Finding Yourself In A Fantasy World

Paul Krugman's recent piece in the Times is very indicative of how I feel these days when I watch the GOP debates or talk to nearly everyone on the right. I'm Alice and I've gone down the rabbit hole. Thankfully, Krugman feels the same way.

And since economic policy has to deal with the world we live in, not the fantasy world of the G.O.P.’s imagination, the prospect that one of these people may well be our next president is, frankly, terrifying.

Terrifying, indeed. Common sense has been sacrificed in the name of orthodoxy.

In the real world, recent events were a devastating refutation of the free-market orthodoxy that has ruled American politics these past three decades. Above all, the long crusade against financial regulation, the successful effort to unravel the prudential rules established after the Great Depression on the grounds that they were unnecessary, ended up demonstrating — at immense cost to the nation — that those rules were necessary, after all.

This is what actually happened.

But down the rabbit hole, none of that happened. We didn’t find ourselves in a crisis because of runaway private lenders like Countrywide Financial. We didn’t find ourselves in a crisis because Wall Street pretended that slicing, dicing and rearranging bad loans could somehow create AAA assets — and private rating agencies played along. We didn’t find ourselves in a crisis because “shadow banks” like Lehman Brothers exploited gaps in financial regulation to create bank-type threats to the financial system without being subject to bank-type limits on risk-taking.

No, in the universe of the Republican Party we found ourselves in a crisis because Representative Barney Frank forced helpless bankers to lend money to the undeserving poor.

This is the fantasy that has been created by the right that I hear every single day. To say this view is monumentally frustrating is a massive fucking understatement.

The G.O.P. has responded to the crisis not by rethinking its dogma but by adopting an even cruder version of that dogma, becoming a caricature of itself. It’s a terrible thing when an individual loses his or her grip on reality. But it’s much worse when the same thing happens to a whole political party, one that already has the power to block anything the president proposes — and which may soon control the whole government.

The way I see it, this is what the election is going to be about: reality or fantasy. The truly sucktacular part about all of this is that the Democrats are going to address this insanity and will likely be sucked into managing fantasies. This will give it legitimacy and then this kind of thinking will be in the national conversation. With millions of people operating solely on anger, hate and fear, many will embrace these crazy ideas. Of course, they could choose to ignore it but that would probably make it worse. We'd probably have more people believe this garbage...the great lie and all, yer know.

I suppose I could take some solace that people like me and Krugman are at least grounded in reality. But with so many irrational people that have completely taken leave of their senses, there's not really much to be happy about at all.

Another Black Eye for Rupert

Rupert Murdoch's NewsCorp is at it again. A story published in The Guardian reveals that The Wall Street Journal in Europe has been selling papers for pennies apiece to companies in order to boost circulation figures. The papers are supposed to be distributed free to university students, but it's not clear that anyone really reads them. The papers constituted 41% of the Jouranal's circulation in Europe.

In essence, the Journal has been defrauding advertisers by claiming much higher circulation than they actually have. One would also assume that advertisers expect that business executives who make purchasing and business decisions are reading the Journal, not college freshmen using it to line their pet iguana's cage.

But it gets worse.

When one of the companies, ELP, complained that they weren't getting enough return for the money they were paying for the papers the Journal would also:

give ELP free advertising and, in exchange, the ELP would produce "leadership videos" for them; they would jointly organise more seminars and workshops on themes connected to ELP's work; but, crucially, [Andrew] Langhoff [the publisher of WSJ Europe] agreed that the Journal would publish "a minimum of three special reports" that would be based on surveys of the European market which ELP would run with the Journal's help.

But ELP still wasn't satisfied, so the Journal made a deal to funnel money back to ELP through third parties:

An email from Andrew Langhoff on 26 November 2010 includes a diagram that indicates money was channelled to ELP through two other middlemen. This suggests that Langhoff wanted €15,000 sent to ELP via a Belgian company called Think Media, which sells space on billboards. An invoice dated 2 December 2010, shows that ELP invoiced Think Media for €15,000. An email from 20 December shows that Think Media had paid the €15,000 to ELP. In a series of phone calls and emails to Think Media, the Guardian put it to the company that ELP had provided no goods or services in exchange for this payment, and that the payment was made at the request of the Journal. Think Media declined to respond.

A whistleblower reported the scam last year to Les Hinton at NewsCorp's headquarters in New York, but no action was taken and the whistleblower was dismissed ("made redundant" in The Guardian's quaint British parlance).

Nothing happened until the Journal got wind of the Guardian's investigation of the deals, which "caused a panic" and resulted in the resignation of Andrew Langhoff on Tuesday.

Rupert Murdoch's NewsCorp is a corrupt organization. Its News of the World subsidiary hacked the voice mails of celebrities, terrorist victims and murdered girls. They bought the silence of former employees. They bribed cops. They bribed employees of other newspapers to steal their scoops. NewsCorp News America subsidiary is under investigation for computer hacking and predatory and anticompetitive practices. Fox News execs routinely require reporters to slant their stories to toe the Republican Party line, especially on politics and climate science. Fox is also fighting the FCC over its indecent programming standards. But what can you expect from a company run by a man who became an American just so he could own US TV stations?

When Rupert Murdoch went after the Wall Street Journal I was expecting this kind of thing. He's brought the British tabloid mentality to the Fox TV network, the Wall Street Journal and Fox News. NewsCorp is a giant multinational corporation that thinks it's above the law, ethics, and morality.

What's the Hurry?

Pundits everywhere are declaring Romney the winner of the Republican nomination. It's months before a single primary or caucus vote will be cast, so why is everyone is such a big rush to make the decision?

At this point in almost every recent election the front runner in either party other than a sitting president was not the ultimate nominee. If the Republicans decide on Romney this far in advance of the election, there will be a lot of unhappy people. Because as soon as the Republican nominee is decided, he will have to move to the center in order to seem reasonable and attract the independent voter.

And many Republicans already think Romney is way too liberal for them. Evangelicals don't like him because he's a Mormon. Most Tea Partyers don't like him for, well, everything he's ever done -- his religion, Romneycare, his altered stands on any number of social issues, being governor of a liberal state, his history as a corporate takeover artist. Libertarians don't like him for many of the same reasons. Pro-lifers don't believe his conversion away from his stated belief in a woman's right to choose.

Romney is the second or third choice for the vast majority of Republicans. He's just another big-business machine politician with good hair who strapped his dog to the top of his car on a family trip to Canada.

All the issues that the majority of Republicans like to holler about will basically be ignored for the next year as Romney tries to position himself to take the center. Yeah, he'll throw out a few red-meat lines in an attempt to rouse the masses. But they won't be convinced. He'll weasel-word most things to avoid looking like a kook in front of the swing voters.

Red-meat Republicans will sullenly vote for Romney because in their mind anyone is better than Obama. But they won't feel particularly motivated to hit the streets and work hard for him. They won't contribute to his campaign like they contribute to Ron Paul's or Michele Bachmann's. They'll feel that Romney is big business's candidate, and they'll be content to let them finance Romney's campaign and the outside issue groups that will be the loudest voices in the election.

Romney is hum-drum and boring. He doesn't raise any kind of enthusiasm in anyone.

If Republicans decide on Romney in December or January, they'll have buyer's remorse come March. When he dips in the polls they'll panic and worry that everything is lost. But by then the other candidates will have dismantled their campaigns and the whole Republican field will be in disarray.

And why Romney, anyway? Well, most of the people who have been running on the Republican side in this cycle are just not qualified. Palin, Perry, Bachmann, and Cain are idiots. Gingrich is damaged goods and disconnected from reality, with his huge Tiffany's bills and serial polygamy. Paul is just too old (older than McCain), and has too many wacky ideas for religious Republicans (legalize prostitution and drugs). Santorum? Seriously? Gary Johnson? Who's that? Huntsman and Pawlenty are passable but too boring and too liberal. They would have a chance with swing voters, but red-meat Republicans despise them.

Republican activists simply hate anyone who would make a credible candidate because they don't like people who have nuanced beliefs or think that government can do any good. And to be an effective president, you really do have to believe that your job is worth doing and that all your employees aren't worthless scum-sucking douche bags.

Anyway, why do we let voters in two or three states decide everything for us? What gives Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina the right to decide who runs for president? I can see why Florida and Nevada want to jump the gun and move their primaries up so they can get some of the campaign cash spent in their states. But this interminably long election season is not good for the country. If anything, we need to shorten the campaign to a few months, not lengthen it to a year and a half that is has become.

In the final analysis, issues that seem so vital at this stage of the campaign could be completely irrelevant by the summer of 2012, and Romney could easily be the wrong man for the job.

The Sowell Reflex

I was reminiscing recently about my long conversation over Facebook with Reverend Jim last spring. Our discussion on Thomas Sowell's Conflict of Visions has continued to resonate with me in an enormously frustrating way and I've finally figured out why.

I hadn't read Sowell's book since the late 80s so I dug out my old copy and re-read parts of it. As I chuckled at his insistence that the "constrained vision" relies on empirical evidence (see: The Economic Collapse of 2008 or how I learned to stop worrying and worship the free market), I realized that he was very sadly arguing this point (via Asimov):

My ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.

In essence, the entire book is one gigantic #3-Projection/Flipping.

The fact is that most liberals do not look at human nature as being inherently good. This is a complete fucking straw man. In reality, most liberals (including myself) look at ALL of the ways human nature is colored. We start as blank slates and develop based on number of factors. Part of it is genetic...part of it is how we are socialized...how we interact with the people in our lives (family, friends, co-workers)...part of it is how we function within the institutional framework of our society. There is a mountain of empirical evidence that supports human development in each of these areas.

But Sowell and his followers don't want to look at this evidence. Instead, they jump immediately to dividing people into two camps: those that are naively optimistic and those who know how the world really works. Yeah...no bias there. Worse, his definition of "how the world works" (i.e. the constrained vision) is equally as ignorant as those who believe in utopias. I've talked about this before...the libertarian utopia is just as ridiculous as the socialist one.

The result of all of this is what I am now calling The Sowell Reflex, a condition that presents itself quite regularly these days in many political discussions. It's happened to me so many times in the last couple of years that I chuckle when his name (predictably) comes up. More often than not, as soon as a person questions the breadth of intelligence of ideologically right folks, Sowell is quickly mentioned as a shield and the "silly liberals" are told to go home with their tail between their legs. Yet, upon closer inspection, one can easily see that this is just another dodge that is summed up simply as this:

The Sowell Reflex is one gigantic excuse for continued and willful ignorance.

So True!

Republicans Now Hurling the C-word At Each Other

Robert Jeffress has made a big splash with his declaration at the Values Voter summit that Mitt Romney belongs to a "cult." He declared that Mormonism is not Christianity, even though the Mormon Church is called the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

But the Mormon Church is not the first to be called a "cult" by a pastor in the Southern Baptist Convention. Jim Smyrl, from Jacksonville, Florida, was calling the Catholic Church a cult since at least 2008.

Smyrl's contention in the video linked above is that Catholic Church is a cult based on doctrinal differences between it and the SBC. In particular, he singles out the transubstantiation of wine into the actual blood of Jesus Christ.

Smyrl's definition seems to be that if a religious group has any doctrine that seems creepy and weird to you, it's a cult. By that definition, Mormonism counts as a cult. It has a history of polygamy, which continues to this day in some sects. It holds that American Indians are a lost tribe of Israel. It has the doctrine of Exaltation, which posits that we can become gods and goddesses. Jews had to fight with the Mormon Church to stop the practice of baptizing Jews killed in Nazi concentration camps (this was apparently done to assist in exaltation). Non-Mormons may not attend weddings in Mormon temples. Mormons keep a cache of emergency supplies wherever they go in case the world ends. And they wear Holy Underwear +4.

And then there's the history of Joe Smith, who seems to have been a prototypical cult leader. He claimed to have translated the Book of Mormom from gold plates given to him by the angel Moroni, which he had to give back after showing them to some guys who signed affidavits that they really, really did exist. Smith was murdered in jail after declaring martial law in the town where he was mayor, shutting down the town newspaper and facing accusations that he was stealing other men's wives. His killers were acquitted.

But what is a cult, really? Generally, a cult is a religious group that has a centralized authority that dictates particular standards of behavior and morality, controls whom followers can marry, dictates with whom members can associate, ostracizes former members, demands large donations from followers, and in general limits exposure to outside influences to prevent "immorality," all in an attempt to maintain complete control over all aspects of the cult member's life.

But the Southern Baptist Convention has its own cultish characteristics. The Baptist Church was famous for forbidding dancing and drinking: that's why there are so many dry counties in the South. Some Baptist sects justified slavery by its mention in the Bible (the SBC apologized for this in 1995). They venerate the cross, the evil device of torture and murder used by the Romans to crucify millions of innocent victims, including Christ, which is more than a little creepy. They have the Trinity, which is really just some freaky nonsense to get around the fact that they actually polytheistic. Their cultishness is sufficiently advanced that Baptists sometimes feel the need to insist that they are not a cult.

But all religions started out as cults: small groups of adherents to a new religion with heretical beliefs. Early Christian cults had to worship in secret for fear of persecution and death.

Cults stop being cults when their numbers are sufficient to be considered mainstream, and their policies allow them to be integrated into the rest of society, by eliminating their exclusionary polices that alienate them from others.

But the real reason that the Baptists say the Mormon Church is a cult may be that the SBC is afraid of losing members to the Mormon Church. This is from an article in Slate from 2007 when the Romney question first arose:

In the early 1980s, Southern Baptist Convention leaders discovered—much to their horror—that 40 percent of Mormonism's 217,000 converts in 1980 came from Baptist backgrounds. More than 150 Mormon missionaries had descended on the northern Georgia area alone, a Southern Baptist magazine noted warily in 1982, and they found Southern Baptists among their most promising targets. When the Mormon Church built temples in the early '80s in Atlanta and Dallas, two of Southern Baptism's most important hubs, it was as if the Mormon Church had thrown down the gauntlet in an arms race between two of the most missionary-minded faiths. Mormonism was declaring its permanent presence in the American South, where Southern Baptism enjoyed status as the de facto religion.

So, what this may really boil down to is not religious doctrine or the saving of souls, but losing church members, the income from their donations, and the subsequent loss of religious and political power to a competing organization.

In other words, this tiff between Baptists and Mormons may all be about the money.

Wait, WHAT???!!!!

How the fuck did this make it through the propaganda machine?

The Mittster

Now that the GOP field has settled down, the nomination is Mitt Romney's to lose. In fact, I can't see anyone else getting the nod at this point. So, since it's Mitt vs. Barry next year, here are my initial thoughts.

First of all, I like Mitt Romney. I think it's cool that he is uncomfortable in some social situations. So what? It shows that he's a person with faults. I also think that if he wins the election next year, he won't govern any differently than President Obama. He talks a good game now on the campaign trail but the health care bill will remain law, we'll still be pursuing the same national security policies, and the economy will still be the same.

The central problem I have with Mitt is he's too Wall Street. That's going to turn a lot of voters off who blame Wall Street second (behind George W. Bush) for our economy. Moreover, the base is not going to take kindly to a Romney candidacy and some will stay home.

This says to me that the race is going to be tight. Polls right now say the president and Romney are tied 48-48 with 4 percent undecided. How will those 4 percent break and in what states? As is usually the case, it might come down to Florida and Ohio. But will the lack of conservative voters put Texas, Arizona, and New Mexico in play with its Latino population and anti-Mormonism. Or will the liberal base, smoldering from Obama's centrism, stay home as well?

It's going to be an interesting year, folks!

Who are the Real Republicans?

Is Michele Bachmann a Real Republican? She just introduced a bill in Congress that would create a federal mandate forcing pregnant women seeking abortions to get ultrasound examinations. I thought Real Republicans were against federal regulations that increase the cost of health care and intrude on the private relationship between a doctor and a patient.

Is Rick Perry a Real Republican? He signed a bill that mandated sonograms for all women seeking abortions in Texas. Portions of the bill were ruled unconstitutional by a judge in August.

Is John Kriesel a Real Republican? He's one of several Minnesota Republican legislators who recently announced that he will work to oppose the gay marriage amendment that will go before voters next year.

Is Ron Erhardt a Real Republican? He and five other Republican legislators in Minnesota voted to override Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty's veto of a transportation bill that increased gas and sales taxes after the 35W bridge collapse. They were summarily drummed out of the party, losing the party's endorsement over this single issue. Erhardt ran anyway as an independent, but barely lost to the endorsed Republican in a three-way race.


Tony Sutton, the GOP state chairman in Minnesota said that individual Republicans can disagree with the party stance on "some issues," but the marriage amendment would stay in the party platform. Apparently you can disagree with the party on gay marriage, but when it comes to raising taxes -- even if those taxes are used to keep bridges from falling down -- that is the holiest of holies, beyond the pale and a challenge to Republican Orthodoxy that can only be met with excommunication.

We Are

Over the last few weeks, a growing group of people have occupied Wall Street in protest of the greed and corruption that has run rampant there in the last few years. They have rightfully pointed the spotlight on the organizations most responsible for our economic malaise at present.

Behind all of this is the We Are The 99 Percent movement. . This is their credo.

We are the 99 percent. We are getting kicked out of our homes. We are forced to choose between groceries and rent. We are denied quality medical care. We are suffering from environmental pollution. We are working long hours for little pay and no rights, if we're working at all. We are getting nothing while the other 1 percent is getting everything. We are the 99 percent.

What we are seeing here is the beginning of a minority block that will likely eclipse the conservative base. Hell, some conservatives may end up joining them. We've had unemployment for quite a long time in this country and it was clearly a simple matter of time before they organized into a force with which to be reckoned. We may even be seeing the beginning of the end of the self defeating plutocracy that has grown over the last decade.

Now, I've got a few issues with these people that I'd like to get out of the way. First, they remind me a great deal of the WTO protesters (see: Protectionism). VERY bad idea. Look at the world 50 years ago and look at it today. Overall, we are better off. Lifespans are longer in Global South countries and it is because of liberal trade practices. If these people are concerned about world hunger and poverty, the best way to solve it is free trade. No tariffs, quotas, non tariff barriers, or any other government restrictions that impede the global market. This means that the labor pool is going to grow which means demand will be lower thus the growing pains. They are going to have to accept this if they want the world to be better off.

Of course, this doesn't mean that MNCs (multinational corporations) have leave to pillage and burn the world. A completely unrestrained free market easily slides into this due to the basic human impulse of greed. So, there does need to be consequences for those that abuse this freedom. Obviously, this is a very complex issue and I don't think the occupiers fully understand the various intricacies of it.

This brings us to another issue I have with the occupiers of Wall Street. Are they so anarchistic in nature that they can't see the benefits of banks and investments? They are the very backbone of our culture. No doubt, they have been abused by people but that simply means that they should be put in "pound me in the ass prison" for 6 months. That would end this bullshit immediately. That means regulators are going to have to grow a pair and get it done. Tearing down the whole system will make things worse.

The occupiers also seem to not have a central message or leader. That's fine for now, I guess. But they do need to figure how exactly they are going to effect the change they desire. The best way for them to do this is vote and, more importantly, get the 40 percent of the people in this country that don't vote out at the polls every year-including the odd years! It's pretty clear to me which party has more in common with them and that's who they should support. Certainly, there are some Democrats who have supported our slide to malaise in the last decade but it's the near entirety of the conservative base that is fighting tooth and nail to support our plutocracy. Their blind anger (similar to the Tea Party's) is keeping them from seeing this simple fact.

In his piece, "Keeping America's Edge," Jim Manzi talks about the importance of social cohesion. An entire section of his treatise on the sad state of our affairs is entitled "Inequality as a Symptom."

Economic inequality is likely to cause problems with social ­cohesion — but far more important, it is a symptom of our deeper ­problem. As the unsustainable high tide of post-war American dominance has slowly ebbed, many — perhaps most — of our country's workers appear unable to compete internationally at the level required to maintain anything like their current standard of living. And a shrinking elite portion of the American population, itself a shrinking fraction of the world ­population, cannot indefinitely maintain our global position.

There it is in a nutshell, folks. We will not continue to maintain our position in the world unless we take very serious steps to support the 99 percent. And by "we" I mean EVERYONE, not just the government (federal, state, local). Giving more tax breaks and less regulation to the wealthy people in this country is going to make things far worse. As Robert Reich said recently,

This isn't a zero-sum game. A lot of wealthy people are beginning to understand that they would do better with a smaller percentage of a rapidly growing economy than with a big chunk of an economy that's dead in the water.

Indeed they are. The Patriotic Millionaires Club is a fine example of what needs to be front and center in the discussion. People like Doug Edwards, a former Google executive, who stood up at a recent town hall with the president and said, "Will you please raise my taxes?" also need to come forward and demand common sense. Edwards was right when he expressed great concern for the future of federal student loans, infrastructure projects and job-training programs if the government does not obtain new revenue. We're not simply talking about our economy here. We're talking about the erosion of our hegemonic power in the world that has guided the global marketplace towards an LIEO (liberal international economic order).

Imagine if a country like China, for example, was the hegemenon. There's no way to sugar coat this, folks, and this isn't hyperbole: freedom would be lost. The intransigence against spending must stop. Clearly, we can't afford to spend like we did post World War Two but we can't go to the exact opposite of that and become maniacal cutters. We also have to cease the daily beat downs of government because this is the entity that has kept us a major power in the world and will continue to do so in the future. Without our federal government, the freedom of the global market that we created at Bretton Woods will be threatened.

I'm not sure that the 99 percenters see themselves as the large turning point that I do. Thankfully, I'm not the only one. E.J. Dionne, from his latest column

The anti-Wall Street demonstrators have created a new pole in politics. Americans have always been wary of concentrated power. The Tea Party had great success in focusing anxieties on what it argues is an excessively powerful federal government. Now an active and angry band of citizens is insisting that the concentrated power Americans most need to fear exists on Wall Street and in the financial system.

It's going to be very interesting to see what happens next.

Ah, Gip...

I came across this video recently and couldn't help but shake my head. Pay close attention to his story of the bus driver at around 12:30 and his question to the crowd at around 15:30.



I guess when Reagan calls for it, then it's not socialism:)

His caution at the end (about 17:30) sadly was not heeded.

Lake Woebegon Boardrooms

An article in the Washington Post shows that even when corporate performance is poor, CEO pay continues to skyrocket. Kevin Sharer, CEO of Amgen, earns $21 million a year, a raise of $6 million over last year. He also has two (2!) corporate jets.

The company lost 3% on its investment last year, and 7% over the last five years. Amgen has had to close plants and fire workers. Sure, times have been tough during the recession. A lot of us have had to cut back.

But not CEOs.

In fact:

Since the 1970s, median pay for executives at the nation’s largest companies has more than quadrupled, even after adjusting for inflation, according to researchers. Over the same period, pay for a typical non-supervisory worker has dropped more than 10 percent, according to Bureau of Labor statistics.

Why are these guys getting monster raises when everyone else is losing their jobs, or working 60 hour weeks, or staying in jobs that they absolutely hate but can't afford to lose their health coverage?

Corporate boards of directors are incestuous men's clubs: CEOs consider a third of directors on their boards to be personal friends. CEOs consider half the compensation committees to be their personal friends.

Corporate boards intentionally give raises that exceed the median CEO salary because they don't want to lose "valuable talent." Paul Volcker called the the "Lake Woebegon Effect," a reference to Garrison Keillor's Prairie Home Companion, where all the children are above average.

Companies like Adobe, Discovery Communications and Countrywide Financial have official polices that CEOs should be compensated at 75 to 90% of peer companies.

This is completely nuts and totally unsustainable. It creates never-ending cycle of skyrocketing CEO pay. It's far worse than the cost of living raises built into Social Securiry and some union contracts, which these days is a few percent -- if at all.

The thing is, CEOs aren't above average. I've personally met half a dozen CEOs, and they're not brilliant masters of the universe. The vast majority are hired guns, and not entrepreneurs. They took no big risks and had no innovative ideas. They just know someone on the search committee, or got hired through the old boys' network.

It's not unreasonable for the founder of a company, say a Bill Gates or a Steve Jobs, to command high salaries: without them the company wouldn't exist. But hired CEOs are just employees, like the janitors, engineers and secretaries. (Even worse than hired CEOs are the heirs of corporate founders who take over daddy's job.) Hired guns are in no way special or indispensable to the operation of the company. As we've seen over and over again at hundreds of companies, CEOs are hired and fired constantly, and they don't really make any difference. They are as interchangeable as any assembly line employee.

Look at HP: they just hired Meg Whitman, the former head of eBay, who spent $160 million of her own money in her failed run for governor of California. She has no experience in HP's current line of business -- making computers, printers and scientific instruments -- which HP is going to ditch in favor of a new strategy to focus on "enterprise, commercial and government markets." That is, they're not going to make stuff anymore, but instead sell services to other companies and government.

Whitman's predecessor, Leo Apotheker, only worked there 11 months, but will receive $13 million in various compensation just for screwing the pooch. His predecessor, Mark Hurd, was fired for trying to screw Jodie Fisher, a marketing support consultant and former actress.

Finally, Carly Fiorino (who spent $5.5 million of her own money on an unsuccessful Senate campaign) resigned as CEO of HP in 2005 after a scandal where private investigators illegally obtained the phone records of journalists and board members.

HP's story is not unique, it is quite typical of corporate America. If you can get behind the wall of secrecy at any company you will find they have lots of skeletons in the closet.

• Rupert Murdoch's News of the World was in the news again for stealing stories from other newspapers by bribing their employees. This is separate from their phone hacking and police bribery scandal.

• The Koch brothers have been illegally selling equipment to Iran. Its French subsidiary has been bribing officials to win contracts and when Koch's investigator reported this she was taken off the inquiry and then fired.

So do you really think that private multinational corporations are more efficient and more trustworthy than a government where we have the power to hire and fire the CEO (president, governor, mayor) and the board of directors (Congress, state legislatures, city councils) at our whim?

A Teacher's Note

I came across this recently on the FaceBook page of Pastor Jim. Recall that Jim's wife was my first girlfriend and he and I regularly have political debates on his wall, some of which I reprinted here.

Clark's piece sums up exactly what instructors go through on a daily basis. The problem isn't really the schools, the teachers, the administrators or communist infiltration of our education system (I could barely type the last bit without laughing). It's the parents and what's become of them as a result of their own choices and our culture as a whole. So, what do they need to understand?

We are educators, not nannies. We are educated professionals who work with kids every day and often see your child in a different light than you do. If we give you advice, don't fight it. Take it, and digest it in the same way you would consider advice from a doctor or lawyer. I have become used to some parents who just don't want to hear anything negative about their child, but sometimes if you're willing to take early warning advice to heart, it can help you head off an issue that could become much greater in the future.

Yep.

Trust us. At times when I tell parents that their child has been a behavior problem, I can almost see the hairs rise on their backs. They are ready to fight and defend their child, and it is exhausting. One of my biggest pet peeves is when I tell a mom something her son did and she turns, looks at him and asks, "Is that true?" Well, of course it's true. I just told you. And please don't ask whether a classmate can confirm what happened or whether another teacher might have been present. It only demeans teachers and weakens the partnership between teacher and parent.

Yep.

And if you really want to help your children be successful, stop making excuses for them. I was talking with a parent and her son about his summer reading assignments. He told me he hadn't started, and I let him know I was extremely disappointed because school starts in two weeks.

His mother chimed in and told me that it had been a horrible summer for them because of family issues they'd been through in July. I said I was so sorry, but I couldn't help but point out that the assignments were given in May. She quickly added that she was allowing her child some "fun time" during the summer before getting back to work in July and that it wasn't his fault the work wasn't complete.

Yep.

Some parents will make excuses regardless of the situation, and they are raising children who will grow into adults who turn toward excuses and do not create a strong work ethic. If you don't want your child to end up 25 and jobless, sitting on your couch eating potato chips, then stop making excuses for why they aren't succeeding. Instead, focus on finding solutions.

Yep.

And parents, you know, it's OK for your child to get in trouble sometimes. It builds character and teaches life lessons. As teachers, we are vexed by those parents who stand in the way of those lessons; we call them helicopter parents because they want to swoop in and save their child every time something goes wrong. If we give a child a 79 on a project, then that is what the child deserves. Don't set up a time to meet with me to negotiate extra credit for an 80. It's a 79, regardless of whether you think it should be a B+.

Yep.

We know you love your children. We love them, too. We just ask -- and beg of you -- to trust us, support us and work with the system, not against it. We need you to have our backs, and we need you to give us the respect we deserve. Lift us up and make us feel appreciated, and we will work even harder to give your child the best education possible.

Yep.

Everything was so well said and exactly how I feel that there was nothing else to add.

Now, the question is...how do we change the behavior of the parents?

If Jesus were the nominee...

In their quest to achieve the emotional intelligence of a 13 year old girl, the conservative base are now begging Chris Christie to get in the race. He's mulling it over but honestly he should just say no. His chances will be better in 2016 when the race is wide open and (hopefully) the apocalyptic cult has been returned to the right wing blogshpere and short wave radio.

They are going to be sick of him in a week anyway. He's for civil unions, gun control and thinks that climate change is man made. That's three big strikes right there. He also supported the Islamic education center that was built a few blocks from the new WTC (B to the W, this is now up and running without a peep from anyone on the right...surprise, surprise). The other thing to consider is that he is very overweight. Many people will look at him and then look at Obama and say, "I'm not voting for the fat guy."

The simple fact is that if Jesus Christ was the GOP nominee, they'd hate him in a week as well. Bill Maher noted this last Friday night.



One has to wonder why these people should be put in charge when they can't seem to make up their mind about anything.

They Didn't Get The Memo

I guess GOP Senator Mark Kirk of Illinois and GOP Representative Peter King of New York didn't get the memo on being against everything Obama.

On a recent trip to Libya, Senator Kirk had this to say about the president.

This is a victory for the United States military, for our British and French allies, for NATO, for the president of the United States, but most importantly for the Libyan people. Unquestioned kudos goes to the president and his team, but the challenges are not over yet. 

This was a success by President Obama and his team. Any military conflict has ups or downs or things you might have done differently … but we have all the makings of a very strong U.S. ally in Libya.

And this from Representative King on the Al-Awlaki killing.

The killing of al-Awlaki is a tremendous tribute to Pres Obama & the men and women of our intelligence community.

You're damn right on both counts, boys, Kudos to both of you for daring to be "impure."

Well Done

When it comes to the issue of national security, President Obama has proven (once again) that he has been enormously effective in eliminating threats to this nation. In a significant new blow to al-Qaida, U.S. airstrikes in Yemen on Friday killed Anwar al-Awlaki, an American militant cleric who became a prominent figure in the terror network's most dangerous branch.

Al-Awlaki was directly responsible for planning the Christmas bomb attack that was foiled in 2009. Al-Awlaki had also exchanged up to 20 emails with U.S. Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, the man behind the Ft. Hood rampage. Hasan initiated the contacts, drawn by al-Awlaki's Internet sermons, and approached him for religious advice.

This is one of the major reasons I voted for President Obama. The strategy by the Bush Administration against Al Qaeda was clearly the wrong one. This new strategy that combines intelligence gathering with surgical attacks has dealt Al Qaeda several serious blows since President Obama took office. It's ability to carry out any sort of significant attacks has been greatly marginalized and it's due the shift in policy.

Vaccines vs. Power Plants

Michele Bachmann raised a lot of questions -- mostly about her competence and judgment -- when she repeated a claim from "a woman in the crowd" who said that the HPV vaccine made her 12-year-old daughter retarded. Did Bachmann simply make this person up? She can't produce the woman, even though two scientists have offered a substantial reward for the girl's medical records.

Bachmann does voice a concern about vaccines that many people have. In 1998 a study by British doctor Andrew Wakefield et al. claimed a link between the MMR vaccine and autism. An American doctor, Mark Geier, also published several papers that claimed vaccines caused autism. Did these studies have any validity?

The preservative thimerosal, which has been used in vaccines since the 1930s, is an organic mercury compound. Mercury is known to cause birth defects and mental retardation. Mercury poisoning causes brain damage in adults as well. For this reason mercury is no longer used in dental amalgams. The phrase "mad as a hatter" has its origins in history -- hatters used mercury to cure felt. So it wasn't a stretch for Geier to propose that organic mercury could cause autism. But other scientists believed the concentration of thimerosal was too small to affect children vaccinated at that time in their development.

As it turns out, Wakefield falsified data for his paper, and the Lancet withdrew it in 2010. There was no link proved between autism and the MMR vaccine. Geier's medical license was suspended in 2011, for endangering the lives of autistic children with questionable (and expensive) treatments.

But, just to be on the safe side, the use of thimerosal in child vaccines was ended in 2001 (it's still used in some flu vaccines). It's also not used in Gardasil, the HPV vaccine used in Texas. The incidence of autism since thimerosal was removed from childhood vaccines has continued to climb since then, so it's fairly certain that it has little or nothing to do with autism.

The largest source of mercury that children are exposed to are emissions from coal-fired power plants and waste incinerators. Mercury is emitted into our air, lakes, rivers and seas, where it becomes concentrated in animals. People who eat fish and shellfish can accumulate potentially harmful levels of mercury in their bodies. That's why pregnant women, women trying to get pregnant, and nursing mothers are advised not to eat tuna, fish and shellfish, and everyone is advised to limit their intake of seafood with high concentrations of mercury.

(Interestingly, Bachmann has also campaigned against compact fluorescent light bulbs in part because they contain mercury.)

Bachmann did raise legitimate questions about Texas governor Rick Perry's financial and political ties to the pharmaceutical industry. One of his former aides was a lobbyist for the drug company that provided the vaccine to Texas, which Perry decreed all girls be vaccinated with, a decision that the Texas legislature overturned before it went into effect.

But this isn't really just about Michele Bachmann. She and the entire Republican Party are now on a tear about regulation.  They oppose "costly" regulations on coal-fired power plants that limit mercury emissions by requiring smokestack scrubbers and dictate the quality of coal burned.

Why do Republicans like Bachmann so often lend credence to discredited studies like Wakefield's, and rumor and innuendo, while completely dismissing the far greater and well-documented dangers from toxins like fine particulates, ozone, mercury, lead and benzene released into the environment by energy industries? Why do Republicans so often deride recycling programs that keep toxins like lead and mercury out of the environment and reduce the need for us to mine these heavy metals?

All the other Republican candidates pounced on Perry to decry the state mandate for the vaccine, apparently objecting that children be forced to receive injections of a substance that the vaccine doesn't actually contain.

But Texas parents would have been able to opt out of the vaccine program if they chose. Sadly, the only the way the rest of us can opt out of ingesting the toxic emissions the Republicans want to prevent the EPA from regulating is to stop breathing, eating and drinking.

So, what's behind the increase in the autism rate? It's a non-trivial issue. One part is that it's simply being diagnosed more frequently: parents often lobby for an autism or ADHD diagnosis to get special treatment for their kids. Asperger's Syndrome, a mild form of autism, is sometimes called the Geek Syndrome. Some would argue that Asperger's and milder ADHD not real diagnoses, they're just personality types. Another theory is that children of older fathers are more prone to autism, and Americans are having children at an older age. But most theories posit that autism is due to some kind of environmental insult. One theory links pesticides to autism and another one links them ADHD.  Others variously blame rain, unemotional mothers, lack of vitamin D, mercury, lead, excessive hygiene, and so on. Short answer: who knows?

One thing we know for certain is that even minute concentrations of chemicals and hormones can disrupt the fetus at critical stages of development. Toxins that don't hurt adults can cause tragic birth defects. If the Republican Party is really the pro-life party, how can they so cavalier about exposing those precious children to environmental toxins?

Six Questions

I came across this piece in my local paper regarding climate change. The six questions that Lenfestey proposes we ask political candidates could really be asked of anyone. So I've decided to put these to my readers and see what kind of responses I get.

1. Do you understand the science of climate change?

Obviously, some people don't.

2. Are you aware that President George W. Bush's administration found the evidence for climate change convincing? Have you read his report, "Scientific Assessment of the Effects of Global Change on the United States," published in 2008?

Actually, I haven't. Has anyone out there read it?

3. Are you aware that in May 2011, the nation's most esteemed scientific body, the National Research Council, reaffirmed the international scientific consensus on the human causes of climate change and made clear that sustained effort must begin immediately to deal with those adverse consequences? That the question of climate change is "settled science," and the impacts are already evident around us?

Well, this has got to be the toughest nut to swallow for the deniers. What exactly do you say to these findings?

4. If you do not accept the conclusions of these careful scientific assessments, what scientists do you listen to? What reports have they issued that you find more convincing? Where do you get the information that you find more persuasive?

Yes, which ones? No right wing blogs. No oil company shills. Let's see the reputable scientists who have examined the data and reached a different conclusion.

5. Let me put this another way. Texas is on fire. Pennsylvania faces record floods. Joplin, Mo., is reeling from epic tornados. Shorelines are eroding in the Carolinas. None of these events can be directly blamed on climate change, but all are predicted by known climate-change trends.

Such events will only worsen if the climate continues to warm, as it will under business-as-usual scenarios. Do you support a business-as-usual model or do you have a plan to stem the trend toward a hotter, more volatile planet?

Well, I can answer that for those on the right. Do nothing. It's the same solution they have for health care.

6. Candidates Perry and Bachmann: Both of you have said the Environmental Protection Agency is a major problem in America, and you would seek to eliminate it if elected, particularly its mandate, affirmed by the Supreme Court, to regulate carbon emissions.

How then would you address the flaw in private markets that attaches no economic value to waste that falls as a burden on the general population -- for example, sewers that flow into waters that cross state lines, or carbon wastes that warm the atmosphere around the world? Without the EPA, how would you propose to address pollutants that cross state and international boundaries?

I'm very interested in the answers to this last one...if there are any. Honestly,  I don't think there are because the right doesn't think this is a problem. Like many problems that require federal government solutions, they just turn away and pretend it doesn't exist and completely rip the left for trying to do anything.

They want them to fail because having no solution is a failure from the very beginning. And we can't let them "win" now, can we?

Obama Jobs Plan=Thumbs Up

Here is a consensus on the American Jobs Act.

President Barack Obama’s $447 billion jobs plan would help avoid a return to recession by maintaining growth and pushing down the unemployment rate next year, according to economists surveyed by Bloomberg News.

The legislation, submitted to Congress this month, would increase gross domestic product by 0.6 percent next year and add or keep 275,000 workers on payrolls, the median estimates in the survey of 34 economists showed. The program would also lower the jobless rate by 0.2 percentage point in 2012, economists said.

So, again, I must ask...which is more important: the economy or making the president a one termer?

Not Qualified

As we continue to witness new depths of conservative ADD in their nomination process, I think it's important to note these words.

You have to feel in your heart and in your mind that you’re ready for the presidency. And there are lots of people who will run just because the opportunity presents itself.

That’s not a reason to be president of the United States. You have to believe in your heart and in your soul and in your mind that you are ready and I don’t believe that about myself right now. So that’s why I said I won’t run and I can’t imagine that changing.

That's current Belle of the Ball, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, from last February. I'd take him at his word. He's not qualified at all.

He has also stated many times that he is not running. Yet our country, according to a woman in the audience at Christie's Reagan library speech yesterday, "can't take four more years of this" so Christie must jump in and save us. Oh, Lawdy! Four more years of what, exactly? Our country being eroded due to Republican extremism? Oops! I forgot...#3 Projection/Flipping....it's all Obama's fault!

Even if Christie does get in the race, the base would tire of him just like they have with all the rest of the candidates. Why? Because they aren't capable of putting together coherent and detailed policy. All they really have is "We have a spending problem" combined with the relentless pursuit of proving Democrats wrong in the most childishly dishonest fashion. Once Christie talks of compromise (as he has already done), they'll hate him too and then it will be on to someone else.

The simple fact that the Republican Party is behaving this way should raise some serious red flags. What exactly is their agenda?