They know not what they do

First of all, if I or anyone reads this even a few years from now, it is likely that the name, Occupy Wall Street will not ring any bells.  So let's just say that OWS is at this moment an on-going, spontaneous, global protest against the corporate and financial structure of the world, at  least the "developed" world.  The resounding theme is "we are the 99%" who are losing wealth, and losing hope, and losing time.  The message is familiar: the only reason we have societies is for our mutual benefit.  We didn't sign up to be mulch in the wealth-gardens of the 1%.

I seems to me that a big problem is that the 1% don't even know they're doing anything wrong.  Of course, they are, but they don't know it.  Our system (call it by name, Capitalism) is ideologically based on the notion that if profits are maximized, all will be well.  Well, it isn't and it won't.  For the most part, the banks aren't doing anything illegal when they buy and sell, debt, and insurance, and derivatives.  Anyone can sell anything whether it's real or not, as long as someone wants to buy it.  And corporations aren't doing anything illegal when they restructure instead of retool, when they move jobs to polluting, hazardous, plantations instead of taking smaller profits.  They're all just doing what the "market" demands.

In order for anything to change, these activities must become illegal.  We can't just do it with incentives; they're no substitute for obscene profits.   Yes, we must put restraints on "liberty" for the benefit of society.  After all, that's why we live in a society, for the benefit.  When the majority (much less 99%) of those who form a society no longer receive a benefit from it, when they'd be better off living in trees, they will bring it down, and the 1% along with it.

Socialized Medicine vs Socialized Public Safety

Those who oppose Socialized Medicine, or Universal Health Care, or let's just call it Common Sense are wont to appeal to basic Puritanism with the notion that people should be responsible for their own lives.  Freedom, they will say, means that individuals are allowed to take risks and are obliged to deal with the consequences of those risks.  Ron Paul, bless his tiny heart, has been steadfast in this regard and others on the Right, while not always quite so eloquent in their support of this Cotton Mather Health Plan are no less adamant in their ardor.

But to my knowledge no conservative candidate or pundit has suggested, much less advocated, that the Police and Fire departments of cities, counties, states, of jurisdictions large and small, far and wide should be disbanded and that individuals should be, well, responsible for their own property.

So that's it, really.  Private property is a public responsibility.  I'm responsible for helping to ensure, that is, to pay for, your house's integrity, your store's defense against the inevitable stampede of entropy, your community's bulwark against riff-raff like, well, me.  But private health is a private responsibility, at least as far as what has become the political center is concerned.  But why is that?  Why is property a collective good but health, even with it's obvious public ramifications (think epidemics), is strictly a personal choice?  Let's be clear.  If your house catches fire because you didn't plan on overloaded and frayed electrical wires failing to perform at more than their specified tolerance, I share in the remediation even if my own house is in no danger.  Socialized fire department.  But if you contract diphtheria because you happened to walk down the same street as someone else that's your own problem alone, even if you're going to bring it into the same bank where I'm making a deposit.  Private responsibility.

I could go on but I'm just repeating the obvious.  It is obvious isn't it?

The Consumer/Employee Coupling Problem

There is a famous exercise in applied mathematics known as the "rabbit lynx coupling" problem (not "coupling" in the sense of "mommy and daddy time", but in the sense of coupled differential equations describing the two populations).  The population of rabbits goes up when the population of lynxes goes down and vice versa.  In a stable ecosystem, the two populations will oscillate at the same frequency with opposite phase.  It's all great fun, unless of course you're the rabbit.

In modern capitalist economies, there is, it seems to me, a similar problem with coupled populations: Consumers and Workers.  In this case, however, they're really the same population or at least there's a great deal of overlap (you NEVER find a rabbit who IS a lynx!).  As I have said before, and is certainly well known anyway, money must flow if the economy is to be healthy.  One way money flows, in fact we're finding that it's the principal way,  is that people buy things.  In order to buy things they need to have money.  In order to have money they need to have jobs.  Furthermore, when they think there is a likelihood that they might lose their job, people buy only what they absolutely need.  This is important.  It turns out that this isn't enough.  For the economy to be healthy, people must buy stuff that they don't need.  That's crazy!

And this is where we are now.  The economy is struggling to get out of a recession and the way we're told this will happen is that people will buy things (that they don't need).  But in order to do that, they need jobs so they can have more money than just what they need to buy just what they need.  And what do we expect those jobs to be?  Why, making stuff and selling stuff and disposing of stuff that we don't need!
Look:  if people don't need stuff, a new car, a new dryer, a new sofa, our economy shouldn't collapse if they don't buy it anyway.  In fact, the economy would be more sustainable if it could survive with people only buying what they need, or at least mostly buying what they need.  It may be, and I have serious trepidation even raising this, that not everybody needs to be fully employed to make what everyone needs.  Ultimately, after all, it's really the farmers, and extractors (oil, minerals, ...) who make what we need.  Everyone else is really making stuff so those guys don't get all the money.  And, by the way, I'm not talking about old MacDonald here.  The farmers in question are Cargill and Monsanto and ArcherDanielsMidland.

Anyway, the problem is that our economy depends on the coupling between different aspects of the same population: workers and consumers.  There are no jobs if people don't buy steering wheel covers, or t-shirts, or paper clips.  Likewise, there is no stuff if people don't have jobs.  But most of it is stuff we don't need.  That is, it's the stuff we're not buying now because we're limiting our buying to what we need.  But because of "lack of consumer confidence", no new jobs are being created so consumers are even less confident.  But it's all made up.  We're not rabbits suffering from an abundance of lynxes.  Nor are we lynxes suffering from a scarcity of rabbits.  We are all both workers (money receivers) and consumers (money spenders).  And we shouldn't have to buy more than we need to ensure that we will be able to buy what we need in the first place.  We ought to find a way of living so that we produce enough for people to have what they need (and then some) and for people to acquire those things and not have to keep acquiring what they don't need.

So okay, you'll say that this is socialism and planned economy and that it doesn't work.  Fair enough.  But I think it's obvious that this, what we have now, doesn't work either.  So why is capitalism not working so much better than socialism not working?

Why I'm not a Democrat

The Democrats are like a big pile of cow shit between me and a big pile of pig shit, that being the Republicans.  They may smell better, but they still stink.  And they're full of shit.

President Obama has nothing to lose

Sure, President Obama would like to be a two-term president.  Once a person decides he or she wants to be president at all, that's pretty much settled.  The problem is, he's gone to such lengths to govern from the middle, to avoid angering anyone (except his shrinking base of support), to appease the howling lunatics of the ideological right, that he can't really be a credible progressive.  He never was particularly hard over on progressive policies anyway.  He was never an advocate of universal health care.  That was John Edwards.  He was never an absolutist against the war(s).  That was Bill Richardson.  But great-googly-moogly he talked a good game!

But here's the thing: the red meat right is never going to love him.  If the moderate right (by which I mean a view of the world that would have made the John Birch Society blush only thirty years ago) prevails, they have Romney, they don't need Obama.  And against the likes of Perry or Bachman, any pragmatic realism is only seen as weakness. 

So the question is, does the majority of the American electorate want the government to sponsor even the meager social safety net we have now or not?   Do they want all government regulation, of child labor, worker safety, environmental protection to be eradicated, leaving us to catch up with China on a slave labor-based prosperity, or not?  Do they want people who make millions of dollars (and create no jobs, whatever Boehner calls them) to be allowed to pay no taxes or not?

If the answers are yes, then Obama has no chance anyway.  But if the answers are no, then he needs to seize whatever executive authority he has and govern against Congress.  He needs to give the American people a glimpse of what a useful government can provide in a time of difficulty.  It may be too late.  On the other hand, he has nothing to lose.

My representative doesn't represent me - 2

The other day I received this mailer from Rep. Doug Lamborn:

There are many things wrong with it but let me pick on a few.  First take a look at the graph, "A Choice of Two Futures".  The current level of debt is something like half what it was at what appears to be the end of WW2.  And here we are fighting in Iraq, Afghanistan, a little in Libya and then all the post WW2 strategic deployments (Korea, Germany, I don't know where all).  So right away, that doesn't seem like too much debt.
Then there's some exponential curve that purports to be our projected debt at "our current rate of spending".  It's ludicrous on the face of it.  There's nothing historical to support that function, in fact more like the opposite.  It's just more right-wing "fact by assertion".

Then there's Lamborn's letter where he refers to the "failed trillion dollar stimulus bill"  and how the "treasury pumped hundreds of billions of dollars in borrowed money into the struggling economy".  Absent from his analysis is any notion of the utter catastrophe that market capitalism left us with and how much worse shape we'd be in if those initiatives he so despises were not undertaken.  But enough of that.  The real outrage is on the 2nd page.

In what he trumpets as a "Common-sense Jobs Plan", Lamborn lists 4 broad aphorisms, talking points of the right for some time now, that have no self-evident connection to the creation of jobs at all.  The times of low unemployment in the United States historically have never been associated with any of these things.  In fact, the only empirical evidence there is suggests that the measures Lamborn endorses will actually lower both the standard of living in the US and the rate of employment.  It is, of course, axiomatic to the conservative movement that taxes are bad for the economy.  Well, axiomatic or not, the only evidence we have is that taxes are at best irrelevant and more likely constructive.

And his "note to seniors" (of which I am one)!  Absent entirely, although not unexpectedly, is any acknowledgement that just increasing revenues a little will actually constitute the "real reform" he supposedly wants.

My representative doesn't represent me

I live in a congressional district represented by Douglas Lamborn.  In my opinion, he's a dangerous ideologue who doesn't understand the first thing about representative democracy, but, hey, what do I know?  As Jefferson said,  let facts be submitted to a candid world. 

I receive occasional messages by email from Rep. Lamborn's office.  Today's documented an interview he held with our local newspaper, the Gazette.  An exerpt:

The Gazette:Budget talks have been the only thing coming out of Washington for weeks now. So along those lines, what’s happening that you specifically think voters around here should know about?
Lamborn:The big news today is that we got together as (House) Republicans this morning, and we have a deal that we think is a great deal to move forward with, and that we can unify behind. And that’s the first time in this whole debate that we’ve really reached this point. And I’m excited about the plan. It’s cut, cap and balance. In the short term, we cut next year’s budget by $111 billion. Some of that is discretionary, some of that is mandatory. In the medium term, in the next 10 years, we cut from our current spending — the current budget is about 24 percent of gross domestic product — to under 20 percent of GDP, with an eventual path to get down, someday, to 18 percent. To me, the sooner the better. And then in the long term, have a balanced budget amendment that goes out to the states. I’m hopeful that enough states would ratify it to put this in the Constitution, so that on a permanent basis, we can’t overspend. Those are the main provisions.   [my emphasis]

 So let's see.  A constitutional amendment that requires, like say, California, that the budget not exceed revenue.  Then, some perverse congress, like the one we have now, that refuses to consider raising taxes just because it has some religious significance for them, can paralyze the entire apparatus of government.  That's working so great for the states!  What a tool!

How the Left killed civil discourse

This morning I heard Cokie Roberts describing her impending appointment to deliver a eulogy for Betty Ford.  Apparently Betty Ford had requested that, when the opportunity came, she speak about the time when Gerry Ford and Hale Boggs (Cokie Roberts' father) were House Minority Leader and Majority Leader, respectively, and House members were collegial and even friends, irrespective of party (united, perhaps, by their common loathing of the Senate).  Later on I read an article in The Nation extolling the courage  and civic virtue of "...all those gay couples who were willing to weaponize their lives...'you're either with me, or you're with the haters - but you can't have it both ways'".

That's it, of course.  You (we) can't have it both ways.  When Boggs and Ford were friends, discourse in the Congress was about compromise and continuity.  Change was gradual, what we might call "adiabatic".  Everyone's position was respectable.  Then there was the Vietnam War, and the Civil Rights Movement.  It was my side, the Left, that saw that gradual change meant more lynchings and more body bags.  It was we who said the other side's argument was totally bankrupt.  And it worked.  Great googlymoogly, it worked a treat!

Of course, THEY were watching.  They saw that it worked.  And whose fault is it that they're even better at it than we are?  So here we are.  There is no middle ground.  An argument is either right or wrong and if it's wrong, what's respectable about that?  You can't have it both ways.

When a dead coyote stops being a dog

My dogs are not a sentimental bunch.  With only few exceptions, any animal that isn't them is, potentially, food.  The exceptions include people and, grudgingly, the cats that live in our house, and, it seems, other dogs.  Their lack of sentimentality not withstanding, there is evidence that their disinclination to eat other dogs extends to dead coyotes, up to a point.

This past winter, a coyote died on my property.  I didn't see any obvious signs of why it died but there it was.  As we passed nearby on our various hikes, my dogs would show interest, but also respect.  They made a point of checking it out, sniffing and circling, but they didn't paw at it, or chew it, or disturb it.

Months later, the corpse looked pretty much the same:

It looked the same to me, that is.  To the dogs, it was totally different.  Over just a couple of walks, they were tearing it apart, chasing each other for pieces, chewing it up (it was totally disgusting to me but what do I know?).

So I think for a long time, and the time was enhanced by the cold weather, the body smelled like a dog.  You may argue that a coyote is not a dog at all.  Since dogs and coyotes can interbreed and produce fertile offspring, I would argue that you would be wrong.  Anyway, I think it's clear that my dogs thought this coyote had been a dog.  They have no compunction whatsoever about cat corpses, skunk corpses, weasel corpses.  But they left this corpse alone for months.  Then, one day, it stopped being the corpse of a dog and became, well, meat.  It was rotten, smelly, disgusting meat, to be sure, but that's never been a deal-breaker for them.

The Prison Problem

The problems with prisons are (at least nearly) universal.  I don't know of any country that can say their prison system is just what they want, that it accomplishes anything really useful for the society.  Certainly the prisons here in the US are a total travesty.  So, why is that?

Well, I think we don't really know what we want from our prisons.  The way I see it, a prison might be expected to provide any one of three services (but only one): Rehabilitation, Penitence, and Deterrence.

In the Rehabilitation model, a convict is sent to prison for some period with the expectation that at the end of that period, he or she has been taught how to behave in a way that society will find acceptable.  Furthermore, the convict will have been re-conditioned in some way so that the expected behavior will be desirable to him or her.

In the Penitence model, the convict is supposed to know what behavior is expected of him or her by society and only requires the enforced time to consider the error of his or her ways and reflect on the connectedness of his or her behavior with the general welfare in which he or she participates.

In the Deterrence model, the convict is subjected to an environment so horrific that the expectation is that he or she will aspire to avoid being subjected to it ever again.  Needless to say, this is really the only model that is ever put into practice.

There may have been a time when we expected our prisons to operate in accordance with the Penitence model, hence the sobriquet: penitentiary.  I sense a heavy overlay of Christianity in this model and, as such, a set of assumptions about people that is more ideologically than empirically based.  Certainly the current state of prisons as overcrowded, chaotic, and dangerous is not consistent with contemplation and introspection.

Likewise, although I'm certain that parole boards honestly expect rehabilitation, the prisons are in no way designed to facilitate anything of the kind.  The educational opportunities that are afforded to convicts, when there are any, are rudimentary.  The vocational training is haphazard, without regard to what job opportunities might exist for the eventual ex-convict.  More importantly, there is no attempt to treat, other than by punishment, the personality traits that led the convict to think that the behavior that brought him or her to prison was reasonable.  Without that, there is no reason to believe that he or she might not think so again.

So, we have Deterrence.  But we don't really since there is no evidence to support the idea that prison has a deterrent effect.  That is odd, of course, since, from all accounts, prison is really horrible.  So either an ex-convict doesn't believe he or she will be caught again, or conditions are at least as bad for him or her "on the outside".  That's a sobering thought.  Either way the whole thing doesn't work and we should try to find out why.