Global Revolution!

Patrick Brown · October 17, 2011

I believe all these protests are the beginning of the true 2012 effect! Yes of course the climate is changing etc but it's the enslavement, hypnotism, of the masses through the machinery of vanity and greed, buSINess, that's really screwing this world up. People have been zombiefied through the media to become consumers and nothing else.

Unfortunately for those that-would-enslave some of us are immune to hypnotism and have always been trying to awaken the masses. Even now most people are only really complaining because they can't afford that holiday or a new car but hopefully they will realise that tempering their desires can lead to a more harmonious life experience.

joeblast · October 17, 2011

I really don't need to be lectured by you as to the definition of propaganda. My remarks are in regards to the insidious use of propaganda produced by the right wing and it's media shills to create division and therefor create a mass movement of weak minded fools! Given the fact that I know a few things about propaganda, here is a You Tube link (starting at 1 min.) of Dr. Joseph Goebbels, Minister of Propaganda for the Third Reich and his use of so called "good propaganda." That was a bald faced lie that led to the destruction of Europe. Linked here is the death toll in Europe for WWII which includes U.S. military.

http://www.angelfire.com/ct/ww2europe/stats.html

The main problem I see with your narrative is that you want to be absolutely right and never wrong.

I know you dont, you make your usages often enough. As tho who's creating division, who wont let go of race, who has problems with the entire concept of profit...extrapolate, who has problems with most of the things that made this country a prosperous place? Yes, its the left that is trying to corrupt america - they've been at it for the last hundred years and running. Their measure of brainwash-success is evident in the failure of our school systems, the skyrocketing costs and watered down college degrees, the increase of entitlement programs, arbitrary legislation with tons of unintended consequences.

For every corporate ill there is a corresponding government enablement.

And you do of course know where the Nazis got their propaganda lessons from, yes? If not, think the top 3 presidents who have diverted this country from the path set out by the founders, and of course among the top 3 presidents who are "da best" as taught to schoolkids these days. Wilson's propaganda minister was very good at what he did, and the nazis took notice.

Keep settin 'em up, I'll keep knockin 'em down. Houses built on sand dont need half the wind or water to show the lack of foundation beneath.

Unfortunately there's not much discussion but an echo chamber of links that pretty much are willfully ignorant of any facilitating of bad outcomes from governmental tinkering. Just a bunch of finger pointing at those greedy bastards and talk of the fantastical contrivances they've done in the name of profit, but of course leave out the entire reason the contrivances happened in the first place - then some speak of possible solutions which entirely neglect root causes, and we know how well a "solution" works when it ignores root causes.

:lol: I want to be absolutely right and never wrong? I'm calling inadequate assessments just that, just like I call global warming models severely inadequate. I'm saying "X behavior from the government produces Y behavior in most businesses" and what I'm getting in reply is "Bah! propaganda! these businesses are evil!" :rolleyes: greeeeaaaat argument! Not once having addressed the argument in the first place, just dancing around the edges.

Like SB's last quote - the man mentions California's localities and their state also, the financial situation is terrible blah blah blah....but WHY? Why is it so much worse in california, new york, illinois?

Did the local businesses somehow sink California? Were the businesses too greedy and they destroyed the economic viability there or something?

Or did the legislators promise light years beyond what they would ever reasonably be able to deliver, tax businesses and people ridiculously for it, then pile heaps upon heaps of regulations for them to evaluate and comply with?

Was it the businesses or the government that was responsible for the realty prices going through the roof there? What are those prices an extension of?

See, when I mention things like that, it gets ignored, and something else about the post is complained about. What that tells me is that most of the people reading thing simply are not interested in root causes, they are interested in the politically correct cause, along the with politically correct quasi solution, which is "reform" or "a solution" much in the same way Dodd-Frank supposedly did away with "too big to fail"....by entrenching it.

Ostensibly you sit there and think that letting a business make money is "throwing the people to the wolves" while you vote for wolves to control your locality's spending and make its laws. Which is exactly what voting for people like Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, Dick Durbin, Charlie Rangel, Maxine Waters correlates to. (Not that there isnt republicans who dont do scandalous things, but most of them at least step down when they're found out. People like Charlie just throw up their hands and go "what?!?!?!" until they get left alone.) Or that fool Ellison, who I just saw a quote from him saying "no, regulations dont affect businesses at all, I dont know how they get that." *shakes head* It'd help if you ran a business to have some sort of baseline for understanding there Keith! Instead, just a glimpse of the fantasy land that resides in between his ears.

So ralis, can you back up the governments and the consequences of their actions with any semblance of a solid argument?

ralis · October 18, 2011

I know you dont, you make your usages often enough. As tho who's creating division, who wont let go of race, who has problems with the entire concept of profit...extrapolate, who has problems with most of the things that made this country a prosperous place? Yes, its the left that is trying to corrupt america - they've been at it for the last hundred years and running. Their measure of brainwash-success is evident in the failure of our school systems, the skyrocketing costs and watered down college degrees, the increase of entitlement programs, arbitrary legislation with tons of unintended consequences.

For every corporate ill there is a corresponding government enablement.

And you do of course know where the Nazis got their propaganda lessons from, yes? If not, think the top 3 presidents who have diverted this country from the path set out by the founders, and of course among the top 3 presidents who are "da best" as taught to schoolkids these days. Wilson's propaganda minister was very good at what he did, and the nazis took notice.

Keep settin 'em up, I'll keep knockin 'em down. Houses built on sand dont need half the wind or water to show the lack of foundation beneath.

Unfortunately there's not much discussion but an echo chamber of links that pretty much are willfully ignorant of any facilitating of bad outcomes from governmental tinkering. Just a bunch of finger pointing at those greedy bastards and talk of the fantastical contrivances they've done in the name of profit, but of course leave out the entire reason the contrivances happened in the first place - then some speak of possible solutions which entirely neglect root causes, and we know how well a "solution" works when it ignores root causes.

I want to be absolutely right and never wrong? I'm calling inadequate assessments just that, just like I call global warming models severely inadequate. I'm saying "X behavior from the government produces Y behavior in most businesses" and what I'm getting in reply is "Bah! propaganda! these businesses are evil!" greeeeaaaat argument! Not once having addressed the argument in the first place, just dancing around the edges.

Like SB's last quote - the man mentions California's localities and their state also, the financial situation is terrible blah blah blah....but WHY? Why is it so much worse in california, new york, illinois?

Did the local businesses somehow sink California? Were the businesses too greedy and they destroyed the economic viability there or something?

Or did the legislators promise light years beyond what they would ever reasonably be able to deliver, tax businesses and people ridiculously for it, then pile heaps upon heaps of regulations for them to evaluate and comply with?

Was it the businesses or the government that was responsible for the realty prices going through the roof there? What are those prices an extension of?

See, when I mention things like that, it gets ignored, and something else about the post is complained about. What that tells me is that most of the people reading thing simply are not interested in root causes, they are interested in the politically correct cause, along the with politically correct quasi solution, which is "reform" or "a solution" much in the same way Dodd-Frank supposedly did away with "too big to fail"....by entrenching it.

Ostensibly you sit there and think that letting a business make money is "throwing the people to the wolves" while you vote for wolves to control your locality's spending and make its laws. Which is exactly what voting for people like Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, Dick Durbin, Charlie Rangel, Maxine Waters correlates to. (Not that there isnt republicans who dont do scandalous things, but most of them at least step down when they're found out. People like Charlie just throw up their hands and go "what?!?!?!" until they get left alone.) Or that fool Ellison, who I just saw a quote from him saying "no, regulations dont affect businesses at all, I dont know how they get that." *shakes head* It'd help if you ran a business to have some sort of baseline for understanding there Keith! Instead, just a glimpse of the fantasy land that resides in between his ears.

So ralis, can you back up the governments and the consequences of their actions with any semblance of a solid argument?

I see you have been watching Glenn Beck and his rants on Nazi propaganda. I assume that is why you didn't provide a reference to Woodrow Wilson's CPI.

You are the most single minded person on this site at the moment. Given your rants against liberals and progressives, are you going to begin using hate speech here?

If the Tea Party ideology is as you maintain, the epitome of what needs to occur in this country, then why isn't the Tea Party having mass demonstrations against OCW? Further, why didn't the Tea Party garner mass worldwide support as OCW has?

I know you dont, you make your usages often enough. As tho who's creating division, who wont let go of race,

I think you need to clear up this remark about race! The implications are not welcome here.

Edited October 18, 2011 by ralis

Encephalon · October 18, 2011

Hey Ralis, Hey Joeblast -

It's been a little rough witnessing the exchange. It does NOT remind me of that famous relationship between John Galbraith and Bill Buckley, two accomplished scholars from very different schools of political thought who found tremendous happiness in their lifelong friendship. It was always a treat for thinking people everywhere to witness occasional and unexpected overlaps in their respective world views. There remain themes that can be plotted on multiple points on the political spectrum (I deliberately avoid recognizing the artificial bifurcation between liberals and conservatives precisely because it is artificial, and in the case of the American political spectrum, it is so embarrassingly narrow as to be almost insignificant).

Galbraith and Buckley were both intimately acquainted with political theory of all kinds but never saw fit to excoriate the grand political ideas as either completely without merit or entirely unimpeachable. Much like Taoism, it was about achieving balance in a world of constant flux. I've done my best over my 51 years to attain a level of education that allows me witness these exchanges from as clear a vista as U could attain, and that continues to include plenty of study of political theory, including conservatism. I am always on the lookout for expressions of conservative thought that capture my conservative sentiments, and I'm gearing up to read "The Conscience of a Conservative" by Barry Goldwater, after just finishing John Dean's book that he started with Goldwater entitled "Conservatives without Conscience." Actually, classic conservatism, never entirely defined or excavated, doesn't even exist anymore except in the minds of 80-year old history professors. :lol:

I think it's safe to say that political debate in TTB will continue, for the most part, to be waged between people who restrict their sources of ideas and information to precisely those sources that reinforce them in the first place. Sorry, Joe, I've never agreed with a single thing you've said about anything of any consequence, but I've always found your line of reasoning internally consistent, more than I can say for a handful of folks in here who seem to change their ideas every time they flush the toilet. Ralis, being closer to my age and armed with a more rigorous education than my own, I trust to have given at least a cursory reading on the intellectual history of American political thought. Without this work, the robust dialogues of the past may be over, at least in America. I actually think they ended in here a long time ago.

JustARandomPanda · October 18, 2011

An interesting little ditty for people to consider....

It's my opinion that it's not just Californians that behave this way. It's Americans (and the first half of the article discusses cities nationwide).

California and Bust....By Michael Lewis

The smart money says the U.S. economy will splinter, with some states thriving, some states not, and all eyes are on California as the nightmare scenario. After a hair-raising visit with former governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, who explains why the Golden State has cratered, Michael Lewis goes where the buck literally stops—the local level, where the likes of San Jose mayor Chuck Reed and Vallejo ﬁre chief Paige Meyer are trying to avert even worse catastrophes and rethink what it means to be a society.

Excerpt of the 7 page article is below....

On August 5, 2011, moments after the U.S. government watched a rating agency lower its credit rating for the first time in American history, the market for U.S. Treasury bonds soared. Four days later, the interest rates paid by the U.S. government on its new 10-year bonds were plummeting on their way to record lows. The price of gold rose right alongside the price of U.S. Treasury bonds, but the prices of virtually all stocks and other bonds in rich Western countries went into a free fall. The net effect of a major U.S. rating agency's saying that the U.S. government was less likely than before to repay its debts was to lower the cost of borrowing for the U.S. government and to raise it for everyone else. This told you a lot of what you needed to know about the ability of the U.S. government to live beyond its means: it had, for the moment, a blank check. The shakier the United States government appeared, up to some faraway point, the more cheaply it would be able to borrow. It wasn't exposed yet to the same vicious cycle that threatened the financial life of European countries: a moment of doubt leads to higher borrowing costs, which leads to greater doubt and even higher borrowing costs, and so on until you become Greece. The fear that the United States might actually not pay back the money it had borrowed was still unreal.

On December 14, 2010, the television news program 60 Minutes aired a 14-minute piece about U.S. state and local finances. Correspondent Steve Kroft interviewed a private Wall Street analyst named Meredith Whitney, who, back in 2007, had gone from being obscure to famous when she correctly suggested that Citigroup's losses in U.S. subprime bonds were far bigger than anyone imagined, and predicted the bank would be forced to cut its dividend. The 60 Minutes segment noted that U.S. state and local governments faced a collective annual deficit of roughly half a trillion dollars, adding that another trillion-dollar gap existed between what the governments owed retired workers and the money they had on hand to pay them. Whitney pointed out that even these numbers were unreliable, and probably optimistic, as the states did a poor job of providing information about their finances to the public. New Jersey governor Chris Christie concurred with her and added, "At this point, if it's worse, what's the difference?" The bill owed by American states to retired American workers was so large that it couldn't be paid, whatever the amount. At the end of the piece, Kroft asked Whitney what she thought about the ability and willingness of the American states to repay their debts. She didn't see a real risk that the states would default, because the states had the ability to push their problems down to counties and cities. But at these lower levels of government, where American life was lived, she thought there would be serious problems. "You could see 50 to a hundred sizable defaults, [maybe] more," she said. A minute later Kroft returned to her to ask when people should start worrying about a crisis in local finances. "It'll be something to worry about within the next 12 months," she said.

That prophecy turned out to be self-fulfilling: people started worrying about U.S. municipal finance the minute the words were out of her mouth. The next day the municipal-bond market tanked. It kept falling right through the next month. It fell so far, and her prediction received so much attention, that money managers who had put clients into municipal bonds felt compelled to hire more people to analyze states and cities, to prove her wrong. (One of them called it "the Meredith Whitney Municipal Bond Analyst Full Employment Act.") Inside the financial world a new literature was born, devoted to persuading readers that Meredith Whitney didn't know what she was talking about. She was vulnerable to the charge: up until the moment she appeared on 60 Minutes she had, so far as anyone knew, no experience at all of U.S. municipal finance. Many of the articles attacking her accused her of making a very specific forecast—as many as a hundred defaults within a year!—that failed to materialize. (Sample Bloomberg News headline: meredith whitney loses credibility as muni defaults fall 60%. ) The whirlwind thrown up by the brief market panic sucked in everyone who was anywhere near municipal finance. The nonpartisan, dispassionate, sober-minded Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, in Washington, D.C., even released a statement saying that there was a "mistaken impression that drastic and immediate measures are needed to avoid an imminent fiscal meltdown." This was treated in news accounts as a response to Meredith Whitney, as she was the only one in sight who could be accused of having made such a prediction.

But that's not at all what she had said: her words were being misrepresented so that her message might be more easily attacked. "She was referring to the complacency of the ratings agencies and investment advisers who say there is nothing to worry about," said a person at 60 Minutes who reviewed the transcripts of the interview for me, to make sure I had heard what I thought I had heard. "She says there is something to worry about, and it will be apparent to everyone in the next 12 months."

Whatever else she had done, Meredith Whitney had found the pressure point in American finance: the fear that American cities would not pay back the money they had borrowed. The market for municipal bonds, unlike the market for U.S. government bonds, spooked easily. American cities and states were susceptible to the same cycle of doom that had forced Greece to seek help from the International Monetary Fund. All it took to create doubt and raise borrowing costs for states and cities was for a woman with no standing in the municipal-bond market to utter a few sentences on television. That was the amazing thing: she had offered nothing to back up her statement. She'd written a massive, detailed report on state and local finances, but no one except a handful of her clients had any idea what was in it. "If I was a real nasty hedge-fund guy," one hedge-fund manager put it to me, "I'd sit back and say, 'This is a herd of cattle that can be stampeded.' "

What Meredith Whitney was trying to say was more interesting than what she was accused of saying. She didn't actually care all that much about the municipal-bond market, or how many cities were likely to go bankrupt. The municipal-bond market was a dreary backwater. As she put it, "Who cares about the stinking muni-bond market?" The only reason she had stumbled into that market was that she had come to view the U.S. national economy as a collection of regional economies. To understand the regional economies, she had to understand how state and local governments were likely to behave, and to understand this she needed to understand their finances. Thus she had spent two unlikely years researching state and local finance. "I didn't have a plan to do this," she said. "Not one of my clients asked for it. I only looked at this because I needed to understand it myself. How it started was with a question: How can G.D.P. [gross domestic product] estimates be so high when the states that outperformed the U.S. economy during the boom were now underperforming the U.S. economy—and they were 22 percent of that economy?" It was a good question.

From 2002 to 2008, the states had piled up debts right alongside their citizens': their level of indebtedness, as a group, had almost doubled, and state spending had grown by two-thirds. In that time they had also systematically underfunded their pension plans and other future liabilities by a total of nearly $1.5 trillion. In response, perhaps, the pension money that they had set aside was invested in ever riskier assets. In 1980 only 23 percent of state pension money had been invested in the stock market; by 2008 the number had risen to 60 percent. To top it off, these pension funds were pretty much all assuming they could earn 8 percent on the money they had to invest, at a time when the Federal Reserve was promising to keep interest rates at zero. Toss in underfunded health-care plans, a reduction in federal dollars available to the states, and the depression in tax revenues caused by a soft economy, and you were looking at multi-trillion-dollar holes that could be dealt with in only one of two ways: massive cutbacks in public services or a default—or both. Whitney thought default unlikely, at least at the state level, because the state could bleed the cities of money to pay off its bonds. The cities were where the pain would be felt most intensely. "The scary thing about state treasurers," she said, "is that they don't know the financial situation in their own municipalities."

"How do you know that?"

"Because I asked them!"

All states may have been created equal, but they were equal no longer. The states that had enjoyed the biggest boom were now facing the biggest busts. "How does the United States emerge from the credit crisis?" Whitney asked herself. "I was convinced—because the credit crisis had been so different from region to region—that it would emerge with new regional strengths and weaknesses. Companies are more likely to flourish in the stronger states; the individuals will go to where the jobs are. Ultimately, the people will follow the companies." The country, she thought, might organize itself increasingly into zones of financial security and zones of financial crisis. And the more clearly people understood which zones were which, the more friction there would be between the two. ("Indiana is going to be like, 'N.F.W. I'm bailing out New Jersey.' ") As more and more people grasped which places had serious financial problems and which did not, the problems would only increase. "Those who have money and can move do so," Whitney wrote in her report to her Wall Street clients, "those without money and who cannot move do not, and ultimately rely more on state and local assistance. It becomes effectively a 'tragedy of the commons.' "

The point of Meredith Whitney's investigation, in her mind, was not to predict defaults in the municipal-bond market. It was to compare the states with one another so that they might be ranked. She wanted to get a sense of who in America was likely to play the role of the Greeks, and who the Germans. Of who was strong, and who weak. In the process she had, in effect, unearthed America's scariest financial places.

"So what's the scariest state?" I asked her.

She had to think for only about two seconds.

"California."

California Iron Man

At seven o'clock one summer morning I pedaled a $5,000 titanium-frame mountain bike rented in anxiety the previous evening down the Santa Monica beach road to the corner where Arnold Schwarzenegger had asked me to meet him. He turned up right on time, driving a black Cadillac S.U.V. with a handful of crappy old jalopy bikes racked to the back. I wore the closest I could find to actual bicycle gear; he wore a green fleece, shorts, and soft beige slipper-like shoes that suggested both a surprising indifference to his own appearance and a security in his own manhood. His hair was still vaguely in a shape left by a pillow, and his eyelids drooped, though he swore he'd been up for an hour and a half reading newspapers. After reading the newspapers, this is what the former governor of California often does: rides his bike for cardio, then hits the weight room.

He hauls a bike off the back of the car, hops on, and takes off down an already busy Ocean Avenue. He wears no bike helmet, runs red lights, and rips past do not enter signs without seeming to notice them and up one-way streets the wrong way. When he wants to cross three lanes of fast traffic he doesn't so much as glance over his shoulder but just sticks out his hand and follows it, assuming that whatever is behind him will stop. His bike has at least 10 speeds, but he has just 2: zero and pedaling as fast as he can. Inside half a mile he's moving fast enough that wind-induced tears course down his cheeks.

He's got to be one of the world's most recognizable people, but he doesn't appear to worry that anyone will recognize him, and no one does. It may be that people who get out of bed at dawn to jog and Rollerblade and racewalk are too interested in what they are doing to break their trance. Or it may be that he's taking them by surprise. He has no entourage, not even a bodyguard. His former economic adviser, David Crane, and his media adviser, Adam Mendelsohn, who came along for the ride just because it sounded fun, are now somewhere far behind him. Anyone paying attention would think, That guy might look like Arnold, but it can't possibly be Arnold, because Arnold would never be out alone on a bike at seven in the morning, trying to commit suicide. It isn't until he is forced to stop at a red light that he makes meaningful contact with the public. A woman pushing a baby stroller and talking on a cell phone crosses the street right in front of him and does a double take. "Oh . . . my . . . God," she gasps into her phone. "It's Bill Clinton!" She's not 10 feet away, but she keeps talking to the phone, as if the man were unreal. "I'm here with Bill Clinton."

"It's one of those guys who has had a sex scandal," says Arnold, smiling.

"Wait . . . wait," says the woman to her phone. "Maybe it's not Bill Clinton."

Before she can make a positive identification, the light is green, and we're off.

His life has been a series of carefully staged experiences. He himself has no staged presentation of it, however. He is fresh, alive, and improvisational: I'm not sure even he knows what he will do next. He's not exactly humble, but then, if I had lived the life he's lived, I'm not sure I would be, either, though I might try to fake humility more often than he does, which is roughly never. What saves him from self-absorption, aside from a natural curiosity, is a genuine lack of interest in personal reflection. He lives the same way he rides his bike, paying far more attention to what's ahead than what's behind. In office, he kept no journal of any sort. I find it amazing, but he now says he didn't so much as scribble little notes that might later be used to reconstruct his experience and his feelings about it. "Why would I do that?" he says. "It's kind of like you come home and your wife asks you about your day. I've done it once and I don't want to do it again." What he wanted to do after a long day of being governor, more or less, was to lift weights.

We're just a couple of miles in when he zips around a corner and into a narrow alleyway just off Venice Beach. He's humoring me; I've been pestering him about what it was like for him when he first arrived in America, back in 1968, with little money, less English, really nothing but his lats, pecs, traps, and abs, for which there was no obvious market. He stops beside a tall brick wall. It surrounds what might once have been an impressive stone house that now just looks old and bleak and empty. The wall is what interests him, because he built it 43 years ago, right after he had arrived and started to train on Muscle Beach. "Franco [Columbu, like Schwarzenegger a former Mr. Olympia] and I made money this way. In bodybuilding there was no money. Here we were, world champions of this little subculture, and we did this to eat. Franco ran the business. I mixed the cement and knocked things down with the sledgehammer."

Before he stumbled while running downhill with a refrigerator strapped to his back, Columbu was the front-runner in the 1977 contest for the title of the World's Strongest Man, so there was some distinction in being hired by his operation, as Schwarzenegger was, to be the muscle. They had a routine. Franco would play the unreliable Italian, Arnold the sober German. Before they cut any deal they'd scream at each other in German in front of the customer until the customer would finally ask what was going on. Arnold would turn to the customer and explain, Oh, he's Italian, and you know how they are. He wants to charge you more, but I think we can do it cheaply. Schwarzenegger would then name a not so cheap price. "And the customer," he says now, laughing, "he would always say, 'Arnold, you're such a nice guy! So honest!' It was selling, you know."

He surveys his handiwork. "It'll be here for a thousand years," he says, then points out some erosion on the top. "I said to Franco we ought to come back and fix the top. You know, to show it was guaranteed for life."

A poor kid from a small village in Austria, the son of a former Nazi, hops on a plane to America, starts out laying bricks, and winds up running the state and becoming one of America's most prominent political leaders. From post to wire the race takes less than 35 years. I couldn't help but ask the obvious question.

"If someone had told you when you were building this wall that you would wind up governor of California, what would you have said?"

"That would be all right," he said, not exactly catching my drift.

"As a boy," I said, taking another tack, "did you believe you'd lead something other than an ordinary life?"

"Yes." He didn't miss a beat.

"Why?"

"I don't know."

"No one has had this kind of crazy, wild ride," he says as we speed away from the brick wall, but in a tone that suggests the ride was an accident. "I was influenced a lot by America," he said. "The giant six-lane highways, the Empire State Building, the risktaking." He still remembers vividly the America he heard and read about as a boy in Austria: everything about it was big. The only reason he set out to grow himself some big muscles was that he thought it might be a ticket to America.

If there had not been a popular movement to remove sitting governor Gray Davis and the chance to run for governor without having to endure a party primary, he never would have bothered. "The recall happens and people are asking me, 'What are you going to do?' " he says, dodging vagrants and joggers along the beach bike path. "I thought about it but decided I wasn't going to do it. I told Maria I wasn't running. I told everyone I wasn't running. I wasn't running." Then, in the middle of the recall madness, Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines opened. As the movie's leading machine, he was expected to appear on The Tonight Show to promote it. En route he experienced a familiar impulse—the impulse to do something out of the ordinary. "I just thought, This will freak everyone out," he says. "It'll be so funny. I'll announce that I am running. I told Leno I was running. And two months later I was governor." He looks over at me, pedaling as fast as I can to keep up with him, and laughs. "What the fuck is that? "

We're now off the beach and on the surface roads, and the traffic is already heavy. He veers left, across four lanes, arrives on the other side, and says, "All these people are asking me, 'What's your plan? Who's on your staff?' I didn't have a plan. I didn't have a staff. I wasn't running until I went on Jay Leno. "

His view of his seven years trying to run the state of California can be summarized as follows. He came to power accidentally, but not without ideas about what he wanted to do. At his core he thought government had become more problem than solution: an institution run less for the benefit of the people than for the benefit of politicians and other public employees. He behaved pretty much as Americans seem to imagine the ideal politician should behave: he made bold decisions without looking at polls; he didn't sell favors; he treated his opponents fairly; he was quick to acknowledge his mistakes and to learn from them; and so on. He was the rare elected official who believed, with some reason, that he had nothing to lose, and behaved accordingly. When presented with the chance to pursue an agenda that violated his own narrow political self-interest for the sake of the public interest, he tended to leap at it. "There were a lot of times when we said, 'You just can't do that,' " says his former chief of staff, Susan Kennedy, a lifelong Democrat, whose hiring was one of those things a Republican governor was not supposed to do. "He was always like, 'I don't care.' Ninety percent of the time it was a good thing."

Two years into his tenure, in mid-2005, he'd tried everything he could think of to persuade individual California state legislators to vote against the short-term desires of their constituents for the greater long-term good of all. "To me there were shocking moments," he says. Having sped past a do not enter sign, we are now flying through intersections without pausing. I can't help but notice that, if we weren't breaking the law by going the wrong way down a one-way street, we'd be breaking the law by running stop signs. "When you want to do pension reform for the prison guards," he says, "and all of a sudden the Republicans are all lined up against you. It was really incredible, and it happened over and over: people would say to me, 'Yes, this is the best idea! I would love to vote for it! But if I vote for it some interest group is going to be angry with me, so I won't do it.' I couldn't believe people could actually say that. You have soldiers dying in Iraq and Afghanistan, and they didn't want to risk their political lives by doing the right thing."

He came into office with boundless faith in the American people—after all, they had elected him—and figured he could always appeal directly to them. That was his trump card, and he played it. In November 2005 he called a special election that sought votes on four reforms: limiting state spending, putting an end to the gerrymandering of legislative districts, limiting public-employee-union spending on elections, and lengthening the time it took for public-school teachers to get tenure. All four propositions addressed, directly or indirectly, the state's large and growing financial mess. All four were defeated; the votes weren't even close. From then until the end of his time in office he was effectively gelded: the legislators now knew that the people who had elected them to behave exactly the way they were already behaving were not going to undermine them when appealed to directly. The people of California might be irresponsible, but at least they were consistent.

Home of the Free . . . Lunch

A compelling book called California Crackup describes this problem more generally. It was written by a pair of journalists and nonpartisan think-tank scholars, Joe Mathews and Mark Paul, and they explain, among other things, why Arnold Schwarzenegger's experience as governor was going to be unlike any other experience in his career: he was never going to win. California had organized itself, not accidentally, into highly partisan legislative districts. It elected highly partisan people to office and then required these people to reach a two-thirds majority to enact any new tax or meddle with big spending decisions. On the off chance that they found some common ground, it could be pulled out from under them by voters through the initiative process. Throw in term limits—no elected official now serves in California government long enough to fully understand it—and you have a recipe for generating maximum contempt for elected officials. Politicians are elected to get things done and are prevented by the system from doing it, leading the people to grow even more disgusted with them. "The vicious cycle of contempt," as Mark Paul calls it. California state government was designed mainly to maximize the likelihood that voters will continue to despise the people they elect.

But when you look below the surface, he adds, the system is actually very good at giving Californians what they want. "What all the polls show," says Paul, "is that people want services and not to pay for them. And that's exactly what they have now got." As much as they claimed to despise their government, the citizens of California shared its defining trait: a need for debt. The average Californian, in 2011, had debts of $78,000 against an income of $43,000. The behavior was unsustainable, but, in its way, for the people, it works brilliantly. For their leaders, even in the short term, it works less well. They ride into office on great false hopes and quickly discover they can do nothing to justify those hopes.

In Paul's view, Arnold Schwarzenegger had been the best test to date of the notion that the problem with California politics was personal, that all the system needed to fix itself was an independent-minded leader willing to rise above petty politics and exert the will of the people. "The recall was, in and of itself, an effort by the people to say that a new governor—a different continued from page 183 person—could solve the problem," says Paul. "He tried every different way of dealing with the crisis in services. He tried to act like a Republican. He tried to act like a Democrat. He tried making nice with the legislature. When that didn't work he called them girlie men. When that didn't work he went directly to the people. And the people voted against his proposals."

The experiment wasn't a complete failure. As governor, Schwarzenegger was able to accomplish a few important things—reforming worker compensation, enabling open primaries, and, at the very end, ensuring that legislative districts would be drawn by an impartial committee rather than by the legislature. But on most issues, and on virtually everything having to do with how the state raised and spent money, he lost. In his first term Schwarzenegger had set out to cut spending and found he could cut only the things that the state actually needed. Near the end of his second term, he managed to pass a slight tax increase, after he talked four Republicans into creating the super-majority necessary for doing so. Every one of them lost his seat in the next election. He'd taken office in 2003 with approval ratings pushing 70 percent and what appeared to be a mandate to fix California's money problems; he left in 2011 with approval ratings below 25 percent, having fixed very little. "I was operating under the commonsense kind of thing," he says now. "It was the voters who recalled Gray Davis. It was the voters who elected me. So it will be the voters who hand me the tools to do the job. But the other side was successful enough for the voters to take the tools away."

David Crane, the former economic adviser—at that moment rapidly receding into the distance—could itemize the result: a long list of depressing government financial statistics. The pensions of state employees ate up twice as much of the budget when Schwarzenegger left office as they had when he arrived, for instance. The officially recognized gap between what the state would owe its workers and what it had on hand to pay them was roughly $105 billion, but that, thanks to accounting gimmicks, was probably only about half the real number. "This year the state will directly spend $32 billion on employee pay and benefits, up 65 percent over the past 10 years," says Crane later. "Compare that to state spending on higher education [down 5 percent], health and human services [up just 5 percent], and parks and recreation [flat], all crowded out in large part by fast-rising employment costs." Crane is a lifelong Democrat with no particular hostility to government. But the more he looked into the details, the more shocking he found them to be. In 2010, for instance, the state spent $6 billion on fewer than 30,000 guards and other prison-system employees. A prison guard who started his career at the age of 45 could retire after five years with a pension that very nearly equaled his former salary. The head parole psychiatrist for the California prison system was the state's highest-paid public employee; in 2010 he'd made $838,706. The same fiscal year that the state spent $6 billion on prisons, it had invested just $4.7 billion in its higher education—that is, 33 campuses with 670,000 students. Over the past 30 years the state's share of the budget for the University of California has fallen from 30 percent to 11 percent, and it is about to fall a lot more. In 1980 a Cal student paid $776 a year in tuition; in 2011 he pays $13,218. Everywhere you turn, the long-term future of the state is being sacrificed.

End of excerpt on P. 3

You can read the full article here

joeblast · October 18, 2011

If the Tea Party ideology is as you maintain, the epitome of what needs to occur in this country, then why isn't the Tea Party having mass demonstrations against OCW? Further, why didn't the Tea Party garner mass worldwide support as OCW has?

I think you need to clear up this remark about race! The implications are not welcome here.

:lol: my "rants" against socialism and the progressive roots that are trying to grow that tree on this land are the closest you'll see me come to hate speech. because I find that tree to be despicable, and I piss on that sapling growing on American soil.

why is the tea party not protesting ocw? out of scope. I never said businesses didnt make transgressions, I simply tried to get people to examine root causes instead of ascribing their own as many seem to have done. upon reading about 2008 when it begins with the mention of easy credit and banks lending with aplomb, it is plainly clear we're starting the story a few chapters in, but the context is mostly that we're starting from the beginning - much like watching star wars episode 4, "the first one."

and speaking of context, you've yet again taken a quote of mine out of context. please try to keep up, context rolls at times race as in who's the race baiters, every question begins and ends with race - the Jesse Jacksons, the Cornell Wests, Keith Ellisons, Al Sharptons, - the Barack Obamas, the Eric Holders and their selective implementations of "justice" - MLK would be rolling in his grave at the way race is used by these people!!! Judged by content of character, indeed! :rolleyes:

SB, where exactly did "easy credit" come from again? Couldnt be lending standards, could it? Who has legislative influence? (and of course, who buys legislative influence...and that finger points in both directions.)

Yes, americans went rather overboard and spendthrift! Did not half or more of Europe? Not in the same manners, but overboard also. Please dont think that since I'm not beating that drum often its not on my set, I'm just not doing drum fills at the moment - especially with an entire percussion section present

ralis · October 18, 2011

my "rants" against socialism and the progressive roots that are trying to grow that tree on this land are the closest you'll see me come to hate speech. because I find that tree to be despicable, and I piss on that sapling growing on American soil.

This country is not just about you and your minority group of Tea Party advocates that are single minded ideologues. What you characterize as socialist has always been part of this country.

What do you intend to do about what you erroneously believe is unconstitutional? Return to the McCarthy era where all that you accuse of being socialist have their lives destroyed? Make the liberal progressive movement illegal? Make all the "commons" such as roads, military, bridges, public utilities, police, fire departments etc. private?

why is the tea party not protesting ocw? out of scope. I never said businesses didnt make transgressions, I simply tried to get people to examine root causes instead of ascribing their own as many seem to have done.

Serene Blue has well presented the causes for all to read here. However, you are in disagreement with her analysis.

and speaking of context, you've yet again taken a quote of mine out of context. please try to keep up, context rolls at times race as in who's the race baiters, every question begins and ends with race - the Jesse Jacksons, the Cornell Wests, Keith Ellisons, Al Sharptons, - the Barack Obamas, the Eric Holders and their selective implementations of "justice" - MLK would be rolling in his grave at the way race is used by these people!!! Judged by content of character, indeed!

Race baiting? That is just more Rush Limbaugh, Fox News and Glenn Beck using Machiavellian techniques to create division through political demagoguery and propaganda. A very old technique that has been used to the same ends for thousands of years.

What is unclear to me, is why you are on this Taoist site? Your ideology is clearly divisive and fails to incorporate different points of view and the real needs of people that are less fortunate than you. In this thread you have characterized people as being lazy and even criticized poor people as buyers of various electronic items before paying their bills and that being a problem that creates social ills. I can find the exact quote if needed. However, you know what I am referring to. I guess the poor make you uncomfortable.

Edited October 18, 2011 by ralis

Encephalon · October 18, 2011

This country is not just about you and your minority group of Tea Party advocates that are single minded ideologues. What you characterize as socialist has always been part of this country.

What do you intend to do about what you erroneously believe is unconstitutional? Return to the McCarthy era where all that you accuse of being socialist have their lives destroyed? Make the liberal progressive movement illegal? Make all the "commons" such as roads, military, bridges, public utilities, police, fire departments etc. private?

Serene Blue has well presented the causes for all to read here. However, you are in disagreement with her analysis.

Race baiting? That is just more Rush Limbaugh, Fox News and Glenn Beck using Machiavellian techniques to create division through political demagoguery and propaganda. A very old technique that has been used to the same ends for thousands of years.

What is unclear to me, is why you are on this Taoist site? Your ideology is clearly divisive and fails to incorporate different points of view and the real needs of people that are less fortunate than you. In this thread you have characterized people as being lazy and even criticized poor people as buyers of various electronic items before paying their bills and that being a problem that creates social ills. I can find the exact quote if needed. However, you know what I am referring to. I guess the poor make you uncomfortable.

I have to agree. I didn't want to fan the flames but the expression "pissing on the sapling of progressivism" is about as obscene as it gets without being pornographic. What you perjoratively call progressivism, and virtually every idea to the left of Rush Limbaugh, is considered by and large throughout the world to be nothing more than mechanisms for insuring that people have access to enough resources that grant them a dignified life without having to grovel at the feet of privilege. You once again demonstrate the most ignorant strains of political ideas, which amount to nothing more than the abolishment of social contracts and the embrace of social darwinism. This has been the crazy uncle locked up in the conservative's basement, and you seem to be renting a room down there as well.

Ralis does remind me of a question I've often asked myself; what in God's name is it about Taoism that appeals to you, Joe, or are you one of the great numbers who only use the teachings to become a better fighting machine? Taoism, at the very least, is about remaining balanced in a world of constant change. The ideas you regularly regurgitate in here are as static as they come; maintaining the privileges of the ruling class while shrouding them in the rhetoric of the free market. Bullshit.

joeblast · October 18, 2011

Too bad there's no market to bet on responses :lol:

:rolleyes: please tell me why there is no such thing as spiritual welfare - why is it that you yourself, only your spark of awareness alone is able to "make progress"?

I think we really should have a program where we can all get together as spiritual practitioners and drain our resources so that those who are unwilling to do the work dont have to.

wait a sec, that's not going to work...

that's part of what I like about spirituality. it is unequivocal in that you must do your own farkin work. people can assist but the impetus is on YOU.

why does my rational side trump and prevent the bleeding out of my heart? damned pragmatism, that's why! individually we will all have better experience under a free society instead of one thoroughly pervaded by rules and regulations that discourages excellence, rewards homogenity at the same time "celebrating" diversity and promising other people's money so that you dont have to go out and make your own. I never understood how people can simply think "we'll just tax the rich more" and that will fix all of these fiscal problems set upon us by the government.

:rolleyes: yes, I must not be spiritual at all since I have the compassion to want to let people succeed as well as let them fail. I must be entirely discompassionate to let people be responsible for their own mitigation of risk and reward! (but please forget my ever mentioning that we should be caring for the sick & infirm, but dammit if you are able then get your ass out and work!)

Rush is racist for suggesting that viewing everything through a prism of race is somehow racist? or that the downstream results of coddling-welfare-poverty programs merely entrench the welfare-poverty, and that subscribing to more of it necessitates ignoring empirical reality, thus a bit of brainwash? :lol: good one. keep projecting that racism and judging people on the content of their race instead of their character. speaking of which, why do conservatives love herman cain if they're so damned racist? oh right, because they're not racist *facepalm* You can only attempt to make these points by selectively editing context - how can you look yourself in the mirror and call yourself honest?

The only thing you can do to counteract the ideology is to respond with ad hominem attacks, charges of racism, and a complete ignoring of the substantive points of discussion.

What appeals to me about Taoism? Practicality. An answer to the "more out there." What, am I supposed to toss my core beliefs and get on the politically correct bandwagon because there is a spiritual side to me? :lol: I think not. I had spiritual experiences long before I ever heard of Taoism so this is quite a natural extension.

I still havent received any substantive rebuttal, only dismissals. Nice try guys. ("SB posted a link that claimed to be comprehensive" doesnt count.) Or do you want me to leave so that the RT60 of sycophant echoes may ring on without interruption?

gendao · October 18, 2011

She wanted to get a sense of who in America was likely to play the role of the Greeks, and who the Germans. Of who was strong, and who weak. In the process she had, in effect, unearthed America's scariest financial places.

"So what's the scariest state?" I asked her.

She had to think for only about two seconds.

"California."

"It'll be so funny. I'll announce that I am running. I told Leno I was running. And two months later I was governor."

"All these people are asking me, 'What's your plan? Who's on your staff?' I didn't have a plan. I didn't have a staff. I wasn't running until I went on Jay Leno."

he called a special election that sought votes on four reforms: limiting state spending, putting an end to the gerrymandering of legislative districts, limiting public-employee-union spending on elections, and lengthening the time it took for public-school teachers to get tenure. All four propositions addressed, directly or indirectly, the state's large and growing financial mess. All four were defeated; the votes weren't even close.

Home of the Free . . . Lunch

giving Californians what they want. "What all the polls show," says Paul, "is that people want services and not to pay for them. And that's exactly what they have now got." As much as they claimed to despise their government, the citizens of California shared its defining trait: a need for debt. The average Californian, in 2011, had debts of $78,000 against an income of $43,000. The behavior was unsustainable

Crane is a lifelong Democrat with no particular hostility to government. But the more he looked into the details, the more shocking he found them to be. In 2010, for instance, the state spent $6 billion on fewer than 30,000 guards and other prison-system employees. A prison guard who started his career at the age of 45 could retire after five years with a pension that very nearly equaled his former salary. The head parole psychiatrist for the California prison system was the state's highest-paid public employee; in 2010 he'd made $838,706. The same fiscal year that the state spent $6 billion on prisons, it had invested just $4.7 billion in its higher education—that is, 33 campuses with 670,000 students. Over the past 30 years the state's share of the budget for the University of California has fallen from 30 percent to 11 percent, and it is about to fall a lot more. In 1980 a Cal student paid $776 a year in tuition; in 2011 he pays $13,218. Everywhere you turn, the long-term future of the state is being sacrificed.

Well, finally we are getting down to the real problems here!

Libertarians want freedom. Liberals want a free lunch. That's the problem in a nutshell. And California (and other blue states like Illinois) are perfect examples of this spoiled brat mentality.

First, these "99%" geniuses vote for an actor (with no platform) after he makes a joke on Leno. Then they veto any spending cuts he wants to make. The entire housing bust was the worst in California. The average Californian has nearly twice the debt as his income?? The state spends vastly more tax dollars keeping criminals comfy than hard-working students at its unis?? And they're so broke now that Pelosi rammed Pelosicare through Congress just to force the rest of the country to play Germany to their Greece!

Is there even any depth or ethical conscience to their political thought process??

Again, this is why Libertarians are against Big Gov - because fair, free-market competition is the BEST REGULATION there is!!! Any actual company would have simply gone belly-up long before their ledger sheet got anywhere near as bad as California's! Or forced to increase profits and cut spending to remain solvent and survive..

So, when is the endless summer free ride for California going to end? Will they ever finally sober up, live within their means and pay their own debt off? Or are they going to just keep freebasing off our future like zombifried crackheads while scapegoating only those 1% at the tops of their own pyramid schemes? Who (see Gen X, Y & Z) will then all be stuck with their mind-bending tab after their hellacious 50-year liberal bender? Do Baby Boomers even care about saddling their own kids with a black hole debt, rather than any type of inheritance???

Greed isn't just on Wall Street. It's also in every 99%r who demanded something for nothing out of thin air for decades.. I believe this is one of the points that Twinner was trying to make to temper-tantrum liberals who just covered their ears and screamed, "I can't hear you!!" :lol:

Edited October 18, 2011 by vortex

Informer · October 18, 2011

Just FYI you guys, I know what must be done to create the foundation of a utopic society, and it is within our grasps.

All we have to do is work together to get eachother "off the grid" so that everyone can have utilization of clean energy freely. Free energy doesn't mean over-unity, it means without payments.

JustARandomPanda · October 18, 2011

Another resource to consider

Charles Darwin the Economist
Natural selection explains more about economics than Adam Smith's invisible hand.

by Robert H. Frank

With good reason, most contemporary economists regard Adam Smith as the founder of their discipline. But I would instead accord that honor to Charles Darwin, the pioneering naturalist.

Although Darwin had no formal training in economics, he studied the works of early economists carefully, and the plants and animals that were his focus were embroiled in competitive struggles much like the ones we see in the marketplace. His observations forged an understanding of competition that is subtly but profoundly different from Smith's. The celebrated invisible hand theory that Smith developed holds that unfettered markets will ultimately channel self-interest to serve the common good. But this idea is really just an interesting special case of Darwin's more general theory.

Smith did not claim that markets always channel greed in socially productive ways. For him, the remarkable thing was that they often appeared to. Although his account of how that happens lacks the generality that many of his most enthusiastic modern disciples ascribe to it, it will endure as one of mankind's most impressive intellectual achievements.

Consider his description of product design improvements or cost-reducing innovations. The entrepreneurs who introduce them hope to steal sales from rivals. They often succeed spectacularly in the short term, which pressures rivals to mimic the innovations. The ultimate beneficiaries of this competition, Smith explained, are not businesses but consumers, who enjoy ever better products at ever lower prices.

In Darwin's theory, natural selection favors traits and behaviors that promote individual reproductive success. Many of the examples he observed were closely analogous to Smith's account of product design improvements. But Darwin also recognized that individual and group interests often conflict sharply and that, in those cases, individual interests generally trump group interests.

The evolution of keen eyesight among hawks is an example of the former type. A mutation that led to slightly improved vision benefited the individual in which it first occurred. By enabling that individual to catch more prey and feed more offspring, it spread quickly. Similar mutations accreted, with the result that virtually all modern hawks have astonishingly acute vision by human standards. Like Smith's product design improvements, these mutations no longer confer relative advantage to individual hawks, but their ultimate effect was to make hawks more effective as a species.

In many other cases, however, mutations that promote individual reproductive success prove costly to the larger group. A vivid case in point is the prodigious antlers of the bull elk. Like males of most other vertebrate species, these animals take more than one mate if they can. But if some succeed, others are left with none, making them the ultimate losers in Darwinian terms. It was thus inevitable that bulls would fight bitterly for access to females, and also inevitable that natural selection would spawn an arms race in the antlers that promoted success in those battles. But while the massive antlers of surviving bulls, which often span more than 4 feet and weigh more than 40 pounds, help them prevail in battles for mates, they are a serious handicap when bulls are chased into densely wooded areas by predators.

Because it is relative antler size that matters in battle, bulls would have good reasons to favor a proposal to trim each animal's antlers by half. The outcome of every fight would be the same as before, and each bull would be far better able to escape from wolves. Yet bulls are stuck with their handicap because any individual bull with smaller antlers would never win a mate.

In short, Darwin's understanding of competition makes clear that there can be no presumption that the process promotes the common good. Often it does. But success in Darwinian terms typically depends heavily on relative performance, and attempts to occupy scarce slots atop any hierarchy inevitably provoke wasteful, mutually offsetting arms races.

It's an important point, since the modern conservative's case for minimal government rests on the presumption that competition always promotes society's welfare. But our best understanding of how competition actually functions, as Darwin's work makes clear, supports no such presumption.

Robert H. Frank is an economics professor at Cornell University's Johnson School of Management and the author, most recently, of "The Darwin Economy."

I noticed my library has this book on order so I submitted a request to reserve it. Fortunately I'm first in line.

A few thoughts that popped into my head.

1. Adam Smith would not be a Libertarian by today's definition of Libertarians. It's often forgotten he wrote a book prior to The Wealth of Nations. That being The Theory of Moral Sentiments.

2. I am interested in reading Frank's book mainly because of some success in using models/theories that first were used in explaining population growth/decline being brought into economics. I think its overshadowed somewhat by behavioral Economics right now but is growing a bit too.

Informer · October 18, 2011

So what have you concluded from all of this Serene?

Encephalon · October 18, 2011

Just FYI you guys, I know what must be done to create the foundation of a utopic society, and it is within our grasps.

All we have to do is work together to get eachother "off the grid" so that everyone can have utilization of clean energy freely. Free energy doesn't mean over-unity, it means without payments.

I share your goals in that direction but I'm wondering if you've had a chance to adequately consider the enormity of resource allocations necessary to do that. Your proposal has been mulled over for decades by scientists of all stripes. A great place to start would be the book I list below or his colleague Richard Heinberg at

http://www.postcarbon.org/person/36200-richard-heinberg

JustARandomPanda · October 18, 2011

Well, finally we are getting down to the real problems here!

Libertarians want freedom. Liberals want a free lunch. That's the problem in a nutshell. And California (and other blue states like Illinois) are perfect examples of this spoiled brat mentality.

Yes, this is where I agree with Libertarians in this instance. Mind you this problem plays out in other cities across the nation too. It's not just California or "Liberal" territory that does this. The Republican/TheoCon/NeoCon heartland loves this just as much as Democratic leaning coasts. I live in a Red State. Don't think it's gone blue since FDR.

To give a personal example my mother is a hardcore "Fox News" Republican on Social Security and the state's Teachers pension fund. (BTW - she hates Ron Paul and has said so multiple times so I'm guessing Fox News must have done yet more of it's "let's-hate-on-Ron-Paul" Talking Head Op Eds).

She loves the Military Industrial complex and supports it fully. Up until the point that paying for it threatens her income. If it means paying for it via more taxes (which is the fiscally conservative thing to do) she doesn't want any part of it and would promptly vote against it.

No doubt she feels someone else with more income should pay. Especially those who are not on a fixed income like she is. Since practically everyone else in the nation feels exactly the same way (I'm stretched thin - someone else with more money to play with should pay. (And who is that someone with more money? The Chinese! :lol: ) the result has been exactly as its played out - a military that - if we truly had to fund it each year with only our own nation's cashflow - is unsustainable.

Again, this is why Libertarians are against Big Gov - because fair, free-market competition is the BEST REGULATION there is!!!

Well that's what we hope will happen (and in many cases it can and does) but alas in the real world zombie companies can and do find creative ways to skirt the effects of the free market all the time. The term "cook the books" didn't come out of nowhere. The Enrons of the world don't come out of nowhere. the Shareholder movement demanding more accountability from corporations didn't arise out of nowhere. Accountants know creative ways to help companies and individuals keep the money churning and liabilities off-the-books.

***********

Of course legislative influence points in many directions. This is why I posted the excerpt of the article right above Joeblast's. It's an everyday example of a faction (in this case, police and firemen, especially retired police and firemen) gaming the system to the benefit of themselves at the detriment of everyone else (in this case all the other citizens of Vallejo). Vallejo is basically a city that's now a 3rd world nation as far as the bond market is concerned.

But I rather doubt the average Vallejo citizen is aware of the timeline and particulars that went into the bankrupting of his/her city. All they see is that the city somehow so mismanaged the taxes it did collect that it went into bankruptcy. And quite rationally think why increase my taxes when they have not shown they can responsibly manage even the bit I give them? And in this case they are right despite the fact most are ignorant of exactly where and how their city's finances are being spent. With the way things are locked in if they give anymore I am suspicious the police and fire departments would once again insist on yet another pay increase. Vallejo is in a bad spot.

It's a real world example of what Mancur Olson's book talks about.

Notice how contract law and arbitration was used to create this system? You didn't have to call out the national guard (that Libertarian bugaboo of "men with guns"), didn't have to get the County involved (which is the arm of the state reaching into local communites), etc. It's using the very thing small gov conservatives so often point to in order to resolve disputes. Contracts. Contract Law and Binding Arbitration (i.e. Rule by privately-paid-for Judges).

Now to this the majority of small gov Conservatives announce this just means we should make unions illegal or at least neuter them when it comes to their collective bargaining power. I might actually agree to this. If they would also agree to neutering corporations' ability to do the same. Including the repealing of corporate personhood. When they hear that they shout I am part of the problem. :huh:

I believe that to take care of one side of the equation while ignoring the other will introduce a whole new host of distortions in public life. But most Conservatives hearing what I believe start pulling the "shout-em down" card. I read the sneers online about how I'm "anti-capitalist", a "liberal" (they've been real effective in turning that one into a label of outright contempt). Or shout that I'm a "socialist" or a "communist" or even occasionally, "anarchist" (typically said by those who have not a freakin clue what Anarchism really is all about). In other words - engaging in a lot of ad hominems of contempt and little substance. They paint me as an enemy of America when I'm really not.

I just have a whole lot less faith than Anti-Big Gov/Pro Big Corp Believers that in their world this kind of distorting would be sapped of it's strength and held in check via the "invisible hand". One doesn't need government in order to figure out how to use resources to one's own faction's benefit over others. Look at how organized crime have sophisticated invisible hand markets in all kinds of people and goods. Slavery is alive and well. Smuggling is alive and well. Child labor is alive and well. Adam Smith was not a Libertarian by today's Libertarian standards.

Everywhere I turn I see Max Stirner's critique of society true - that is, there's always some dominant faction who convinces the general populace that ITS own welfare and ethics equals the welfare and ethics of the Commongood.

So what have you concluded from all of this Serene?

Speaking only for myself I don't like pronouncements that Government is the Problem or that Corporations are the Problem or Unions are the Problem. I would rather take a more granular approach and start looking at the specifics of each case. Sometimes Government is the Problem. Sometimes Corporations are the Problem. And sometimes [insert Collective X] is the Problem. Sometimes its all of the above together.

For me It all depends.

But most people (right-left-whatever) really don't like that answer. They prefer their rational explanations/theories and so naturally look for confirmation of them. One is supposed to do that but it can also lead to confirmation bias instead of also looking to see where or if the rational explanation falls down or has other factors.

Edited October 19, 2011 by SereneBlue

Informer · October 18, 2011

I share your goals in that direction but I'm wondering if you've had a chance to adequately consider the enormity of resource allocations necessary to do that. Your proposal has been mulled over for decades by scientists of all stripes. A great place to start would be the book I list below or his colleague Richard Heinberg at

http://www.postcarbon.org/person/36200-richard-heinberg

The best place to start is with action. The government's interest is obviously not in energy effeciency with all the funds being allocated into the politics from the oil companies which make them even more profit from tax write-offs.

Iceland and Norway are prime examples of making the move towards clean energy. They produce all the electricity without fossil fuels, why don't we? Even McDonalds could start salving all the grease they produce to run cleaner* bio-fuel generators to produce energy. These things should be required, not requested.

Edited October 18, 2011 by Informer

JustARandomPanda · October 18, 2011

Another personal example from my own life of what would intensify under Minarchist/Libertarian government structure.

From my days in Contract Law class...

My Prof often used actual court cases to teach this or that example he was going over in class about a point of Contract Law.

One day he brought in a handout describing a lawsuit by a multinational corporation against another multinational corporation (neither had been his clients). This handout included several sections of a big contract these two companies had entered into.

Our assignment: To find out why a particular clause in that contract was the source of the lawsuit using our textbook, class notes, online materials (for those who had laptops) and hobnobbing together as to what was wrong.

We broke off into little groups. Everyone poured over this contract. And everyone was utterly baffled as to why there had been a lawsuit at all. The clause was boring. Nobody - even with all our materials on hand - could figure out what was so wrong with it. We could understand why both parties had signed it.

We started to get frustrated. We asked him to give a hint. He just smiled and said to keep at it. Now we actually did have one advantage that a real contract lawyer doesn't have. A practicing contract lawyer during negotiations doesn't have someone like our Law Prof whispering in his/her ear, "hey buddy. You might want to scour this particular clause extra carefully." We at least did have that advantage.

The minutes were ticking down and it was looking like we weren't going to make it. Which meant it would be added to our homework load he'd already given out.

Then about 15 minutes before class end....

From the very back of the classroom,

"Holy Shit! They just signed over to the other company all rights to their half of the joint venture's profits!"

All heads whipped around to our Prof to see if this was true. Was this what this boring and innocuous clause actually saying?

Our Prof gave a wolfish grin.

"Congratulations. You finally figured it out. Now stand up and explain to the class how you arrived at that conclusion."

Whereupon my classmate did.

****

And again it makes me wonder. If multinational corporations do this to each other, what makes me think they wouldn't do it to anyone else?

joeblast · October 19, 2011

there's obviously a few goals here, at times relatively competing.

if we're concerned with "fixing the economy" then details such as what one company will try to put over on another company's lawyers is somewhat second fiddle.

when citizens dont pay attention to their local elections, then the count is left up to those whom interests will be padded by making sure they all show up (hence the unions sending letters or otherwise telling their members "vote's coming up, make sure you show up and vote" - what corporation does that?? and then be tax exempt on top of it? of course not all unions pull that crap, but my buddy's dad was a longtime union member, foreman, etc..his take - "unions generally do a good job at serving their members interests...until they become more interested in The Union's interests, that is..." and they've demonstrated a thousand times over that they're more interested in securing contract-hours rather than a better jobs climate as a whole. I'm relatively anti union from the experiences of those close to me that have been in them.)

a little bit of integrity in government positions would also keep the political favors down - if we took a hatchet (the proverbial one) to every politician that made these transgressions then it would happen a whole hell of a lot less.

granted they all feed back into one another - the feedbacks should be balanced, if some areas feed back too easily or too...generously, whatever the case may be, then its a detriment.

I'd be calling myself one of these anarchists if I wasnt so pragmatic, because there's not a damned thing pragmatic about Anarchy.

"Politicians can solve almost any problem -- usually by creating a bigger problem. But, so long as the voters are aware of the problem that the politicians have solved, and unaware of the bigger problems they have created, political "solutions" are a political success." -Sowell

Edited October 19, 2011 by joeblast

Patrick Brown · October 19, 2011

"Politicians can solve almost any problem -- usually by creating a bigger problem. But, so long as the voters are aware of the problem that the politicians have solved, and unaware of the bigger problems they have created, political "solutions" are a political success." -Sowell

That is exactly what this vid suggests:

ralis · October 19, 2011

Just found this on Bloomberg News. Very important read!

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-10-18/bofa-said-to-split-regulators-over-moving-merrill-derivatives-to-bank-unit.html

gendao · October 19, 2011

Another personal example from my own life of what would intensify under Minarchist/Libertarian government structure.

"Congratulations. You finally figured it out. Now stand up and explain to the class how you arrived at that conclusion."

And again it makes me wonder. If multinational corporations do this to each other, what makes me think they wouldn't do it to anyone else?

Why would this intensify under Libertarians - who support laissez-faire wu-wei free-market capitalism and are against over-regulation? In fact, this is exactly the type of bureacratic red tape & legal booby-traps that they fight against!

For example, I believe the Obamacare bill ended up being over 3000 pages of fine print legalese. Moreso, it was purposely ramrodded through Congress with little time for anyone to read any of it. Now, how many Congressmen, much less citizens, do you think actually understood all the full ramifications embedded in that bill??? Considering how it basically took you guys a whole class period just to decode one lawsuit that your prof even gave you hints on??

Nancy Pelosi said we need to pass the bill so we can find out what is in it. Just as a comparison, President Clinton’s Healthcare Bill from 1994 was half the size of Obamacare. The bill that established the whole Social Security Administration in 1935 was 64 pages.

Canada Health Act is just fourteen pages of legal text, or roughly 0.6 percent as long as the Senate’s counterpart. It’s no wonder liberals are as baffled by Obamacare as conservatives are.

So, Pelosicare is essentially the liberals' version of the neocons' Patriot Acts. Liberals pass NW0 Trojan Horse legislation under the guise of "compassion" just as neocons do for "security." They're like 2 barrels in the same shotgun. As I've noted before, the 2 largest gaping holes sinking our ship are liberal welfare and neocon warfare.. If we were to significantly cut those back, then our ship would stop taking on water and could slowly begin the process of righting itself again.. Edited October 19, 2011 by vortex

joeblast · October 19, 2011

That is exactly what this vid suggests:

It mentions it, but it suggests a whole hell of a lot more, look at the opening premise for chrissakes - the whole focus is on social order/justice, being more fair for everyone...

and to quote Sowell again, those seeking to spread prosperity in this way merely serve to spread poverty instead since governments infused with this notion of "creating" social order merely put a drain on the productive in order to support the unproductive.

sick or infirm and you have an excuse not to be productive...and technology has come a long way towards making most of the infirm that are at least of sound mind still be able to be productive.

It seems to be roughly as honest as "the story of stuff"...which can easily be referred to as a selectively presented story to place blame on capitalism and try to claim that failures of government and the resultant wobbly mechanics are a root cause of "free-market failure" as if we truly had a free market instead of a limited one with plenty of government derailments.

Patrick Brown · October 19, 2011

It mentions it, but it suggests a whole hell of a lot more, look at the opening premise for chrissakes - the whole focus is on social order/justice, being more fair for everyone...

and to quote Sowell again, those seeking to spread prosperity in this way merely serve to spread poverty instead since governments infused with this notion of "creating" social order merely put a drain on the productive in order to support the unproductive.

sick or infirm and you have an excuse not to be productive...and technology has come a long way towards making most of the infirm that are at least of sound mind still be able to be productive.

It seems to be roughly as honest as "the story of stuff"...which can easily be referred to as a selectively presented story to place blame on capitalism and try to claim that failures of government and the resultant wobbly mechanics are a root cause of "free-market failure" as if we truly had a free market instead of a limited one with plenty of government derailments.

Well you might be right but I doubt it. Yes there are people that just don't want to work and screw the system but they're not exactly living it up. There's also people that don't work because they see the error and hypocrisy of buSINess and caPITalism. I haven't got an answer but then again I'm a bit of a misanthrope!

Here's another angle of the capitalist agenda:

ralis · October 19, 2011

Why would this intensify under Libertarians - who support laissez-faire wu-wei free-market capitalism and are against over-regulation? In fact, this is exactly the type of bureacratic red tape & legal booby-traps that they fight against!

Do you just make this stuff up or even analyze the implications of a pure free market? What is natural about free market capitalism? To say that markets should be free and in the same statement complain about overregulation. Your statement implies that you are wanting some regulation. Libertarians and Tea Baggers are posturing for markets that are absolutely unencumbered by any regulation i.e, free markets.

What you and others whom have bought into this ideology, fail to realize or even consider, is the problem of the downside of human nature that is primitive and violent! Whether it is the Koch Bros. or any other corporation, these people do not have anyone's best interest in mind! Corporations are not benevolent entities! Humans are socialized primates and exhibit primate behavior towards one another. BTW, there are data accumulated by research scientists to substantiate that statement.

Edited October 19, 2011 by ralis

Enishi · October 19, 2011

Karl Denninger, a former CEO who has expressed some agreement with OWS, posted an analysis recently of the main demands.

(Denninger oftentimes comes across as an ass, but he IS quite knowledgeable when it comes to economics and banking fraud).

http://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=196201

There finally has been an appearance of what some might call a "political agenda" by the "99%" folks - those doing the "Occupy Wherever" protests in America.

This is an embryo of a document, and they have specifically asked for comments and input.

Here's my 2 cents, and since my "people's mic" is most-easily utilized through The Ticker, I'll do it this way, although this is being CC'd to their gmail address.

WHEREAS THE FIRST AMENDMENT TO THE UNITED STATES CONSTITUTION PROVIDES:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

BE IT RESOLVED THAT:

WE, THE NINETY-NINE PERCENT OF THE PEOPLE of the UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, in order to form a more perfect Union, by, for and of the PEOPLE, shall elect and convene a NATIONAL GENERAL ASSEMBLY beginning on July 4, 2012 in the City Of Philadelphia.

I. Election of Delegates:

The People, consisting of all United States citizens who have reached the age of 18, regardless of party affiliation and voter registration status, shall elect Two Delegates, one male and one female, by direct vote, from each of the existing 435 Congressional Districts to represent the People at the NATIONAL GENERAL ASSEMBLY in Philadelphia. Said Assembly shall convene on July 4, 2012 in the city of Philadelphia.

The office of Delegate shall be open to all United States citizens who have reached the age of 18. Election Committees, elected by local General Assemblies from all over the United States, shall coordinate with the 99 Percent Declaration Working Group (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/the99declaration/) to organize, coordinate and fund this national election by direct democratic voting. The Election Committees shall operate similarly to the original Committees of Correspondence during the first American Revolution.

II. Meeting of the National General Assembly and Deliberation:

At the NATIONAL GENERAL ASSEMBLY, the 870 Delegates shall set forth, consider and vote upon a PETITION OF GRIEVANCES to be submitted to all members of Congress, The Supreme Court and President and each of the political candidates running in the nationwide Congressional and Presidential election in November 2012. The Delegates of the National General Assembly shall vote upon and implement their own agenda, propagate their own rules and elect or appoint committee members as the Delegates see fit to accomplish their goal of presenting a PETITION OF GRIEVANCES from the 99% of Americans before the 2012 elections.

Representative government. My oh my, I like it. I think I mentioned something about what was forming out there..... and as they say "Heeeeerrrreeeee's Johnny!"

III. Proposed Petition for the Redress of Grievances:

The PETITION OF GRIEVANCES shall be non-partisan and address the critical issues now confronting the People of the United States. The Delegates shall deliberate and vote upon proposals for the PETITION OF GRIEVANCES in consultation with the 99% similarly to the first two Continental Congresses.

Below is a suggested list of grievances respectfully submitted by the OWS Working Group on the 99% Declaration. The final version of the PETITION OF GRIEVANCES voted upon by the Delegates of the National General Assembly MAY or MAY NOT include the following suggested issues:

1. Implementing an immediate ban on all private contributions of money and gifts, to all politicians in federal office, from Individuals, Corporations, Political Action Committees, Super Political Action Committees, Lobbyists, Unions and all other private sources of money to be replaced by the fair and equal public financing of all federal political campaigns. We categorically REJECT the concept that money is equal to free speech because if that were so, then only the wealthiest would have a voice. These actions must be taken because it has become clear that politicians in the United States cannot regulate themselves and have become the exclusive representatives of corporations, unions and the very wealthy who spend vast sums of money on political campaigns to influence the candidates’ decisions and ensure their reelection year after year.

2. The immediate reversal, even if it requires a Constitutional Amendment, of the outrageous and anti-democratic holding in the "Citizens United" case by the Supreme Court, which equates the payment of money by corporations, wealthy individuals and unions to politicians with free speech. We, the People, demand that institutional bribery and corruption not be deemed protected speech.

The first two are linked, so I will deal with them together. The premise and intent -- that these decisions have had the effect of disenfranchising the people -- is correct. The problem is that one should never enact something that might make the disease worse, and I'm not sold on the remedy being put forward here.

First, I would like to note that the "people's mic" is a distributed form of a megaphone or sound amplification system. Such as it is with money in campaigns. That is, money is not speech but it buys amplifiers that make some speakers louder than others. This conceptual framework is what leads people to want restrictions, as the "some animals are superior to others of the same species" is exactly what is being attacked (and justly so.)

Now here's the issue: As things stand today OWS or others can organize and pool funds to buy their own amplifiers (advertising, etc) in political campaigns. Let's say you cut off all such spending. Today's a new day, the sun is out, and it's beautiful, right?

Not so fast.

Let us presume that Joe and Jill are both running for Representative in some district. A local business analyzes the positions of Joe and Jill and then calls an all-employee meeting. The following speech is delivered by the boss:

"The election is tomorrow. As you know both Joe and Jill are running for the position of Federal Representative for this district. I have analyzed their positions and to the best of my ability this is what I believe the impact of their political positions will be on this firm and the people who work here.

If Joe is elected he has promised to make changes to the tax code and regulations that I judge will cost this company 10% of its gross revenue. Our operating margin, as shown in the last quarterly report, is 12%. While we can and will attempt to recover some of the additional expense it is ridiculous to believe that we will be able to recover all of it, as some of our competitors are not going to be forced to spend the same amount of money. I anticipate that with our best efforts this will result in a halving of our operating margin and that, in turn, will likely require that we ask everyone here to work harder for less pay. While I can and will absorb a 20% pay cut myself, many of you here cannot realistically take a 20% pay cut and feed your families. The business realities mean that the likely outcome of Joe's election is that 10% of you will be laid off.

If Jane is elected she has promised to make changes to the tax code and regulations that I judge will improve the operating margins of this company from 12% to 16%. This is a significant increase of about one third in our operating margins. That may well lead the Board to give me a pay raise as the firm will make higher profits. In turn I would expect everyone here in the room to receive a pay increase of somewhere around 10% over the next couple of years, and in addition our better operating margins would likely lead to hiring of new employees, perhaps by 5 or 10% of the current workforce.

You have a secret ballot in this country and every right to vote for whoever you believe best aligns with your interests. But as you to go to polls tomorrow, I believe it is only fair that you understand the possible impact on your job here, since this is how everyone in this room, myself included, feeds their family.

Thank you very much for your time.

How do you stop that? Bluntly: You can't. But today you have the ability to band together and buy advertising to put out your message to the people if you believe this sort of speech is either wrong or should be ignored in favor of larger, more-important differences between the candidates. The change in the laws being proposed here not only prevent the corporations from buying advertising to try to hawk their message, they also prevent you from buying advertising to counteract the above speech which you cannot prevent from being given under the First Amendment.

In short, be careful what you effort towards. I applaud the effort but I don't believe what you're trying to do will work. It may be more effective to mandate that declared political candidates each have some amount of available time on media outlets within their respective jurisdictions. In addition it may be more effective to demand that no contribution may be made to a political candidate by anyone who is not a physical resident in that representative's district (or state in the case of a Senator.)

In other words I like the goal, but believe you need to take care in how you craft your remedy lest it become worse than the disease you're trying to cure.

3. Prohibiting all federal public officials and their immediate family members, whether elected or appointed, from EVER being employed by any corporation they regulate while in office and/or holding any stock or shares in any corporation they regulate while in office until a full 5 years after their term is completed.

4. A complete lifetime ban on accepting all gifts, services, money, directly or indirectly, to any elected or appointed federal officials or their immediate family members, from any person, corporation, union or other entity that the public official was charged to regulate while in office.

I have no problem with this. In fact, I argue that one of the biggest issues that we have as a nation in respect to the financial crisis is not so much the "money in politics" but the revolving door. For the former head of Goldman to run Treasury and then hand out subsidies to his former firm along with others is an obvious conflict of interest. So is the obvious problem of rewarding failed regulators (E.g. Tim Geithner) with cabinet positions. The counter-argument you will hear immediately is that "we need qualified people in these positions." That is true but it is utterly false that there are no qualified people who do not carry these conflicts.

5. A complete reformation of the United States Tax Code to require ALL citizens to pay a fair share of a progressive, graduated income tax by eliminating loopholes, unfair tax breaks, exemptions and deductions, subsidies (e.g. oil, gas and farm) and ending all other methods of evading taxes. The current system of taxation favors the wealthiest Americans, many of whom, pay fewer taxes to the United States Treasury than citizens who earn much less and pay a much higher percentage of income in taxes to the United States Treasury. We, like Warren Buffet, find this income tax disparity to be fundamentally unjust.

There is a problem here in that the income tax is not the only tax paid. I agree that the hodge-podge of federal taxes to which a person is exposed needs to be reduced to one tax when it comes to income-based compensation if we are to have an income-based tax system at all. I personally prefer a consumption tax for a whole host of reasons, with the most-important two being that it is entirely voluntary and, if coupled with a "prebate" such as is proposed with The Fair Tax embodies a progressive nature while also leaving everyone with "skin in the game", along with the most-important factor of all, promoting capital formation.

The process of capital formation is what grows businesses. Lending of capital is not a jobs engine; saved surplus capital (that which you produce but do not need to spend on necessities) is. The more of the latter we have the more opportunity every person has to advance their station in life through their own efforts.

6. Medicare for all American citizens or other single-payer healthcare system, adjusted by a means test (i.e. citizens who can afford it may opt-out and pay their own health insurance or opt-in and pay a means tested premium). The Medicaid program, fraught with corruption and fraud, will be eliminated except for the purpose of providing emergency room care to indigent non-citizens who will not be covered by the single-payer program.

There is a serious problem with the health system in that it has become financialized. This must end, along with protective laws that prohibit people from selling what they have lawfully acquired. This is why a prescription pill may cost $25 each here in the United States but $2 in Canada. Absent these intentional interferences that sort of price disparity cannot exist as someone would buy a huge stock of those pills in Canada and bring them into the US, destroying the competitors who are gouging US citizens. The drug companies argue that this system is necessary to promote development of drugs. The counterargument is that one can never make the argument that robbing people is justified, and that's what this argument on their part amounts to.

In addition the Medical System has a ridiculous amount of transference of cost from one person to another, literally at legal gunpoint. Provision of indigent care was once handled by "Charity Wards" in the United States. Returning to such a system will not provide equal access to everyone, but it will provide necessary access to all. This subject is one that does not lend itself to a couple of paragraphs so I will insert a shameless plug for Leverage, which is due out in mid-November in hardback (and can be purchased in electronic formats now.)

7. New comprehensive regulations to give the Environmental Protection Agency expanded powers to shut down corporations, businesses or any entities that intentionally or recklessly damage the environment and/or criminally prosecute individuals who intentionally damage the environment. We also demand the immediate adoption of the most recent international protocols, including the "Washington Declaration" to cap carbon emissions and implement new and existing programs to transition away from fossil fuels to reusable or carbon neutral sources of power.

I have no problem with intentional or reckless polluters being punished. However, "capping carbon emissions" is, in my opinion, foolish. I will not engage in a "Global Warming" debate in this missive as it is neither necessary or relevant: The fact is that we cannot compel other nations to follow our commands, and the two largest upcoming sources of carbon emission, China and India, will not comply. They have pointedly refused and there are ten times as many people in those nations combined as live in the United States.

Carbon emissions will decrease on a per-capita basis as price rises and alternatives become economically viable all on their own. The laws of mathematics make this shift inevitable. However, so-called "international protocols" are a sham and a fraud in that without universal adoption they're pointless and you will not achieve universal adoption.

There is a further issue which you must all recognize: Behind every unit of GDP is a unit of energy. If you demand that which is thermodynamically impossible you won't get it. There are no free lunches. Energy policy is not only joined at the hip with economic policy stability in energy policy (or the lack thereof) is a direct cause of economic instability. Anyone who doubts this wasn't sentient during the middle and latter half of the 1970s.

8. Adoption of an immediate plan to reduce the national debt to a sustainable percentage of GDP by 2020. Reduction of the national debt to be achieved by BOTH a cut in spending to corporations engaged in perpetual war for profit, the "healthcare" industry, the pharmaceutical industry and all other sectors that use the federal budget as their income stream AND a truly progressive income tax code that does not allow the wealthy and corporations to evade taxes through excessive deductions, subsidies and loopholes. We agree that spending cuts are necessary but those cuts must be made to facilitate what is best for the People of the United States of America, not multinational and domestic corporations.

This plank means immediate cessation of deficit spending. A "truly progressive" tax code will not fix this; as you noted spending cuts -- not changes from baselines, but actual cuts -- will be necessary. The simple fact of the matter is that about 50% of the Federal Government has to go away. This was 25% just four years ago, and that deterioration should frighten everyone.

I wish to note that this implies that the doubling time is somewhere between four and seven years. Exponential growth curves tell you that when you think you're "halfway there" you are in fact one doubling time away from being dead even though you had many, many doubling times in the past!

This is extremely dangerous and not well-understood by most people. Please read my Ticker from yesterday on exactly this point; the laws of mathematics are not suggestions. We cannot take this on in an "incremental" basis; it has to be done right now or we're finished. This isn't politics, it's mathematics.

9. Passage of a comprehensive job and job-training act like the American Jobs Act to employ our citizens in jobs that are available with specialized training and by putting People to work now by repairing America's crumbling infrastructure. We also recommend the establishment of an online international job exchange to match employers with skilled workers or employers willing to train workers in 21st century skills.

The biggest issue with jobs is so-called "Free Trade" that in fact has turned into the international abuse of people via slave labor and the environment by selecting manufacturing locations for their ability to pollute the air and water with impunity. The solution to this problem is found in the Constitution via tariffs; immediate imposition of wage and environmental parity tariffs will resolve it.

At the same time we must deal with our policies that have enabled the running of monstrous trade deficits (our trade deficit with China has essentially quadrupled in the last decade.) At its root this problem is found in deficit spending and manipulation of the currency by injecting more and more credit to "make up" for the capital that is drained through the trade deficit. The problem with such policies is that credit and capital spend the same but they're not the same: One is weakness (Debt), the other strength (Capital).

The resolution to this problem is threefold:

Wage and environmental parity tariffs.

A hard, inviolate zero-inflation target with criminal penalties for breaches.

An immediate end to deficit spending.

If you're serious about resolving this problem that's the only way to do it.

10. Student loan debt relief. Our young People and students are more than $830 billion in debt from education loans alone. Payment and interest on these debts should be deferred for periods of unemployment and the principal on these loans reduced using a corporate tax surcharge.

Students should be able to file bankruptcy and avoid the debt by doing so. This will force the bad loan back on the lender who will lose their money. In turn that will force lenders to make only good loans.

It is manifestly unjust to give someone who made a bad decision "a pass" as that simply shifts the cost to someone else - in this case, to everyone else. But it is also manifestly unjust for a lender or college to be able to prey on young people without consequence. Again our Constitution offers the solution: It mandates uniform bankruptcy procedures. It is entirely reasonable to read this as requiring that all debts be treated equally in a bankruptcy. Students who took on too much debt will be (correctly) punished through ruined credit for a period of time but those who foolishly lent someone money without any evidence they could pay will lose their investment.

This is as it should be.

11. Immediate passage of the Dream Act and comprehensive immigration and border security reform including offering visas, lawful permanent resident status and citizenship to the world’s brightest People to stay and work in our industries and schools after they obtain their education and training in the United States.

No. We've done this before - a blanket Amnesty plan was offered previously, if you remember. It did not work because it rewarded bad behavior; what happened instead was that the number of illegals in the nation doubled as potential lawbreakers deduced (correctly) that they would be rewarded for bad behavior. Those who are here illegally must leave. They should be able to petition to return on their own merits, but "cutting in line" by breaking the law is unjust to those who worked hard and legally to come to this country via our immigration system.

In a time of 9% unemployment and 10% underemployment it is ridiculous that we have millions of illegal aliens in this nation competing with lawful permanent residents and citizens for the available jobs.

12. Recalling all military personnel at all non-essential bases and refocusing national defense goals to address threats posed by the geopolitics of the 21st century, including terrorism and limiting the large scale deployment of military forces to instances where Congressional approval has been granted to counter the Military Industrial Complex's goal of perpetual war for profit.

Agreed.

13. Mandating new educational goals to train the American public to perform jobs in a 21st Century economy, particularly in the areas of technology and green energy, taking into consideration the redundancy caused by technology and the inexpensive cost of labor in China, India and other countries and paying our teachers a salary that is competitive with the private sector. Paying our teachers a competitive salary commensurate with the salaries of People in the private sector with similar skills.

See above. You will never compete with slave labor and rampant pollution, as controlling pollution is expensive and slaves can't vote.

Teachers should teach because they love it. Money has never correlated with educational success; see areas like North Dakota for an example and compare it against any large city. The primary purpose of education is to teach you how to think; vocational training is a different animal entirely. Separate the two with the first being primary direct instruction in the 3 "Rs" which can be done at very little cost. As jobs and technology change the latter will change as well, but the first does not change.

Our teachers and other public employees must understand that they were lied to. Their pension and health benefit plans, especially into retirement, are mathematically impossible to provide. The assumption of 8% pension growth is mathematically impossible over the long run. That which cannot be done won't be done; we are merely arguing over exactly how it collapses, not whether it will. Rather than let it all collapse we must deal with the facts: We have to deal with the truth and if there is wrath to be dealt to those who lied direct it at the union bosses and pension managers who were complicit in these lies and did nothing to stop them. Looting has been present everywhere in the system over the last 30 years, and it's not limited to bankers.

Unfortunately in every case looted funds are gone. You cannot make a thing that has been dissipated reappear. All you can do is hold the people responsible to account through both civil and criminal means.

14. Subject to the elimination of corporate tax loopholes and exploited exemptions and deductions stated above, offering tax incentives to businesses to remain in the United States and hire its citizens rather than outsource jobs and reconstruct the manufacturing capacity of the United States. In conjunction with a new jobs act, reinstitution of the Works Progress Administration and Civilian Conservation Corps and a similar emergency governmental agency tasked with creating new public works projects to provide jobs to the 46 million People living in poverty, the 9.1% unemployed and 10% underemployed.

The WPA and CCC are not practical. We do need to rebuild our infrastructure but we also need to stop lying about its financing. Investigate things like road construction and repair bonds and you will find a disturbing truth: There are thousands of such projects performed against 15, 20 or 30 year bond issues that have a design life of five to ten years, and they were financed "interest only." That is, not only will the principal never be paid the road will wear out before the bond matures, meaning that the citizens got screwed twice by being promised that which they didn't pay for.

This sort of outrageous abuse in the funding of these projects needs to be treated as an act of public corruption and the County Commissioners and others involved in such shenanigans indicted and prosecuted for public corruption.

That which we demand in public infrastructure we must be able to fund with current tax revenues, not deferred borrowing that can never be paid down.

15. Implementing of immediate legislation to encourage China and our other trading partners to end currency manipulation and reduce the trade deficit.

See above: Wage and environmental parity tariffs, a hard zero-inflation requirement and an end to deficit spending. The problem will immediately disappear.

16. Immediate reenactment of the Glass-Steagall Act and increased regulation of Wall Street and the financial industry by the SEC, FINRA and the other financial regulators, and the commencement of a Justice Department criminal investigations into the Securities and Banking industries practices that led to the collapse of markets, $700 billion bail-out, and financial firm failures in 2007-2008.

Yes.

17. Adoption of a plan similar to President Clinton’s proposal to end the mortgage crisis and instead of the Federal Reserve continuing to lower interest rates for loans to banks who are refusing to loan to small businesses and consumers, the Federal Reserve shall buy all underwater or foreclosed mortgages and refinance these debts at 1% or less to be managed by the newly established Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (and foreclosure task force described below) because 1% or less is the interest rate the Federal Reserve loans to the banks directly who hoard the cash rather than loan it to the People and small businesses.

NO.

The solution to things being too expensive is not to make the borrowing of money cheaper. It is to withdraw the artificial supports and let price collapse.

Yes, this will result in a monstrous number of foreclosures. So what? Your $300,000 house will collapse in price to $100,000. You'll get foreclosed. But - once you have been foreclosed you'll be able to buy another house (or perhaps your present house!) for $100,000 instead of $300,000!

The solution to the housing crisis is to stop trying to prevent home prices from collapsing to where they should be. Houses are not investments if you're living in them as a primary residence: They're a consumer durable good. Ask anyone who's owned one - the roof needs fixing, the water heater needs to be replaced, furnaces wear out and electrical work is needed from time to time. Absent that routine addition of more capital eventually your "house" will crumble into dust! In addition this "more price always" game has enabled the municipal governments in making promises they know they can't keep either by jacking real-estate taxes at astronomical rates of growth. That has to end as well.

We all want cheap cell phones, cheap DVD players and cheap televisions. Why would you not want cheap houses as well? You've gotten both better quality and lower prices in these other items you consume. I understand that there's this mental block when it comes to houses but you have been intentionally deceived by those in the housing and lending industry in this regard - a home is no different than any other large and expensive consumer "thing", and you are best-served by the highest quality at the cheapest price, just as with your television, refrigerator or car.

18. An immediate one year freeze on all foreclosures to be reviewed by an independent foreclosure task force appointed by Congress and the Executive Branch to (in conjunction with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau ) determine, on a case by case basis, whether foreclosure proceedings should continue based on the circumstances of each homeowner and propriety of the financial institution's conduct.

Yes. Those who did illegal things must not be rewarded for doing so. Filing perjured documents is a felony and must be prosecuted; in addition it is essential that institutions (and people) not profit from their own illegal acts.

19. Subject to the above ban on all private money and gifts in politics, to enact additional campaign finance reform requiring free air time and public campaign finances to all candidates who obtain sufficient petition signatures and/or votes to participate in the primaries and/or electoral process, to shorten the campaign season and to allow voting on weekends and holidays.

That makes sense when taken in light of what wrote up above.

20. An immediate withdrawal of all troops from Iraq and Afghanistan and a substantial increase in the amount of funding needed for veteran job placement and the treatment of the physical and emotional injuries sustained by veterans in these wars. Our veterans are committing suicide at an unprecedented rate and we must help now.

True. If we really wanted to punish the nation(s) that were behind funding the 9/11 terrorist attacks we would have invaded Saudi Arabia. Let that roll around in your head for a while.

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that IF the PETITION OF GRIEVANCES approved by the 870 Delegates of the NATIONAL GENERAL ASSEMBLY in consultation with the PEOPLE, is not acted upon by Congress, the President, and Supreme Court, to the satisfaction of the Delegates of the NATIONAL GENERAL ASSEMBLY, said Delegates shall organize a THIRD, COMPLETELY NON-PARTISAN, INDEPENDENT POLITICAL PARTY to run candidates for every available Congressional seat in the mid-term election of 2014 and again in 2016 until all vestiges of the existing corrupt corporatocracy have been removed by the ballot box.

Oh look - it's a political process, exactly as I wrote the other day.... ("does anyone recognize what's forming here")

It will be interesting to see how the establishment political parties respond to this. There's more here to like than dislike, and I believe that with some constructive back-and-forth with the community we can actually get a platform here that works - both politically and from a scientific perspective.

Edited October 19, 2011 by Enishi

Global Revolution!

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