Tuesday, May 6, 2014

Now I’m well aware George W Bush’s presidency ended over a month ago. However, given this is my blog’s kickoff, I would feel remiss if I were completely left out of the Bush bashing parade. There just seems to be a vacuum now that he’s gone, which leaves me in an awful nostalgic mood. As a matter of fact, the extraordinary decline in consumer demand for anti-Bush merchandise since he gracelessly left office is one fascinating theory of how the financial crisis got so bad in the first place. So hey, I’m just doing my part to prime the proverbial pump

I’m going to take a little different approach than most have and call Bush out for his distinctly free market hating policies. I think the idea that Bush was somehow fond of unregulated, dog eat dog, laizzez-faire capitalism in all of its creatively destructive glory is an extremely important myth to bust. Why? Well since our economy is crumbling all around us, people are desperate to run away from whatever we were just doing as fast as Keith Olbermann can decline a debate. Therefore, it’s critical to know just exactly what it is we were doing before we start running.

Unfortunately, the “Bush was a free marketer” myth is more or less ubiquitous these days. Barack Obama has repeatedly said in one form or another, the financial crisis “…is a verdict on the failed policies of the last eight years that said that we should strip away consumer protections, let the market run wild, and prosperity would rain down.” And many others have taken the baton and regurgitated that sentiment en masse (see here and here). But what were those horrible policies? Was the Bush administration really letting “the market run wild?” If they were, then maybe we should try big government again. However, if they were big government policies to begin with, maybe the free market deserves a first chance.

It is true that Bush has said some nice things about the free market, but since when do we believe what politicians say. If you really believe everything Bush says than you must think there are some WMD in Iraq and on another note I have some beach front property in the Mojave Desert you may be interested in. Oh but didn’t Bush cut taxes like three times? Well yes he totally did. He “slashed” the top income tax bracket from 39.6% to 35%. He also added a sixth bracket to our ridiculously complicated tax code. However that’s about where his free wheeling free marketing ends.

The media rarely blames the tax cuts for our financial mess though, instead it repeats ad nauseam that deregulation was the key to our current crisis. I’ll leave refuting this claim to another article, but the key here is Bush has not been a deregulator. The main piece of legislation proponents of the “deregulation theory of financial collapse” point to is the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act that repealed much of the Glass-Steagall Act, effectively breaking down the barriers between commercial and investment banks. The problem is that this piece of partial deregulation was passed during Clinton’s presidency in 1998 (and voted for by Joe Biden by the way).

In reality, Bush’s presidency has been an eight year long string of red tape. The Bush administration added a staggering average of 76,526 pages to the federal registry each year. In 2002, he signed off on Sarbanes-Oxley, one of the most overbearing regulations since the New Deal. The SEC alone saw it’s budget triple over eight years, which of course wasn’t quite enough to catch a 50 billion dollar, decades long ponzi s cheme. The Bush administration increased

federal spending on regulatory agencies by 6.5% per year (adjusted for inflation) and staffing by 6.3%. That’s more than any president since Richard Nixon (another president bestowed with the “free market” myth).

Even more damning is the federal budget. Bush was the first president to ever push the federal budget over 2 trillion (yes trillion with a t) and then just to shatter the record Michael Phelps style, he was the first to push it over 3 trillion as well. In his first term Bush increased total budget expenditures by 25.3% and non-defense discretionary spending by 19.7%. Both were the largest increases since the Nixon/Ford presidency from 1972-76. Bush’s second term was no better.

In eight years, Bill Clinton only increased the budget from 1.41 trillion to 1.86 trillion, a 32.2% increase which is notably not adjusted for inflation. As a percentage of GDP the budget fell from 21.4% to 18.5%. Under eight years of Bush the budget increased from 1.86 trillion to 3.11 trillion, an uncanny 66.8% increase. However, that figure does not include either war or the 700 billion dollar bailout. If we include the wars and the multitude of bailouts, Bush’s budgetary madness parallels the eight years of New Frontierin’ in the Great Society under Kennedy and Johnson, which saw the budget increase 87.9%. As a percent of GDP, by 2009 the budget had jumped back up to 20.7%. In contrast, the highest percentage of GDP spending reached during either the Kennedy or Johnson administrations was 20.6% in 1968.

Source: Budget of the United States Government: Historical Tables Fiscal Year 2009

Fiscal conservatives should also hate budget deficits, but Bush sure doesn’t. The deficit may exceed a trillion dollars this year and the total debt has ballooned from 5.6 trillion dollars to 10.7 trillion dollars! Even more startling are the unfunded liabilities (what we would need to have invested in treasury bills to meet future entitlement obligations) which now stands at an incomprehensible 65.5 trillion dollars!

Source: Z-Facts Gross National Deficit

So how did he do get the budget so bent out of shape? Well with conservative things such as the biggest entitlement package since the Great Society in Medicare Part D. A piece of legislation David Walker, the former comptroller general of the GAO, called “a poster child for what not to do when considering new legislation .” Or perhaps it was doubling the size of the Department of Education, a department Reagan campaigned on abolishing. Or maybe it was two wars that the Congressional Budget Office estimates will cost the United States an absurd 2.4 trillion dollars (along with many lives) in economic output by the time they both end. Or just possibly it was his massive wealth redistributing, failure rewarding bailout of bankrupt financial firms. Or could it have been his end around Congress to bail out the auto industry. Hey, maybe it was his own 150 billion dollar stimulus package in 2007.

All this brings us to an obvious conclusion: Bush was not a free market president. This reality is confirmed by the The Fraser Institute, which releases country-by-country rankings for economic freedom every year with a 10 being completely free and a 0 being completely unfree. In 1990, the United States had a 7.8 ranking. After Clinton (albeit with a Republican congress most the time) the United States’ ranking went up to 8.6 in 2000. By 2006, Bush had let it fall back to an 8.0 and it will likely sink further after all this bailout mania. Canada, with all its universal health care, has an 8.1 ranking.

So how on Earth is Bush a fiscal conservative? How is he even conservative? Aren’t conservatives in favor of the free market and federalism while being weary of big government? Well empty suit, talking head, political hack Fred Barnes took up the issue in 2003. As he wrote in The Weekly Standard, Bush is “a big government conservative.” George Bush and his administration “simply believe in using what would normally be seen as liberal means–activist government–for conservative ends.”

Ahh, big government conservatism: a delightful oxymoron akin to centralized federalism, Darwinian Creationism and environmentally friendly nuclear explosions. One simply can’t be conservative in any simultaneously American and non-Orwellian sense with out being pro-free market and one simply can not be pro-free market while massively increasing the size of federal government. There are many, especially on the left, who accuse Bush of increasing the size of government to simply ally with big business and rip off the taxpayers, but that is aside the point. Corporatism is not capitalism! So if you want to blame corporatism for the mess we’re in, that’s fine. But perhaps, just perhaps, capitalism, real capitalism is a better way out of this mess than big government. Big government is after all what we were just doing.

Monday, January 19, 2009

The Cult of Obama

I wrote in a previous post, and still believe, that Barack Obama is a good person and will be a major improvement over the disaster that was George W. Bush. His election is also great for race relations and surely means even more to many African Americans than I, as a white man born decades after Jim Crow ended, can fully understand. I still disagree with our President Elect on a lot of issues, especially his Keynesian stimulus garbage, but his tax and spend is better than Bush’s borrow and spend. What concerns me is this cult of personality that has sprouted up around Obama.

It’s almost like Barack Obama has been knighted as the Messiah of America. Conservative talk radio is often hyperbolic, but I think they got the mainstream media’s (other than the neoconservative Fox News) kids glove approach to Obama right. However, what’s more disconcerting than this media fawning is the millions of people who seem to just seem to fall heads over heels for him.

I’ve had a couple of friends on facebook constantly post pro Obama related material in their profile and there are currently 1,156,677 confirmed guests to Obama’s inauguration on facebook despite the fact that you can’t attend his inauguration via facebook. For the real thing over two million people are expected to attend the actual inauguration. I unfortunately missed the parties after he was elected, but I heard they were out of control.

Now, this isn’t necessarily bad, I mean it’s good that people are getting involved in politics. But there seems to be a feeling that his election will save us all from financial ruin, terrorism, war, greedy corporations, racism, sexism, crime, foreclosure, layoffs, bird flu and athletes foot. I mean look at all these Hollywood stars falling all over themselves for Obama in music videos like this one, this one, this one, and of course Obama girl.

What’s stranger and more disheartening are the youth choirs singing about how great Obama is. I don’t mean to compare Obama to Hitler, but I’m sorry the hero worship is just too reminiscent. Sorry, I couldn’t help myself.

It’s not a surprise that some conservative writers have picked up on this but even liberal economist Paul Krugman picked up on it during the primaries. Unbridled executive power is extraordinarily dangerous as we’ve seen in the fascist and communist states of the 20th century and we need to be very careful about how much power we allow our presidents to have. Bush, like many before him, increased executive power significantly which liberals have rightfully criticized. Now, however they’re jumping all over themselves for a president who will almost certainly expand the federal government.

We have to pull ourselves back from in this cult of the presidency in general and the cult of Obama in particular. The intent of the founders and the explicit language in our Constitution was meant to limit the power of the president. Hell, the original Articles of Confederation didn’t even have a president! Now there were problems then (think slavery), but a powerful executive is simply the antithesis of liberty and while it’s great Bush is gone, it’s time for Obama fanatics (and Obama himself) to relax.

Or we can just laugh at them.

Tuesday, January 13, 2009

Blogger Deleted My Post!

Wow, Bogger.com can really suck sometimes. So I write out this long post and all. Take a lot of time to do so. I linked some sites that I got information from and all. Then I highlight it to copy and paste it in a Word file. I do this simply because Blogger's editing tools are subpar at best. Well what happens... it deletes the whole thing and there's no undo or anything. Yeah, all I did was highlight it! Well, I don't feel like rewriting so if I have any readers out there, just know that Blogger.com just screwed you out of my weekly insight.

Screw you Blogger.

Monday, January 5, 2009

New Year's Resolutions

Making New Year’s Resolutions and then proceeding to break said New Year’s Resolutions seems to be an annual event for Americans and many others around the world. One survey of over 100,000 people in 16 countries found that 98.7% made one or more resolutions and only a shameful yet darkly humorous 3.1% actually kept them.

Aside by making fodder for bad stand-up comics, this embarrassing statistic begs the question; why do people still do this. A common definition for insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. Well this one almost answers itself. No one is completely happy with himself, and so we want naturally want to improve. The New Year symbolizes a new beginning (although really it really represents nothing more than passing go with out the $200 of course), therefore it’s a chance to start anew more literally. To fix those problems we all know that we have.

Well unfortunately, people rarely change and never change easily. Alcoholics don’t just stop drinking, fat people don’t just lose weight, hippies don’t just start making something of themselves, it takes a lot of hard work and dedication. A simple resolution will provide nothing more than a week or two of motivation.

Any serious attempt to improve requires time, goals and dedication. The best way I’ve found to do this is to create a plan. Compliment that plan with a schedule and goals and then meticulously keep track of your progress. For example, I looked to get back into shape so I created a work out plan. Then I created a schedule with goals for bench press, weight and run time. And so for I’ve had great results.

Now obviously this is no guarantee, but a plan and a schedule can help focus your effort unlike some vague resolution. In addition to the plan, involving a friend or at least telling people what you’re trying to do helps keep yourself accountable. You can really start this at any time, so the New Year might as well be it. But given the statistics, I wouldn’t call your goal a resolution.

Happiness and Success

At the end of every year I go through my stuff and my computer in a vain attempt to organize and clean it all up. This last year was no exception. While doing said tedious work I came across an interesting thing I wrote a couple years ago. I don't remember writing it or why I even wrote it but I liked it. While it had no title, it might as well have been titled "Happiness and Success." So here it is in its unadulterated form, a bit cheesy, yes, but also kind of deep. Well at least I think so.

The activities that will lead to success in the long term must be identified, accepted and executed in the short term for long term success to be possible.

Thus the short term activities that will lead to success in the long term are a means to an end (success/happiness).

However, if short term activities are only to gain long term ends (success/happiness), it could be implied that the short term (present) is devoid of those desired ends (success/happiness).

If the present is devoid of both happiness and success, then the next question is when do you reach the long term? When do you feel the fruits of success or happiness or both?

In addition, should success and happiness even be put together? They are not innately linked. Does success bring happiness, or does happiness bring success?

Regardless of which brings which, happiness is the greater achievement. Because your success is a purely personal representation of achievement (not social) it matters little to you if it isn't accompanied by happiness.

So happiness must be applied to the short term activities that will lead to success in the long term if achievement is even still desired.

If achievement is desired it is no longer and ends (happiness is) so is it a means?

Achievement at its highest level is an actualizing of personal ability. Happiness should (but not necessarily) make one want to achieve their best. Thus achievement is a means to no end.

The short term activities to bring long term success should be the short term activities that bring true happiness.

The short term activities that bring true happiness are the ends.

Happiness is an end in itself.

Friday, December 5, 2008

The Irrational Texas-Oklahoma Dabacle

There's really no better place on Earth to hear rampant, unrepressed, unabashed, almost exuberant irrationality than in the world of sports. Hell, sports commentary may have somehow beat out politics in this regard. The ferocious, unrelenting tirades filled with every profane word the English language has yet graced us with that fill the mouths of even the most mundane sports fan whenever a questionable call is made against their favorite team should be evidence enough of this. If that doesn't do the trick, just go onto an ESPN message board after a team loses or listen to some of the most bland, unenlightened "analysis" on sports shows by the likes of Sean Salisbury and Stephen A. Smith.

Unfortunately for those of us who like sports but also prefer a rational argument, College football has blessed us with another conundrum for which angry fans can spit their ill-informed venom at. Of course I'm speaking of the Texas/Oklahoma mess.

Here's the breakdown; Texas and Oklahoma both finished 11-1 overall and 7-1 in the Big 12. When they played each other Texas won on a neutral field 45-35. Now the team that wins the Big 12 South plays the team that wins the Big 12 North for the Big 12 Championship. If two teams have the same record, the head to head match up decides who wins, if there is a three way tie, than the team with the higher BCS ranking goes.

OK, so as you may know, Oklahoma is ranked 3rd and Texas 4th so Oklahoma will played a vastly outmatched Missouri team for the title and likely a trip to the national championship game this Saturday. Texas fans are absolutely outraged, I mean they won the head to head, end of story right. Some Texas fans even set up a website; 45-35.com. It is an outrage isn't it? I mean, if you listen to this idiot, it really is that simple.

Well it's not that simple and I'm sick of hearing Texas fans and poorly educated sports "analysts" tell me it is. See there's this little problem called Texas Tech that every Longhorns fan conveniently forgot about. Here's how the games went down:

Texas beat Oklahoma 45-35, Texas finished 11-1

Texas Tech beat Texas 39-33, Texas Tech finished 11-1

Oklahoma beat Texas Tech 65-21, Oklahoma finished 11-1

There is a three-way tie, therefore head to head is completely nullified. Gone forever, meaningless, pointless, useless, etc. Some have said that Texas Tech hasn't had as tough a schedule, nor as big a margin of victory, and they're not playing as well right now. Well the same exact thing can be said about Oklahoma against Texas. Oklahoma had a tougher schedule, playing top 15 teams Cincinnati and TCU, while the only tough opponent Texas played that Oklahoma didn't was a barely ranked Missouri team Oklahoma will probably throttle tomorrow. Oklahoma has a better margin of victory, they are a hotter team right now, they lost earlier in the season than Texas, they have scored 60 points in four straight games and will likely set an NCAA record for points scored.

So that leaves the most mind numbingly stupid argument left; Texas Tech got blown out so badly they shouldn't be considered. I've actually heard this one many times. Now listen here ya'll, what you are actually saying, whether you’re aware of it or not, is because Oklahoma did so good and beat a team that Texas lost to by so much they don't deserve to go to the championship. If only Oklahoma wasn't as good and didn’t win by as much, then maybe they deserve to go.

Obviously this doesn't mean the BCS is a good system, it is ridiculously unfair. We desperately need a playoff to sort these annual messes out. Really, the Big 12 itself should have a better system. Why is it split into two divisions anyways? Why is a 9-3 team playing an 11-1 team for the Big-12 championship when there are two other 11-1 teams sitting idly by? However, in this very imperfect system, Oklahoma deserves to go. With the head to head nullified, Oklahoma's tougher schedule, better margin of victory and the fact they are certainly playing better right now should trump anything else. Texas is getting screwed, but they're getting screwed out of the third seed in a best of eight playoff that does not currently exist.

Monday, December 1, 2008

Some Change Barack

Not that I expected that much from him, but Barack Obama's cabinet selections have been a disappointment to say the least. Today he officially nominated Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State. A bit of a U turn from all those horribly mean things Clinton and Obama said about each other during their bitter primary campaign. I am not exactly what you would call a fan of Hillary Clinton. I've always found her, like her husband, to be the ambitious, cuthroat, lying politican type. Although she did dodge all those make believe bullets in Serbia back in the early 90's, so that's a plus.

My bigger problem is how blatantly status quo Obama's selections have been with Hillary Clinton simply being the biggest name on the list. He also picked many others who were long time Clinton people including John Podesta as Transition Chief and Rep. Rahm Emanuel as White House chief of staff among others. Some have described this as a "a team of rivals" in reference to Abraham Lincoln, who basically put everyone he beat in the election into cabinet posts. That's one way of looking at it, but I don't see it that way. I think these selections, all basically Clinton people (with the notable exception of Robert Gates, who will probably remain at Secretary of Defense, again big change) just creates the second presidency of Bill Clinton.

If that was what this whole election was about, fine, he should have said so. Hillary Clinton at least for once took a leave from her normal dishonesty and basically admitted that was her intention. But this coming from the guy who talked so much about "hope" and "change" and a "new politics" just seems awful disingenuous. I guess that's nothing new from a politician. Change all the way back to 1999!

That being said, it's not all bad. Bill Clinton certainly had many faults, like launching some 25 odd, mostly inept military interventions, but those were at least short, small wars with few casualties unlike the debacles George W Bush got us into in Iraq and Afghanistan. In the end, while I'm no fan of Bill Clinton, he's leaps and bounds ahead of Bush. Ironically, our economy actually got freer under Clinton and then less free under Bush, which will probably surprise the many mindless talking head drones who assume rhetoric equals action. According to the Fraser Institute's yearly report on economic freedom, the US was a 7.8 (out of 10) in 1990, two years before Clinton took office. When he left, the US stood at 8.6, and now, after 8 years of Bush it has fallen to an 8.0.

I guess all this elucidates the simple point that politicians are, with very few exceptions, dirty liars. The supposedly egalitarian democrats increased economic freedom, the supposedly free market republicans decreased economic freedom and Barack Obama isn't about change or a new sort of politics. He's simply trying to have the third and then fourth terms of Bill Clinton's presidency. But hey let’s look on the bright side, given our recent history, that's certainly not the worst thing that could happen.

Wednesday, November 26, 2008

Oil Company Altruism

Regardless of whether the statistics show it or not, our economy is in a recession. Major banks have failed, the government has unwisely bailed out large financial institutions to the tune of 700 billion dollars and may soon bail out the Big 3 automakers, housing prices have drastically fallen, foreclosures have skyrocketed and unemployment numbers are starting to creep up. We can all feel it, we all know it, we are in a recession.

So isn't nice of our leading energy companies to come along and offer us such charitable prices at the pump? Just a few months ago gas was hovering between $4.40 and $4.60 in Salem, Oregon where I live. Salem is a boring town unfortunately, so each weekend I wanted to leave for Portland or Eugene. But with those kind of gas prices, I weighed the pros and cons each time. Sitting alone in my apartment on a Saturday night isn't that bad compared to purging my wallet at the gas station.

Nationally, things were little better as the average price hit a record $3.24 a gallon in May of this year. But then Christmas came early. Apparently the oil executives felt guilty about their record setting profits and felt like they should give some of it back to us less fortunate. This massive outpouring of altruism has lead gas prices to plummet. In Salem it's $1.99 a gallon, the cheapest I've seen since I was in high school. Nationally gas prices have fallen to $1.89 a gallon. For those of us struggling to pay rent on time, the oil companies may be all that's keeping us afloat. And it doesn't end there. Oil, which was around $150 a barrel has plummeted well below $100. Apparently OPEC has gotten into the Holiday spirit too.

Now unless you are on a record setting pace for denseness, you realize I'm joking around. The oil companies are still as greedy as ever. It's simply they can't charge as much because of good old supply and demand. Honestly think about it, why did the oil executives all of a sudden start to raise prices around the turn of the century? Did they just up and become greedy? Of course not, they've been greedy the whole time, they were just restricted by the market. And now, our inflationary boom has collapsed (financial crisis, housing bubble) and the deflationary adjustment has come. This is bad, but can be good too. Sure investment and wages will go down, and unemployment will go up, but prices should go down as well (that is unless the government tries to keep prices from adjusting, like they did in the Great Depression, which will lead to yet another depression). Eventually (again under the delusional assumption that the government stays out) the economy will stabalize and everything will return to normal.

Now remember before the financial crisis and bailouts and change talk and all that. Remember back to this summer when all the talk was about the housing crisis and oil prices. The oil company's were gouging us! Hang the CEO's from the gallows! The hysteria was completely out of control. It should be no surprise that those leftists at the DailyKos jumped into the muck, but so did Bill O'Reilly and many faux right wingers. Congresswoman Maxine Waters even, to her eternal shame, threatened to nationalize the entire oil industry!

Well what now Maxine? What now Bill? What now left wing nuts at the DailyKos? Will you thank the oil companiess for their collective genoristy? Will you take a quick break from your current outrage over the supposed lack of regulation in our financial markets to apologize for all the bad things you said about them? You know what, save the the apologies and save the gratitude. Here's another idea, why don't you all just realize you don't know the first thing about economics and shut the hell up!

Monday, November 17, 2008

The Worst Sports Year Ever (At Least for Washington)

With the election finally over and done with, I feel I should delve into some less important topics such as that alternate universe of escapism we call sports. Although, those suffering from the agony of athletic ineptitude and deprivation that those living just to the north of me are, may disagree about this topic’s level of importance.

What I'm obviously referring to is the epicly bad year Washington residents are experiencing when it comes to sports. Despite all the whining you've heard from Philadelphia or Chicago or Cleveland over the past 20 or 30 years, nothing even comes close to comparing with the absolute horror experienced by Washington sports fans in 2008.

We'll start with baseball. I figure I should get the boring sports out of the way quickly so I can end on a bang. And the only thing more consistently boring than baseball is bad baseball. The Seattle Mariners make for a brilliant example of both the former and the ladder. They went an AL worst 61-101. Ichiro is still doing his thing, but everyone else is just stuck in fail mode. The Mariners have now missed the playoffs seven straight years.

Moving on to football, things get more entertaining but certainly get no better for either Washington’s professional or collegiate teams. The Seattle Seahawks, playing in Mike Holmgren's final season, have been riddled by injuries and are now just 2-8, which will almost assuredly end their run of 5 straight division titles. Even worse is the fact that those two wins are twice as many as both the University of Washington and Washington State combined!

Washington can at least say they've lost star quarterback Jake Locker to injury, but does that excuse being 0-10 and losing six straight by 20 points or more? How about Washington State, they did beat 1-AA Portland State, but have been simply atrocolicious (words don’t describe how bad they’ve played so I made one up that would) in league play. They rank last out of 114 College teams in scoring defense (giving up an other worldly bad 50.2 points per game) and are second to last in scoring offense (13.9 points per game). Yes they are being beat by an average of 36.3 points per game! In Pac-10 play they've given up 60 points four times, along with 58 and 59 and have been shut out three times! They are truly boys amongst men. Thank God for these two teams that they play each other next week in the annual Apple Cup - A game I almost want to make the six hour drive to just to see how awful a game of college football can actually be.

Basketball gets a bit better, than a whole lot worse. Their college teams were actually pretty decent last year, but have graduated some good players and are expected to be middle of the pack this year. The Pro Team, well they were bad, real bad, and then they were gone. In the 2007-08 season the Seattle Sonics went 20-62, the second worst record in the NBA. However, Sonic fans knew it would be a bad season; they traded away Ray Allen and Rashard Lewis for a bunch of picks and young players. Plus they had just drafted Rookie of the Year Kevin Durant who averaged over 2o points a game in his first season. The future looked bright.

Too bad that future now looks bright in Oklahoma City. In 2006, after failing to convince Seattle to help pay for a new stadium, Howard Shultz decided to sell the team to Clayton Bennett. Bennett subsequently held the city hostage by demanding they either build a new stadium or he'd move the team to Oklahoma City. First of all, cities shouldn't be helping private owners pay for new stadiums in the first place, but this case is particularly awful. Not only was there a Dog Day Afternoon like hostage situation, but it appears the plan from the beginning was to move the team, as the new Sonics co-owner Aubrey McClendon told an Oklahoma City newspaper "we didn't buy the team to keep it in Seattle." Unfortunately, unlike the movie, Clayton Bennett will probably not be shot in the face at the end.

So yeah, Washington and Seattle got screwed by Bennett and his cronies. And unfortunately, for perhaps the millionth example that karma doesn't exist, Bennent is doing just fine and all the rest of Washington's sports teams have utterly collapsed into an unwatchable mess of athletically inept garbage. But hey, cheer up Washington sports fans, there's always next year (well for all your teams but the Sonics that is).

Wednesday, November 12, 2008

So What Shouldn't be up for Vote?

In my last entry I discussed the limitations and problems with democracy, at least the unbridled version of it. However, I realized I wasn't very specific on what should be up for vote and what should not be. This is actually a very tricky question, unless of course you're an ideologue, i.e. everything should be up for vote or nothing.

Let's start with the obvious. The politicians that represent us should be elected by popular vote. Having problems with unbridled democracy is by no means supporting dictatorship. Even with a strong constitution and a rigidly defined version of federalism, the likes of Adolf Hitler, Josef Stalin, Mao Zedong and Benito Mussolini are going to find a way around them unless they are voted out (or preferably not voted in).

So what else? Well if I was an Ayn Rand obsessed objectivist I would say not much. Pure laizze faire capitalism should rule the day. However, while I lean libertarian, I do think there are places the government can intervene to help a little bit with out screwing up the economy or become totalitarian. I don't believe in massive wealth redistribution, a business-government compact, the military industrial complex or an over bloated affirmative action program for every minority there is, but some mild protections and maybe even a little welfare for the truly downtrodden is by no means out of the question.

Here's how I would break it down. The government's primary goal is to protect natural rights or negative liberty. By that I mean it should protect its citizens from threats to their well being either foreign (invasion, terrorism) or domestic (crime, persecution and the government itself). This epitomizes the classical liberal maxim espoused by the likes of John Locke and Adam Smith that your freedom to swing your fist ends where my nose begins. On the other hand, positive liberty, like the right to a home or healthcare, is really a misnomer because you can't give positive liberty to someone with out taking it from someone else.

Therefore, the federal government should deal almost solely with negative liberty. It should be there to provide a national defense and intrastate police force (like the US Marshalls) to chase down criminals that flee from one state to another and probably the major infrastructure such as the freeways. It should also override state decisions, but only in the negative. So for example, the Jim Crow laws should, and eventually were, be overturned by the federal government. I would probably be OK if the feds also overturned Proposition 8, which I discussed in the last entry. However, the federal government should not be handing out welfare to citizens in Alabama or telling how a small business in Deleware should be ran.

I would give the states more leeway though. Here I think citizens should be able to vote for more positive rights. Some welfare here and there, a couple regulations as well as on the tricky issues like abortion, for which it's debatable whether or not another person is involved. I would still leave things like outright socialism, discriminatory laws, denying gay rights and probably even denying the right to ingest whatever drugs you want off the table.

Why more power to the states? For several reasons. First, this creates a separation of powers where the federal government can prevent the states from denying people's rights while not having the power to do so itself. Secondly, the majority is more likely to actually represent people's opinions in a state because of the smaller and more homogenous populations involved. It always amazed how angry liberals got that major policies in California and Massachusetts are decided by people in Texas and Georgia, yet liberals still oppose state rights. Finally, even if a state enacts an atrocious law that the federal government fails to overturn it, it's much easier to move out of a state than out of the country. And if the United States goes wrong, a country founded on the thirst for freedom, where else do we have to go?

So there you have it. Under these guidelines the federal government could probably be funded by a small non-protective tariff and perhaps some corporate taxes. I'd probably let the state's citizen’s vote on how each state government should be funded even though this opens the possibility for those high taxes I dislike so much. I can always move to New Hampshire right? Anyways, I know it probably needs to be more refined, but it's a good start.

Tuesday, November 11, 2008

My Thoughts on Prop 8

In the euphoria liberals having been feeling over the past week after Obama won the election and Democrats picked up several more seats in the House and Senate, there has been one sour note for them. That is the passing of proposition 8 in California. Prop 8 basically bans same-sex marriage and it does so in the biggest and one of the most liberal states in the union.

Now I don't live in California and I am neither gay nor have any interest in getting married anytime soon. I do however agree with my liberal friends that Prop 8 is a ridiculous and unfair law. Of equal importance though, I feel I should weigh in on this issue because it elucidates a paradox within the standard liberal orthodoxy: namely that democracy is an infallible good.

Democracy is good you say, well I agree, but only to a limited extent. There are certain rights we shouldn't be able to vote away from each other. We should remember that Hitler came to power in a democracy (Weimar Republic), the Jim Crow laws were kept in place for 100 years with out being overturned by vote, George Bush was reelected in 2004 and Saddam Hussein got 100% of the popular vote (OK that one's not really fair). Detractors we'll surely say that democracy isn't perfect but it is still good, as Winston Churchill said "democracy is the absolute worst type of government, aside by every other one."

So I guess we just have to live with democracy's imperfections, right? Well not really, because the United States is not a democracy! Yes you read that right and I am not inferring it's a fascist dictatorship (my apologies to any Noam Chomsky fans out there). The United States is a Constitutional Republic. The Constitutional part obviously implies the Constitution, or namely a strict set of rules our government must be held to. Separation of powers is explicit in that to prevent a consolidation of the monopoly (government), which interprets said document. The Republic part insinuates federalism, or state rights. Now obviously this isn't perfect either as Jim Crow was justified with state rights. But we need not go to any extreme; the federal government can (under the 14th Ammendment) and should prevent the states from blatantly taking people's rights away.

So we need all four (democracy, federalism, a constitution and separation of powers) to have a just government. Unbridled democracy alone is simply mob rule, the power of the 51% to take away the rights of the 49%. It’s what Thomas Jefferson referred to as "two wolves and a lamb voting on what's for dinner" while liberty was "a well armed lamb protesting the vote." James Madison was more explicit:

The prescriptions in favor of liberty, ought to be levelled against that quarter where the greatest danger lies, namely, that which possesses the highest prerogative of power: But this [is] not found in either the executive or legislative departments of government, but in the body of the people, operating by the majority against the minority.

Neo-socialists like Howard Zinn claim Madison was trying to make sure the rich minority could exploit the poor masses, but that had nothing to do with it. Although slavery was allowed (against the wishes of most founding fathers), the idea was that no party, political orthodoxy, religion or anything else could come to dominate the country and that people who held opposing views would be free from the tyranny of the majority. This is why our 1st amendment isn't up for vote. We can't vote away free speech (although politicians through out our history have tried to do it in an underhanded way).

So in essence what Prop 8 did was allowed the majority of Californians to vote away the rights of the minority. This is what the Federal Constitution and every State Constitution is meant to prevent. What angers me here is not so much that Prop 8 passed, but that we would even be allowed to vote on such a thing. Hell, marriage wasn't even a state regulated institution until about 100 years ago when the government got into it (and makes us pay them to get married).

Well, there's the legal, constitutional argument, how about the moral argument. Well first off, it shouldn't matter. Why does someone else getting married, probably a stranger, matter to you at all? Is it to maintain the institutions traditions? Well, just 40 years ago interracial marriage was illegal in 16 states, so that can't be it. OK, so the Bible says "13If a man also lie with man, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination." Well be careful, the Bible also says "18-21 If a man have a stubborn and rebellious son, which will not obey the voice of his father... all the men of his city shall stone him with stones, that he die." Are you really going to feel good about enforcing that one? All Christians need to either accept that the Old Testament is a bit anachronistic and there's a lot of allegory in there or you are not even close to living a Christian life and should certainly not be casting the first stone! Keith Olbermann, who usually bugs me like he’s the left's version of Bill O'Reilly, actually puts it very well.

Oh wait, my bad, I found this great top 10 list that explains why gay marriage should be outlawed. I'll try not to write so much next time before changing my mind at the last second:

1) Being gay is not natural. Real Americans always reject unnatural things like eyeglasses, polyester, and air conditioning.

2) Gay marriage will encourage people to be gay, in the same way that hanging around tall people will make you tall.

3) Legalizing gay marriage will open the door to all kinds of crazy behavior. People may even wish to marry their pets because a dog has legal standing and can sign a marriage contract.

4) Straight marriage has been around a long time and hasn't changed at all; women are still property, blacks still can't marry whites, and divorce is still illegal.

5) Straight marriage will be less meaningful if gay marriage were allowed; the sanctity of Britany Spears' 55-hour just-for-fun marriage would be destroyed.

6) Straight marriages are valid because they produce children. Gay couples, infertile couples, and old people shouldn't be allowed to marry because our orphanages aren't full yet, and the world needs more children.

7) Obviously gay parents will raise gay children, since straight parents only raise straight children.

8) Gay marriage is not supported by religion. In a theocracy like ours, the values of one religion are imposed on the entire country. That's why we have only one religion in America.

9) Children can never succeed without a male and a female role model at home. That's why we as a society expressly forbid single parents to raise children.

10) Gay marriage will change the foundation of society; we could never adapt to new social norms. Just like we haven't adapted to cars, the service-sector economy, or longer life spans.

Again, my bad...

Congrats Obama

OK, so I guess I'm about a week late, but then again, no one really reads my blog anyways so I have a pretty flexible schedule. Regardless, congratulations President Elect Barack Obama. I didn't vote for you, I think many of your policies are wrong, but I think you're a good, honorable person and will be a major improvement over our current president (of course, my last bowel movement would have probably been an improvement).

Given that the election really came down to Obama and McCain, I'm glad Obama won. His vicotry is basically a rejection of the the Iraq War. And while I doubt Obama will start withdrawing our troops from all over the world, I do think he'll at least slowly bring that awful war to a close.

As I stated earlier, his economic policies do make me a bit nervous. Then again, McCain wasn't an improvement. I could barely stand the irony of McCain calling Obama the "redistributionist and chief" a week or so after he voted to pass the $700 billion dollar bailout (the biggest wealth redistribution in American history). Obama is not a socialist by any means, still a new New Deal is definitely not what we need right now. Hopefully he'll keep it within reason. Although with all the problems this country is facing and pressure he's facing, I kinda doubt it. Oh well. Good luck President Obama.

Monday, November 3, 2008

Getting My Vote On

Who to vote for, who to vote for? That was my dilemma last weekend as I went through and filled out my mail-in ballot. It was probably the most mind-numbingly boring experience of my entire life... so I'd like to share it with you. Don't worry, I'll skip the boring ballot measures and annexation requests and State Treasurer runoff and jump right to the real meat of the matter: Who should I vote for President.

I'll start with the Republicans. Wow, have they proven they don't deserve my vote over the past eight years. I'll say that no matter what happens, this election can't be all bad given that George Bush will be out of office in two months. And while I like John McCain as a person and definitely respect him for what he had to go through in Vietnam, I simply can't vote for him. I won't even consider it. The reason being is his steadfast support for the war in Iraq and his almost romantic disposition toward US militarism. Every prediction made by the war's supporters - that it would be a cake walk, that there wouldn't be an insurgency, that the insurgency was in its last throes, that oil would pay for the war, that there wouldn't be any sectarian violence - has been proven wrong. The surge seems to have helped stabilize the situation, but I think it has more to do with the Iraqi people segregating themselves along sectarian lines. Basically McCain was wrong about Iraq in the beginning and he is still unwilling to budge. To me, this is unacceptable.

Unfortunately it's not just Iraq with him. McCain is a super hawk, through and through. He even said in one of the Republican debates that "we lost in Vietnam because we didn't have the will to finish the job." Really John, really? Were 13 years not enough (1960-1973)? Were 55,000 dead Americans not enough? I'm just afraid that he is such a hawk that not only will we stay in Iraq for a 100 years but that Iran may be next. To fill out his resume he has admitted he's doesn't know much about the economy and Sarah Palin is inexperienced and looks kind of lost on the campaign trail. At least she's helped Saturday Night Live produce a much needed revival.

So let's turn to the Democrats, Barack Obama is tempting. All that talk of change, well it makes me think of this. He did oppose the Iraq War and comes of as uniting figure. However, if you read his anti-war speech closely, it's really not very anti-war, it's just anti-this-war. While obviously very few people would oppose all wars regardless of circumstance, Obama felt it necessary to reiterate that four times in a 921 word speech. And since when does one short speech make you passionately anti-war prior to the conflict. So Barack may just bring us back to the ineffective, scattered, naive interventions a la Bill Clinton. Oh and he hasn't pushed any legislation to end the war of even voted against funding it. Some change there buddy.

What worries me more about Obama is his economic ideas. As I mentioned in the previous post, the government is the root of our financial crisis, but the junior senator from Illinois simply blames Wall Street and only Wall Street. Overall he wants to raise taxes during a recession. Come on Barack, economics 101! Sometimes his economic policies are just plain ridiculous, such as when he was asked why he wants to raise the capital gains tax even though the last two times that was done it brought in less revenue. His answer: it's more fair. Really Barack, really? He also wants to increase spending, which will mean more borrowing, even with the tax increases he has proposed. Thereby increasing our ever growing and unsustainable national debt, which I will have to write a blog about sometime later.

So I'm saying no to the two major candidates. Aren't I throwing my vote away then? Well, I live in Oregon, which is easily in Obama's camp. So no matter who I vote for I'm throwing my vote away. I'm not against democracy by any means (although it needs to be restrained by a strong constitution, separation of powers and federalism). And I do know that if many people vote for a third party candidate en masse it could swing the election, such as with Ralph Nader in Florida in 2000. However I also know that it is simply a fact that no election has ever been decided by one vote and Oregon will go blue no matter how I fill out my ballot. So screw the major parties and call it a protest vote if you want, but I'm voting for who I want regardless of their odds.

So then who? Well I liked Ron Paul a lot during the primaries, so maybe I could write him in. He's not on the ballot, but did gain quite a following during the primaries. Paul's libertarian conservatism may be a bit simplistic, but he's one of the few politicians that Washington hasn't corrupted. I supported him until those ugly, racist newsletters saw the light of day. Paul says he didn't write them and I believe him, but it's hard to believe he had no idea what was going on. I mean the newsletter was called the Ron Paul Newsletter for crying out loud. So I guess I still respect him (and by the way his book, The Revolution: a Manifesto, is quite good), but I'm not going to write him in.

So, given my moderate libertarian beliefs I guess I'll just go with Bob Barr and the libertarian ticket. I have some beefs with the former congressman too - such as his support of the Defense of Marriage Act, a very unlibertarian piece of legislation if there ever was one - but overall he's a more restrained version of Ron Paul with out the racist charade circling him. Hey, he's as good as anyone to throw my vote away on.

Thursday, October 30, 2008

Should We Blame the Market?

Watch five minutes of coverage on the financial crisis and you'll come across one general theme: the markets are to blame. We need more regulation. Go ahead, turn on CNN. How about that, huh.

With the presidential election closing in fast, both candidates, but especially Barack Obama have been pushing for more federal oversight, regulation and assistance. John McCain is less enthusiastic about the regulation, but went ahead and joined Obama in supporting the 700 billion dollar bailout among other measures. And plenty of polls have been showing that people are losing trust in the free market and believe more regulation is required.

Well is this what we should do? Did capitalism fail? Did the markets let us down like they always seem to do? Do we need our benevolent government to step in and save the day? Well if you trust the government to fix this mess you might as well ask the guy who just stabbed you to perform the surgery.

First let me start with a disclaimer, a big one at that. I do not mean to absolve Wall Street of its responsibility. On the aggregate, they screwed up badly. Some, such as Wells Fargo and Bank of America, did the right thing. They played it conservatively when housing prices were skyrocketing and now they're the one's with enough money to buy up all those who got caught up in what Alan Greenspan called "irrational exuberance." However, most of the major firms and CEO's behaved irrationally, irresponsibly and sometimes criminally.

What started this train a rollin' were the flood of sub prime mortgages made by financial institutions to borrowers who had no business buying a home. Many of these loans were interest only or negatively amortized, which basically means that the owners were relying on continued appreciation or otherwise they would be upside down (owe more than the home was worth). Many banks accepted stated income, which boiled down means the borrower simply states how much they make and that's good enough. The stupidity here needs no further elaboration. In addition, many mortgage brokers would do anything and everything they could to get people into these loans because the risk didn't matter to them, they were just in it for the commission. Finally, these mortgages were packaged into mortgage-backed securities that were then sold to investors thereby infecting the entire financial system with garbage loans. Here's a nice little primer on how the whole process worked.

Anyways, when the real estate market finally and inevitably started to take back some of its ridiculous gains, the whole deck of cards collapsed. So again, Wall Street deserves plenty of blame, especially AIG, who after being bailed out is now spending $140,000 on a party for their "top sellers."

Given all of this, you may ask how is not the market's fault you ask? Well gee, where should I begin?

Let's start with the Federal Reserve and its ridiculous monetary policy during the real estate boom. After the dot com bubble burst, the Enron and World Com scandals and the 9-11 attacks the markets looked shaky. Alan Greenspan and the Fed thought that dramatically lowering interest rates could help avert a recession. They lowered the discount rate to 1% and kept it there for about two years! This is a stupidly low rate for a ridiculously stupid period of time. It probably prevented a longer recession after 9-11 (there was still a short one) but the prosperity was all an illusion.

What such a monetary policy did was push floods of liquidity into the market. With people scarred of a tumbling stock market they turned to real estate and the bubble began to form. Housing prices and starts accelerated at record paces and builders built far too many homes and apartments. Why did they do that? Simple, they supplied what demand told them to. Unfortunately the demand was artificial, pumped up by the low interest rates. In turn people started refinancing their newly found equity and used it for all sorts of things (like big screen TVs, new cars, etc.). This spending was what made the economy run. Unfortunately, that money was not only borrowed, it was borrowed against equity that shouldn't have existed in the first place! When the market finally adjusted people found themselves with what amounted to unsecured credit card debt. And predictably the foreclosures started coming en masse.

Unfortunately, this was not the only mistake the government made. Thomas Sowell made a pretty good list, but I'll highlight a couple of the other ones for you. First it was the goal of both the Clinton and Bush administration to increase home ownership. It sounds great, but like most political inventions, these great sounding goals come with unintended consequences. One of the major ways they attempted to influence this trend was with the Community Reinvestment Act. What this program did was push lenders to make loans in poor communities. Sounds altruistic and all, but these lenders need to justify risky loans with higher rewards. So whereas politicians used to be praising banks for making risky, higher interest loans, now they are condemning them. Say what, politicians can be hypocritical... who would have thought?

Then there's the whole Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac thing. These are both government created firms that have made it easier to make home loans. Again nice sounding, but it has lead to a steady and artificial growth in real estate prices for a long time. And a little digging will expose how again the politicians cheered Fannie Mae when it made it its goal in 2002 for every American to own a home. Same old goal, same old political cheering and same old unintended consequences. Now look where we are.

There are a litany of other government offenses, but I'll stop there. The main question is do we need more regulation now? There are probably some helpful regulations here and there, but going back to a strictly regulated economy is not the answer. Whenever that temptation befalls you, just remember the airlines used to be heavily regulated and now they are not. If they still were there would be no Southwest or Jet Blue to give you cheap flights to one of the few other countries that we still have a good exchange rate with. Same goes for many other industries. In addition, we would be regulating to prevent this crisis, not the next one. As the famous military slogan goes "we must be prepared to fight the first day of the next war, not the last day of the last war." Unfortunately, the best medicine for this whole mess is probably just time. Time for the market to liquidate the bad debt so we can get back to some sense of normalcy. Then hopefully our government can maintain some semblance of a reasonable fiscal and monetary policy. Damn, good thing you can't see me because I couldn't even write that with a straight face.

Tuesday, May 6, 2014

Wednesday, August 11, 2010

Is The United States Going Bankrupt?: http://www.swifteconomics.com/2010/08/11/is-the-united-states-going-bankrupt/

SwiftEconomics Twitter Feed Ranks 29th Best in Following Economy: http://www.swifteconomics.com/2010/08/01/swifteconomics-twitter-feed-ranks-29th-best-in-following-economy/

Things We Should Be Allowed To Do – Part 1: Sell Our Own Organs: http://www.swifteconomics.com/2010/07/29/things-we-should-be-allowed-to-do-part-1-sell-our-own-organs/

Wednesday, March 24, 2010

Sunday, March 14, 2010

Tuesday, September 29, 2009

Wednesday, September 16, 2009

Saturday, March 7, 2009