years. Beyond that, Plan B is still available. He can propose real measures to create jobs and aid the unemployed and put Republicans on the spot for standing in the way of the help Americans need.

Would taking such a stand be politically risky? Yes, of course. But Mr. Obama’s economic policy ended up being a political disaster precisely because he tried to play it safe. It’s time for him to try something different.

So, have the meeting with these guys, point out that you're still the President, and demand cooperation. Have Pelosi and Reid gear up and get as much stuff in the backlog passed as possible. If the Republicans block votes or filibuster, so be it. Publicize it, and show the nation what is actually happening. And, point out to McConnell and his crew in the Senate that filibuster reform is very possible, in fact, likely...after the new Senate takes office. Which will have a pared down, more liberal, more progressive base. And, it only takes 51 votes to pass a rules change when the Senate is seated.

Or not. I could see both parties becoming irrelevant. I think it would be a problem for the nation, doddering as we are on the issue of remaining  a world party or becoming a client state of China, but what the hell...I'll probably be dead before it all goes completely south. It won't be a great show, and it may drag on. But when you elect somebody who claims the audacity of hope as a trademark and then fritters away two years so that the next two years will be unnecessarily tough, you can't rule it out.

One other thing has irked me of late. The press has been blasting the White House for not selling its accomplishments. Well, in our Athenian Republic as advocated by the Founders and explained in the Federalist Papers, the press should have done that as a part of being fair, balanced and doing its job of informing the voters so they can make the best choices. Obviously, the framers and the authors were on crack. It amazes me that when any critical thinker realizes that the attention span and memory of  the average member of the public is about .5 nanoseconds (Ohhh, shiney!) the White House figures that its accomplishments, however historic and marvelous, but undeniably complex, will come to mind when Bob, who's wife has been laid off, kid has had to drop out of college and mother's home is being repossessed will remember that he can't be denied insurance next year or that if the kid had taken his loans out now instead of when he started, he could still be in school or that the bank did lower Mom's mortgage for six months, or that he has an extra $50 in his paycheck since they reduced payroll taxes and his wife has an extra $50 in her unemployment check. All he knows is that he's pissed off, screwed over and the people on Fox News use simple words and no big ideas. The last three Democratic Presidents -- Carter, Clinton, Obama -- have all been bright, highly educated and ultimately ineffective due to being so bright, educated and arrogant as to forget what got them there in the first place. Obama has two years to replicate Clinton and maybe fix this disaster -- we'll see.