Watch It Unravel

The finest example of the corporate force I've been talking about for the last year or so is unraveling before our eyes in the form of the News Corps scandal. Most of us who weren't willfully ignorant knew that Murdoch and his people were up to shit like this and now we have the proof. I take several things away from all of this.

First, here is a shining example of a private organization fucking people over by attacking their liberty. If you still don't understand what I am talking about, go have your head examined.

Second, the implications for this in the 2012 election could be staggering. As most of you probably know, News Corp owns Fox News and the Wall Street Journal-two organizations that are not friendly to President Obama. Even if the scandal stops here, this will weaken them.

Good.

Third, the initial reaction by Mr. Murdoch struck me as very typical of the adolescent power fantasists on the right. They actually think that only certain laws matter. This is especially true if they have a lot of money as Mr. Murdoch does.

Finally, pay attention to the FBI investigation for a couple of reasons. I'm sure we are going to see the right wing blogsphere explode soon with cries of derision for Eric Holder and jack booted thugs. I can't think of anything more anti American than hacking into the cel phones of 9-11 victims and their families. It will be interesting to see how the true believers spin this hypocrisy.

I'm not sure where this will all go but I think that those of you who are corporate apologists need to do some serious reflection.

Republican Messiahs

Listening to the debate in Congress and in the states, it has become clear that the Republicans have developed a messianic complex.

Democrats, in general, seem to believe that they were elected to do the job of making the country or state run smoothly and efficiently. During the campaign they tell us the way they think things should work. Once they get to the capitol they do what they can to make things work that way, but when push comes to shove it's more important to have the country continue to function than to get their way.

But that's okay, because a broad swath of progressives, moderates and independents voted for Obama and the Democrats in the 2008 election. It was obvious that all the people who voted for them didn't expect or want Obama and the Democrats to carry through on every single promise they made during the election. They sent Democrats to Washington to clean up the messes that Bush and the Republicans had made of the economy, the wars in the Middle East, international relations, and so on.

On the other hand, Republicans and especially Tea Partyers like Michele Bachmann seem to go to Washington with the delusion that they're doing the bidding of the people who voted for them if they ram through every crazy notion that ever spilled from their lips.

Bachmann is perfectly willing to let the US government default and lose our AAA bond rating. Or she pretends that nothing bad would happen, and all we really need to do is pay off creditors like the Chinese government, Wall Street, and wealthy individuals who bought treasury bonds, and stiff FAA flight controllers, USDA inspectors, and Social Security recipients.

Republicans won the House in 2010 not because the American people wanted the things the Tea Party was promising. They won because the people who voted for Obama in 2008 stayed home, and many independents were angry about the poor state of the economy (caused by Bush's errors) and the bailout (engineered by Bush) and bought into the rhetoric of the Tea Party. There were a lot of protest votes.

In 2000 Bush lost the popular vote 47.87% to 48.38% (winning 271-266 electoral votes). In 2004 Bush won by 50.74% to 48.27% (winning 286-251 electoral votes). In 2008 Obama beat McCain 52.92% to 45.66% (winning 365-173 electoral votes).

Clearly Obama and the Democrats had a much wider margin of victory in 2008 than Bush and the Republicans did in the 2000 and 2004 elections. For the first eight years of the century Republicans pretended that they were granted a huge mandate and were entitled to do absolutely anything they felt like. In 2006 and 2008 they were trounced by Democrats, who received an obviously much larger mandate.

But if the Republican House victories in 2010 indicated that the American people wanted massive budget cuts and no change in the debt ceiling, why didn't the Democrats' much larger victories in 2008 indicate that Americans wanted single-payer health care? Why are marginal Republican victories always mandates, and solid Democratic victories aberrations?

This country was founded on the basis of compromise, coming together for the common good of the people. The founding fathers didn't all speak in one voice, and they made serious compromises to make sure this country got started in the first place. Compromises like allowing slavery -- which had essentially been outlawed in England since 1701.

Obama has been running the country from the middle. He gave up on single-payer health care and instead accepted a plan like Romney's in Massachusetts, a plan that Bob Dole -- who deep-sixed Clinton's health care initiative -- supported. He accepted Republican insistence on extending Bush-era tax cuts. And on and on. Attempts to portray him as radical and liberal are simply lies. He's right down the middle of the road on just about everything -- much to the annoyance of many Democrats.

And that's not a ploy to get reelected. That's how all politicians should operate: work together to get the job done and the best deal for the greatest number of people.

Americans in general are disgusted by politics. They hate it when politicians promise something and don't deliver. But they hate it more when politicians can't even do their basic job and keep the country or state functioning properly.

Republicans elected to Congress are not messiahs anointed by god to enforce Grover Norquist's will on the country by throwing us down the rathole of default. They were hired by the American people to keep the country running smoothly.

They need to get on with it.

The Times They Are A Changin'

I've been coaching tennis this summer with a very diverse group of instructors. Most of them are much younger than me and are in college or just starting. A few were my tennis students long ago and have since grown up and are now teaching with me after having played high school varsity tennis.

Over the course of the last few weeks, I have attended several of their grad parties. At one of these parties, in honor of my friend Ben, something crystalized for me that I had been thinking about for awhile. Ben is Chinese and has several Chinese friends who were all at the party. Two of his closest friends are Penny (also Chinese) and Sam (from India). Ben, Penny, and Sam are all tennis instructors with me this summer. Sam and I were chatting as we watched Ben and some of his friends play Foosball.

"I've never seen so many Asians standing around a Foosball table before," Sam remarked. They all laughed and I turned to look at him.

"You're Asian," I stated
"Well, I guess so...South Asian," he replied.

Later at the party, Penny told me about this web site and showed it to me on her iPhone.

High Expectations Asian Father

Her friends (also all Chinese) chimed in and said it was exactly what their fathers were like as well. I began to notice at subsequent social gatherings and during tennis lessons how Ben, Penny, and Sam were all very relaxed about race. In fact, they weren't simply relaxed...they were decidedly not PC at all. I've noticed this in school as well. Towards the end of the year, I overheard the following conversation.

"Hey, Marcus, I can hear you all the way around the corner," Tim (a white student) said, "it must be because you are black."
"Black people are loud," Marcus replied, "It's because of all that friend chicken and watermelon."

We hear stuff like this all the time and it's mostly done just to get a rise out of the staff. But after a conversation with Ben, Penny, and Sam, I think it's more than that.

"We just don't care," Sam said. "We're more open about this stuff. People are what they are."
"I actually don't like being Asian," Ben remarked, "In most photos, I look too Asian."
"I hate what Chinese culture did to my dad," Penny added, "He's an absolute asshole."

I'm sure part of this is your typical teenage apathy but I have to say I was shocked at some of what they were saying and, after some reflection, it was a pleasant surprise. Racism ends when no one cares anymore about epithets. Certainly when there is actionable hate behind them, we still have problems.

Like the gay issue, young people today are shaping a very different view of race. It's not framed in the classic PC vs. Bigot debate. It's completely different. New rules are being written every day and many people across the entire spectrum of debate on race are going to be metaphorically hit in the head with a shovel.

I don't think they are going to be able to handle it.

Not Good

I have to say I disagree with the recent federal court ruling that struck down Michigan's affirmative action ban. Affirmative action was necessary in the past but honestly is no longer needed. Back when it was a good idea, the power of the state to enforce biased hiring practices was suspect. This is no longer the case.

If you sit and really think about it, having a ban on hiring practices based on race actually works to the favor of those who want more diversity. If a company decides to not hire someone because they are black, for example, the state can get up their ass with a tweezers for discrimination. In other words, you can't refuse to hire someone because they are black as well as hire them because they are black.

Supporters of affirmative action argue that it gives people of diversity more opportunities. I say that it's another way of avoiding the real problem which is our education system and, more importantly, our culture in general. We do indeed live in a society of entitlement largely pushed by the mass media as well as the symbolic interaction of our daily lives. Having affirmative action makes this worse and gives the true believers another reason to hate the government. We need less of those reasons.

Currently, California, Washington, Nebraska and Arizona have banned affirmative action. I think California's wording should be a model for how to move forward on this issue.

The state shall not discriminate against, or grant preferential treatment to, any individual or group on the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity, or national origin in the operation of public employment, public education, or public contracting.

Now that's civil rights!

High Taxes?

Take a look at this chart.

Oh...really? I thought that US Corporations where woefully overtaxed compared to other nations.

Here's a nice breakdown of the table if you are interested.

And to think I actually believed some of the lies about corporate taxes. I was even willing to give the captains of industry the benefit of the doubt. Fool me once...

What Do You Want Him To Do...Pull Your Car Around For You?

A few days ago, President Obama called on Congress for a much bolder plan to reduce the deficit. He asked for double the amount of reduction ($4 trillion dollars) that is currently being discussed. This was in line with the Bowles-Simpson plan from last December. The GOP response?

Nope.

They only want $2 trillion in reduction.

I'm trying very hard to find the logic in what they are doing but I can't. In all honesty, I feel for John Boehner He's a good guy but he simply doesn't have the votes because his party has been hijacked by true believers. Like the socialists who believe in their utopia, the Tea Partiers have their own unicorn fart land and they are not budging from attempting to realize their warped dream. The word "compromise" isn't in their fucking vocabulary. Part of me thinks they would love it if the government defaulted on its loans so then it could be destroyed and everything could then be privatized. They may yet get to realize their dream.

Rick Ungar breaks this down quite nicely over at Forbes.

What Boehner likely understands – better than those who he is supposed to be leading – is that the GOP is permitting the fundamental change, long at the heart of the conservative cause, to vanish into thin air and that it is happening in the name of protecting corporate subsidies that are the very antitheses of a free market economy – another of the inviolate tenets of conservative policy.

I've been saying that for the last couple of weeks. At least Ungar has an explanation to my confusion.

I don’t know about you, but I can only think of one other explanation – fealty to the wealthy corporations and wealthy individuals who keep your Republican leadership rolling in the campaign cash so they can remain in their powerful jobs.

I fear we are witnessing one of the most perverse and dangerous games our leaders have ever embarked upon. I’m stunned by the sheer audacity of these elected officials so ready to play chicken with the financial lives of so many simply to benefit a very few.

And yet people keep supporting them. As Maher said the other day, I get the 1 percent that support the GOP. What I don't get is the other 99 percent. No doubt, this is one the greatest achievements in propaganda in the history of the world. A very small (and wealthy) group of people have convinced a very large group of people that anyone who makes up the the entire left half of the political spectrum (as well as the 25 percent to the right of center because, let's face it, they're RINO pussies) are actively working to destroy our country when in reality the complete opposite is true.

The GOP has a chance here at very serious entitlement reform but they are letting in slip through their fingers. Even Krugman admits that Obama is out GOPing the GOP. So far the markets are acting like the debt ceiling will be raised and there will be a deal. I guess I'm not so sure.

Uncertainty Unhinged

Oh, I'm sorry, did I say rich? I meant "job creators." Yes. That's actually a prevailing theory on the right...that Obama's rhetoric towards Wall Street has been so hostile that is has created an uncertainty in the business community because he called them fatcats once and they're still suffering from some sort of jobs creating disorder...like he burst into the bathroom while they were trying to pee and now they can't go at all.

When did the business community become so sensitive that we have treat them like some rare and exotic animal? Don't startle them or they'll fly away! We need to sooth them so they can nest here and lay their magic eggs full of jobs.

And that's the end of all this uncertainty bullshit. Thanks again, Bill!

Submissive?

Listen to this quote from Marcus Bachmann, husband of GOP presidential hopeful, Michele Bachmann.



I'll leave the jokes about how Marcus Bachmann is so clearly gay to the stand up comics.

Of course, my first reaction to this was to question whether or not this was a voice inside my head:) After I realized (like so many other voices) that it was, in fact, real, I thought about something that Ms. Bachmann said a while back. In a speech to congregants of the the Living Word Christian Center in 2006, she stated that she pursued her degree in tax law only because her husband had told her to. “The Lord says: Be submissive, wives. You are to be submissive to your husbands,” she said.

So, does that mean that if she is elected she will start homosexual re-education camps for the barbarians?

More importantly, if she is submissive to her husband, won't that mean that he is the actual president? And an unelected one at that!

Bachmann's Oath

To become a candidate for president in the Republican Party, you are expected to take half a dozen oaths to assuage the doubts of fanatical special interest groups. These range from Grover Norquist's extortionary pledge to not raise taxes, to the anti-abortion pledge Rick Santorum is exercised over, to Michele Bachmann's recent marriage pledge.

Bachmann is taking heat for taking the pledge because it implies that blacks were better off as slaves:

“Slavery had a disastrous impact on African-American families, yet sadly a child born into slavery in 1860 was more likely to be raised by his mother and father in a two-parent household than was an African-American baby born after the election of the USA's first African-American President.”

This ignores the fact that slaves were often forbidden to marry, were told who to breed with, and were often used as sex toys by their masters. Slave families were split up and children sold like calves. The pledge is full of other nonsense that has no bearing on anything, such as married couples having better sex and "robust ... childbearing is beneficial to ... security." Yes, we can screw ourselves silly to foil the terrorists!

All these pledges serve only to prevent our legislators from properly carrying out their official duties by a form of blackmail.

The only pledge members of Congress should make is the oath to uphold and defend the Constitution that they take when they assume their office. Any other oaths are a conflict of interest that places their true loyalties in question.

Murdoch's Empire Crumbling?

The phone hacking scandal in England took an abrupt turn when Rupert Murdoch's son announced that the News of the World is being shut down. The British tabloid has been accused of hacking the voice mail accounts of numerous people, from royals (reporter Clive Goodman and PI Glenn Mulcaire were jailed for this crime), to kidnapped children, to victims of the Underground bombing of 2005, to family members of soldiers who died in Afghanistan. There are also allegations that police were bribed in the affair and that the paper interfered with a murder investigation involving employees of the paper, a matter which the police chose not to prosecute because of their fear of the paper's power.

What's surprising is that Murdoch decided to shutter the entire paper, rather than sack the individuals who actually committed the crimes. This seems to be a move to offer a sacrificial goat in order to get what he really wants: the British pay television company British Sky Broadcasting. He's trying to buy the broadcaster, but is meeting opposition from those who think Murdoch has too much power in the media.

These crimes have been swirling around for years now. Earlier this year Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron's press secretary, former News of the World editor Andy Coulson, resigned from that position earlier this year because of questions raised again this past January (he resigned from the paper in 2007). According to The Guardian, Coulson will be arrested tomorrow.

What does this British scandal have to do with the price of coffee in America? It shows a blatant disregard of the law and ethics in the management of News of the World, which is owned by Rupert Murdoch, who also owns Fox Broadcasting, Fox News, The Wall Street Journal, etc. These practices have been going on for 10 years, and it's inconceivable that Murdoch knew nothing.

Politicians in Britain walked in fear of News of the World, and even Conservative PMs are rejoicing in its demise. In Fox News Murdoch has successfully created a media outlet in which truth is subservient to political machinations; those who watch Fox are the least well-informed news consumers. With The Wall Street Journal, Murdoch is able to shape and perhaps control the financial markets. With News of the World he has demonstrated he knows no shame, has no ethics and has outright contempt for the law.

Which brings us to the age-old question that must be asked of all men at the top of corrupt enterprises: what did Murdoch know about this scandal, and when did he stop knowing it?

Brooks Hits A Grand Slam

Well, David Brooks has done it again. His latest column works as a nice book end with the Cohen piece from two days ago.

That’s because the Republican Party may no longer be a normal party. Over the past few years, it has been infected by a faction that is more of a psychological protest than a practical, governing alternative.

No shit. But why?

The members of this movement have no economic theory worthy of the name.

Well, the name of their theory should be called the "You're Wrong and Stupid" theory as that is largely the only concept in which they are capable of working. That and rich corporations are Jesus.

The members of this movement do not accept the legitimacy of scholars and intellectual authorities.

Yep. Every climate change scientist is an apocalyptic nut. Any person who is smart and a liberal is a condescending and arrogant elitist trying to force his opinion on the poor, sweet and innocent conservative whose ignorance is purely imagined by the fascist progressive. Please ignore the profoundly ignorant things conservatives say as they are really the fault of Katie Couric.

The members of this movement do not accept the logic of compromise, no matter how sweet the terms.

Either with us or agin' us! Liberals/Progressives=all bad and Hitler.

The members of this movement have no sense of moral decency.

Well, their ideology dictates that fucking people over is enlightened self interest.

The good news is that Americans (based on several polls) want taxes raised, want to end subsidies (which distort the market just as much as taxes), and will undoubtedly now blame the right for any problems that result from a possible government shut down.

In other words, a very massive turn out at the polls next November. So please, do continue...:)

The Wisdom of Youth (Part The Second)

I informed Michael, my tennis student today, that most of you don't believe that he exists. His response?

"Well, isn't that just trying to prove you wrong...just like I said?"

We can learn much from the youth today.

Cult or Gang? You decide!

Not long ago I urged Markadelphia to swear off accusing conservatives of belonging to a cult. I said the cult meme wasn't really very accurate, the Republican weren't all that monolothic and dogmatic, they actually were more tribal or clannish, and so on. Imagine my chagrin when Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen wrote an opinion piece reiterating Mark's thesis.

I still don't go along with the cult idea. The Republican Party likes to think of themselves as a band of revolutionary firebrands or guardians of an ancient and noble trust. But they're more like a criminal gang that sees its influence slowly leaking away as new people move into the neighborhood.

They've still got a mean streak a mile wide, and aren't afraid to bust a lot of heads to get what they want. They don't mind smashing up the store fronts of our economy to keep the protection money flowing to the oil company capos. And they're perfectly willing to kidnap the opposition's debt ceiling and hold it hostage, even if it'll bring the whole neighborhood down around their ears when the mob from Beijing comes to collect their cut.

A Fourth of July Voice Inside My Head

I find it highly amusing the deep need that some have for me to comment again on Kevin Baker's site. A couple of them email me every new post that he puts up. Odd, considering each one essentially torpedoes the "voices in my head" bit.

Take this latest one, for example.

First of all, huh? I've never heard of this. I love the 4th of July and celebrate just like everyone else. And what a fine example of adolescent behavior we have here as well. So much for claiming to be "adults."

No, stupid fucking liberals, I fucking will not shrink from embracing the beauty and freedom encased in our Celebration of Independence.

Wow. Nice 8 year old boy with a temper tantrum drawing at the end as well, "voice" in my head.

Happy 4th everyone!

The July Invasion

It's summer and it's hot: the perfect time to go to an air-conditioned movie theater and chill out for a couple of hours. Later this month Cowboys and Aliens, with Harrison Ford and Daniel Craig, will hit the theaters. From the trailer it looks like a typical alien invasion flick, with plenty of explosions, along the lines of Independence Day, or TV shows like Falling Skies and V.

Last year Stephen Hawking raised some eyebrows when he said that humans should avoid drawing attention to ourselves, because interaction with aliens would turn out poorly for us. Others, like skeptic Michael Shermer, pooh-poohed the idea that aliens are dangerous. Shermer says evil aliens are a "myth" and we have nothing to worry about.

So, how likely is it that there are planets like Earth, and that there are intelligent aliens living there, that those aliens can travel between stars, and that aliens will come here?

These days astronomers are finding Earth-sized planets at an amazing clip. Since its launch in 2009 the Kepler telescope has identified almost a hundred earth-sized planets, hundreds of super Earths (rocky planets bigger than earth), and many hundreds of gas giants like Neptune and Jupiter.

Kepler orbits the sun in the same orbit as Earth, trailing millions of miles behind us. The telescope is pointed at a small patch of sky in the area of the constellations Cygnus, Lyra and Draco. Kepler detects planets when they "transit" their stars. That is, when the planet comes between its parent star and Kepler. A planet transiting its star reduces the star's observed brightness ever so slightly. The amount of light blocked roughly indicates the size of the planet. Results are often verified by examining the tiny wobble that the planets cause in the star's position, to give an estimate of the planet's mass. (Stars actually orbit their planets too, but the amount of motion is relatively small.)

For Kepler to detect the planet, it has to be in a very particular orbit around its star: it must be orbiting its star in the same plane in the direction of us and Kepler. The odds of that happening are, uh, astronomically small. Which means that if we're detecting hundreds of planets by their transits around the hundred thousand or so stars we're observing, there are probably many, many thousands more that we can't see because their orbits are in a different plane.

So now we know there are almost certainly billions of planets out there, and that planets similar in size to Earth are probably very common. What we don't know is how many of them have atmospheres like ours, and how many have life, and how many have intelligent life. Astronomers like Frank Drake have tried to calculate this, with his famous Drake Equation. The honest truth, though, is that we have no way of knowing what values to assign to the terms of that equation.

So, is Hawking justified in fearing that aliens would be dangerous? His basic thesis:

“If aliens ever visit us, I think the outcome would be much as when Christopher Columbus first landed in America, which didn’t turn out very well for the Native Americans.”

Shermer represents the other view:

I am skeptical. Although we can only represent the subject of an N of 1 trial, and our species does have an unenviable track record of first contact between civilizations, the data trends for the past half millennium are encouraging: colonialism is dead, slavery is dying, the percentage of populations that perish in wars has decreased, crime and violence are down, civil liberties are up, and, as we are witnessing in Egypt and other Arab countries, the desire for representative democracies is spreading, along with education, science and technology. These trends have made our civilization more inclusive and less exploitative. If we extrapolate that 500-year trend out for 5,000 or 500,000 years, we get a sense of what an ETI might be like.

Shermer is being naive. Even if we posit that galactic civilizations advance socially and morally, not every group or individual will be so enlightened. We have plenty of examples today of dictators who murder their own people, oil companies that turn countries like Nigeria into a swamp of toxic oil residues, and criminals who traffic in sex slaves -- even in our own country.

Any galactic civilization capable of interstellar travel would have the technological wherewithal to give small gangs of thugs or even one individual the capacity to drive our entire civilization into the stone age. Given a base on the moon, we could do this ourselves. With lunar mass drivers (electromagnetic catapults) we could bombard terrestrial cities with rocks that would strike with the force of an atomic bomb (as described in The Moon is a Harsh Mistress).

And even if an alien civilization is truly benign, the discovery of its existence could have a very destructive effect on the fragile psyche of humanity. If we detected an alien spacecraft heading our direction, reactionary elements on Earth could very well bring about Armageddon before the aliens even got here.

So Hawking is right that we shouldn't be intentionally sending radio signals into the void. It's very unlikely that anyone will pick them up, but we certainly shouldn't be trying to draw any attention to ourselves. At least, as long as we have no means to protect ourselves from a space-faring civilization. Why take an unnecessary risk?

But it seems doubtful that any alien civilization would bother coming to Earth. If they have the capacity to travel between stars, there's nothing here that they couldn't get in their own solar system, or a closer one, with less effort. It would be far easier for them to terraform other planets and moons in their own solar system, or build their own habitats in space from raw materials in their asteroid belts or the moons of gas giants. No matter how you slice it, they'll never be able to send enough colonists to other solar systems to relieve their own population pressures; in the end they'll have to learn how to live within the means of their own solar system or perish. The only ones that would come here would be small groups of explorers, exploiters, or people with an ax to grind.

But still and all, Earth is the only planet we've got. We should be very careful with it.

What Would Ronald Reagan Do?

Well, it's pretty easy to find out.

Ghost of Gipper looms over GOP

More importantly, what does his top economic guy say now?

Americans Support Higher Taxes. Really.

Get the message yet?

The Wisdom Of Youth

Before our match yesterday, one of my tennis kiddos (Michael) arrived early for our match. Since it was extremely hot, I told him to hold off on warming up and sit in the shade for a while. We started chatting a bit about Wimbledon and at a lull in the conversation he asked me if I was into politics. The inner me chuckled.

As I do with every student, I asked him what he thought. Nearly all students are more interested in talking than listening. The first words out of his mouth?

"I want you to know that I'm a Democrat. It seems that all the Republicans are about these days are trying to prove people wrong."

Out of the mouths of babes...

Models of Efficiency

A central dogma of conservative ideology is that private corporations and capitalist moguls are the best at what they do. They deserve gargantuan paychecks because they make it rain money for everyone else.

Let's see how that how that plays out for two sports franchises: the Los Angeles Dodgers and the Green Bay Packers.

The Dodgers recently filed for bankruptcy. How did one of the sports' most vaunted teams fall so low? Two words: Frank McCourt.

McCourt bought the team from NewsCorp (Fox) in 2004 for $430 million. McCourt made his wife, Jamie, CEO. The couple separated in 2009, during the playoff season. After the Dodgers were eliminated she was fired as CEO and filed for divorce.

Forbes valued the Dodgers at almost $800 million in 2010, an increase in value obtained largely by jacking up ticket and concession prices year after year. But now McCourt has bankrupted the team in order to pay off his divorce settlement. Another scandal involved the charitable Dodgers Dream Foundation, which was run by Howard Sunkin, one of McCourt's cronies who helped with his divorce. Sunkin's salary was $400K, a quarter of the foundation's entire budget.

McCourt, a prototypical high-flying capitalist Master of the Universe, has driven the Dodgers into the ground. He used the team's TV deal as a private piggy bank to pay $150 million for his wife's divorce settlement. He let his personal problems bankrupt a national icon.

On the other hand, we have the Green Bay Packers. Named the "best sports franchise" by ESPN The Magazine, the Packers have fans all around the country.

The Packers are a non-profit public corporation. Over 100,000 people hold the 4.7 million shares of Packer stock. The president is the only paid executive. The other members of the oversight committee provide their services gratis. In short, the Packers are the closest thing you can get to a government-run pro football team.

Green Bay is not a big town, but it manages to field a team that can win national championships. Cities with 10 times the population are told they're too small a market for professional sports franchises.

The Packers should be the model for all major-league sports franchises. Most every other team in the country has threatened to pick up and go to another city if the city or state doesn't pony up a billion dollars for a stadium. A stadium where there'll only be 13 four-hour home games a year. Given the average life-span of a stadium these days is only 20-30 years, this is not a good deal.

The Vikings are begging for a stadium in Minneapolis. Vikings owner Zygi Wilf claims they need one because the Metrodome is old and doesn't have the right facilities for luxury boxes. I might be inclined to build a stadium for the Vikings if they were organized like the Packers, and were certain to stay in town forever. But why should we pay a billion dollars for a stadium where millionaire CEOs can watch millionaire players toss a ball around for a billionaire owner? To add insult to injury, those luxury boxes are paid for by corporations, which will claim them as expenses and deduct them from their taxes. So I get to pay for the stadium and for the CEOs to watch it in sybaritic comfort.

Worse, if Wilf pulls a McCourt and bankrupts the Vikings, the team could be taken over by the league and sent to another higher-bidding city, leaving us with a billion-dollar white elephant.

I'm sure the Packers have their problems. But private corporations like Frank McCourt's Dodgers by their very nature are rampant with nepotism, cronyism, corruption and backroom deals. The slavish devotion conservatives pay to guys like Frank McCourt, Donald Trump, Donald Keating, Bernie Madoff, Ken Lay and the like makes no sense if you're interested in efficient, well-run corporations that do well for their shareholders.

Conservatives insist that government is inherently inefficient, wasteful, filled with cronyism and corruption. But as we've seen over and over again, private corporations are just as prone to these ills.

The difference is that with government we choose who's running the show. We have the right to see what's going on. And when we watch the process we see how messy and noisy and annoying it is. Because everyone gets their say, and government officials have to listen. Or we fire them in the next election.

Corporations don't work that way. They can hide all their dirty laundry beneath a veil of secrecy, so we don't see all the ugliness. The CEO dictates his decisions and fires any dissenters. The board of directors -- the only constraining force on the CEO -- is composed of other corporate CEOs who are only too happy to rubber-stamp the CEO's decisions, knowing that he will in turn rubber-stamp their decisions because he serves on their boards.

Only occasionally, as with Frank McCourt, is the veil of secrecy ripped away, when their greed and stupidity outpace their capacity to cover it all up.

So, which is more efficient? Frank McCourt's personal Dodgers fiefdom? Or the Green Bay Packers' non-profit public corporation?

About Time

Most of the time, I get nauseated when the left bitches about President Obama. They really have no fucking clue what kind of country we live in today. For the most part, this is especially true when they whine about the president not being tough enough.

But today, I have to say, I was very happy to see the president call the right on their bullshit during his press conference today. The position the right has taken on taxes is so ludicrous that it's embarrassing given reality. Thankfully, most Americans are not with them.

Politifact has an iPhone app, b to the w, which is pretty mega and only $1.99.

And check out this poll.

26 percent blame President Bush, 25 percent blame Wall Street, 11 percent blame Congress and just 8 percent blame President Obama. In all honesty, this poll is just about the right distribution for blame. The other 30 percent could probably be a variety of other sources including the American people themselves.

All of this tells me that the doom and gloom about the president and the Democrats losing in 2012 is terribly short sighted. Most Americans aren't buying the narrative that the GOP and other parts of the right are peddling. It doesn't add up. They simply don't have any solutions for our problems and it's very clear that their past efforts have completely failed.

All they really have left is the media which they fake scorn every chance they get. Without them, I doubt anyone would pay attention to what anyone says on the right. They'd have their own little world where they could blow bowels about fake problems and the rest of us can get on with actually making this country a better place.

Uncertainty

There's been a lot to talk lately about how President Obama's economic policies are causing uncertainty. This is the reason conservatives are pointing to when defining our sluggish economy. Stirring up phantom fear is nothing new for them so it's not surprising to me whatsoever. And I still can't figure out how less regulation is going to help our economy to take off after less regulation nearly destroyed it. The facts are there. Some people don't want to listen.

But if you want to talk about the unknown, here is an article for you that I save from late last year. It also explains how less regulation was (and still is) a large part of our problem.

The banks in this group, which is affiliated with a new derivatives clearinghouse, have fought to block other banks from entering the market, and they are also trying to thwart efforts to make full information on prices and fees freely available.

Really? I wonder why?

Banks’ influence over this market, and over clearinghouses like the one this select group advises, has costly implications for businesses large and small, like Dan Singer’s home heating-oil company in Westchester County, north of New York City.

This fall, many of Mr. Singer’s customers purchased fixed-rate plans to lock in winter heating oil at around $3 a gallon. While that price was above the prevailing $2.80 a gallon then, the contracts will protect homeowners if bitterly cold weather pushes the price higher.

But Mr. Singer wonders if his company, Robison Oil, should be getting a better deal. He uses derivatives like swaps and options to create his fixed plans. But he has no idea how much lower his prices — and his customers’ prices — could be, he says, because banks don’t disclose fees associated with the derivatives.

“At the end of the day, I don’t know if I got a fair price, or what they’re charging me,” Mr. Singer said.

But wait...I thought that the free market took care of every one.

The marketplace as it functions now “adds up to higher costs to all Americans,” said Gary Gensler, the chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which regulates most derivatives. More oversight of the banks in this market is needed, he said.

Wait...huh? More regulation? That can't be possible!!! I'm afraid I don't understand.

I thought that in the free market we had a choice about all this stuff and this article not only says that we don't but members of these private banks set the rules and make the choices for us.

Well, at least I can rest comfortably knowing that Dodd Frank is in place and the GOP, ever the supporters of the middle class working man, will make sure that fairness rules the day.

Mr. Gensler wants to lessen banks’ control over these new institutions. But Republican lawmakers, many of whom received large campaign contributions from bankers who want to influence how the derivatives rules are written, say they plan to push back against much of the coming reform.

Or not.

The simple fact that no one knows how far and deep the derivatives market goes is an uncertainty that should be scaring more people. But since there's a lot of money involved and everyone's rich, there's no way it could be their fault if anything goes wrong again.

No fucking way.