Looking Forward?

As usual, Florida is still undecided, a mess. According to NPR, though, it is leaning heavily toward Obama, despite the shenanigans of the state GOP in suppressing the vote. I didn’t watch last night. Couldn’t. We went to bed early. But then Donna got up around midnight and woke me by a whoop of joy that I briefly mistook for anguish. To my small surprise and relief, Obama won. I will not miss the constant electioneering, the radio ads, the tv spots, the slick mailers. I will not miss keeping still in mixed groups about my politics (something I am not good at, but this election cycle it feels more like holy war than an election). I will not miss wincing every time some politician opens his or her mouth and nonsense spills out. (This is, of course, normal, but during presidential years it feels much, much worse.) I will not miss… Anyway, the election came out partially the way I expected, in those moments when I felt calm enough to think rationally. Rationality seemed in short supply this year and mine was sorely tasked. So now, I sit here sorting through my reactions, trying to come up with something cogent to say. I am disappointed the House is still Republican, but it seems a number of the Tea Party robots from 2010 lost their seats, so maybe the temperature in chambers will drop a degree or two and some business may get done. Gary Johnson, running as a Libertarian, pulled 350,000 votes as of nine last night. Jill Stein, the Green Party candidate, got around 100,000. (Randall Terry received 8700 votes, a fact that both reassures me and gives me shivers—there are people who will actually vote for him?) Combined, the independent candidates made virtually no difference nationally. Which is a shame, really. I’ve read both Stein’s and Johnson’s platforms and both of them are willing to address the problems in the system. Johnson is the least realistic of the two and I like a lot of the Green Party platform. More . . .

Continue ReadingLooking Forward?

The myths of big government

Matt Taibbi of Rolling Stone points out the lessons Americans have seen as a result of Hurricane Sandy:

The point is, we will end up with a big government no matter who wins next week's election, because neither Mitt Romney nor Barack Obama is supported by a coalition that has any interest in tightening its own belt. The only reason we're having this phony big-versus-small argument is because of yet another longstanding media deception, i.e. that the only people who actually receive government aid are the poor and the elderly and other such traditional "welfare"-seekers. Thus a politician who is in favor of cutting services to that particular crowd, like Mitt Romney, is inevitably described as favoring "small government," no matter what his spending plans are for everybody else. But everyone lives off the government teat to some degree – even (one might even say especially) the very rich who have been the core supporters of both the Bush presidency and Romney's campaign. Many are industrial leaders who would revolt tomorrow if their giant free R&D program known as the federal military budget were to be scaled back even a few percentage points. Mitt's buddies on Wall Street would cry without their bailouts and dozens of lucrative little-known subsidies (like the preposterous ability of certain banks to act as middlemen in transactions when the government lends money to itself). And if it's not outright bailouts or guarantees keeping the rich rich, it's selective regulation and carefully-carved-out protections from competition – like the bans on drug re-importation or pharmaceutical price negotiation for Medicare that are keeping the drug companies far richer than they would be, in the pure free-market paradise their CEOs probably espouse at dinner parties.

Continue ReadingThe myths of big government

Joseph Stiglitz details the many aspects of economic unfairness

Joseph Stiglitz has written a new book confirming what many of us have been seeing and feeling:

If markets had actually delivered on the promises of improving the standards of living of most citizens, then all of the sins of corporations, all the seeming social injustices, the insults to our environment, the exploitation of the poor, might have been forgiven. But to the young indignados and protestors elsewhere in the world, capitalism is failing to produce what was promised, but is delivering on what was not promised—inequality, pollution, unemployment, and, most important of all, the degradation of values to the point where everything is acceptable and no one is accountable.

Continue ReadingJoseph Stiglitz details the many aspects of economic unfairness

Bonus clawbacks and fair play

Businessweek is reporting that JP Morgan is considering moving to "clawback" bonuses which had been awarded to executives and others responsible for Morgan's recent $2 BILLION dollar loss.:

The lender can cancel stock awards or demand they be repaid if an employee “engages in conduct that causes material financial or reputational harm,” JPMorgan said in its annual proxy statement. The company will claw back pay if it’s appropriate, said one of the executives, who asked not to be identified because no decisions have been made.
But wait! These big Wall Street firms told us that bonuses were untouchable after they blew up the economy in 2008. Am I the only one that remembers that? There was all sorts of bullshit about how these employees were simply too valuable, that if they didn't get their massive bonuses they would leave to seek other employment, that contracts and bonus structures were sacrosanct and untouchable (untouchability does not extend to unions and teachers, by the way). Oh, but I guess that was when taxpayers were paying the bonuses. Now that JP Morgan took a big hit in their own shorts, they want their money back. Funny how things change.

Continue ReadingBonus clawbacks and fair play

More politics of peak oil

One can be forgiven for not understanding the state of our world today in terms of oil and its availability. A new article in Forbes assures us that peak oil is off, that the world is awash in oil. Meanwhile, an article from the current issue of The Economist claims the opposite: that oil supply is insufficient to keep up with demand. Meanwhile, the president is blaming high prices on those nasty speculators. So which of these competing claims is a person to believe? For the uninitiated, peak oil is the point in time when maximum extraction of the world's oil endowment is reached. Since oil is a finite resource, we can exploit it in increasing amounts until we can't any longer, and flows begin to decline.

Continue ReadingMore politics of peak oil