The Empire Strikes Out

[Originally posted on goofyblog 10.13.06]

A few weeks ago, I finished last year’s Empire of Debt, written by Baltimore financial advisors Bill Bonner and Addison Wiggin. Their take on American history and current events is, to the say least, unique. They can be snarky at times and over-the-top, but the book is definitely something worth checking out.

The final page refers to their website, which has daily articles about world financial markets and events pertinent to the US. Some of their writers are visiting/living in France & Ireland right now, and there are also works on financial markets and conditions in South America & Asia.

This week the following appeared, excerpted here:

What are the serious challenges America faces? ‘Terrorism!’ comes the cry.
Terrorists are a nuisance, not a menace. We can’t think of a single major power…let alone a single empire…that was undone by terrorism.

But right now, the United States is spending a fortune on this nuisance.

The total bill for the wars and occupations in Iraq and Afghanistan is expected to top $1 trillion. The whole business is no more than an invitation to squander money and lives in a campaign against nobody-who-really-counts…an invitation the Bush administration gladly accepted!

So, we ask again - what are the serious challenges faced by the U.S.

The empire is going broke. The federal government is on the hook for some $55 to $65 trillion in expenses, beyond what it can reasonably expect in revenues.

There’s nothing especially novel about this bankruptcy. Empires usually go broke…and then they collapse - or are destroyed by enemies.

But why do thriving empires go bust? Why can’t they make a profit? Well, of course, at first they usually do. Either by force of arms or force of commerce - usually both - they grow and expand. But there must be a flaw in the human character. Once it is set on course for expansion, it doesn’t seem to know when to stop. More and more conquests lead to more and more battles…more territory to administer…and more military expenses. The United States now has more than 100 bases all over the world, and a military budget equal to that of all the rest of the world’s nations combined.

Meanwhile, institutions age and wither like old trees. Gradually, they are taken over by parasites, freeloaders, and hustlers. In military matters, the defense establishment shifts from actually defending the nation…to expanding the empire…and then to expanding itself. Contractors grow fat and rich. Politics and profits dictate which weapons are put into service, not military necessities. Even wars are chosen for reasons other than their actual military benefits. Politicians need enemies. The military/industrial complex, as Eisenhower called it, needs a raison d’etre. The people themselves need to be scared and bullied into cooperating with the imperial agenda.

George W. Bush is supposed to be a ‘conservative’ president, but he has actually expanded social spending programs more than any president in history. The old ‘conservative’ program has been corrupted by neo-conservative shills who serve the interests of the empire…along with their own interests, not those of the Old Republic.

Check out more of their writings here.

On Location - 10/06/2006

[Originally posted on goofyblog on 10.06.06]

Fall is here: breezy, sometimes rainy, then back to hot and humid, but not so hot and humid as in July. New Yorkers are already wearing sweaters and light coats, even in sunny, hot weather. Go figure.

Just finished Bob Dylan’s Chronicles, Volume 1 (there is no Volume 2—yet), which makes very little chronological sense but is engrossing. His telling of both the physical experience of being an artist and the creative process was enlightening to me. Why he did this or that, what the scene was, his reaction to other artists, etc. Great book!

I was down in the Village and mentioned I was reading the book to a guy at a bar. He said he’d been a bartender in those days that “Bobby” had lived around the corner. I asked him how much a studio apartment would go for in the area now. He said a room not even big enough for a double bed would rent for $1,700.

In the book, Dylan does finally take an apartment (just down from the bar I was in) after months of sofa-surfing: a 2-room place for $60–in 1961. That would make rental inflation about 6,000% in 45 years (you would double 2006’s 1-room price).

I was also struck by the empty (or emptier) artistic landscape Dylan found when he started out. He came to New York to do something new. There were other artists sure, but the field seemed somehow more sparse than today. An older artist I talked to recently voiced the same opinion: when he started out, an artist’s calling was rarer. I know from reading the autobiographies of directors John Houston and Elia Kazan that actor’s used to be looked down upon by society as ne’er do well’s. It wasn’t something you would do or want to aspire to unless you had a calling.

That’s all changed now. Everyone is an artist or wants to be. Dylan may not be everyone’s idea of an artist or a singer. I personally think he was most vital in the first 6 years of his recording career and after that he just lost it. Some really hate his voice and that distracts them. Whatever your opinion, his description of his creative processes is fascinating for those interested in the creative arts.

On Location 9/28/2006

[Originally posted on goofyblog on 09.28.06]

When I was 20, I was living in a residence hotel in San Francisco on Pine across the street from the Bank of America building with my girlfriend, Janice. We had been there a week when the manager asked us to leave. Why? We had been honest and told him we were not married. This should not have surprised me. All my coupled-up friends had that same difficulty when trying to rent an apartment in Berkeley and San Francisco. Most of them dealt with it by wearing phony wedding rings and lying. I didn’t think that would be an issue in a weekly hotel, but it was.
That was in 1969. In the next 5 years, that issue disappeared completely from the social horizon in the Bay Area and in other parts of the country. It was as if somehow the whole issue of couples living together had suddenly become none of anybody’s business, which is what it should’ve been always anyway. Everybody just moved on.

Or did they?
In 1966, my first girlfriend in Berkeley told me about something relatively new: birth control pills. It meant we had the freedom to have sexual relations without the onus of potential pregnancy and having to consider getting an illegal abortion. I was astonished and greatly relieved. She told me that anyone could get them at Planned Parenthood. Indeed, the times were changing.

Or were they?
A year later, a good friend of mine, Cathy, called me over to her dorm room at the new co-ed housing off-campus. She answered her door, her face red from crying. She was pregnant, but she wasn’t ready. It had been an accidental pregnancy and she was in her second year studies. Becoming a mother at this stage felt to her like the end of her ambitions and dreams. The father hadn’t been able to deal and had backed out. I agreed to go with her to Mexico so she could get an abortion. Illegal abortions were being done somewhere in the Bay Area, but we didn’t know who and where. Before I could leave with her, her boyfriend decided he needed to do the right thing—he went with her to Mexico.

In the next 5 years, abortion in California first became quasi-legal (similar to current California medical marijuana law: the pregnant woman had to go to a doctor and explain that having a child at that particular point in her life would cause significant psychological damage. The doctor was then allowed to prescribe a legal abortion.). Within a year, the Supreme Court decided Roe v. Wade, granting nationwide legality. I breathed another sigh of relief. A woman’s right to choose when to have a family or more family was just basic common sense. So glad that issue was settled!

Or was it…

Fiat Justitia, et Pereat Mundus

[Originally posted on goofyblog 9.25.06]

35 years ago, President Nixon used his executive powers to secretly drop 110,000 tons of bombs on Cambodia, instructing the pilots to falsify their flight records. He tried to cover up this by putting illegal wiretaps on journalists and other government officials who were investigating and/or leaking the details. In the name of national security, he ordered wiretaps on and had the tax records investigated of dangerous radicals like Paul Newman.

Nixon ordered the CIA to screw with Chile’s economy, then ok’ed a coup there, bringing murderous dictator Pinochet to power after democratically-elected President Allende was assassinated. He ordered the CIA to block the FBI’s investigation of the Watergate break-in, again all in the name of national security.

For none of these actions, did he consult Congress or get Congressional consent. He resigned before he could be impeached and, by the time he resigned, it was a certainty he would have been. President Gerald Ford, pardoned the disgraced ex-President sparing him criminal prosecution, also a certainty, in the name of “healing the nation.”

It was dramatic times. The Supreme Court had backed down the Executive regarding the Pentagon papers, Congress had backed down the Executive and started to impeach. A free press had effectively investigated and reported the abuses of power. Our 3-branch form of representative government had weathered the attempted takeover by a standing President. In a further reaction to Nixon’s abuses, Congress passed laws throughout the 70s to make sure it couldn’t happen again.

All’s well then, right? Not really. The people in power now and their advisors believe that everything Nixon ever did was quite alright. Not only that, they believe that Congress’ role is not to reign in the Executive. In short, these cretins believe that anything a President wants to do, he should be able to do. Break or just ignore laws passed by Congress? Tap phones? Invade countries using falsified evidence? Torture and imprison people without charges or due process? Violate the Geneva Conventions? Act like we are a rogue nation? Ignore diplomacy? All completely ok.

If you’re going: wtf? like I am, you’re probably in the land of the sane. Did we all go to the same American History and Civics classes? How could anyone even vaguely knowledgeable about the founding precepts of the U.S. think the Executive branch has the right to run free? No new world development makes it ok for President Whoeveritis to rule above the laws of the courts and legislature—ever. That’s why we aren’t a monarchy. It’s why we had a revolution against someone in England called King George.

What is the definition of a tyrant? A tyrant is a ruler who believes he can and should operate above the law. Nixon was a tyrant by that definition. Bush is also one. Bush advisors Professor Yoo and Attorney General Gonzales believe he has that right. They believe that the Prez can and should torture anyone he wants to. Torture doesn’t work, but they don’t care about that little detail. Our Leader knows what’s best for the rest of us. He has our best interests at heart therefore, we should let Him do anything He wants to.

There are too many proponents of this theory. Only problem with it is: it’s horseshit! Jefferson, Washington, Franklin, et al, started a republic with values contra to royalist assholes. I fail to understand how anyone in their right mind could go with the theory of unlimited power for the Executive.

Do you think we are somehow better off with a homegrown tyrant in power? How? Afraid of terrorists? Bush has made us less safe. Worried about the economy and your jobs? We now have an enormous world debt, leaving us in a financially unsound position. Many jobs are being shipped overseas (even some attorney work is now done in India). Worried about our ability to compete in the world market and the ability of future generations to compete technically? The Bush administration’s support of creationism and anti-stem cell research is a gigantic step backward from the scientific/technical trends of the rest of the world. We are moving backward.

Clinton eliminated the national debt, left a surplus, kept our foreign relations on an even keel and attempted other reforms that addressed the issues in this modern world. Maybe not the greatest President, but not an incompetent fool. Evidently, his private sex life was somehow more important to a lot of people. But a guy who screws everything up, takes no responsibility for it, calls himself The Decider, well, that’s ok?

Yea, for 30 years, they’ve been working on getting us back to the way it was in 1969. It’s like a monster in a horror film coming back to life—put it down, but it rises up again.

Our American values have influenced the rest of the world, but an all-powerful Executive is not one of those values. That’s another type of government, another country’s legacy. It’s a way of governing that you’d think everyone would understand was stupid without question. Now, the rest of the world is looking at us clearly, saying: what happened to America? What’s going on over there?

Such a foundation for American hegemony is unstable at best and sure to perish in the ill winds that are coming. Soon enough, there will be many storms.

I am a patriot
And I love my county
Because my country is all I know
I want to be with my family
The people who understand me
I’ve got nowhere else to go
And the river opens for the righteous.

-S. Van Zandt

The Latin title of this piece comes from Kant’s Principles of Politics and “is rendered thus: Let righteousness prevail though all the knaves in the world should perish for it. It is thus a bold principle of Right cutting through all the crooked ways that are shaped by intrigue or force…And this is to be held, whatever may be the physical consequences which follow from adopting these political principles…Moral evil has this quality inseparable from its nature that, in carrying out its purposes, it is antagonistic and destructive to itself.”

We must return to being a nation of laws, not tyrants.

On Location: 5 Years On

[Originally posted on goofyblog 9.14.06]

5 years after the worst attack on US soil in history, Osama’s free, Afghanistan isn’t. As President Bush said in March 2002, “I truly am not that concerned about him,” and then began pulling key resources off the hunt for Al Qaeda’s leaders.

Pakistan has signed a truce with Islamic militants in North Waziristan, where bin Laden is most likely hiding—another safe haven adjoining Afghanistan.

Bush has always neglected Afghanistan, providing no peacekeeping troops anywhere but in Kabul and supplying minimal economic aid in the first year after the invasion. Now, war lords and the Taliban rule most of the country, this year NATO forces have sustained a higher fatality rate than coalition troops in Iraq and the country is reverting, becoming a large safe haven for our enemies. More on this can be found here.

But neglect and poor planning are the major themes in Iraq also, as detailed in Peter Galbraith’s article, “Mindless in Iraq,” which reviews several books on the failed reconstruction in Iraq and says in part:

“Trainor and Gordon [authors of Cobra II: The Inside Story of the Invasion and Occupation of Iraq] present a devastating picture of Rumsfeld as a bully. Convinced of his own brilliance, Rumsfeld freely substituted his often hastily formed opinions for the considered judgments of his military professionals. He placed in the most senior positions compliant yes-men, like Myers, and punished those who questioned his casually formed judgments. He enjoyed belittling his subordinates. The day before the September 11 attacks, Rumsfeld told a Pentagon meeting that the Defense Department bureaucracy ‘disrupts the defense of the United States and places the lives of men and women in uniform at risk.’ His aides followed the same approach: Steve Cambone, Rumsfeld’s closest aide, ‘jested that Rumsfeld thought the Army’s problems could be solved by lining up fifty of its generals in the Pentagon and gunning them down.’”

And finally, a major blow to the executive power grab over our lives all in the name of safety: the Hamden case, decided recently by the Supreme Court, strongly refutes the Bush Administration’s illegal strategy of torture, tribunals, secret prisons and illegal wiretapping. The court’s ruling goes beyond a narrow rebuke, trapping both the legislative and executive branches into adhering to the Geneva Conventions and marks an emerging court majority, at least on these issues, with Justice Kennedy taking the place of Sandra Day O’Connor. The article concludes with the following:

“The Bush doctrine views the rule of law as our enemy, and claims it is allied with terrorism. As the Pentagon’s 2005 National Defense Strategy put it:
‘Our strength as a nation state will continue to be challenged by those who employ a strategy of the weak using international fora, judicial processes, and terrorism.’
“In fact, both the strength and security of the nation in the struggle with terrorists rest on adherence to the rule of law, including international law, because only such adherence provides the legitimacy we need if we are to win back the world’s respect. Hamdan suggests that at least one branch of the United States government understands this.”

The article, which is a detailed analysis of the decision, can be found here.

It’s a Moral Hazard

[Originally posted on goofyblog 9.8.06]

Health care in the US is a mess. Americans spend $5,267 per capita on health care while the industrialized world’s median is $2,193, yet we go to the doctor and get admitted to the hospital less than people in other Western countries. We spend more than $1,000 per capita per year just on administration costs (Canada spends $300), and still over 45 million of us are uninsured (every other Western country insures all of its citizens).

Health in the US is a mess. Childhood-immunization rates in the US are lower than average. Infant-mortality is in the 19^th percentile. Life expectancy is lower than the Western average. Obesity from childhood on is at all-time high. Yet, the leading cause of bankruptcy filings in the US is for unpaid medical bills.

Why are we such a backward nation?

1. Like European countries, the push for health care in the 20^th century was carried by big labor unions, but unlike in Europe, the US unions worked just for coverage for their memberships. They were successful, but the burden of coverage was thrown onto private companies, thus their efforts excluded coverage for all and insured that someday (and that day is now) the big companies would lose competitive edge and even fail due to the enormous costs of maintaining private health care coverage for their employees and retirees.

2. Moral hazard theory as applied by economists and think tanks to health insurance. Moral hazard theory is the idea is that offering coverage for health care needs causes the insured to over-use it in a frivolous manner. This theory is responsible for the thicket of co-payments, deductibles and utilization reviews that now cripple American health-insurance systems. It’s responsible for the general lack of enthusiasm for expanding healthcare coverage here. Moral-hazard theory in health care insurance is bullshit.

“You always hear that the demand for health care is unlimited,” says Princeton economist Uwe Reinhart. “This is just not true. People who are very well insured, who are very rich, do you see them check into the hospital because it’s free?”

3. The denigration of the “social insurance” model–that group insurance is meant to help equalize financial risk between the healthy and the sick–which is the model used in the rest of the Western world (as well as in Medicare in the US), in favor of the “actuarial” model–higher costs for higher-risk customers and vice versa. The Bush administration’s Health Savings Account plan, introduced in 2003, is based on the actuarial model. This is turning out to be an effective way to increase health care costs in this country while at the same time guaranteeing even poorer coverage than we now have, whether insured or not.

Here’s an article on a person working for change. This issue is and will be critical in the next few years as it gets harder to support the excessive costs for health care in this country and as the population ages and gets poorer. Tasani’s motto on his web site is “Vote for what you believe in!” His site is a great place to start when looking at the reasons why there should be Medicare for Everyone.

Scalia vs. de Tocqueville

[Originally posted on goofyblog 8.31.06]

The eventual repeal of Roe vs. Wade (it’s coming) would have very little effect on a woman’s ability to get an abortion in the US, because even right now, only 13% of all counties in America have any abortion providers. The states that are abortion-friendly (Maryland for the Southeast, California for the West, etc.), where women who want an abortion are already forced to travel, would still be available if and when the Federal law is repealed.

However, what would change is the privacy doctrine the Roe decision helped to establish and this would drastically alter our society.

A clue as to how this would happen comes from Justice Scalia’s dissent in that Supreme Court decision striking down Texas’ anti-sodomy laws in 2003. Scalia was in the minority then, but is probably in the majority now. His dissent reads in part:

The Fourteenth Amendment expressly allows States to deprive their citizens of liberty, so long as due process of law is provided. The Due Process Clause prohibits States from infringing on fundamental liberty interests by using the doctrine of so-called “heightened scrutiny” protection—but only rights which are “deeply rooted in this Nation’s history and tradition” qualify.

Criminal prohibitions of homosexual sodomy are not subject to heightened scrutiny because sodomy was a criminal offense and was forbidden by the laws of the original 13 States when they ratified the Bill of Rights,” and thus was not “deeply rooted in this Nation’s history and tradition.”

Roe v. Wade recognized that the right to abort an unborn child was a “fundamental right” protected by the Due Process Clause but the Roe Court made no attempt to establish that this right was “deeply rooted in this Nation’s history and tradition.”

Let me be clear that I have nothing against homosexuals, or any other group. It is indeed true that “later generations can see that laws once thought necessary and proper in fact serve only to oppress,” and when that happens, later generations can repeal those laws. But it is the premise of our system that those judgments are to be made by the people, and not imposed by a governing caste that knows best.

By the reasoning above, any practice that was banned in the 1700s can still be banned today by a simple majority. Moreover, the majority is the only entity that matters in American democracy. So, any minority (gays, blacks, women who want to chose, political parties, dope smokers, etc.) can be criminalized by legislative majority.

Over 120 years ago, Alexis de Tocqueville warned us about this:

“The main evil of the democratic institutions of the United States does not arise from their weakness, but from their irresistible strength. I am not so much alarmed at the excessive liberty which reigns in that country as at the inadequate securities which one finds there against tyranny. If an individual or a party is wronged in the United States, to whom can he apply for redress? If to public opinion, public opinion constitutes the majority; if to the legislature, it represents the majority and implicitly obeys it; if to the executive power, it is appointed by the majority and serves as a passive tool in its hands. The public force consists of the majority under arms; the jury is the majority invested with the right of hearing judicial cases; and in certain states even the judges are elected by the majority.

“If, on the other hand, a legislative power could be so constituted as to represent the majority without necessarily being the slave of its passions, an executive so as to retain a proper share of authority, and a judiciary so as to remain independent of the other two powers, a government would be formed which would still be democratic while incurring scarcely any risk of tyranny.”

The type of arrangement above is really what’s “deeply rooted in this Nation’s history and tradition,” not, as Scalia claims, a pure majority rule government. The shield against tyranny by the majority has been responsible for allowing individuals to view sexually explicit material, participate in consensual sex in the privacy of their own homes, buy and use contraception of their choice, a woman’s right to choose, the removal of Jim Crow laws discriminating against blacks and countless others advances.
There is no doubt this is what our Founding Fathers intended:

“The tyranny of the legislature is really the danger most to be feared, and will continue to be so for many years to come. The tyranny of the executive power will come in its turn, but at a more distant period.”

–Thomas Jefferson

Scalia et al, don’t understand or acknowledge these issues. And if you watch shows like Hannity & Combs or The O’Reilly Factor on Fox, you see that they are also based on this mob/majority mentality.

It isn’t just the right to an abortion, it’s the idea that unless the rights of the individual are protected from the mob we will lose what makes our country unique and great.