Working Across the Aisle

American voters have heard a lot this campaign season from both presidential candidates about the need to work in a bipartisan fashion, but neither candidate truly supported a bipartisan approach to resolving the economic crisis we faced this week. Both took the usual approach of accepting a flawed bill proposed by the Executive Branch and tacking on some perks and pork to sweeten the deal. They then crossed their fingers and hoped that the revised bill could garner enough supporters who would hold their nose and pass it despite the churning in their gut and the ire of their constituents.

The real leadership came from representatives in the House who examined the bill, unearthed its many flaws and sounded alarm over the unprecedented power it placed in the hands of the Executive Branch. A small group of Democratic and Republican representatives refused to be bullied and frightened into submission. They balked at their leadership’s insistence that it was the Bush way, jazzed up a bit with some constituent candy, or imminent doom and destruction at the hands of the wrathful free market god. They courageously voted NO on the bill. Then they talked and creatively proposed intelligent alternatives to the administration plan.

As I write this, some Republican representatives are going to the Rules Committee to request permission to add an amendment to the bill that would significantly reduce the pork that was added by the Senate while also limiting the power of the Executive branch and taking back power for the Congress in oversight and approval. The Democratic opposition to the bill, led by Ohio’s own Marcy Kaptur and Peter DeFazio (OR) proposed a totally different plan that would pay for the bailout with a tax on stock trades while attempting to stabilize the market by increasing the FDIC limit and changing SEC mark to market valuation of assets.

While the plans proposed by the Democratic and Republican holdouts in the House are different, they have some things in common.

• They limit the power given to the Executive Branch and reclaim power for the Congress

• They cut the amount of government money that is given to the Secretary of the Treasury upfront and make him or her more accountable to Congress for the way it is spent.

• Neither bill includes pork and perks totally unrelated to the immediate crisis. It isn’t that some of those perks and pork barrel projects aren’t worthy, it’s just that they shouldn’t be lumped together so that they can’t be fairly debated and passed on their own merit.

In fairness to the leadership, some changes were made to the president’s proposal that improved it, but they pushed their colleagues to pass it and acted like officers of the Executive Branch instead providing creative leadership to the Congress. It’s time we had a Congress that can work across the aisle to protect the American taxpayers from an Executive Branch that has usurped power that wasn’t given to it under the Constitution. It is time for our Representatives to work in a bipartisan manner to solve problems instead of playing politics with legislation. Their constituents deserve bills that they can understand, strong bills that address the issue instead of bills that are so encumbered by amendments and weakened by compromise that they are ineffective. The best solutions aren’t created by throwing a little of everyone’s ideas into a bill with hundreds of almost incomprehensible pages of legalism and passing it. Then when it doesn’t solve the problem, the parties blame each other for the failure.

The best solutions come from creative problem solving by people of good faith with respect for each other even when they offer different approaches to solving the problem. Creativity, problem solving and respect, and courage that’s what I saw in the deliberations of some members of the House this week. Unfortunately these were not qualities I found evident in their leadership.

Obama and Taxes

I was out campaigning for Obama yesterday, and I was impressed with how well Senator McCain's campaign ads and attacks are working to convince voters that if Obama wins the election, they will have huge tax increases. One elderly lady living in a subsidised senior citizens housing complex was a registered Democrat, but she was going to vote for McCain this year because she was convinced that if she voted for Obama all the prices would go up because businesses would pass tax increases onto consumers.

The voters need some education about income inequality in the United States and the effect the Bush tax cuts combined with an expensive war have had on our national debt. The only problem is, it takes more than a 30 second sound bite to explain economics and the philosophical basis for a progressive tax code. Unfortunately, the attention span of the average voter seems to be pretty short. Maybe they need some graphs and charts. It seemed to work for Ross Perot. The picture above is a graphic representation of the Gini Coefficient, a measure of income distributuion, for various countries. The darker blue and purple colors show more inequality and the lighter yellow and green more equality. Compaired to other industrialized democracies, the U. S. doesn't measure up.

Now I can understand the top 3-5% of the population being against the repeal of the Bush tax cuts. I can even understand voters being reluctant to tax anyone, after all, no one likes to pay taxes or bills. But what I don't understand is how voters with average intellegence and a decent education can believe that McCain or Obama will fix the problems we face without either raising taxes for someone or going fruther into debt as a nation. We've all spent enough time at our kitchen tables trying to balance our budgets to know that if income doesn't equal spending you have to get another job, tighten your belt or go into debt. Maybe the voters really believe that the mavaricks, McCain and Palin will cut out all the "Bridges to Nowhere" in the budget and find a lot of hidden cash to balance things. ( Didn't Alaska keep that money?) Sorry, I just don't buy it. Congress has never been very good in the belt tightening department. Even with Sherrif McCain and Deputy Palin in D.C. packing pistols and riding herd on Congress, the budget isn't going to balance unless the taxes are raised for some of us or we hock our national treasures and our childrens' future in pawnshops around the world.

Here is what the candidates in this election are not talking about. The presentation comes from Ross Perot's website (Remember him) . Although I didn't vote for him, his warning of the disaster to come with trade agreements being signed was not lost on me. This morning I saw his running mate, PAT CHOATE, author of Dangerous Business: the risks of globalization for America, on C-Span. That and the first campaign 2008 forum last night prompted me to post something on this blog.

After watching the Warren forum, I fear that this election will be decided based on campaign slogans, smear ads (even an 11 year old can see through), and social issues. If we care about our country, we should be talking about economics, not abortion, gay marriage, getting Osama Bin Laudin dead or alive, and rattling our sabers at Russia. What was really scary was how the political talking heads rated the performance of the two candidates after the debate. McCain got high marks for his expected pandering to the religious right and Obama got slammed for his "nuanced" professor type responses (recognizing and discussing complicated issues in an intelligent manner?). Unfortunately, economics is a complicated problem and there is no easy fix that can be summed up in one slogan or campaign promise.

We are in deep trouble in the U.S. and our economic situation is a major threat to our national security, both economic and military. Ross Perot and Pat Choate are trying to get the discussion going. I only hope the voters are up to listening to it.

Monopoly

When I was a child, cold winter Saturdays like this one were often spent in the tower of a Victorian mansion that had been made into four apartments. My best friend’s family lived in the apartment on the top floor that used to be the attic of the mansion. My family lived in the duplex in the ally behind the apartments, where the stable for the mansion once stood. The kids in our neighborhood spent their 10 - 25 cent weekly allowance on coke, pretzel sticks, and penny candy. Then we settled in around a big table and enjoyed this game of high finance that was developed during the great depression. The game ended hours later when one of us had accumulated most of the property and wealth and someone else went bankrupt paying the rent required for landing on the other’s property full of hotels.

The game was developed during the great depression, when the country reaped the result of years of over extended credit, unbridled greed, and the consolidation of wealth. So it seemed fitting that I was playing Monopoly in a made over Victorian mansion, though I had no clue about the history of either as I munched on my pretzels and drank my Coke.

The Gilded Age and the Jazz Age that preceded the worst economic depression in history were periods of unprecedented corporate growth. An increasingly smaller percentage of the population controlled not only business, but through their wealth also influenced the political process to their advantage. These were times when the gap in the distribution of wealth between workers and those who owned the means of production increased dramatically. This was also the age of the muckrakers and the trust buster, Teddy Roosevelt. There are many similarities between this period of history and our own. Is John McCain a Teddy Roosevelt Republican hiding in a Reagan costume? Check out my guest column on the Cosmic Message web site?

Letter to Congress

I have to say I am angry enough to spit bullets, so I sent this letter to my Congressional representatives, Senator Sherrod Brown, Senator George Voinovich, and Congressman 16th District, Ralph Regula. I hope that they will share my opinion with the rest of their colleagues. If any of this hits home for you, feel free to cut and paste as you see fit and send it off to your Congressional representatives.

Dear Congressional Representative:
I have been closely watching the economy for a long time. It was easy to predict the present "crisis" as American families borrowed at high rates of interest on credit cards when they couldn't afford to do so. When they got into trouble on credit cards, the Fed lowered the rate of interest so they could double mortgage or use home equity loans to pay off credit card debts. The banks and financial institutions could not make their high rates of interest on traditional loans, so they made the risky sub-prime loans and jacked up the credit card rates on those who were already in financial trouble.

It is strange that the Congress now wants to "do something" about the economic crisis. People in Ohio have been losing their decent jobs for years. Credit card companies have been robbing us of what little money we have each month. We are as much tied to the credit card companies as the coal miners were tied to the company stores. What did Congress do about it? It changed the bankruptcy laws so it is harder to get free of the debt this government has encouraged consumers to shoulder and encouraged people to hock the house to pay off the credit cards. Our elderly are getting reverse mortgages to pay for health care and living expenses.

In the meantime, Congress went on an Iraq spending spree with billions that cannot be accounted for, and all we hear is that entitlements are breaking the budget. We are told that health care for everyone would break the budget, but federal and state funds are already paying the cost for those who are at highest risk among us, the elderly, disabled, and poor. Meanwhile the private insurance companies refuse to insure people with preexisting conditions and charge employers and the self-employed outrageous rates. Insurance companies have increased profits and higher salaries for their CEOs while the tax payer picks up the tab for the uninsured and those at highest risk. When a crisis does occur like hurricane Katrina, insurance companies refuse to pay their subscribers, leaving the government to give aid to the people who have been hurt.

Ah! But now the stock market is hitting the skids. Now there is a REAL economic crisis for Congress to worry about. What will we do?! The answer, of course, is for the government to spend billions of dollars they borrow from China, some Middle Eastern oil rich leader or our Social Security fund to goad the American consumer to resume spending. It is interesting that Congress has no money to help Americans who have no health care, have lost their jobs to China, owe their homes and their lives to credit companies and banks, but they have 160 billion to spend to prop up the stock market and the financial institutions that have been gouging us.

Here is what I have to say to this Congress and I hope you will say it for me. Keep your refund! You weren't there when the credit card companies and banks were enslaving me. You weren't there when my health cost were doubling. You weren't there when the good jobs in Ohio went to China, India and Vietnam. So don't be there for the bankers, CEO's, mortgage companies, day traders and house flippers. I might suffer a bit, but I know how to do with less. Lower and middle income people in Ohio have had a lot of practice.

Do you want to pass some legislation?! How about regulating the financial institutions, stock market, and insurance companies? How about changing our trade agreements to protect American workers? How about ending the Bush tax cuts to the wealthy, so that we can fund the war this Congress voted to get us into? Maybe you could stimulate the economy by fixing our bridges so they won’t fall and our levies to protect our homes. Maybe you could put some Americans to work fixing our broken infrastructure, policing our streets to make our neighborhoods safe, or fixing our schools.

Yours truly,
Angry Constituent

Joining CRAM

Discontinuous Permafrost has started a great movement called CRAM and I am joining the movement today. It is time American consumers began to fight back against corporate abuse and this seems like a great way to do it. If you want to join, just start putting all those credit card applications back in the prepaid envelops with the words please recycle scrawled across the application or better yet, send them back shredded with a note to recycle the contents.

While we are on the topic of corporate greed...
Is anyone else upset by the politicians attempts to solve our economic crisis by sending us back a penitence of our own money so that we can spend it to prop up the stock market?

Seems strange to me that universal health care is seen as prohibitively expensive when the cost is estimated to be $110 billion a year, but candidates from both parties seem ready spend $50 billion to $150 billion for a tax stimulus package that they hope Americans will spend to prop up corporate profits and the stock market. Americans have been losing their jobs, their homes and their financial stability for a long time, but what gets the attention of Congress? The stock market is going down and the financial institutions are losing their shirts on the bad loans they made to the financially overextended American consumers. Except for Ron Paul, none of the candidates seem to be losing sleep over where the money will come from to pay for the stimulus.

It is time for the politicians to start telling the truth about our economic situation. This nation cannot survive as the major consumer of products that are produced elsewhere. We cannot continue to borrow away our future to prop up our overindulgence today. This is a time of reckoning. It isn't the first time this has happened. It happened once before when everyone was trying to get rich quick by speculating in land and stocks. People were enticed by advertisements to buy the latest technological gadgets today and pay for them tomorrow and credit was easy to get. The only difference was that it was washing machines, radios and automobiles then and it is iPods, cell phones, and Nintendo's today. We are in a recession and we could end up in a depression if the politicians continue to stick jacks under the crumbling foundation instead of addressing the true problems with this economy.

Latest Political Post

Even though I haven't been doing a lot of posting here, I am still watching the news. I've posted my latest thoughts on unsafe products and our government's unwillingness to protect workers and consumers. Visit the Cosmic Message to learn about my mushroom experience and join the discussion.

The DOW and the TAO

On August 19th the DOW Industrial Average hit 14,000, and then it started gyrating around like a balloon that has been blown up and released without a knot at the end. Having predicted a credit created tsunami for over ten years now, I can’t say I was surprised. Corporate America with the help of the government marionettes has been propping up our economy with credit while stealing its valuable resources and picking the pockets of lower and middle income Americas for a long time. While the advertisers were inundating the public with the messages of unbridled consumerism and the financial institutions promoted funding it with credit card and home equity debt, there was a fundamental truth to which no one was paying attention except those who found themselves with nothing left to hock, not even the possibility of future earnings. James McMurtry has a song about it, “We Can’t Make it Here Anymore”.

There is something fundamentally wrong with a society that consumes more than it produces. You don’t need an MBA to understand this concept, but the idea of being able to consume without end and reap without harvesting is so intoxicating that even a lot of MBAs allowed themselves to be sucked in. I was watching CNBC during the rise to 14,000, when the money pundits were gushing about Goldilocks and stomping like bulls. They were singing the praises of globalization like overwrought converts at a religious revival. Then the credit balloon got away, and the Dow went haywire. Suddenly the tone turned to panic and there were prayers for the Federal Reserve Board to come and save them from certain destruction. "Lower the interest rates!", they cried. "Add some liquidity!" At the same time, products produced for a big profit in China were increasingly found to be defective. Law suits loom on the horizon to rob investors of anticipated profits and rising stock prices. The very people who were all about globalization and deregulation are now crying for the American government and the taxpayers to step in to protect them.


I was also watching the sad drama being played out in Utah where six miners are trapped and others have died trying to rescue them. In my mind, I made a connection between these two events. There was greed involved in the mining and greed involved in the hedge funds and mortgage markets. Too much coal had been removed to support the mountain above it. Those who stood to gain most from mining it knew they were taking a big risk. When the roof fell in, the owner wanted to blame it on nature, not humans taking so much coal from the mine that the mountain needed to fill the void. They propped up the roof, but you can only defy the laws of the universe for so long. Those who made the plans to do retreat mining and reaped the lion’s share of the monetary rewards from it weren’t the ones trapped and dead when the ceiling collapsed. The owners kept reassuring the miners that the mine was safe, that they were looking out for them. Those who lent credit at high interest rates to poor credit risks knew that these loans were risky, yet government and economic leaders keep telling us that the economy is solid and growing. But when the loans can’t be repaid after years of trying, it will be the American consumers who are left with nothing to show for their years of labor and sacrifice, not the big investors or the government officials that they financed and duped the public into electing . The roof of this economy is being supported on the backs of lower and middle class Americans who are in hock over their heads, and are losing their jobs to cheap labor in foreign countries and exploited illegal immigrants. The Federal Reserve might be able to shore it up by lowering the interest rates again, but we cannot defy the laws of nature forever. When the collapse comes, those who have been making the economic decisions will be counting their profits in some offshore resort while the rest of us try to dig ourselves out of the rubble. It is time for us to develop some respect for nature and learn from it instead of abusing it. We need to look to the TAO for guidance, not the DOW.


When a country obtains great power,

it becomes like the sea:
all streams run downward into it.
The more powerful it grows,
the greater the need for humility.
Humility means trusting the Tao,
thus never needing to be defensive.

A great nation is like a great man:
When he makes a mistake, he realizes it.
Having realized it, he admits it.
Having admitted it, he corrects it.
He considers those who point out his faults
as his most benevolent teachers.
He thinks of his enemy as the shadow that he himself casts.

If a nation is centered in the Tao,
if it nourishes its own people
and doesn't meddle in the affairs of others,
it will be a light to all nations in the world.

Tao Te Ching, 31 Lao-tzu

Be Afraid, Be Very Afraid

"The only security of all is in a free press. The force of public opinion cannot be resisted when permitted freely to be expressed. The agitation it produces must be submitted to. It is necessary, to keep the waters pure." --Thomas Jefferson to Lafayette, 1823.

The very heart of our democracy is threatened when information and debate is controlled by those who have economic and political power. I am afraid, I am very very afraid, not of the terrorists but of those who have been and are continuing to take over our media and prevent the free flow of conversation between citizens and deny the public access to essential information. There are two major threats to the free press that has prompted me to write this and increased my anxiety.

First, are all the media mergers that place control of the mass media in the hands of media conglomerates. Nine companies, Disney, CBS, Time Warner, News Corp, Bertelsmann AG, Viacom, General Electric, Lagardère Group and Vivendi SA own 90% of the market. There is one and only one guiding principle for these mega corporations, “make a profit”. For a good discussion of the deterioration in the mass media’s coverage of the news I would refer you to an article at Cyber College titled, The Decline of TV News Coverage. One of the most recent takeovers was yesterday’s sale of the Wall Street Journal to News Corp. Now, I’m not a great fan of many of the opinions expressed in the Wall Street Journal, but I do read it on occasion and look to it for a conservative and business point of view on the news and as a source for understanding the economic world of big business and multinational corporations. What I don’t want to read in the Wall Street Journal is what I read in all the other newspapers and see on TV.

Second is the continuing effort by multinational corporations and many of our current “corporate owned” elected officials to control the Internet and restrict the free flow of information and harness it for profit. As newspaper, television, radio, and motion picture media has increasingly come under the control of big corporations concerned only with profit, not information, factual reporting or democracy; the Internet has become the best hope for the spread of democracy throughout the world and the continuation of our own. But as Cosmic has posted on his website, the average American is too distracted by endless debates on Iraq, new reports of threats by terrorists, the latest Hollywood gossip, and political spin to protest the legislation that would silence the voice of the people and rob them of the information they need to maintain their freedom.

“As special interests jockey for control of the information highway, consumer input has become noticeably absent from the conversation. Unable to express their concerns, people are reduced to passive listeners, voiceless to interject their opinions about the most significant free speech matter to emerge in the past 75 years. Instead of focusing on a substantive policy which assures the Internet will be shared equally by everyone at an affordable price, the slugfest has degenerated into a hostile engagement about who will profit the most from its future deployment.”

It is time for freedom loving Americans to protect free speech and free press, fundamental rights guaranteed in our First Amendment. The founding fathers knew the importance of these rights to our continued survival as a free nation. Join the fight to Save the Internet for the people.

"We all take for granted the freedom that the internet gives us to access any piece of information, ranging from the smallest website to the largest. Most importantly, we take for granted the freedom it gives us to share our opinions. Imagine, if you will, an Internet where certain websites are blocked or take a prolonged amount of time to load just because the broadband provider you subscribe to doesn't agree with the opinions or content presented on them. The great innovations that come from an open, collaborative environment would be stalled, if not completely halted."
"Media conglomerates threaten Internet neutrality" Polytechnic Online

Modern American Lifestyle

Thanks to an e-mail from Stephanie, I discovered a blog that does a nice job of critiquing the constantly on-the- go American lifestyle. I would encourage you to read Thomas Paine's Corner, especially the post on What McDonalds resurgence tell us about US capitalism.

This post points out the devastating effect the focus on capitalism is having on our personal lives. There are many who see a crisis of values in this country. The blame has been placed on everything from ending prayer in school, gay marriage, to drugs, but burgeoning unregulated capitalism is rarely brought up as a causal factor.

One indication of the elevation of capitalism is President Bush's tribute to Julie Aigner-Clark, founder of the Baby Einstein Co in his State of the Union Address. Slate gives a good critic of this enterprise that markets videos to infants. What was Julie Aigner-Clark's great contribution to humanity?
"Julie represents the great enterprising spirit of America." (G.W. Bush)

I'm not against making money or encouraging people to be enterprising by awarding them a goodly share of the profits for their hard work and ingenuity, but I am opposed to valuing the ability to obtain luxuries over meeting human needs.

I'm not for limiting free speech, but shouldn't there be some restraint in marketing to children and teens? Shouldn't we create films and television shows that encourage the highest form of human behavior instead of catering to our baser instincts? I don't think laws are the answer, though some regulation might help when it comes to advertising to children and youth. When my children would complain that I did not give them enough freedom, I told them that freedom equaled responsibility. To be truly free one must take responsibility for making good choices. Americans need to exercise their freedom through responsible consumption and revolt against the values that are being preached to us daily through advertising. We need to ask hard questions about our American life-style. Instead of passively accepting our place on the treadmill, we need to explore alternatives.

Some interesting facts about TV and Family Life Critically watching TV and all the commercials gives a very interesting commentary on the American lifestyle and our value system. I thought the commercials during the Superbowl hit a new low.