Guest Post: Bunner's 2 cents

The following doesn't vary much from the way I feel about our slide into national insolvency. So rather than write a post myself, here y'go, y'all:

Money started out as a convenient form of exchange. It's become an adversarial construct, a tin deity and the scoreboard for our existence. We can pretend it's still working for us, but it's become a lever that - as the length and stiffness of that lever expands for the haves - is used to pry us from what little hard wealth we have. 14,000,000,000,000.00 in debt notes is a stupid thing to trade anything for.

You can harrumph and wave your made in China flag and wait for Michelle Bachmann to lead you to the promised land of loonies and pray to Bill O'Reilly and keep crushing those aluminum cans but the pooch has been hosed and we're holding the bag for these junk notes.

We need a concise game plan that includes a lot of hard and fast changes to how we allow businesses to function, who gets to do what and to whom and for how long or the hard and fast change will come via a molotov cocktail when there's no more malarkey to sell and the curtain is pulled back from the man in the booth. This - shit - isn't - working - anymore. Pretending it is has put us in this sack.

This is cut point for America, y'all. With or without me or you and recess is over. So if anybody has some useful ideas that don't include guillotines or mathematically gymnastic bar graphs that add up to "shut up and don't pester the wealthy", I'm all ears. Cause I don't want to see riots in the streets, either. But this shit is way past band aids and if we don't waylay the getaway car, we're gonna be left with ashes and whatever we can grow in that corner lot where those small shops used to be. I got nothing against wealth. How you got it and what you do with it matters, not the wealth itself. I got a huge problem with pirates and thugs. Don't you? .02 USD.

- by that Internet entity known as "Bunner."

Incentives, who needs 'em?

As the self-destructive spiral masterminded by our elected representatives continues, now the Pentagon, in a masterful display of military intelligence, wants to move the military pension system to a defined-contribution plan.

Like certain other professions, such as teaching, one of the major incentives has always been a good, secure defined-benefit pension system. Now it is proposed to sweep the military pension system into the great dustbin of history to save $250 billion over 20 years. And in 20 years, what will our military look like in consequence? I suspect that the only thing that is holding up enlistment rates at this point is the recession that our leadership doesn't even like to mention.....and it may be that only if our economic malaise continues will sufficient numbers of high-quality recruits enter our Armed Forces.

And- are we to wait 20 years to see what the impact of all those savings have been on our national defense? I'd rather not.

Rallies, then & now

"Do you believe, as do the many, that certain young men are corrupted by sophists, and that there are certain sophists who in a private capacity corrupt to an extent worth mentioning? Isn't it rather the very men who say this who are the biggest sophists, who educate most perfectly and who turn out young and old, men and women, just the way they want them to be?"

"But when do they do that?" he asked.

"When," I said, "many gathered together sit down in assemblies, courts, theaters, army camps, or any other common meeting of a multitude, and, with a great deal of uproar, blame some of the things said or done, and praise others, both in excess, shouting and clapping, and, besides, the rocks and the very place surrounding them echo and redouble the uproar of blame and praise. Now in such circumstances, as the saying goes, what do you suppose is the state of the young man's heart? Or what kind of private education will hold out for him and not be swept away by such blame and praise and go, borne by the flood, wherever it tends so that he'll say the same things are noble and base as they do, practice what they practice, and be such as they are?"

(Republic, 491e - 492b), translated by Allan Bloom

A Fable for our Time

I can't really call this fantasy, because it isn't. Except for the last part (which apparently DID happen).

An obscure fanatic from a small town makes wild assertions and threatens to burn books.

His rhetoric is taken up by the news media and given national and international coverage.

He is given lavish attention by important government officials and agencies, thereby raising him from obscurity to notoriety overnight.

Attention is so acute that incipient hysteria and paranoia spill over and result in the chief executive of a nation of millions of people making a personal appeal to this individual.

A member of a major news organization wonders whether or not the media handling of the whole affair "-might have been reckless."

D'ya think?

Bibliography: See Adolf Hitler, rise of National Socialism, Beer Cellar Putsch, Hitler treason trial, etc., etc. You may end with the burning of the Reichstag if you wish....

At my limit

I'll tell you one thing blogs are good for- solipsistic rants, that's what! (Cue laugh track)

I received a telephone call last night from a young lady conducting a survey. The following is my best attempt to reconstruct the sense, if not the word-for-word, of this amazing experience.

She: "We're looking for people's opinions of Illinois politicians in the upcoming elections."

Me: "Go ahead."

She: "First, I'll read a list of names, and you tell me whether you feel positive, somewhat positive (insert remainder of array of choices to ....'negative')."

Me: "These are all politicians?"

She: "Yes."

Me: "Put me down for all negative."

She: "I can't do that; I have to ask each one separately."

Me: "OK"

She reads list of names, I respond

She: "Do you intend to vote in November?"

Me: "Absolutely."

She reads lists of candidates, I tell who I'd vote for.

She: "Now, I want to read two statements about Boody Jar Moblinga (name of well-known Illinois political hack changed to protect the guilty, referred to hereinafter as 'BJM'), and you tell me which one you agree with the most."

Me: "Read away."

She: "First, do you agree that BJM is wonderful, can walk across Lake Michigan on her bare feet, shines at night with her own golden aura, and deserves to be escorted to Springfield by a thousand trumpeting cherubim and a full twelve dozen winged mantics?"

"OR"

"Do you agree that BJM is a domestic terrorist who seeks to overthrow the Constitution of the United States, that the very grass and flowers die wherever she walks, that birds fall dead from trees wherever her shadow is cast, and that she is numbered among the legions of Satan?"

[The previous questions may have been somewhat different, but for purposes of this illustration, you may regard them as valid]

Me: "I can't believe you've attempted to insult my intelligence with those questions. This interview is over."

(I hang up)

This episode requires no explication or analysis; it has served to convince me that we are living in a political comic strip...a very dark, dark comic strip.

Put another way.....

"One should never forbid what one lacks the power to prevent. "

-Napoleon Bonaparte

.....or, never pass a law that cannot be enforced or for which the political will is lacking. We fall deeper and deeper into this chasm.

No Changes

And then there was the people who once stood for progress and anticipation that the future would be better, and was somehow transformed into the Society of No Changes. Then comes the paradox of everyone engaged in the change of their choice, and paranoid / aggressive of any criticism thereof, and viewing the activities of others as disastrous and conspiratorial.
Every society ends as a book, then that book is reduced to a chapter in a later book, then to a subsequent paragraph, and finally just to a meme. "No Changes" is pretty sorry.

Well, that's reassuring

In his introductory remarks to his SCOTUS nomination today , the COOTWH stated that she represents what we need, less of the dry dead old law on paper, and more concern for people in their everyday lives. I thought I already had somebody like that......my Representative.

I cannot for a moment believe that a law professor / factotum, sans judicial experience, is even going to be able to be concerned about the everyday lives of people, let alone conceive that that is her job. The Constitution gives broad legislative powers to Congress, and the 435 districts into which the House of Representatives is divided is crafted and specifically intended to see to my "needs."

Yet another example of rhetoric that is either simply BAD, or which has intentions which are far more than questionable, given that we are presently visited with far, far too much legislation by judicial fiat.

Moynihan Lives

The fuss over the misbehavior of a variety of pro sports athletes is merely in microcosm of what Daniel Patrick Moynihan wrote about, writ large:

"There is one unmistakable lesson in American history: a community that allows a large number of young men to grow up in broken families, dominated by women, never acquiring any stable relationship to male authority, never acquiring any set of rational expectations about the future -- that community asks for and gets chaos... And it is richly deserved."

-- Daniel P. Moynihan, Family and Nation [1965]

And, as he wrote before he died, what applied largely to the black community in 1965 has spread to include all sectors of society. The manifestation of this in irresponsible and brutal men has become an equal opportunity employer.....

Vital Data and Postscript

VITAL DATA

"There are two restaurants here and a tearoom, two bars, one bank, three barbers, one with a green shade with which he blinds his window, two groceries, a dealer in Fords, one drug, one hardware, and one appliance store. several that sell feed, grain, and farm equipment. an antique shop. a poolroom. a laundromat. three doctors. a dentist, a plumber. a vet. a funeral home in elegant repair the color of a buttercup. numerous beauty parlors which open and shut like night-blooming plants. a tiny dime and department store of no width but several floors. a hutch, homemade, where you can order, after lying down or squirming in, furniture that's been fashioned from bent lengths of stainless steel tubing, glowing plastic, metallic thread, and clear shellac. an American Legion Post and a root beer stand. little agencies for this and that: cosmetics, brushes, insurance, greeting cards and garden produce -anything - sample shoes - which do their business out of hats and satchels, over coffee cups and dissolving sugar. a factory for making paper sacks and pasteboard boxes that's lodged in an old brick building bearing the legend OPERA HOUSE, still faintly golden, on its roof. a library given by Carnegie. a post office. a school. a railroad station. fire station. lumberyard. telephone company. welding shop...and spotted through the town from one end to the other in a line along the highway, gas stations to the number five."

- William H. Gass, In the Heart of the Heart of the Country (1968)

.....and from the same author, in only a slightly different place: "Things have changed since then, but in none of the respects mentioned."

....and I would add: "Except- less of everything described, none of some, and the only addition, which is of questionable merit, of two meth labs."

Eradicating Meaning

When a "player," someone who represents an interest (aka a nation) gets the Nobel Peace Prize, it damages the whole notion of "peace." Peace cannot be partisan....and when we dig into the elements of most situations where leaders or representatives of states were awarded the NPP, the partisan element isn't hard to find.

Woodrow Wilson fundamentally didn't deserve the Nobel Prize, because no matter how noble his Fourteen Points, without the U.S. taking the lead and forgiving all the war loans to the European countries (which was done after WWII, a lesson hard learned), it ultimately validated the crushing reparations exacted against Germany in the Versailles Treaty, which was a major factor in bringing Adolf Hitler and the NSDAP to power in Germany. The U.S. may or may not have deserved the pejorative "Uncle Shylock," but Calvin Coolidge was simply being Bismarckian in his realpolitik when he said "They hired the money, didn't they?" These things may be judged one way or another by history, but they don't fit into consideration for a peace prize. They just don't.

Henry Kissinger, in the context of the Vietnam War, may have been deserving of many things, but the Nobel Peace Prize was certainly not one of them.

One of the very few things James Earl Carter may deserve to be remembered for is the Camp David Peace Accords. But should anyone have been awarded a Nobel Peace Prize for this? Peace in that situation would have involved the Palestinians, whether the Egyptians were present or not- and the Palestinians were nowhere to be found. This may have been the first "joke" NPP.

What Barack Obama has done -in any substantive way- to merit a nomination for such a prize -let alone its being awarded- is hard to fathom. The Nobel committee's most trenchant statement on the topic seems to boil down to "He's made people feel good."

At the very least, it is questionable that the leader of a nation with tens of thousands of its forces currently in combat roles on foreign soil would be considered for such an award, regardless of the situation. It is therefore impossible to believe that the award of the Nobel Peace Prize (along with the prize for Literature...any that aren't awarded for measurable scientific achievement) hasn't devolved into the same level as the political vagaries of the International Olympic Committee or the United Nations. The Nobel Peace Prize should be ignored.

A valid comparison?

George Will comments on the Obama administration's politicizing the arts, and

This.

Of course, to some people there is no comparison. The ends, as always to some humans, justify the means. We will be told that the ends of the former are noble, humane, and socially true, therefore whatever exigencies, whatever horror must be perpetrated to carry them into effect are just. The ends of the second example were horrible and perverted, etc.

The thing is, if you dug up anyone in history who had ever attempted to direct an entire society and its culture to their own agenda.....they would tell you exactly the same thing.

Probable Impact

The automatic media-machine furor over the Coast Guard daring to conduct an anti-terrorist exercise in Washington on 9/11 may well have one systemic effect. Administration officials will shovel crap downhill, which will have an overall result of reducing preparedness exercises -maybe just for the Coast Guard, if we're lucky- which means reduced preparedness. The media will have damaged us, once again.

Just do it. Now.

Seen on the news streamer this morning (does it really matter the channel?): "Government says recession will be over by the end of the year. Recovery to take longer."

So- if we translate from the WhiteHousese, this means "We can't wait three or four years for the economy to bounce back, so we're going to declare the recession over in our New Years' message, even though those millions will still be unemployed and the Dow remains hovering in the low 8K. It'll come back.....sometime. In the meantime, we can get down to the serious business of spending more and more obscene amounts of money in a recession-free atmosphere."

To those responsible: Go lick a dog's ass 'till it bleeds.

Now put some spin on that......

Just Like Magic

We abruptly have commercials on national TV for "NORML," an organization seeking the instant high ground portraying marijuana use as "norml." It's really obvious we've entered a time when all sorts of people, having had all manner of extravagant promises made to them, are now in "collect mode." No questions about the ramifications of all this......it's going to save our economy, clear out the prisons, rectify yet another of the thousand thousand historical injustices that translate into "keeping us from doing whatever we bloody well want."

Bertolt Brecht wrote that the motto of The City of Mahagonny was "Do it."

A Crisis Based on Fantasy?

Heard this morning on NPR- an interview with a individual whose profession is analyzing the domestic and international financial markets, discussing the level of "bad mortgages," which we have had drilled into us Lo! these many months now.

I have organized his discussion into a sic et non set of "Myth vs. Fact."

Myth: "There are trillions in bad / unrecoverable mortgages."

Fact: There are only about eight (8) trillion in total mortgages in the entire U.S.

Myth: "The level of bad / unrecoverable mortgages is a large percentage of the total."

Fact: It's about two (2) percent. Ninety-eight percent (98%) of all mortgages are currently being paid on schedule (not in arrears).

Myth: (From question by NPR interlocutor) But aren't there trillions of these "new" and very risky financial instruments used to compile mortgages for sale in the market?

Fact: There are about two (2) trillion worth of these sorts of instruments total, worldwide.

I would like to advance the following in the form of a debate proposal:

Resolved: We have no basis for even knowing if we are becoming "the tribe that lost its head," if we cannot determine what is and is not factual in the media.

My only weapon against this is a distrust of all media -all- that grows deeper every day.....and that's not a good place to be, either.

All hail Grummet!

For most, the close encounter with government that April brings is a brief view into the festering maw of the IRS via Tax Day. This year, I've had a trifecta beyond that...... and I can't claim the taxes, since I don't do 'em.

I turn 65 so I had to go through the Social Security interview, a polite excursion into Kafkaland. A forty-minute phone conversation later, and numberless questions important enough to ask, but to which I was assured repeatedly I needn't know the answers. On the other hand (I think that's three hands, so far......) I was informed both at the beginning and end of the conversation that the penalties of perjury apply. The good news (I think) is that I received a letter in the mail yesterday telling me that I'm a proud card-carrying member of Medicare.

Then there is an ongoing brushfire war with the VA, what we grew up calling the Veterans' Administration, but is evidently officially yclept the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. Their motto: "You can't call us on the phone." The 800 number exists, and picks up immediately to a mechanical voice that says, in paraphrase: "We're too busy to come to the phone, so why are you bothering?" To give them a little credit, they do say that you can go to their Internet site with your questions. After going through several cycles of question & answer on the VA web site spanning a month and a half, I think the motto should be changed to: "We'll answer your questions in less than a week, but don't plan on anything either informative or relevant."
Without detailing ad nauseam, after seven months with a pending claim application with the VA for my Mother, it was denied....because we had filled out the wrong forms. Return to "GO," do not collect $200; start over.

Now I have fallen afoul of the Farm Service Administration, because we have the misfortune to own somewhat over three arable acres that we sharecrop with a local farmer. The FSA decided to generate a whole new registration system this year, which means a whole new sheaf of paperwork to be filled out, and deforestation proceeding apace. I mailed them in without the slightest conviction that they have been filled out correctly.

Ye shall know Bureaucracy by the signs given above, and by the Fifth Horseman, in this case riding one of paper. I've never been much for Hegel, but it convinces me that our stage of History is about done, and it's time for Grummet (aftermath). Could it all happen that quickly? Could the acceleration that is mentioned frequently in all other phases of contemporary society also accelerate the movement back to Chaos? I'd rather not find out.....but may not have a choice.

Smoke & Mirrors, the Series

I've been delaying making this post....because I find the subject distasteful. Predictable to the point of nausea, but....distasteful. The present state of our economic affairs is undoubtedly due to some important factors, deeply rooted in our national character, and other factors will assuredly pull us out....given time.

But time is what we may no longer have. The turnaround between general news coverage of anything perceived as serious and a felt need among the mental pygmies in government to do something -anything- is now well under 24 hours. In the two months since the inauguration we have already seen one reflexive hurling of over $700B at the economy.....but whether the disbursement of this money will actually have the desired effect of stimulating the economy is at least dubious. It could hardly be otherwise, given the time frame of a month and change in which this was put together, passed by Congress, and signed by the President. If this had been done in another venue, someone less charitable than I might describe it as "panicky."

Now, while those in charge of our affairs wait and sweat out the results of their move, they propose a monster budget and engage in relentless scapegoating of anyone and everyone in the previous administration, with no evidence to support their allegations other than "they were there at the time."

The serial scapegoating continues into the private sector, as the heads of faltering corporations are hauled in and castigated by the sleazemasters Chris Dodd and Barney Frank, as if the likes of the CEO of AIG is somehow more to blame for the current situation than those same gentlemen who were instrumental in loosening up the lending strings at Fannie & Freddie that helped precipiate the mortgage collapse that precipitated the current recession. At every turn, they propose dangerous and even unconstitutional measures in the name of "making the people whole." This includes the violation of perfectly legal contracts and ex post fact tax laws to confiscate bonuses called into question. Isn't this the definition of demagogues? More important, is anyone noticing?

All this to avoid confronting the core issue that if we don't change things (as I recall, "Change" was supposed to be the theme of the current administration) at a fundamental level, this will happpen all over again. In 1929, it may have been margin buying of stocks that preciptated the Great Depression, but it was a list of other factors and problems, all left unaddressed, that interacted to produce the Depression itself. Our current situation has a lot to do with the way we choose to live. The constantly advertised and paraded string of things everyone "deserves" or is "entitled to," from a certain standard of living through a guaranteed pension and universal unlimited government-provided health care. The relentless materialism, the depressing consumerism, the push to live on credit which continues cheek by jowl with the panicky hair-tearing over "the worst recession ever."

Either these things change, or we'll just pull out of this recession to do it all over again. And, at long last, I'm beginning to find it tiresome. As a newspaper editor said back in the golden days before the Great Depression, "I'm out of sorts with America."

Quote While You Can....

The front & center column in our local "commentary" section featured this piece by John Whitehead, founder of the Rutherford Institute. It begins with this quote by Ray Bradbury:

"There is more than one way to burn a book. And the world is full of people running about with lit matches. Every minority, be it Baptist/Unitarian, Irish/Italian/Octogenarian/Zen Buddhist, Zionist/Seventh-day Adventist, Women's Lib/Republican, Mattachine/FourSquareGospel feel it has the will, the right, the duty to douse the kerosene, light the fuse. Every dimwit editor who sees himself as the source of all dreary blanc-mange plain porridge unleavened literature, licks his guillotine and eyes the neck of any author who dares to speak above a whisper or write above a nursery rhyme."

Now that's worth reading.......and maybe on a daily basis. Even though all this may be far too late. My fears began with the publication of Robert Hughes' Culture of Complaint some years ago.

Now, whether it's clowns to the right of me or the jokers to the left, it's all about......control.

But if not.....

Yet another meeting on the "critical catastrophic crisis" today with Mr. Obama and assorted governors. It's as if, despite a vast and highly questionable plan having been passed, that having meetings every day will somehow help to cure the country's economic malaise.

Then there are the endless theories, mostly incorporating at some juncture a hopeful prediction as to when the recession will 'turn around.'

But it doesn't take a whole lot of reading to see that we are living in a monstrously complex economy, that is tied in to an incalculable degree with other economies in the world, and that no one has an accurate view of what's going on.

Which is why I'm doubly apprehensive at the haste to pass a gigantic 'stimulus package' only a month into the new administration. Yes, there's a lot of pressure to do something, but that doesn't make this wise.

If there's anything specific that bothers me, it's the rush of government at every level to preach tax cutting, while at the same time proposing -and in some cases already passing- measures to generate more revenue, many of which may charitably be called inadvisable.

The thing I'm looking for -and have yet to see- is a list of government cuts to attempt to balance the deficit that is only growing worse. And it's not going to come, because every one of our elected officeholders is already looking at November of 2010 and sweating.