Granted, they never taze reasonable people. However, the argument Taser International makes is that these things save lives by incapacitating a violent criminal that the cops would have to kill otherwise. This argument is highly questionable in light of how tazers are actually used by law enforcement. They use it as a crutch whenever incapacitating someone would make their job easier, not as a replacement for lethal force. The point we have been trying to make all this time is that using tazers in this way increases the number of deaths that result from regular police work, because taers are more likely to cause death than the methods the peace officer would have had to use to resolve the situation. This is in turn compounded by some officers apparent inability to diffierentiate between a regular citizen and a genuine threat.
When the Chinese government was putting on a carefully orchistrated dog and pony show to the western media to try and convince us that all is well in Tibet, some brave monks busted in and began pleading with the assembled members of the press, not to believe the crap being fed to them. Aparently this was not so carefully orchistrated after all. The shame is on the Chinese for trying such an old trick.
I want to contrast this to Bjork, who recently ended a concert of hers in China with a call to free Tibet. This was entirely selfish. Her chanting to the audience will have no effect on whether Tibet will gain any sembelance of independence. There was not some person in that audience that will rise up and liberate the downtroden because of a subversive message whispered at the end of a concert. All Bjork did was mark everyone in the audience as a suspect. She got to leave China but now her fans may have to endure scrutiny as suspicious persons because of her self-indulgent outburst.
Unfortunately, due to the arcane nature of economic measurements and a desire on the part of the elite to remain elite, there is an entire market around attempting to provide answers to clients and predict near- and long-term economic phenomena. So, in an effort to help you from wanting to go spend money on overpriced financial services, here are some questions you may be asking, and some answers.
How much will this crisis cost the economy in the long term? According to JP Morgan Chase, the overall costs could be as much as $1.2 trillion.
How is the crisis being felt in other markets? Europe's economy is resilient against the contagion, thanks to the rising Euro and sound monetary policy of keeping interest rates stable, which, in turn, draws available capital into the Eurozone. Head of the European Central Bank President, Jean-Claude Trichet remains skeptical if the worst has yet to come. Canada's CIBC still is working through at least $25 billion in exposure to monoline insurers.
Is there more unwinding yet to happen in bad loans? The simplest way to answer this would be to say, "Yes." However, as details are still emerging about the prevalence of home equity loans, or other liens placed on homes in addition to the traditional first lien, mortgages, there is still a lot of red ink to be spilled.
Is the stock market going to be a viable investment anytime soon? Perhaps, but not for the next few years. In the cyclical nature of business, the stock market traditionally sours for a decade after a decade of strong trading. So if this trend continues, the market will probably not begin to make lasting gains until approximately 2012.
With increasingly visible protests against financial corporations receiving bailouts from the Federal Government, are there any other potential targets of popular discontent? As all politics are local, one need look no farther than the financing of your local Wal-Mart. Does your local community allow 'tax increment financing?'
The employment outlook is souring, but was there any good news in the latest batch of GDP data? Not really, almost every number on the page is down in comparison to the quarter before, with a very precipitous drop in government spending. Also of note, exports are declining at the same time as imports are decreasing, which is a reflection of real consumer spending. Also of note, the value of real residential fixed investments, that of houses and such, fell by 25.2%.
With all of the concerns about moral hazard, is there really a bad way to intervene in the marketplace? Yes, there is. For instance, pushing Fannie and Freddie into buying bad loans and then holding more capital in reserve against this new volume of bad loans. Businesses and executives that made bad decisions need to face the consequences of their decisions. The government has enough work to do to get its own house in order. I'm not alone in thinking that with this bailout will come a spiraling dollar.
Of course, the world never stops spinning, and police officers with Tasers will probably use them.
In North Carolina, a young man who had high hopes is brought low by a taser. Apparently, whatever outrage and horror that one should feel as a result of this is rendered moot by the fact that he had marijuana hidden in a sock, which police found in a search after the fact. This article provides more questions than answers, but hopefully now that the lawyer hired by the lad's mother has found a new key witness, we can know what officers were thinking.
An incident sure to draw fire from the legal department at Taser International, the death of an individual from Idaho, who died after being hit with a Taser, has been ruled a homicide. The family and freedom-lovers everywhere want answers.
Not satisfied in violating one amendment to the constitution, the police of Washington DC have started a door to door campaign asking, "Got any guns?" Aparently this has been happeing in Boston for some time now. My favorite part is how suprised they are to experience resistance.
I have often focused on how government failures contribute to Cleveland being a horrible place to live but I have overlooked how the awful people that live here do their own part every day to contribute to the horrid torments of this city.
Yesterday I saw two things that I never expected to see in my life, let alone in America. In the middle of the afternoon on a Monday I saw two school buses traveling down the road, packed full of kids, on fire. The kids weren't on fire the busses were. Well, now that I think of it the kids could have been on fire. I could not see inside the buses through the heavy, ten story tall, cloud of smoke shrouding the busses. I was stuck behind these busses for some time and they made no effor to pull over and remove the chidren from danger, or to put the fires out.
The second horrendus thing I saw yesterday: A person, I could not tell what gender, tossed a cat off an overpass into rush hour traffic on I-71.
In Cleveland, the housing market crash has mixed with joblessness to get the recession started off soon. This economic catastrophy has turned the desperation of poverty into a criminal desperation. In a city like Cleveland where the criminal population is a demographic measured by the census this increase once again causes Cleveland to win the trophy, the catastrophy. Copper pipe theft is a trade in Cleveland, one that a young boy can apprentice in with some of the more enterprizing members of the community. In the county which has been hardest hit by foreclosures there are many vacant houses lying about. Within hours of a house becoming unoccupied it is stripped of its metal siding, copper piping, appliances, and even the wire is ripped out of the house. Next, vagrants and drug dealers move in using these vacant buildings as their office so they don't have to ply their dangerous trade door to door. Eventually all the windows are broken out and ultimately the house will either be burned down or will become someone's urban tomb.
Yesterday during a presentation before the New York Port Authority, Ben Bernanke demonstrated his telepathic and psycho-economic skills to cause the stock market to rally briefly. It is unclear whether he used his powers of econotelepathy to manipulate the minds of JP Morgan execs to get them to pay a higher price for Bear Stearns, or if he caused traders in the black pits of Wall Street to interpret the offering favorably. Or if he simply moved the markets directly with his voodoo economics. When asked why the initial rally did not continue and keep the gains throughout the day, Bernanke replied with exhaustion, "I couldn't hold it."
Its been awhile since we linked to a tazer story but don't think that is because there have not been any. This little gem comes from one of our more violent states. The article has no indication about what happened making it difficult to ask our typical question. Consequently, I point out that this news outlet has chosen to make half of the short article about the crimes this man had previously committed. As if to say, don't worry, this only happens to bad people, he deserved to die, you are safer now, let your fear justify their violence.
This is what I was talking about in a previous post. This is what a law abiding person has to fear from a government that has too much information and no respect for boundries, rights, or freedom, in obtaining that information.
There are two issues going before the Supreme Court in the news today. The hearing challenging the Washington D.C. gun ban and a challenge to broadcast indecency regulation by Fox. Both of these cases have to do with the relationship of individual to one's government. And, in both of these cases freedom is being defended by right wing maniacs. The same maniacs who have been decidedly anti-freedom under the Bush administration.
It's difficult to defend freedom of speech when its offensive, and it's difficult to defend the right to have and use a lethal weapon without resorting to a slippery slope argument that evokes an opressive totalatarian 1984 regime.
Many of the Founding Fathers were philosophically libertarian. This philosophy describes the American way the individual relates to one's government. Power is vested in the government by the citizens and the purpose of the government is to preserve the rights of its citizens. This is the only way sovereignty can be legitimate. Under this philosophy, the rights delineated by the Constitution and the Bill of Rights are not granted by the document but ensured by it. Every human has these rights, it is the purpose of government to ensure the freedom to use these rights.
Freedom can be a scary thing. Its hard to trust strangers not to abuse their freedoms and infringe upon ours, but that is the freedom that each of us gives up to live within civilization. As long as no one infringes on your rights, you do not have the right to be offended.
The national debate over guns is often depicted as having one side that declares, possessing guns is an individual human right, and another side that declares that guns kill people. I do not see these as counterpoints to one another. Saying that a gun kills is like saying water is wet. A gun is a tool for killing and a pistol is a tool for killing other humans. The point is so obvious that it overlooks a fundamental difference in ideology that stems from the Western fear of death. We believe that death is bad and killing is wrong as if they are intrinsic universal truths. In an urban life, separated from the terrifying freedom of nature, and surrounded by a comforting layer of concrete and glass it is easy to believe, "my life does not cause death," but that is not true. It seems to me that this is the same kind of foolishness that leads to veganism. Though, as much as I believe it to be foolish, it is each person's right to choose when it is acceptable to kill. And in a society where our killing is done for us by others, it is difficult to stop. I can only accept that by being alive that my life necessarily causes death, one day I will die, and something will eat my body.
All this wheel of life shit is too philosophical for the debate at hand. The point is that sometimes, killing is necessary. Sometimes it is necessary to kill another human being. For instance, in self defense when that human is trying to rape you, kill you, or severely injure you it is acceptable to use lethal force to protect yourself. Libertarian philosophy supports this conclusion and our laws regulate its effect by apportioning guilt. If you accept these two points, that there are acceptable times to kill and one of those times is to protect your person, the only remaining debate is one of tool choice and the question of banning guns becomes one of reasonable regulation. Should weapon choice be limited, and in what way?
Meaningful hard data is difficult to come by since through studies have been done by either side of the issue and anecdotal evidence can be pointed to by either side. In my recent posts on this blog I have referenced some stories from the past year that tend to support the conclusion that gun regulation either does not work or is counterproductive. One story noted a significant decline in violent crime in Detroit, every year for the last ten years since the passing of Michigan's concealed carry law. In the tragic massacre at Virginia Tech, the killer had been declared to be a danger to himself or others. Existing gun control laws prohibited him from purchasing a gun but he was able to anyhow, either because of bureaucratic bungling by law enforcement or through the negligence of the shop owner. Even more recently a gun toting maniac shot up a convent and was stopped from killing more people by an armed member of the congregation that had the lawful right to carry and had been a police officer.
One last point about the Second Amendment. The founding fathers were radical revolutionaries who had just overthrown their government through a violent war. They knew this was only possible by having armed citizens who could be loosely organized into militia when there was a need for extra military force. As Thomas Jefferson said, "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants."
Such an audacious quote brings me to the topic of freedom of speech. You are not really using your freedom of speech unless someone is trying to take it away from you. The gurantee of this freedom exists not to protect mundane and polite speech, but offensive, shocking, profane, and challenging speech. This is why freedom of speech means you do not have the right to be offended.
Speech is impossible to regulate. Profane language is derived from emotion and is meant to convey that emotional content. The power is only marginally in the words but it really stems from the emotional content they are meant to convey and the power we invest in them. You might as well attempt to regulate anger and criminalize rage.
Even if one could make a list of say, seven words, that must never be spoken and if that regulation can actually have an effect on stamping out those words. Other words will be granted offensive power by being filled with the same emotional content and social stigma making the old words meaningless and silly. Language is fluid and meaning changes in relatively quick time even in regular words. "Humbug" used to be a profoundly profane word and is hardly used today.
Further, such regulation is inherently self-defeating. Labeling certain words as taboo only encourages their use for the purpose of shocking others. Thusly, restricting a words use as profane, only enshrines its profanity, and further empowers it to do harm.
I am certain that this was the goal of the performers who used these offensive words and caused Fox to be fined by the FCC. It seems ironic to me that Fox, the network that curtailed political speech and freedom of the press through social pressure and jingoism in the frantic run-up to the Iraq war where the MSM failed its duty to the entire world, is the one who is fighting for a small victory for free speech. Then again, if anyone is going to go to court over profanity, its going to be the network that brought you "Who wants to marry a millionaire?"
With Ben Bernanke's newfound affinity for nimble and flexible policy, the comparison to a cat almost seems natural. However, in an effort to help you better channel your inner cat here is some reading and food for thought.
First, usaspending.gov is a really awesome website for policy addicts out there with some dynamic ways of looking at the way that the U.S. Government spends its money, with much potential for fun and blogging. For instance, in 2007, the Federal government spent less on traditional state spending than in previous years. This continues, despite record federal deficits. As one would expect the crumbling value of the dollar is being reflected in exponentially increasing federal spending. Unfortunately, for us, the War in Iraq and the Global War on Terror are contributing, if not causing, this problem.
Here is a handy slide show from the GAO about how the government is spending its money. The numbers are pretty terrifying, especially considering that these numbers don't reflect the quicksilver economic reality that we are currently faced with, aka the increased transportation costs of gas prices going up by 25% on average. Remember when it was serious when gas reached $2 a gallon? Not to mention the fuel inefficient vehicles the military relies on aren't going to see less use in the near future. Unlike the GAO, we here at the Fringe Element feel that more constructive advice is necessary, if for nothing more than general principle. My recommendation would be to move towards an asset-based financial system, perhaps similar to Islamic banking practices, in an effort to provide some stability to the dollar to try to halt its historical slide to worthless.
What would happen if the government forced these big financial institutions to take responsibility for their own bad behavior, instead of forcing it on individual home owners? Its both a bit creepy and a bit reassuring when the Wall Street Journal is asking the same questions we have been for months. They reach the conclusion that presumably the fed reached with sober and rational thought. That it is against public policy to allow a pillar of the U.S. financial world to fall during a widespread crisis.
My problem with this whole thing is not so personal so long as I have a roof over my head and a steady job so I resort to moral philosophy. I see a great deal of hypocracy in the behavior of large financial institutions during this crisis. I assume that these white men in power over these companies are of a political bend that reacts negatively to the concept of welfare. Yet here we see one of the most gross examples of corporate welfare since the Cheney crafted energy bills. These institutions acted with a conscious disregard for the substantial risk in their investments or undertook efforts to conceal the risk. This is a violation of even the slim standards of corporate ethics. Even concealment is a thin excuse. I am no financial guru, but even I was aware of news articles by sober economists who saw the writing on the wall regarding the real estate bubble a year ago. Now these institutions are pushing the consequences of the risk they willingly, or negligently undertook, on home owners, and now on the tax payers because the government is afraid of what will happen. Rightly so. Still, it could be worse.
This is another example of the Bush administration being asleep at the switch. This administration frequently selects highly incompetent people for the highest offices in government based almost solely on their loyalty to the party or the specific individual that currently holds the office of the president, rather than to the people to whom they are supposed to be accountable. This is not to say I would rather have had more cumbersome regulation of the markets. But the markets will run off a cliff like a blind lemming if given the opportunity and I presume this administration allowed that to happen because of a pathalogical need to continue to claim the economy was doing well as whole sectors of the economy collapsed, one after the other, on their watch. Now, more regulation is guranteed. This regulation is going to be drafted by people with only a rudimentary understanding of what happened and are more conserned with elections. All industry has to do to avoid new, clumsy, onerous regulation is stop being both selfish and stupid at the same time.
With the weak Dollar, the times are right for the manufacturing sector to surge into action and save us. Tragically the long fall of the giant U.S. manufacturing sector, that supplied durable goods to the whole of the world for almost a century appears to be complete. The last nail driven in the coffin by Wal-Mart.
These two realities of market forces are both strong examples of the foolishness of faith in the market. The government releaving financial institutions of the moral hazard of the decisions they make and our pathalogical need to consume massive quantities of cheep, foreign-made, goods are illustrative of how even regulated capitalism encourages us to feed the monster that is killing us.
Jack Thompson is a lawyer in Florida who spends his time acting as an attention whore screaming about the gaming or pornography industries interchangably. Its easy to hate him, but I am compelled to feel sorry for someone who is obviously an extreme result of the psychological pathology of our society. Where we childishly glorify violence and adress sex with a bizarre characture, Thompson lashes out at attempts to profit from this communal tendancy. This man is a symptom of our collective social mental illness. Fortunately for the legal profession, he faces sanctions for his outlandish behavior. http://www.abajournal.com/news/lawyer_threatened_with_sanctions_after_putting_images_of_kangaroos_swastika/#When:08:10:00Z
The FBI abused its power under the Patriot Act? I'm schocked, schocked! Well maybe not that schocked.
Lastly, for anyone who is somehow so unaware that they may be compared to a cave dwelling hermit and in keeping with our mockery of hypocratical politicians; Elliot Spitzer.
MTS Systems, an advanced components engineering firm has plead guilty to helping sell components for weapons systems to two companies that are directly involved in the weapons components of the Indian government's nuclear program. As typical of the ramifications of the 14th Amendment, the corporation itself has been allowed to plead guilty to falsifying documents, as though it was an abstract organization that was pushing people to lie to avoid export licensing requirements. Apparently, the human element, though failed, is not to be held accountable.
The story is complicated by "Co-conspirator A," an unnamed diplomatic official in the Indian Mission in Washington, D.C. This official tie is involved through a Singaporean businessman, who is facing 5 years in jail as a result of his role in the twisted scandal. I'm sure there's a lesson about race and fairness to be found there, but is not integrally important to the story.
Sure, the U.S. counterintelligence is kind of a joke and many countries are always stealing our knowledge and intellectual property, but then again, how easy is it to keep an idea under lock and key? This will only further serve to strengthen opposition to the deal in the U.S., although that might not matter at this point.
As always, the world keeps spinning, and people will keep being people. So, by way of briefing, here are a few developments, like how a Recession is inevitable. Bush is optimistic.
Ben Franklins are increasingly worthless, compared to most foreign exchanges. The Dollar has gone below 100 yen for the first time in more than a decade, and keeps hitting new highs against our poor greenback. Inflation, though, reportedly didn't go up by very much in February, perhaps signifying a leveling out of prices, in the wake of consumer prices not properly reported in the Consumer Price Index. Any hope that inflation will be ameliorated by flattening or perhaps falling consumer demand is probably, at best, naive with oil on its march up to $125 a barrel. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac may have been thrown a lifeline by Fed chief Ben Bernanke, but should he have? Is it enough? $200 Billion is a lot of money to be financed by Treasuries, yet not very much compared to the size of the mortgage market. Speaking of which, is going into dire straits as the crisis is beginning to move into the more traditional branch of mortgages, those whom enjoy good credit histories. In truth, the Fed has now set a course to assume all risk to the global financial system from the mortgage crisis.
Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson has announced new financial guidelines that are already market practice, which mostly center around risk assessment and the documentation required to receive a mortgage. Any notion of adjusting accounting requirements to allow banks to free up capital on their balance sheets, however, seems extremely misguided.
Fanning the entropy further, a pair of large financial institutions have collapsed in the wake of the problems in the financial sector. Bear Sterns, just after appointing a new head of East Asian operations, found its liquidity destroyed almost overnight. Thankfully for them, JP Morgan is riding in to the rescue. The Carlyle Group may come to the rescue of its stepchild, not-really subsidiary Carlyle Capital Corporation, as its assets have been seized. In a branding effort, David Rubenstein, Carlyle co-founder, wants to make sure that investors break even. This effort, like almost all of the efforts of the Fed and Treasury, are aimed at helping large banks and financial institutions recover their capital outlays lost as a result of inordinate risk assumption.
154,000, which is only a rough estimate. How many more veterans are just scraping by, living in the margins of our society? How many have been forced to impose upon the good natures of their family? How many of them are still battling demons from America's wars for empire?
There is a wide disparity in the quality of military service, as one might expect, almost correlated to the disparity of resources nations devote to their national defense. But, beyond the perceptions that the news media conveys, there is a further disparity within military ranks, between officer and enlisted. In professional military services, the enlisted soldier is treated with respect from his superiors and not commonly regarded as the piece of government property he or she is. In some countries, professional enlisted personnel serve as personal servants to the officer corps. In the worst examples, military service is little more than forced labor, where soldiers are beaten or worse, there is not much of an institutionalized retirement plan. Here, in the United States, we can take something of a moral high ground, compared to groups like the Interahamwe. Here, we grant our veterans education benefits and the like, if they are not rendered dysfunctional by wartime injury, such as amputation or post-traumatic stress disorder.
A look at the last hundred years of the wartime Presidents also reveals something of a trend. For instance, one of the key leaders in the foundation of the American Empire, Theodore Roosevelt, aside from the contempt he held for those not so blessed to be white, had never actually served in the military until the beginning of the war. Perhaps the reason he was not given the Congressional Medal of Honor until after his death was for having pushed into a military battle without having been ordered to do so. Just a thought.
Woodrow Wilson, who also brought us the Federal Reserve System, was an intellectual and academic, who also had never spent a day in a military uniform before leading the nation into WWI.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt, a corporate lawyer before entering public service, similar never served any kind of military service.
Harry S. Truman, who was a WWI Artillery Officer, also brought us nuclear warfare and the policy of containment. In addition to his role in the recognition of Israel and Pakistan, he laid the groundwork for the Cold War and tried to bring the whole of the Korean peninsula under Western influence.
Which brings us to W. I don't really feel as though I need to say too much about his military record.
In summation, the leaders and defenders of the Free World, those most rabid about the defense and expansion of the U.S.' national sovereignty, almost without exception have never picked up a gun at a range and thought about how to justify to himself seeing the form of another human being in his gunsights and pulling the trigger. After all, a warrior seeks to conserve his strength and continue living, and thus should fight as little as possible. Unfortunately, the toll of these wars is paid by those who fight, either draftees or volunteers, who often seem to be tragically discarded by those for whom they served.
For those who want a visual representation of America's War Dead, try this.
If those who are being held in contempt of Congress are above the law because they were ordered not to cooperate by Bush himself, then why not hold W in contempt? There is no article or provision that puts the President above the laws of the land. For offenses up to and including the most heinous crime against a state, treason, the President should expect, as any other citizen, the combined weight of our laws, codes, and regulations when he chooses to violate them. Otherwise, why should any other citizen expect that there will equitable enforcement of the laws? Tin foil hats aside, with just a sparse review of his conduct, there are very simple cases that can be made. For starts, how about the NSA wiretapping program that is widely acknowledged to have been illegal? Then, in the light of Grand Jury discovery, or perhaps even the threat of it, we can finally untangle the web of lies, spin, and contempt which has so characterized the way the Bush administration has treated its adoring public.
What the fuck! Thats un-fucking-acceptable! These people dedicated years of their lives to serve us. They put their lives on the line to protect us. They enlisted with the promise of a better life and a leg up on the future, and now they are the wards of the fucking VA who can do little more than count them. This is the definition of a miscarage of justice. They deserve a minimum gurantee of housing, food, and medical care for life.
For those uninterested observers, the price of a barrel of crude briefly touched a record of $105.97, which is above the record set during the 1979 oil crisis, adjusted for inflation. As for monetary data, several growth engines are looking at double digit money supply growth, with the corresponding increase in inflation, namely, Saudi Arabia, South Korea, and China. In the United States, figures from the end of February also pointed to growth in inflation in March and beyond.
For less abstract data, one can look at the inflation figures from the European Union. Resisting calls to lower rates to help encourage consumer spending, the ECB and Bank of England have, for the most part, resisted cutting rates for fear of even greater inflation, deciding again today that no rate cut was necessary. Once again, I ask, does Ben Bernanke have doubts late at night about the course of monetary policy here in the U.S.? This move, on the part of the Europeans, will help serve to mitigate some of the effects of the financial crisis, by drawing capital to accounts where said capital can earn more interest.
American employment figures superficially appear stable, with whatever signs of growth that one might be able to pull from them. Better data will be available next week to see if the economy can keep itself sputtering along based on job creation, but this seems like a losing proposition, to say the least, especially with the rising tide of foreclosures.
On the retail side of things, shoppers are definitely out looking for bargains, reflected by strong sales at Wal-Mart and weaker sales at the higher priced Gap and J.C. Penney. In Europe, big box retailer Carrefour is also reporting lower earnings, after having its profit margins mostly wiped out by logistical costs during the second half of last year. While the company expects to see return to strong profitability in the near term, their plan of lowering logistical costs may not achieve fruition with the price of oil not likely to fall in the near to medium term.
In the stock markets, the credit crunch is beginning to be seen in failed margin calls, and perhaps the beginning of a margin spiral. Thornburg Mortgage Co. and the Carlyle Capital Corp. both reported failed margin calls, sending both scrambling for cash. Which, as the spiral metaphor implies, will send stock prices further downward, and other companies scrambling to find enough cash to cover accelerated margin calls from banks.
The bet that companies are wagering their financial futures on, namely that the US Treasury will ensure that agency mortgage securities, such as those issued by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, are going to go sour, and have been called "absolutely not true" by a Treasury spokeswoman. The markets are reacting, but in a more direct way, the spread between these securities and U.S. Treasuries is growing, which is a sure sign that investors are having second thoughts about the long-term viability of the GSE twins.
Troubled bond insurer Ambac has announced that it is expected to raise $1.5 billion in capital to keep its business operations going and avoid a rate cut by Moody's. Interestingly, banking institutions do not appear interested in offering Ambac any capital, which may be a sign that the worst is yet to come in municipal bonds. Unfortunately for Ambac, the company is going to require more than this to keep afloat.
As always, theories as to how and why abound. Some, such as Rich Karlgaarld, favor a supply side solution, with a lower tax burden on business. As he argues,
"What's the effect of supply-side tax cuts? As Steve Forbes likes to say, when you reduce the tax burden on a thing, you tend to get more of that thing. Reduce taxes on production and you get more production. More production means that more goods and services must compete for your dollars. That's how prices go down, not up. This is not hard to figure out! It is simple supply and demand. If you want prices to go down, increase supply. Incentivize the suppliers."
Unfortunately, this is meaningless if those who provide demand aren't capable of demanding anything out of the economy. With the dollar losing evermore value, the individual consumer is going to be hard-pressed to find any margin for consumption amidst higher costs for staples, such as energy and food. Oh, and not believing in the evidence of something does not mean that there is no evidence of that something.
On the other side, the Mogambo Guru finds the best way to read the Total Fed Credit, completely drunk. Grumbling about fiat money supply, the fractional reserve system, and the direction of monetary policy in the U.S., the Guru decries those who say Gold is the panacea for the ills of the dollar. Gold, by the by, is already above its previous record high and is pushing towards $1000 a troy ounce.
In a new twist, the White House is almost appearing the most reasonable party involved in the latest geopolitical saber rattling, or flashpoint, developing as Venezuelan troops are reportedly completely deployed in three regions along the Columbian border, aside from invoking the word terrorism in defense of the Columbian military raid into Ecuador. The matter is further complicated by assertions that FARC was dealing in Uranium. After all, no military adventure is too costly when defending the world against Weapons of Mass Destruction. There is a qualitative difference in this tension, though, as it is being complicated by an arms deal. In this case, the vaunted F-16 would have been sold to Venezuela from Spain, had it not been for a veto from the United States. Secretary of Defense Gates is comfortable in the ability of the Columbian military to handle their own affairs. This is hardly the first time that there has been tension along this border, as observable by the airstrips built into the road system in eastern Columbia. The investment community has signalled strong support for the Columbian side, pushing the Columbia's main stock exchange to the highest gain on world markets. As usual, the Wikipedia site on the incident is the most comprehensive.
In other news, Syrian and Saudi officials met in Cairo in an effort to relieve the tensions in the region, namely in Gaza, Iraq, and Lebanon. The Saudis then held discussions on the side with an American envoy. The USS Cole has been relieved off the coast of Lebanon by two U.S. warships and has passed through the Suez Canal en route to the Persian Gulf, signaling a wider build up of U.S. Naval forces in the region. The head of Egypt's Head of Intelligence, Omar Suleiman, has canceled a planned visit to Israel, perhaps reflecting a response to Ban Ki-Moon's letter, a denunciation of Israel's operations in the Gaza Strip, a snub at the U.S.-led bloc, or a combination of the three. Judging from the militaristic propaganda, and pondering minor war crimes to avoid major war crimes, Israel is ready to fight.
Does anyone remember Somalia? The United States has conducted another air strike there, which is sure to keep the fires of war still burning.
Ernest Gary Gygax died this morning. Basements across the country today erupted with the tears of thousands of nerds. Like most people that grew up in Southern Wisconsin, I was within the six degrees of seperation from this man who was the central legendary figure of pen and paper gaming but I never had the opportunity to meet him myself. Now it looks like I will never get that opportunity.
Though the age of supremecy of Dungeons and Dragons in role playing games has passed and there was much controvercy within the fan community over the aquisition of TSR by WOTC this man created something that has resonated with the popular culture not just with a nerdy subculture of social outcasts, but with the culture on the whole. Mr. Gygax's enthusiasm for gaming was a testiment to the idiom, "do what you love and the money will follow."
Gary Gygax, you will be missed by thousands of people you never knew.
Israeli citizens living along the border had a rude awakening, which was initially feared to be Qassam rocket attacks. Unfortunately for everyone who can read this, there are tensions, to say the least, on both sides of the border. In Lebanon, among long-standing political deadlock and the assassination of their military leader, Hezbollah has replenished its arms to pre-2006 war levels. Meanwhile, on the Israeli side of the border, the Israeli Defense Forces are training in the ways they have improved their vaunted Merkava tanks in light of deficiencies discovered during the aforementioned Israeli invasion.
The UN General Secretary, perhaps desperate to enforce UNSC Resolution 1701, has sent a letter to Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak about the situation. If I had to guess and paraphrase:
Dear President Hosni Mubarak,
Get me on this one and I will owe you big!
Your BFF,
Ban Ki-Moon, UN Secretary-General
On a more serious note, Imad Mughniyeh, the Hezbollah official, whom was reportedly assassinated by Israel by sources of no repute, was actively involved in facilitating international cooperation, such as "bringing members of the Iraqi Shi'ite Mahdi Army to the Lebanese Beqa'a valley, where they trained in paramilitary methods," amongst other allegations. However, again, I would advise one to judge the quality of the source before completely swallowing either side.
The Saudi Arabian and Kuwaiti governments, on the other hand, are pulling all of its civilians out of Lebanon for fear of violence.
And the addition of the group of vessels off the coast of Lebanon, led by the USS Cole, has brought its own added significance to the dangerous situation.
With the Israeli government looking ready to apply its lessons learned and vindicate a troubled administration, the entire situation is a tense powder keg that is ready to explode. I, for one, hope that this entire affair turns out to be another tempest in a teacup. However, as the Lebanese military moves to the highest state of readiness, the question should be raised, "What about the children?" Or, why isn't this story more of a headline in the mainstream media?
First, in answer to the "Case for Telecom Immunity," specifically: "2. Beyond the theoretical case for the warrantless program’s legality, the telecoms here specifically relied on written representations from the administration that the program had been reviewed by the president and determined to be legal." The question of the legality of this program is anything but theoretical, and the argument so often so cleverly invoked to defend this insidious assault on the very freedoms that Bush notionally seeks to defend.
Addressing the National Association of Attorney Generals, the debate surrounding the FISA renewal and telecom immunity was Bush's primary topic. In a case of misrepresentation, W says the target of the whole program of the big bad jihadis sitting in the mountains of Afghanistan, dialing their favorite operatives in Anywhere, Homeland. I would imagine being so far away from home, in a land where no one can speak their language, they would be pretty homesick.
However, evidence has emerged that the real target of this program may really be the e-mails. Which, makes me want to breath a sigh of relief, given the Bush Administration's track record of handling e-mail. It's not that the NSA, by means of this warrantless wiretapping program, invaded your privacy and cracked open a Pandora's box where probable cause and the very slim margin of institutional procedure that keep Americans from having to fear what goes bump in the night, but they probably wouldn't know how to manage it.
And if you were wondering how probable cause died, and if it will make a sound? I would say probably not. Our newest candidate for the vaunted 'Republicrat' status, Intelligence Committee Chairman Silvestre Reyes said that he hopes to bring the matter to a vote within a week. Also of interest, is the point that the House has seen and reviewed documents in relation to this matter, and they're "pretty much finished." So, what was in those documents? Or, were they mostly redacted? Some of the potential deals that are in discussion would continue to leave this entire matter beneath the lock and key of classification, away from the prying eyes of the interested or not public. The Senate version of the bill that has already been passed allows the Attorney General to wave his magic pen and pronounce everything legal and dismiss any and all related lawsuits.
For extra flavoring, try the aforementioned NPR coverage, now with audible delight. Or Senator Feingold issuing a public service warning about the already-passed Senate version.
Some editorialization from the Young Turks. Yes, the Democrats do suck.
And if you haven't seen Bush enough today, here he is addressing the National Association of Attorney Generals. And no matter how many times Bush said that his government told these telecommunications companies that the program that they were requested to participate in was legal, it clearly wasn't and every instance of him saying that the government said this program was legal before it saw the light of day could be used as evidence against him.
We have talked before about the nature of police work and its effect on individuals. Both on the mental state of the individual peace officer and the effect on the people being tazed. To rehash somewhat, when your principle mode of interaction with other people is as an authority figure dealing with the most violent and depraved elements of society it tends to color your perception of the world. This can lead to the effect that an officer looses the ability to differentiate between a clear and present danger and a normal person. I have no study or authority to point to that says this, it is just my observation in dealing with the police. Which has colored my own perceptions.
The example I want to talk about is my own recent experience in being falsely accused of a crime. I won't get into too many details of what happened until I consult a lawyer but, basically I was accused of something I didn't do because my name is similar to the person who the evidence points to.
The two things above seem unrelated until you consider the example of Arabic looking persons trying to use air travel since 9/11.
Mistaken identity and prejudice by law enforcement exacerbate an already stressful situation of being falsely accused of being dangerous or a criminal with an affront to your human dignity. Furthermore, in a situation where one must resolve a bureaucratic error one must remain calm so as not to upset the desk jockey that holds ones fate in their hands.
Combine all the above with the already stressful situation of dealing with air travel, the Muslim persons who actually complete travel by air must have the patience of a saint.
Kenneth Wainstein was on NPR today discussing the warrentless wiretapping bill currently stalled in the legislature. The man must be an excelent litigator, he never became distressed even when faced with difficult questions or confrontational or callers. The part of the interview that sent me into a patriotic rage was his explination as to why FISA is insufficient to aquire necessary intelligence on terrorists. Unfortunately no transcript of the interview is available currently but audio file of the show should be on NPR's website tonite. So I will be forced to paraphraze.
Mr. Wainstein explained that FISA is insufficient because it requires them to show probable cause. Showing probable cause to a judge requires expendature of manpower and time. Those intelligence analysts and lawyers could be doing other things.
So basically the justice department finds it inconvenient and cumbersome to deal with our justice system designed to protect innocent people from abuse of police power. Or in other words, the warrentless wiretapping bill, in its avoidance of probable cause, is designed to circumvent our Fourth Amendment rights against unreasonable search and seizure. Or to put it another way the government wants the ability to spy on anyone with or without probable cause.
In discussions of this nature the question is often raised, "Why do you care?" or, "You should not have anything to worry about if you are not a criminal." These kinds of statements being based in a naive trust not just in the institution of government but in the individuals acting as agents of the government.
Honest, law abiding people have reason to fear not only of being wrongly accused by mistaken identity, beureucratic error, mistake from lazyness or stupidity, intentional framing by the real perpetrator of the terrorism, but we also have reason to fear simple corruption in the hourly employees of the various agencies handeling the information. For example, if you purchase anything over the internet, use internet banking, or speak about your financial information on the phone, you put your account numbers and pin numbers at risk of simple opportunistic theft by the employee handling your info.
For a real world example of things "going missing" after being handled by agents responsible for national security. boingboing
More pertinent article outlining other reasons to be conserned.
10.Poverty of the State exchequer causes an army to be maintained by contributions from a distance. Contributing to maintain an army at a distance causes the people to be impoverished.
