The Ben Franklin Report: The Bailout Settles In

Just in case you need a reference point to how much the bailout was, consider the number to the right, the cost of the War in Iraq thus far. Yes, the bailout that was passed last week surpasses the amount of money spent on that mistake by leaps and bounds. So, when history is written, how should this period be judged? Where were our priorities? Did we ensure that every child in America had access to primary health care? Were we more concerned about finding a cure for cancer, or spending money on making sure that phone calls and emails didn't contain terrorist-related content?



The bailout and its effects in the market place, in a nut shell. Apparently, today the chaos continues as the first market to open after Bush's signature, the Israeli Tel Aviv Stock Exchange tumbled like a rock going down a sheer slope. 

The fundamental source of the entire financial crisis has been the opaque nature of the books of the biggest financial institutions. The fact that they refused to value assets which, if shown in the light of day, would be revealed to have little revenue potential, will probably end up costing the companies billions in dollars is only being papered over by the bill that the various branches of the federal government approved on Friday. This is further reinforced by new rules from the Securities and Exchange Commission stating that corporations no longer have to price these assets on a 'mark-to-market' basis. That is to say, they no longer have to value them at the price they would likely fetch in a free and open market, but rather can just pencil in whatever they want and use these assets as capital, or as collateral for the various short-term lending programs offered by the Federal Reserve. However, the hanging $55 trillion question in the air is what happens when the Credit Default Swaps start becoming unbundled. For instance, you may remember A.I.G. which met its fate and an $85 billion bailout from the Federal Treasury because of these insurance policies, but has yet to sell a single asset, despite blowing through $61 billion of the money provided in the bailout. Yet their executives party like Nero in Rome. Party on, Wayne. Why worry when none of those responsible for the lending practices will ever be prosecuted? 

So, with some banks saying that they won't even participate in the No Bank Left Behind program and banks that will still fail regardless of their participation, what are we left with? A budget problem that will hamstring the domestic and foreign policies of the next President, whoever it may be, an IRS with undercover investigative powers which will be on the prowl to make sure that every dollar Uncle Sam has coming is brought to the Treasury, and good, old-fashioned rage almost everywhere other than Wall Street. 

The Friday Bacon

Here we see pilfered bacon. Bacon that was snuck behind my back. Certain trecherous people waited until I left the house and then cooked up themselves a bacony breakfast even leaving a piece on the floor for the cat. Taunting me. Saying, "look, even the cat gets bacon but not you."

The Ben Franklin Report: Talking Points and the MSM

It was interesting to me to observe the tone of media coverage regarding the Bailout over the last week. Prior to the rejection of the first bill by the House the coverage was neutral with most coverage being directed at explaining just what the legislation was supposed to do but there was almost no coverage of popular opinion which was vastly opposed to the measure. After the shock subsided from the precipitous drop in the stock markets following the vote by the House, and it was found that the sky had not fallen and business continued as normal, the MSM started covering the vast negative public sentiment. This was mainly as a means of explaining why the Representatives voted as they did and attached to the old adage that the House is the more populist body. Suggesting that the real people of the country are only actually represented in government at the national level in the House of Representatives.

Until this morning the MSM was freely using the term "Bailout" to describe this massive gift of taxpayer dollars to the greedy rich motherfuckers that got us into this crisis in the first place. However this morning, the MSM has started referring to the bill as the "Rescue Plan." Yes, the Bailout that passed the Senate in the dark hours of the night when noone could see their shame has been spun. Instead of being a colossal failure of leadership, this is now a plan. Instead of being a giant burden of over $10,000 on every taxpayer, this is being called a "Rescue."

How long will this kind of transparent bullshit go unchallenged? Where is the voice of the American people? We, the people of the United States are overwhelmingly opposed to this legislation but if you look at the MSM you would think that we all accept this bill as a necessary evil. This is exactly the same failure of the media that got us into Iraq. Where are the pointed questions? Where are the experts holding the feet of the members of congress to the fire? Why is Kucinich the Keebler the only person that sounds sane? It takes a vegan who thinks he was abducted by aliens to raise concerns about the artificial haste with which this bill is being forced through congress? What about the old adage that the Senate is the more deliberative side of the Legislature?

Where was the thought process yesterday? It was clouded by fear and greed. Fear that there is an imminent catastrophic collapse in the future, and greed motivated by all that money. Why think about rational solutions when you can slip in a rider that directs funds back to your pet projects? If you are going to alienate millions of people by voting "yes" you might as well buy the votes of a few back home.

Like 9/11, this is another crisis that was easy to foresee but once it materializes people in government are using the ignorance of those that did not see it coming to create an unjustified panic in order to gain unfettered power. I cant' believe that exactly the same trick is working on the same people just six years later. I guess Lincoln was wrong.

I wish that was all I had to say about this but I want to highlight the behavior of the presidential candidates and I want to single out a particular economic pundit who has been causing me great personal outrage for the last three weeks.

The H-pod has been getting increasingly aggravating with his constant reliance on the trickle down theory of economics as if it is still a valid method of thinking. As if trickle down hasn't been clearly disproven by the recent recession. As if he isn't just fattening us up for the slaughter. Velshi is just trying to keep the taxpayers calm and encourage acceptance of the vastly flawed Bailout.

As for the candidates, they have both failed to show leadership in this crisis. Neither candidate has even attempted to deliver a strategy for solving this problem. Neither candidate nor their VP nominees have given concrete examples of things they would do if elected that differs from anything they have been saying since June of '07. To me its painfully obvious that they could follow FDR and his lead that propelled us out of the last Great Depression. They start a massive public works project. How about one that creates energy independence? Then you solve two national problems at once. OK, its four problems is you include oil wars in the middle east and energy's impact on the environment. Massive building projects that create super solar farms in the sun belt, wind farms in the great lakes and off the Atlantic coast, factories that produce the new solar power generating windows. The government can spend some of the seven hundred fucking billion dollars of U.S. taxpayer rape on investing in our technology future. The U.S. is falling behind. It was the lack of foresight of congress that caused the Large Hadron collider to be built in France and Belgium.

Both parties have failed. Both houses of Congress have failed. The Bush administration has failed. Local governments have failed. Wallstreet has failed. Individual investors and property buyers have failed. Foreign governments and corporations have failed. There is plenty of blame to go around but little understanding of the full scope of the failure. This colossal failure of leadership is not likely to be cured by panic and a rush to pass the first piece of legislation proposed by an administration that has showen itself to be power hungry and incompetant. We need to vote every one of these selfish beureaucrats and politicians out of office. We need to finish the job of cleaning house that we started in 2006.

Throw the bums out.

The M.I.C. Rumbles On

With another new week comes another new round of notifications to Congress from the DSCA about new arms sales to various countries, mostly friendly, but others perhaps less so. Moral questions abound surrounding the sales of military weapons to various regimes throughout the world, not the least of which being whether a country can afford the expenditure, but perhaps more importantly, whether the weapons will be used to crush opposition, as may be the case in Kenya. It might also be the case that the 33 T-72's were bound for South Sudan, for the purpose of re-newing the civil war. Interfering with the transfer of arms, of course, is a dangerous game, and will probably not end well.

In Taiwan, the lack of arms sales are much more of a controversy. The Taiwanese government is being vexed by inter-department review in the Bush Administration of its desired arms package. Currently, the brouhaha is boiling down to a game of fingerpointing between the GMT and the former ruling party the DPP. Either way, this type of arms sales, including heavy duty equipment such as attack helicopters and surface to air missiles would certainly force the People's Republic of China to take notice and be concerned.

A Little More Bacon Makes the Medicine Go Down

Unfortunately, the professional politicians of the Senate, including Sens. and presidential candidates Obama and McCain, voted in favor of a revised version of the bailout. Now, with some tax breaks and other pork barrel spending to enhance the bill's chances to pass through the House, and of course extra flavor. This delicious bacon costs an addition $100 billion, which is far more than I would ever pay for it, no matter how delicious it is. In addition, there are other sections that have been added to the bill, and you don't need to worry anymore about your children's wooden arrows being taxed at an exorbitant rate. One may argue that it passed through the Senate because only a portion of its members have to worry about re-election, which may or may not be the true reason. However, if one feels that this bill is overtly socialist, consider the opposition of Sen. Bernie Sanders, a self-described socialist, who describes the bailout as unfair.

Also, I would like to see the opinion polls that Americans are more confused than opposed to the bill. I'm sure Mike Shedlock would have something to say about that, in between falling asleep at his computer, leading the charge against this horrible piece of legislation.

For those who need this explained, one has the choice of either the illustrious Dr. Ron Paul's Campaign for Liberty, or if you need to have it put into perspective with examples, this Opinion piece by Jonathan Weil is a must-read.

I wish that I could believe that this bailout is just an inefficient piece of legislation written in a system that didn't suffer from the systemic failings that went through Sweden's financial system in the 90's. But, even with, or should I say despite, the benefit of the experience of Sweden's former Finance Minister, the legislation is going forward in the worst way possible. When these banks are able to price these horrible pieces of financial wizardry that are currently befuddling their balance sheets at a price dictated by a former head of Goldman Sachs, the economic crisis will continue unabated, as the underlying fundmental economic problems remain. People will still be losing their jobs and inflation will be destroying the purchasing power of the dollars that are still being earned by those fortunate enough to have employment. This is a very dangerous game, with even more money being wasted on tax breaks that aren't substantiated in any significant way.

Victory for the American People

It hasn't been often in the last 7 plus years of the Bush Administration when one could truly say that the power of people defeated the people of power. When special interests took a back seat to those who really run the country, Mr. and Ms. Average. Since the bailout was originally announced, there have been numerous campaigns to stop it, academic disputes, and even the rarest of the rare, a public battle among the normally tightly disciplined Republican party. But, in the end, those who have to face up to the voters on November 4th realized that voting yes was potentially one of the biggest threats to their political careers, regardless of party. If you look at the list of how people voted in this historic vote, those on the 'yes' side will probably have a rough time of it, if not lose their seats to those who chose not to approve the still horrible re-negotiated version of the bailout proposal. In particular, I'm sure Dennis Kucinich (OH-10th) is feeling a little smug, knowing that he predicted the outcome of the vote.

On a slightly different note, I'm not sure why everyone in the world of pundits is characterizing this rejection of the bailout proposal a failure of governance. In common parlance, bills are said to have failed, but that is almost a bureaucratic term. In real terms, this bailout was an ideological battle between those who are in favor of and those who are against nationalization and similar bailouts in the United States. Moreover, this is not a vacuum of leadership in which the U.S. government is flying down a country road like a  '62 Corsair without a driver., as that has been happening for the last 7 years. 

Of course, in a vacuum, comes the punditry. Perhaps the most offensive piece I've read thus far about the political process that brought about this conclusion comes from Rupert Cornwell from the U.K.'s Independent. My favorite metaphor in the article compares the mechanisms of American democracy to Alice Through the Looking Glass. Putting that aside, though, the author clearly doesn't understand the huge popular backlash against the bailout. Sure, in the U.K. and other parliamentary democracies, the Prime Minister isn't approved by the people at large, but in the U.S. the leaders need to be especially accountable. And to say that the bill died in partisan sniveling is obviously disregarding what was essentially a bipartisan effort to keep the American people from having to shovel out $700 Billion or more on a plan that was only designed to correct the dangerous excesses of the richest segments of society. Perhaps, too, the American people have become wary of those who warn about apocalyptic disaster and offer a solution that meets a certain biased politican agenda. 

Kevin Connolly from the BBC, in looking at the reasons behind the bailouts defeat in the House of Representatives, expresses a strange sentiment, that after this bill's defeat and the sense of crisis that it engenders will offer a way out for the bailout proposal, that Main Street hasn't suffered yet. Unfortunately, the people of the United States have been suffering, which is the underlying cause for this economic crisis. With the inflationary impact of cheap money, combined with tepid job growth, primarily in the services sector since the recession of 2001, people were forced to choose between living and surviving, which meant that the mortgage had to go unpaid. Thus, in a trickle up fashion, the banks and other financial institutions, who were holders of arcane financial securities into which these poorly written mortgages were conglomerated, began to suffer the counsequences of their poor lending practices. I think Mr. Connolly underestimates the intelligence of Mr. and Ms. Average and their understanding of this situation, as Mr. or Ms. Average are probably already unemployed, underemployed, or facing the prospect of losing their job in the failing economy. 

From the campaign trail in Iowa, Sen. John McCain who, infamously, suspended his campaign to not show up in Washington for negotiations, has called upon Congress to return to the drawing board and to get back to work right away. Sen. Barack Obama, from a rally outside of Denver, called for calm, saying that things in Congress are never smooth, and instead of imploring or demanding that his colleagues work on the proposal to shore up the wealth of the financial sector, he used a baseball metaphor.  

So panic thus gripped the financial markets, and the Dow Jones suffered its worst lost ever in terms of points. But, have no fear for liquidity, because Helicopter Ben Bernanke has come to the rescue, increasing the amount of dollars in the global financial system by a whopping $630 Billion dollars. To show you a frightening graph that indicates inflation, perhaps even hyperinflation, is just around the corner, here is the Adjusted Monetary Base, courtesy of the St. Louis Federal Reserve. The highlight of a series of moves in the banking industry, Citigroup has purchased Wachovia, after the stock lost more than 80% in trading on Monday. 

The Friday Bacon

This weeks Friday Bacon is served with a side of Blasphemy.

Free The West Memphis Three

Finally some real news. Judge William R. Wilson Jr., the judge who sent Echol's appeal back to Arkansas State court has recused himself. A second article provides some details of Jason Baldwin's appeal based on the argument that his lawyer represented him poorly during the original trial. The quoted text seems like Paul Ford, Baldwin's original defense lawyer, is cooperating in a genuine attempt to get an innocent man out of prison, and is doing so without hubris.

I made you an economy but I broked it.

If any of you are regular readers you may be wondering why these last two weeks have gone without a posting on the economy. There are several reasons. First, our senior economic analyst, TheRedKap is still stuck behind the Great Firewall. Second, my political rage peaked about a year ago. After seven years of rising outrage at this administration I finally reached my limits and fizzled out somewhat.

I haven't been able to listen to Marketplace in almost a year so I have had to try and make sense of this stuff myself. Which is difficult for even economists to understand. If the voodoo priests of the dollar can't explain on whats going on, what hope does an average American have? Here is one thought I had yesterday which I hope is not so obvious that I appear foolish for taking the time to lay it out.

One economist yesterday likened the current $700 B...B...B...Billion Bailout to that scene from Blazing Saddles when Bart, played by Cleavon Little, holds a gun to his own head to keep the town from lynching him. Wall Street, here played by Henry Paulson, is holding the gun to its own head and saying they will pull the trigger if we don't save them from their own mistakes. That's pretty obvious but it's the first step. So, what caused this situation? Housing and real property values have risen astronomically bolstered by unfettered access to credit. People were given loans that they could never pay back and the sleaze bags that sold them these loans bunched them together to hide that they were bad investments and then gave them to ratings agency sleaze bags that told the whole world that this was some good shit. Then the poor people who were lied to about how much house they could afford in George Bush's "ownership society"start defaulting on their mortgages. Banks sit up and take notice and start forecasting falling profits and eventually losses and then admit that they don't know how many of these toxic mortgages are going to explode, but they have lots of em'. Opportunist investment bankers then short sell the stock of these banks. (Short selling is either complicated, or simple and commonplace depending on which economist you are talking to and their politics, but the basic explanation is investment bankers try to drive down the value of a stock in order to make a quick buck. They do this because they don't actually have jobs and don't contribute anything of value to society and can only destroy. Like little economic vampires in suspenders.)

So, you get to our current situation with overinflated housing values putting pressure on the markets because banks are so heavily invested in these things that aren't worth what they paid. Now they want the government, meaning the taxpayers, meaning you and me, to buy these worthless bundles of mortgages. They say this will set a bottom level price that they can always be sold to the government for, so that investors can never loose all the money they put into these mortgages, eliminating the mystery of whether the one they just bought will explode in their hands, thusly bolstering confidence in the market and loosening up credit so you and I can go back to buying 72" LCD TVs and leveraging our house to put a pool in our back yards. Thusly fueling the rampant over consumption that has fueled the economy.

Except maybe some of these banks should fail. Maybe an economy based on credit is inherently unstable. Maybe we shouldn't just go back to buying cheaply made garbage from overseas? Maybe these same people that have been pushing for deregulation and chanting the mantra of the free market, when suddenly faced with the terrifying face of the monster that is the free market, they let up a cry for socialism such that has not been heard since Lenin. These people who have played games with our retirement and destroyed the value of our employers and our homes want it both ways just as long as they don't have to feel the pinch. Analysts point out that CEO's of these failed banks are getting fired but mention golden parachutes to them and they begin to dissemble. It doesn't take an economics degree or an MBA to understand that if someone who made over a million dollars in income last year looses their job, they aren't going to loose their house or go hungry like the guy working down at the Ford plant in Cleveland, or the GM factory in Janesville. These guys on Wall Street are more out of touch with what middle class is then McCain. When was the last time an investment banker welded the bumper onto a car or pulled a ton of coal out of the Earth with only their sweat and muscle?

OK, I got distracted by class warfare there. Where does this $700 Bubble Burst Bailout Billion come from? It doesn't just come out of the ass of Johnny Taxpayer, it gets squeezed out of the value of the Dollar. What the markets and Paulson are asking congress to do is to transfer the overinflated value of housing and real property indirectly to the value of the dollar. Inflation. I am talking about inflation with a capital "I." The value of the dollar has been falling against other currencies over the course of this whole subprime crash and since commodities are pegged to the dollar it has fueled the rise in costs of oil and food and other basic essentials. So basically after destroying the value of our homes and companies, the Wall Street voodoo machine is going to destroy the value of our labor and the dollar. I think they are doing this because they know that their "labor" doesn't have any value.

Another Fall After a Tazering

A Boston man was standing on a fire escape and shouting at people. The cops were summoned and he swung a light bulb at the cops. This article quickly frames the issue in the usual way, that tasers are a substitute for lethal force and so save lives. The obvious question in so many of these cases is whether lethal force was even called for. We weren't there so it is unlikely we will ever know. However, so many of these cases raise the question that they lead to the assumption that these useful devices are not being used exclusively as a substitute for lethal force, or are even diminishing the use of lethal force, but instead are being used as an excuse to use violence since it is more expedient than taking the time to deal with the mentally disturbed.

9/26/8 update: Another article with more information from the victim's mother and a second cell phone video. Also, this article has some details of the guidelines for taser use by NYPD.

The Friday Bacon

Do Not Take the Red Pill!

What do Wisconsin and Ohio have in common? Emerald Ash Borer? The homes of the primary writers of the illustrious Fringe Element blog?

All of the above, but most recently, they are both the sites of dirty tricks by the McCain campaign.

In Wisconsin , the McCain campaign conduct a massive mailing to encourage absentee voting, presumably so that voters who would otherwise be unable to do so, such as the elderly and veterans, would vote for their candidate. However, all of the applications that were mailed also included the wrong addresses for the appropriate county clerk's office or addresses for the wrong county clerk's office. Both of which would render the application completely invalid as the applicant would be filing in the wrong district, and would possibly lose their right to vote in the election on November 4th.

In Ohio , the campaign similarly distributed potentially fraudulent ballots. In this case, the campaign distributed ballots that were invalid as they contained one too many boxes. This "Are you a qualified voter?" box, if left unchecked would invalidate the application, and again, disqualify the voter for the November 4th election.

The statement that the campaign made a mistake because of faulty lists is an egregious insult to voters everywhere. With direct mailing costs so high, and campaign funds so limited, these types of mistake would have been too costly to allow. So, let's evaluate the two choices of fraud and mistake. If this were a deliberate campaign of fraud, and two instances of similar fraud begin to remove the necessary layer of reasonable doubt, the question becomes whether individual state investigations are called for, or if the federal government should become involved. With the Justice Department having become a tool for Republican electoral tricks through partisan hiring practices, especially in the Civil Rights Division, and miscellaneous shenanigans, this seems very unlikely to happen, even if it were called for, and with states' budgets, particularly Wisconsin's and Ohio's in a state of distress from the ongoing economic crisis, any relief from that quarter seems equally unlikely. However, if this had been a case of a mistake made in the processing of the direct mailing, then the McCain campaign is incompetent on multiple levels. Any random sampling would have revealed the problems of the mailing list, and brought into question whether the effort was needed at all. In the case of Ohio, this is a much more sinister form of incompetence. Someone in their staff took the extra time to design another box that probably doesn't appear on other absentee ballot applications, and their supervisor, who is assumedly similarly inexperienced in Ohio elections, approved it. If these campaign managers are allowed to stay in their office after wasting money on such a large scale, the plot will thick and further peel away the thin, fatty layer of reasonable doubt. Stay tuned.

The Department of Defense: We Deliver Weapons to the World

[Note: This posting was authored by TheRedKap, who is currently behind the Great Fire Wall, and is unable to post directly.]

For those of you at home who are worried that the American economy is crumbling beyond repair, take heart in the fact that the United States is still the arms supplier to the world. All of the usual types of equipment are involved, namely the M-16 assault rifle, the F-16 in various configurations, and the C-17 military transport plane. However, there are a few new surprises. For instance, the United Arab Emirates is reportedly considering purchasing Black Hawk helicopters and Hellfire anti-tank missiles.

Details of the record $32 billion year enjoyed by the Pentagon include a package of various weapons systems to countries in the Persian Gulf region. But, don't worry, all of these weapons are going to our friends, such as an advanced missile defense system for the aforementioned U.A.E., helicopters and tanks for Saudi Arabia and Egypt, , and most interestingly technology to help Jordan secure its border with Iraq. Iraq, soon to be flush with billions of dollars in oil revenue is in the market for modern military equipment, including F-16s, armored vehicles, attack helicopters, and mortar systems. An upgrade to the PAC-3 and munitions for Israel is also in the works, along with at least 25 F-35 Joint Strike Fighters, with options for up to 50 more, with an eye to getting the planes to the IDF "as quickly as we possibly can."

Meanwhile, Russia's 21% of global arms sales, which partly go to Iran and Syria, were recently characterized by the Israeli Ambassador to Washington, Sallai Meridor as "dangerous and destabilizing to Israel and for peace in the region." Sure, the US and Israel were cooperating with the Georgian military prior to the recent 5 Day War, to the tune of $300 million dollars last year alone, but clearly the Russians were unjustified in their reaction to the Georgian offensive into South Ossetia and Abkahzia. The ambassador, for his part, couldn't understand why anyone would see these arms supplies as threatening or destabilizing. Looking through the old crystalline prism of spheres of influence, the Russians are very concerned about the threat upon its borders.

Do not be confused into thinking that these arms sales are entirely funded by the recipients of these weapons systems. The U.S. government, according to numbers from the BEA, spent approximately $3.8 billion dollars in the first quarter of 2008 financing foreign military sales. While this may be a drop in the bucket compared to the monthly deficit our government is currently running, such as the $111.91 billion dollar deficit for the month of August, arms sales are the classic example of foreign diplomacy that has the biggest potential for unintended catastrophic results.

The Walk of Shame: Corruption and Government, Don't Look So Suprised

Apparently the tax law is so complex that even the guy in change of writing it doesn't understand his own obligations under that law. Or maybe he just forgot to report tens of thousands of dollars in income over two decades. Somehow, I think that if I made a similar mistake there would be gruff men in dark suits knocking on my door.

Speaking of money owed to the government. Days after the Interior Department received an award for high standards of integrity the Inspector General of the Interior Department issued a detailed report describing inappropriate conduct among the minerals management services who collect royalties from oil companies. The sordid dealings include contract fixing, inappropriate sexual relationships between regulators and oil company execs, and regulators being on the payroll of oil companies as consultants. The missing money comes in where the MMS has failed to pursue thousands of dollars in royalties owed to the government by the oil companies while they have been racking in record profits and growing fat off of huge tax subsidies. Subsidies which also don't seem to be doing anything to keep gas prices low. At least the "MMS Chicks" had a good time.

Pelosi seems to think this will effect the nature of the debates regarding increased offshore oil drilling. By which she doesn't mean that this information revealing that the Bush administration could have done something about the rising cost of oil will be used to take increased drilling off the table. (Drilling that wont do anything to reduce the cost of oil since it will take decades for there to be any production and that production will be so small as to not make any impact at the pump.) No, this will just result in some language being added to the bill regarding integrity. This new information won't change anything because it has already been decided to go ahead with drilling. In fact congress has decided to go ahead with a worse plan than that suggested by Paris Hilton.

The Friday Bacon

Free The West Memphis Three

Judge Burnett denied the request for a new trial for the WM3. He sided with the prosecution who argued that there being no DNA evidence at the crime scene did not prove the innocence of the convicted. Though if the Paradise Lost documentaries are to be believed there was no actual evidence connecting the three to the crime in the first place. If I understand the process correctly, the next step is to appeal to the Arkansas Supreme court and then to federal court. Unfortunately this could go on for some time.

The Friday Bacon

Cleveland Ohio: Terrible American City, or the Worst American City?

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, Cleveland is the second poorest city after only Detroit Michigan. The downfall of both cities is linked and ongoing but at least Cleveland doesn't have a mayor under indictment for perjury. Local news outlets are trying to cut the sting of the numbers by pointing out that the same report states the average household income in Cleveland grew over the same period. What they either don't realize or are deliberately not saying is that this means the gap between the rich and the poor is widening at the expense of middle income families.

This is the kind of thing one would expect to see in a major urban center that is still experiencing flight of the middle class out of the city into the suburbs. It is also an increased threat to the American Dream. In a city where poverty is increasing and which has been hard hit by the collapse of the housing market it seems increasingly unlikely that this is a place where a working family can get a leg up and advance their financial standing. Which would explain why people are leaving the area.

All of these things combined cut down the tax base while increasing the demand on government services. This isn't just more people becoming a drain on the welfare state. It's vacant buildings becoming bastions of criminal behavior causing a drain on the under staffed police force. Those same vacant buildings are also a drain on the fire department due to arson, which increases response to emergencies and costs of investigation. Lastly, the city has to buy those buildings and demolish them creating costly legal work on top of paying out settlements to the banks that have foreclosed on these houses. The roads are in bad need of repair, and communities region wide have to replace their sewage systems because they violate clean water standards, spewing human waste into lake Erie. The steel industry is dead, but its rotting corpse is lying unburied across the rust belt of America.

Life Lessons and Vice Presidential Candidates

As a child, I learned two lessons about the adult world almost as soon as I was able to tell right from wrong. That the authority granted to adults and supposed authority figures most often is not granted because they are moral or even responsible people and is usually a coincidence arising from their career, rather than given to them through any legitimate means. Second, I learned that most people are not deserving of respect (beyond that due every human) until they prove otherwise. Since I learned those lessons at Catholic school, it took me a while to separate my problem with authority from my perception of all Christians as hypocrites. If you have read some of my other posts on this blog you will notice that I still have that perception of Christians.

Christian hypocrisy is a good transition into discussing the issues surrounding the pregnancy of Sarah Palins unwed teenage daughter. Anti-abortion types will see this as not being hypocritical since Bristol, Palins daughter, will be keeping the child. This is itself a red herring and the hypocrisy I wish to discuss because it ignores the anti-contraception and anti-sexed positions that are associated with an anti-abortion and which Gov. Palin has herself expressed. A friend of mine observed today that you can't treat teen sex like the Easter bunny and decide not to believe in it because it does happen and has profound consequences. Many of those consequences will not be felt by Bristol and her child(eren) because of the financial status of her family. Sadly this is not the case for most unwed teenage mothers. Teen pregnancy is almost a guarantee that the mother and new child will live out their lives in poverty according to the CDC. It is easy to be anti-abortion when you have a safety net. Yet the Bush administration, right wing Christians, and other people with nothing personally at stake continue to push for abstinance only sex education, which has been shown to do nothing to reduce premarital sex or teen pregnancy. At the same time, Jamie Lynn Spears is on a publicity romp, glorifying teen pregnancy. To get back to the accusations of hypocrisy, Sarah Palin has advocated abstinence only sex ed while claiming to be anti-abortion, which is consistent until you notice her unwed teenage daughters pregnancy and have to question Palins parenting.

So while she is telling the rest of the nations women what is right for them she is either not practicing what she preaches or she is ironically suffering the consequences of the polices she supports, but not really suffering from them the same way every one else will. At the same time the Republicans are decrying all the public attention this is getting because its prying into a personal family matter and shouldn't be public, which is hypocritical because of the way in which the very same Republicans dug into the personal sexual lives of the Clintons during the Monica Lewinski scandal.

I applaud Sarah Palin for supporting her daughters choice to become pregnant and to keep her child. (Remember there is always adoption.) I just hope it can be a learning experience for her about the failings of abstinence only sex education even though it will not open her eyes to the deep personal consequences it has for far too many American girls and the resulting social costs to U.S. taxpayers.

Zer-0bama

During Gov. Lingles speech at the RNC tonight the crowd could be heard chanting "Zero," when Lingle attempted to answer accusations that Sara Palin is inexperienced by pointing out that neither Obama nor Joe Biden has any experience in an executive office. The red herring aside, I was immediately inspired. The number zero and the letter "O" are similarly shaped and to distinguish between the two, people and computers will frequently put a slash through the zero. I thought this could be a clever way for the Republicans to say "No," to Obama while also implying that he has no experience as a leader. It could be spelled as 0bama or as zer0bama and pronounced "Zer-obama." Hands off that, I am going to try to sell the idea to the RNC.