Scripting News

The US Economy after Katrina

Wed, 01 Oct 2008 05:47:34 GMT

If you want to get an idea how terribly wrong things can go, look at New Orleans after Katrina. We didn't want to look there. I made myself look, I went to New Orleans in December 2005, and saw a city largely in ruin. I saw sections of the city that had burned where no one came to put the fire out. I visited middle class neighborhoods I lived in as a college student that had been reduced to ruin. I wanted to get a first-hand look at post-Apocalypse America. That is the accurate way to view it, it is not overly dramatic.

The United States is horribly vulnerable now. We weren't able to bring back one of our greatest cities. It's hard to understand why this isn't front and center in people's consciousness. Maybe it's too grim to look at. But the danger of not looking is that you wouldn't recognize the symptoms when the problem grew, as it was sure to. And it has.

Fact is the people who run this place aren't qualified to run it. No one is. You can see that the legislators have basically no idea how the economy works, yet they make decisions that determine where trillions of dollars flow. The Secretary of the Treasury, a banker, has no idea how the legislative process works, and even harder to accept, doesn't have a basic understanding of the Constitution, how the three branches of government work.

Yet we desperately need them to not only understand their own jobs, but how their jobs relate to others. They don't. We've got a government full of Brownies, dressing for the part, but not remotely prepared to do the job.

So the NY Times today says the voters rebelled because no one from Washington explained to them what was going on. Folks, that's just the tip of the tip of the problem. They couldn't explain it because they themselves needed to have it explained to them.

Meanwhile the monkeys who call themselves The Right are preparing to blame the moderator of Thursday's debate for the gross incompetence of the Republican candidate for VP. Someone needs to yank their chain, hard, and wake them up. That game is over. Everyone knows. No one is fooled.

BTW, I took pictures of the devastation in New Orleans and Gulfport/Biloxi. Have a look. This might be coming to your life soon. People who were banking in New Orleans went to their ATM and found their accounts were gone. Did you know that St Paul police arrested reporters at the Republican Convention this summer because they were covering demonstrations? How was that covered up? As the Times said, it gets really bad when trust is gone. Right now there's the tiniest frailest thread of trust left, because we've seen the system work, sort of, when no one understood how all the pieces fit together. It still basically is working. But it wouldn't take much to knock it all down.

When I visited New Orleans and considered how it could come back to life, and how long it would take, I realized something that you don't see when living your day to day life. It took a lot of time and belief to build up the momentum that drives our civilization. Once the wheels stop turning it takes just as long to get them going again, maybe longer because you have to deal with the wreckage that spewn all over the landscape. Look at those pictures and extrapolate. Imagine your neighborhood looked like that. That was the United States of America, our country. Think.

Debate joke

Wed, 01 Oct 2008 00:38:02 GMT

An open source joke for next week's Saturday Night Live...

Scene: The Palin-Biden debate.

Governor Palin is responding to a question from moderator Gwen Ifil asking if she has enough experience to be VP.

She's listing the Vice-Presidents who had similar amounts of experience.

She mentions Dan Quayle.

Biden interrupts.

Governor.

I knew Dan Quayle.

I served with Dan Quayle.

You're no Dan Quayle.

"cheesecake"

Debate-watching party in Berkeley

Tue, 30 Sep 2008 18:23:25 GMT

Raines Cohen is organizing a debate watching party at the Hillside Club in Berkeley on Thursday night.

I'm going to help out with some of the technical work. We're going to do it all-digital, with three projected computers, so there will be lots of options for back-channel stuff. Of course there will be IRC and food from the Cheeseboard and the Thursday farmer's market, and a small charge for the rental of the club and eats.

I'd like to say it's a non-partisan party, but that would probably be a stretch, given that it is Berkeley.

The Upcoming page for the event.

Brooks hits it out

Tue, 30 Sep 2008 06:03:36 GMT

David Brooks is not one of my favorite NY Times columnists, but today he showed why the United States is coming out of its long malaise and the vacuum of leadership in every area is now being filled by intelligent, eloquent and thoughtful people, like Brooks, who always had the capability to lead, but probably never felt it was their place.

I highly recommend reading the whole piece, from beginning to end. Don't stop at the places where your chin drops. He's a Republican, not a Democrat -- and he's got some stern words for Democrats, but nothing compared to what he says to his fellow Republicans. But mostly he, like many other Republicans, are finally talking like Americans. No more talk of wedge issues, and winning elections for the sake of winning, there's no time for that now. We have to think in terms of where our country fits in, in the world, and then start going there.

On CNN this evening, another American who is rising to the occasion, Suze Orman, was on fire. You could see the truth in her eyes. It's so great.

I think we may be on the verge of the greatest days of the United States in my adult life, and I've lived some great times, having a front row seat in three technological booms, which of course drove a lot of the growth in our economy in the last 30 years. But now there's a lot more work to do, to get busy on the four major areas we need improvement: education, health care, housing and infrastructure.

Anyway, here's a link to the Brooks piece, with a short quote to give you an idea how great it is.

David Brooks: "We're living in an age when a vast excess of capital sloshes around the world fueling cycles of bubble and bust. When the capital floods into a sector or economy, it washes away sober business practices, and habits of discipline and self-denial. Then the money managers panic and it sloshes out, punishing the just and unjust alike."

It's so true!!

New dollar bill

Mon, 29 Sep 2008 23:16:09 GMT

CNN: McCain takes credit for bailout

Mon, 29 Sep 2008 20:49:33 GMT

In this video clip, McCain takes credit for the success of the bailout, and disparages Obama for staying on the sidelines.

McCain has already engineered a breathtaking 180 degree flip-flop, he now blames Obama for killing the deal.

Judge for yourself what role McCain played, but there are strong arguments to be made that bringing Presidential politics into such a serious matter probably wasn't a good idea, and there's no doubt that McCain, in dramatically suspending his campaign, did exactly that. Did the House members sign on to the deal as he asked them to? Obviously not enough.

Anyway this story is being reported widely but until now, we haven't had the video on the web. This makes all the difference when you see how McCain, who obviously has been coached on how to seem more like Teddy Roosevelt, becomes a real caricature of himself.

If you're in a hurry, start listening at about 2:00.

The fundamentals of our economy

Mon, 29 Sep 2008 15:29:55 GMT

Who cares if they hate us?

Sun, 28 Sep 2008 16:35:29 GMT

I spent the first years after my illness driving around the country, stopping in some places for a year or two, then moving on. In that time I drove across the United States four times, and across Canada once. I mostly lived in places where people like myself, politically, live, but on most of my trips, except for the trip across Canada, the politics were the red state kind. Me, I'm a coastal guy, a blue stater, through and through.

I'm the kind of guy the red stater's hate.

I have an excellent education, and I didn't stop after I finished school. I worked hard, and struggled, and made a success of myself. I didn't borrow money, I don't have much in my Social Security account, but I do have good retirement savings and health insurance. I have a well-used passport. I read voraciously, and on some subjects, systematically, and communicate with people on the Internet from all over the world.

Because of my education both formal and continuing, I have a perspective on the world that people in the flyover states not only don't have, but that they openly express hatred of. I know that's an extreme statement, but listen -- in the east and the west you don't hear ignorant people boasting of their ignorance the way Sarah Palin did in her acceptance speech at the RNC. But in the middle of the country, esp the South, you do hear that. A lot. So much so that you can pretty much win a national election by appealing to that character flaw.

Now I'm not a Democrat, and I'm quite conservative on a number of issues, but they still call me "The Left" when dismissing me. I follow the example of my maternal uncle who said he was a Party Of One, he thought for himself, and made up his own mind. So I am totally Pro Choice, anti-death penalty, and I practice no religion. That's another reason people in the flyover states hate me.

But I've decided I don't care if they hate me or not. After all, they say that we as Americans shouldn't care whether people outside the United States hate us. So why should I care if they hate me?

Another reason they probably hate me, though few have the guts to say it openly, is that I'm Jewish. Many of them don't like immigrants. I was born in the US, but my parents weren't. I'm as much an American as any of them are, but I'll never agree with their paranoia about immigration.

They act as if they're the only ones who die in our wars or pay taxes or do hard or meaningful work. They feel pretty sorry for themselves. They didn't care a bit for NY until it provided them with an excuse to hate other people. Shit, you would think they would applaud the act of terrorism that destroyed the twin towers and all those New Yorkers! I've never figured that one out. I thought they hated liberals who live in NY?

And by the way, I do care if people outside the United States hate us, if they're right. If they're wrong, fuck em. But I'm willing to listen.

And all my religious brothers and sisters in the flyover states, aren't you supposed to in some way attone for your sins? If you fuck up, and break one of the Commandments, aren't you supposed to ask god to forgive you? I may not be religious but I do believe in greater beings. I do believe if you screw someone, it'll come back to you, so if I find out I'm doing something wrong, I stop doing it as soon as I can. Now does it say in the Bible that the Commandments don't apply to Muslims or Liberals? Heh.

In the debate on Friday, you could tell that Obama cared if people in the flyover states hate him, that's why when he listed the costs of the senseless war in Iraq, he didn't include the hundreds of thousands of Iraqis who died or whose lives were ruined in the war. The displacement, the devastation caused by the war is something people in Flyover-Land don't want to hear about. But why shouldn't we talk about it anyway, even if they don't want to hear about it? That's been our mistake, us bluestaters, we worry too much about what they think, we coddle them, and encourage their ignorance and naivete, to the point where their leader, McCain, says we're naive. No sir, that's not accurate. He's trying to keep the people in the middle of the country from knowing the awful truth. We've done some horrible things, the United States of America. And we should have stopped a long time ago. Not because of the money it cost us, or the allies who doubt us, or the relatively small number of American lives that have been lost or ruined. We've grieved plenty for ourselves. We haven't begun grieving for the people who we have aggrieved.

We excuse a lot in the name of ignorance, but we are not actually ignorant. That's the disconnect, our hypocrisy. Just because you blindly and forcefully assert that you did nothing wrong doesn't mean you actually did nothing wrong.

Here's what we did that was wrong: After being attacked by people who live in Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, we took it out on people who live in Iraq, who had nothing to do with the attack. We killed many of them and destroyed their country.

We say it's not our fault because we didn't vote for Bush, but if you're an adult, you know that's not how it works. You and I, because we are Americans, are responsible for what America does. Once you realize that, you can't not talk about it.

Now for the good news. You can see the awakening beginning to happen, and its the looming financial collapse that's making it possible. On This Week, you could see George Will, Robert Reich and Newt Gingrich agreeing that the US needs to invest (key word there) in education, health care and infrastructure. Bing! Exactly right. At least 20 years too late, but better late than never.

People in Flyover Land, when you lose your manufacturing jobs and are reduced to government handouts, think about how we can work together, not who Did This To You -- for that we all need to look in the mirror. Boy were we blessed, we could have been really smart and worked together, but we didn't. Some of that is the bluestaters' fault because we cared too much about your hatred of us. So be it. That's the past. I believe we still have many blessings, and we're no worse off than anyone else on this planet. But we're also no better than they are either. It's our hubris, our arrogance and ignorance that led us to believe that we were.

More than any other country, the United States is a product of and part of every other country on the planet. That's our legacy, and our strength, because to get here, our ancestors had to be smart, hard-working and brave. That's the advantage of America.

PS: I'm turning comments off for this post. If you want to respond, post something on your blog. Thanks.

Update: Cross-posted at Huffington.

A broken clock is right twice a day

Sun, 28 Sep 2008 17:32:44 GMT

First a disclaimer. Andrew Keen's book is a piece of trash, he says things that enflame people just to enflame them, I don't want to do anything to encourage him.

That said...

He was on a Gillmor Gang last week discussing Sarah Palin with Steve and Michael Markman, and he said something profoundly correct, and surprisingly validates his theory about the Cult of the Amateur.

Sarah Palin is the ultimate expression of the lunacy of the belief, that I don't share, that amateurs should replace professionals in every walk of life. That's the false premise of Keen's book, that anyone is advocating this, but clearly the Republicans do actually believe that being President is something that any schnook can, and should do. It's so obviously not true, incredibly dangerous thinking, so dangerous it borders on treason.

It's provably ridiculous.

Would you get on a plane if you knew the person flying the plane had never flown one before?

Would you let a surgeon operate on you if you knew he or she hadn't been to medical school?

Do you think that operating the US government, and the military, is less complex and specialized as flying a plane or operating on a human being?

And before you say that Obama doesn't have the experience either, don't insult your own intelligence. No one has experience being President when they take the job for the first time. Not McCain, not Roosevelt or Reagan or Bush.

I read a piece this morning by Fareed Zakaria who said Palin was unqualified. That's overly polite. That someone like her can get as far as she has reveals a serious flaw in our form of government.

Update: Andrew Keen responds.

Bad news

Sat, 27 Sep 2008 19:27:14 GMT

Get Susan Collins on the record

Fri, 26 Sep 2008 21:29:15 GMT

I had an idea while walking to the Hillside Club today. I was listening to a Nightline from last week, they were interviewing Susan Collins, one of two Republican senators from Maine (both are women, btw). She was talking about off-shore drilling and explaining why, even though there might be oil off the shore of Maine, they wouldn't support drilling because fishing off the coast is a huge part of their economy. Then they got around to Sarah Palin and she said Palin was a great choice, and how she had energized the Republican Party. I found this shocking. (Here's the clip.)

Then I realized it was an old podcast and she hadn't had a chance to see the Couric interview with Palin yet and wondered how she'd react if she had. I imagined that Collins, who is an intelligent, thoughtful and fairly liberal Republican, probably would find it offensive, and would be scared on behalf of the country as many of us are. So I wondered how we could get her on the record. My guess is she'd try like hell not to get asked that question.

Then I thought of a way to drag her into it, and I think we should do something about it.

First, let me tell you that my friend Andrew Baron did the mashup with Miss Teen USA and Sarah Palin and it's become a viral hit on YouTube. So we have flow to play with.

Imagine a split screen and on the left is Palin and on the right is Collins. For 30 seconds Collins is speaking. Then for 30 seconds Palin speaks. That's all. Compare the two. Ask a question -- why didn't the Republicans choose Collins?

The next day do the same thing with Christie Todd Whitman.

Then Kay Bailey Hutchinson.

Get the idea. Keep going with intelligent, thoughtful, well-spoken Republican women. Then throw in a few men like Tom Ridge or Mitt Romney.

Now here comes the fun part. Citizen journalists in Maine should try to get an interview with Collins, on camera, about Palin. Go where she goes, like the press does, and just ask. Eventually you'll get some good footage and we'll run it on the Palin Channel on YouTube.

Everywhere there's a Republican, ask them about Palin and how prepared she is to be Commander In Chief or Economist In Chief. Make her issue #1. The Republicans will keep trying to bury the Palin issue, but we should keep digging it up!

What do you think??

Congress should ratify the Paulson plan as-is

Fri, 26 Sep 2008 14:03:58 GMT

It seems today is the day when everyone is putting their stake in the ground, so I thought since I have a blog, and a stake, I should put my two cents in too.

First, when people ask why should we the people bail out Wall Street when they caused the problem in the first place? Well, they did, but so did the rest of us. If you took out a second mortgage to pay living expenses or to buy luxury, you were living high on the real estate bubble, you caused the problem too, and we're bailing you out. Might as well start placing responsibility where it really belongs, and take some yourself.

Second, I know these Republicans are dicks, and they lied about the pretense for war, and just yesterday they admitted to discussing torture in The White House (which is worse than what Bill Clinton did in the White House). There's no reason to trust them, but I've weighed all the evidence and decided, again, we don't have a choice but to believe them. It might all be a scam again, but it probably isn't.

Third, this isn't a moral thing -- if it were, we would let everyone fail so they can learn their lesson and pass down the lessons so it doesn't happen again. But right now it's a question of what's a good use of our money. And there seems to be no choice about that, if you trust Warren Buffet, and I don't see any reason not to.

NY Daily News: "Warren Buffett urged quick action and compared the current crisis to Pearl Harbor."

Now, is it really all that much money? I don't think so...

If you average the $700 billion over the population it's somewhere between $2K and $10K per (depending on whether you count people or households). So let's figure this one out. If there's a market crash on Monday, and if the credit crisis is real, you might lose your job, or your savings, or both. Most people are still in their houses, you might lose your house. You have kids who want to go to college, etc, etc. Are you willing to put down $10K to make sure that doesn't happen? You may come to a different conclusion, but I'd be willing to pay ten times that to make sure we don't have an economic collapse.

About all the michegas they want to tack on to the proposal -- come on get real! None of that is going to make a difference. It's all the same old shit, it'll go to the same industries that always get our handouts, we won't see any of it. Don't delay the whole thing and take a chance on a crash for something with zero upside.

That's how I see it. We'll find out, I suppose, who is right.

An aside: It's not surprising that we failed to remember the lessons of the Great Depression and gradually removed the regulations that were put in place after the financial collapse of 1929. What is amazing is that we also failed to learn the lessons of Vietnam, which happened to the generation in power when the decision was made to go to war in Iraq. I guess the economic regulations worked for a while. Maybe we should pass some new laws regulating war.

Palin-Couric, part II

Thu, 25 Sep 2008 19:47:42 GMT

Sarah Teen USA Palin

Fri, 26 Sep 2008 02:35:23 GMT

Another McCain bombshell/Hail Mary?

Thu, 25 Sep 2008 18:21:55 GMT

Taegan Goddard just posted a piece at CQ suggesting that McCain may be preparing to join Republicans in voting against the bailout. If so, he's basically saying "No way am I going down for this, Bush, it's your problem, you take the fall."

An interesting discussion followed my post yesterday outlining four possible scenarios for the bailout negotiations in DC. The whole thing is playing out now in DC.

We're moving toward options 3 or 4.

I don't think it's #1. It could be #4. I kind of hope it's #3.

Palin-Couric interview

Thu, 25 Sep 2008 17:12:10 GMT

It's not over until Bush and Cheney leave town

Wed, 24 Sep 2008 23:30:24 GMT

There are four distinct possibilities.

1. The need for a bailout is a bluff, so nothing happens and Bush finally looks wholly like the idiot asshole that he is. McCain suspended his campaign for nothing. The Republican Party loses in a landslide in November.

2. McCain votes for the bailout, providing cover for other Republicans to follow him, and enough Democrats will sign on so the bailout passes. The Republicans who vote for it blame McCain for the mess, and he loses to Obama, in a landslide, and the Republicans lose more seats, but most of them get re-elected anyway. (Democratic voters think the bailout sucks but it's not a matter of religion for them as it is with the Republicans.)

3. McCain convinces Bush & Cheney to resign, Pelosi becomes President until January 20, and a Democratic Congress and Executive passes the bailout, all Republicans who have conservative constituencies vote against it and win re-election in November. A few Democratic incumbents get thrown out because the public will hate the bailout, even if it works. Pretty good chance the next Senate has a Republican majority, maybe the House too.

4. The need for a bailout is not a bluff, Bush refuses to leave, McCain refuses to sacrifice his candidacy, the Republicans in Congress won't vote for the bailout so neither will the Democrats, and the world economy melts down.

Okay it's your choice. Which of the four scenarios do you think will prevail?

I think the hot potato lands in Bush's lap. His father comes down and tells him playtime is over, he has to leave to save the world economy, and what little remains of the Bush name, and we limp along until Obama takes office on Jan 20.

Now McCain wants to cancel the VP debate

Wed, 24 Sep 2008 23:15:40 GMT

Maybe this was the whole point of all the gimickry of McCain's announcements today, to provide a lot of smoke to hide the fact that they can't put Palin up in front of the country live.

CNN: "McCain supporter Sen. Lindsey Graham tells CNN the McCain campaign is proposing to the Presidential Debate Commission and the Obama camp that if there's no bailout deal by Friday, the first presidential debate should take the place of the VP debate, currently scheduled for next Thursday, October 2 in St. Louis."

Aside from the financial crisis, the candidacy of John McCain is melting down today. Never seen anything like this.

McCain to suspend campaign

Wed, 24 Sep 2008 18:56:56 GMT

11:55AM: Just heard an announcement on MSNBC that McCain has requested that Friday's debate be postponed so he can focus on the economic plan in front of Congress. He also said he plans to suspend his campaign until the crisis is resolved? Not clear on exactly what was said, but this is obviously a big deal.

AP: McCain calls for debate delay.

First reaction -- this is the right thing to do. Whether you like it or not, McCain's vote on this matter is pivotal, and being in debate prep is probably not the best place for him to be.

Rahm Emanuel (D-IL) says he's not so sure McCain's presence is needed in DC. He says the American people could hear from the candidates in the debate. So it's not clear that Obama is going to react positively to the McCain move.

Picture of McCain announcing the suspension of his campaign.

My first reaction was probably wrong -- this was an intensely political decision by McCain and a bit of a double-cross as Obama was trying to work out an agreement between the campaigns privately when McCain decided to go public.

Chris Cillizza at the Washington Post has background.

Lots of new stories on today's NewsJunk.

Wonkette calls McC's move a bluff-in-vain. "You could tell after seeing that new Washington Post/ABC News poll this morning that McCain would need one helluva muppet stunt to get himself a farthingworth's of non-horrendous attention."

"The debate is on," a senior Obama campaign official told ABC News.

MP3 of Obama response to McCain.

Listen to yesterday's FreshAir

Wed, 24 Sep 2008 17:33:59 GMT

If you want to spend 40 minutes getting a high-speed update on the financial crisis, I highly recommend yesterday's Fresh Air interview with NY Times financial reporter Gretchen Morgenson.

There's a chin-dropping number in the interview. $60 trillion. It's the dollar value of insurance purchased to back up the money market. It's as if all the neighborhoods in the world were on fire and the insurance industry is going to have to deal with claims on all of it. Obviously, they never planned for that. But there's a lot more shocking stuff in the interview, and it raises far more questions than it answers. If you're like me, and put off understanding how our financial system really works, I'd suggest clearing out 40 minutes and have a listen.

Update: Aaron Pressman, in a comment on this post, suggests (gently, much appreciated) a rewording. "The $62 trillion (not $60) is the total amount of credit default swaps, or insurance policies, that financial firms have written on all types of debt, not just money markets. So: It's the dollar value of insurance purchased to back up bond market investments. It's the amount that banks and insurers are on the hook for if absolutely everything goes down the tubes."