Job creation

The Financial Times reports that bankers who lost their jobs in the credit crunch are to be offered work in the Treasury as Alistair Darling beefs up his department to try to keep pace with the financial crisis.

You could not make it up.

Pantheist Anarchists: Should We Fear Them?

(This a response to a kind, but condescending person who mistakenly believed that I am not what I say I am: a pantheist/anarchist... my reply is to an email which I will not produce, but I think you can get the drift of the original statement)


I appreciate your considerate response.

I am an anarchist. Anarchist philosophy is considered to be one of the four major public philosophies in the US: along with socialism, conservativism and liberalism. It has nothing to do with a desire for a violent, chaotic anarchy and everything to do with a belief in small, mutable collectives working toward the public good (with a heavy dose of skepticism toward dogmatic systems--religious or political). In this we celebrate personal responsibility, intellectual integrity and moral complexity. We do not believe that it is ok to excuse our actions onto a controlling narrative like: christianity, communism, profit-line margins, and, yes, democracy. We believe that we must develop our moral complexity through interaction with the world (peoples/places/beliefs) and that we are responsible for our own actions. In other words you would never hear an anarchist say I did it because I was ordered to do it, or god commanded me to do it, or we had to sacrifice workers for the good of the corporation. Personal responsibility (authenticity) is probably one of the driving forces of all of the many weird and wonderful anarchist collectives. We can be a pain in the ass sometimes, but we are struggling to make sense and will always seek to engage with other ideas. Can we say the same of the other three major public philosophies?

Don't buy into the gross stereotypes of anarchism perpetuated by our controlling capitalist narrative (it probably didn't help that the communists also marked anarchists out as an enemy). The problems in Africa are symptomatic of the after-effects of the earlier European colonialism and the continuing American imperialism. It is a form of Darwinian free-market capitalism in places like the Congo (later referred to as gangster capitalism) and a destructive duel of controlling monologic political and religious narratives (Zimbabwe/Sudan/etc). Anarchists do not support these types of systems.

The French revolutionaries were not anarchists. Perhaps you might look into the later history of the Paris Communes who we would look to for inspiration--are you familiar? Once again I appreciate your concern, but your history is very flawed. Have you actually researched these things or did someone tell you about them?

I would discuss anarchism, revolutions, the cause of the African chaos, problems with the American political system, radical pedagogy and utopian possibilities with you (or anyone else).

Pantheism has nothing to do with the worship of nature. Take the word apart--simply "many beliefs". It is Bakhtinian dialogism in its essence. A belief in the power/benefit of multiple perspectives. I do not subscribe to any one religion, instead I seek wisdom-from/engagement-with all belief systems. I am simply ideologically becoming and desire to rub up against other modes of perceiving the world. When will I be a complete being--as I die, until then I am always learning, studying, engaging and researching (for simplicity's sake... "becoming"). We could think of it as a "being as becoming"

I do not agree we are all pagans. For instance, the email from the tech person professing god this and god that as if we all will simply understand what god he is ranting about. Obviously he is referring to the god of the Christian church that dedicated itself to eradicating pagan thought and beliefs. The Christian leaders did this because they were unable to reconcile themselves with the fact that some group of people may not want/desire to follow their "way". Like any good monologic, dogmatic, controlling narrative the Christian leaders decided these beings that defied the Christian narrative of the world through simply living their own lives had to be destroyed for everyone's good. For if others live a different way they challenge their controlling way of life. This is the same problem tyrants and dictators have with free-minded folks. Suppress all opposition. If that doesn't work... Eliminate all opposition. A truly dystopic reality for all involved (master and slave).

I guess you might also call me an anti-theist (because there are those who seek to trademark pantheism). Now before you get worried that I have slid into a nihilistic conception of a meaningless world, let me explain...

Anti + theism = against institutionalized religion and dogmatic systems and controlling narratives

No good has ever come of them. If you think the French revolution was bad you should have traveled the French countryside during the 100 yrs war and the 30 yrs war and all of the other religious wars that ravaged that nation.

I prefer my spiritual intoxicants uncut and unfiltered, I do not need a priest or a preacher or a prophet or a church to outline my connection to the higher forces of the universe. However, I do appreciate mediation through my interactions with art (in all its forms), philosophies (all belief/knowledge systems), peoples (all peoples), places (the physical world), but they must be put into "play" with each other... play, in the fullest sense of the world. Against controlling narratives, for the free play of multiple perspectives, so that we can learn and experience as much as possible... does this sound dangerous?

If you hear anyone complaining about the crazy pantheistic anarchist teaching in our college I would appreciate it if you pass this along to them.

Pura vida!

A Fruitful Omission: Forgetting a Book and Learning a Lesson

As I opened my briefcase before teaching my evening Ethics 1030 course at Metro State College of Denver, I noticed that I had forgotten the textbook. However, I did have my notes and had read the entries for that evening (Kant and Richard Taylor) many times.

However, I could not point students to specific pages or read from the text. That was, I thought, a drawback of my forgetfulness. Yet, it ended up making for a more interactive and textually-oriented class because I had to ask the students to read pertinent passages aloud so we could analyze them. This gave them more ownership of the texts and got them more involved a deeper level.

Sometimes, teachers can teach too much--that is, do too much of the work for the students. But by not having my text, I was forced to depend on student involvement more than usual. All teaching involves some trust in and reliance upon students (as Parker Palmer points out), but my absent-mindedness deepened this need and actually enhanced the classroom environment.

I'm not planning on leaving the text behind next time, but I will encourage students to supply more of the textual involvement for themselves.

The Essentials of Clear Expression (archive)

a, an

Australian Brush Fires: Angry survivors blame council 'green' policy

One person said it very well:

ANGRY residents last night accused local authorities of contributing to the bushfire toll by failing to let residents chop down trees and clear up bushland that posed a fire risk.

During question time at a packed community meeting in Arthurs Creek on Melbourne's northern fringe, Warwick Spooner — whose mother Marilyn and brother Damien perished along with their home in the Strathewen blaze — criticised the Nillumbik council for the limitations it placed on residents wanting the council's help or permission to clean up around their properties in preparation for the bushfire season. "We've lost two people in my family because you dickheads won't cut trees down," he said.

What's a few dead people if we protect the trees and brush?

Straw puts Iraq back onto the agenda

The decision by Justice Secretary, Jack Straw to veto the publication of minutes of key Cabinet meetings held in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq in 2003 seems almost certain to make the war an issue again.

The BBC report that Straw is to use a clause in the Freedom of Information Act to block the release of details of meetings in which the war's legality was discussed:

Releasing the papers would do "serious damage" to Cabinet government, he said, and outweighed public interest needs.

The Information Tribunal ruled last month that they should be published.

They had rejected a government appeal against the Information Commissioner's ruling that the papers be published because decisions taken in the run-up to 2003 invasion of Iraq were "momentous" and controversial.

There is a balance to be struck between openness and maintaining aspects of our structure of democratic government

The government could have appealed against the Information Tribunal's decision in the High Court, but has decided instead to use the ministerial veto for the first time since the Freedom of Information laws came into force.

Mr Straw told MPs he had not taken the decision - which had to be approved by Cabinet - to block the minutes "lightly".

But he said it was "necessary" in the interest of protecting the confidentiality of ministerial discussions which underpinned Cabinet government and collective responsibility.

"There is a balance to be struck between openness and maintaining aspects of our structure of democratic government," he said.

"The damage that disclosure of the minutes in this instance would do far outweighs any corresponding public interest in their disclosure."

Not surprisingly, the Justice Secetary has won the support of the Conservatives for his decision. They joined with the Government to vote in favour of this illegal war.

When Jack Straw says that publication will cause damage he is right but it is the Labour Party and the Government who will suffer the most. No wonder he overruled publication. David Howarth is quite right when he says that the decision is "more to do with preventing embarrassment than protecting the system of government".

He believes that it is in the public's interest to know that the Cabinet, as a decision-making body, had "collapsed" in the run-up to war and been supplanted by a handful of key individuals around the then prime minister Tony Blair.

Now the Labour Party are trying to brush the whole affair under the carpet.

Chutzpah, Hypocrisy and Nonsense at the Fiscal Responsibility Summit

Today, the President held a fiscal responsibility summit in which he met with a bi partisan group of lawmakers, economists and power brokers to talk about ways to reduce our budget short fall in the long term. There are those, like me, that think that it takes an awful lot of chutzpah to push through a bill that's nearly $800 billion and then hold a summit on fiscal responsibility. There are others that say what's important is that the government recognize that fiscal responsibility is very important in the long term. I actually agree with both sides (of course I agree with myself), and I agree that if the President is serious about long term fiscal responsibility that cynical or not that's a good thing. Of course, as a late friend of mine often said

if if was a fifth we'd all be drunk

From all reports today, this conference had little to do with finding solutions for long term fiscal responsibility and much more to do with politics and posturing. The President started the conference by taking pot shots at the previous administration.

President Barack Obama took aim at the “casual dishonesty” of Bush administration budgets Monday, saying he’ll abandon accounting “tricks” used to hide the ballooning deficit and pledging to cut a $1.3 trillion federal shortfall in half during his first term. “I want to be very clear,” Obama said to open a “fiscal responsibility summit” at the White House.

“We cannot and will not sustain deficits like these without end. Contrary to the prevailing wisdom in Washington these past few years, we cannot simply spend as we please and defer the consequences to the next budget, the next administration and the next generation.”

While President Obama has found time to spend nearly $800 billion, he's found little time to find anything concrete to one day bring our budget in order. All we have heard was that he would end the war in Iraq and raise taxes. He can end this war with little negative consequence because the surge he opposed worked, and raising taxes is certainly not my favorite for of fiscal responsibility.

I would have felt better about this conference if it wasn't merely a platform to take frivilous potshots at the previous administration. What's more, the potshots reek of hypocrisy. The stimulus that he backed included increases of about $66 billion to the Department of Education, $25 billion to the Department of Energy, $77 billion to Medicaid, and $50 billion transportation. Either President Obama doesn't understand D.C., or he thinks the rest of us don't. Once a department receives more money it is next to impossible to dial back its funds. This is what is referred to as a new baseline. While President Obama calls these funds only temporary stimuli, the rest of us firmly believe the added infusions will create a new baseline. While he was attacking the previous administration for misleading the public, he never once proclaimed, unequivocally, that these temporary infusions of cash would in fact be temporary.

It takes an awful lot of chutzpah to spend almost a trillion Dollars and then proclaim

Failure to act quickly and decisively, Obama said, “we risk sinking into another crisis down the road, as . . .our bills come due, confidence in our economy erodes and our children and grandchildren [suffer].”

Yet, it takes even more chutzpah to bemoan the "dishonesty" of your predecessor all the while not acknowledging that your temporary spending increases will lead to permanent spending increases which perverts the idea of fiscal responsibility.

Toronto J-Film Pow Wow: Our Top Ten Favorite Japanese Horror Films

Our Top Ten Favorite Japanese Horror Films
Toronto J-Film Pow Wow



While Akira Kurosawa's "Rashomon" was widely dubbed "The film that introduced the world to Japanese cinema" during the 20th-century it could easily be argued that films like Kiyoshi Kurosawa's "Kairo (Pulse)", Hideo Nakata's "Ringu" and Takashi Shimizu's "Ju-On" were the films that introduced a whole new generation to Japanese cinema in the 21st-century. At the start of the new millenium audiences had already been haunted, stalked and dismembered by a gallery of boogie men from Leatherface to Freddy Krueger and frankly the standard scares were getting a bit stale. In an attempt to devise new ways to keep people sleeping with the light on Hollywood turned East and found inspiration in the atmospheric and exotic horror being produced in Japan. The major studios started buying up the distribution and remake rights for a wide variety of films from a diverse group of filmmaker like the names mentioned above, but also more "extreme" directors like Takashi Miike, Shinya Tsukamoto and Sion Sono. The work of this loose group was was dubbed "J-Horror" and for a few years it was the hottest thing in genre filmmaking. Unfortunately we live in hyper-accelerated and fickle times and once the best horror from Japan had been bought up and recycled studio execs were left picking over whatever sub par product was left and the hot new sub-genre quickly fizzled out.

Regardless of the fact that J-Horror has gone past its sell-by-date that burst of attention at the start of the decade opened doors for a wide variety of not only Japanese but Asian films in general to make their way West and horror fans now have a whole new crop of cinema classics that can join "The Exorcist", "The Shining" and "Night of the Living Dead" in the pantheon of fear. To honour the genre that got so many of you interested in Japanese cinema in the first place we at the Toronto J-Film Pow-Wow wanted to pull together our list of Top Ten Favorite Japanese Horror Films from across the history of Japanese cinema. Proceed at your own risk...

To See the List and Read the Descriptions

Ralph Peters Vs. President Obama

As far as military knowledge and analysis there are few people more astute, in my opinion, short of General Petraeus himself than Ralph Peters. I have generally found his analysis of all things related to war as rather spot on. As such, his latest piece is in many ways startling.

• Best. Instead of increasing the U.S. military "footprint," reduce our forces and those of NATO by two-thirds, maintaining a "mother ship" at Bagram Air Base and a few satellite bases from which special operations troops, aircraft and drones, and lean conventional forces would strike terrorists and support Afghan factions with whom we share common enemies. All resupply for our military could be done by air, if necessary.

Peters' assertion is that we are going along in a never ending cycle of escalation with no strategy, and worse yet, no hope of success. Peters believes that we call it a day and remove our troops from Afghanistan as quickly as logistics allow leaving a residual force for certain and very limited roles.

What is startling about Peters' assessment and recommendations are how both are eerily similar to those of folks like the President himself in the beginning of 2007 about Iraq. Peters lays out a hopeless quagmire in which historical alliances and rivalries provide an environment in which we have no hope of bringing about any stability.

Peters is no ideologue and he better than most understands all the diferences, subtle and otherwise, between Afghanistan and Iraq. In Peters view, Afghanistan holds little strategic value for the U.S.

Even if we achieved the impossible dream of creating a functioning, unified state in Afghanistan, it would have little effect on the layered crises in the Muslim world. Backward and isolated, Afghanistan is sui generis (only example of its kind). Political polarization in the U.S. precludes an honest assessment, but Iraq's the prize from which positive change might flow, while Afghanistan could never inspire neighbors who despise its backwardness.

Peters also sees a government that's totally dysfunctional and using our presence in a counter productive manner.

Even "our man in Kabul," President Hamid Karzai, put his self-interest above any greater cause. Reborn a populist, he backs every Taliban claim that the U.S. inflicts only civilian casualties in virtually every effort against terrorists. Karzai is convinced that we can't abandon him.

So, he sees an ever increasing quagmire with no hope of succeeding.

We should do just that. Instead of floundering in search of a strategy, we
should consider removing the bulk, if not all, of our forces. The alternative is
to hope blindly, waste more lives and resources, and, in the worst case, see our
vulnerable supply route through Pakistan cut, forcing upon our troops the most ignominious
retreat since Korea in 1950 (a massive air evacuation this time around,
leaving a wealth of military gear).

Much like in Iraq, Peters also sees Afghanistan's neighbor, this time Pakistan, as the key for success in the region.

In any event, Pakistan, not Afghanistan, will determine the future of Islamist extremism in the region. And Pakistan is nearly lost to us — a fact we must accept. Our strategic future lies with India.

It is a rather remarkable stance that Peters takes. Peters was an early defender of the surge. He always believed that Iraq was winnable. Furthermore, Peters firmly believed that Iraq was of vital strategic importance.

On many of these fronts, there are clear differences between Iraq and Afghanistan. Yet, I can't help but feel there is some cynicism in Peters pessimism. Certainly, the President has provided no plan to go along with his increase in troops in Afghanistan. Yet, there is one common thread between Afghanistan and Iraq. That is that we are facing an insurgency in Afghanistan like we faced in Iraq. The details of the insurgencies are certainly totally different. The terrain is different. Yet, no two insurgencies are the same. Before taking over command in Iraq, General Petraeus wrote the Army's counter insurgency manual. In the manual, he drew on experiences from such obscure wars as one fought in Algeria in the 1950's. While insurgencies are never the same, the blue print comes down to three basic principles: clear, hold and build. Whether in Iraq or in Afghanistan, ultimately any successful counter insurgency perfects those three principles. You clear out the bad guys from all trouble spots. You hold the newly safe area. Then, you rebuild it so that they never come back.

The same person that wrote the manual, that so successfully turned around Iraq, is now head of Central Command. He is in charge of the whole region including Afghanistan. The same principles that brought such a remarkable turn around to Iraq can be applied to Afghanistan. Before we declare defeat, maybe we should let Petraeus apply these principles there.

Wankers of the Day

The New York Yankees.

Buyer's Remorse?

You would think that when you go all out to elect Barack HUSSEIN Obama, you would have clue of the policies you are going to get.

In a swift about face from her views as New York's senator, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is now hammering Israel over its treatment of Palestinians in Gaza.

As First Lady, Clinton raised eyebrows when she kissed Suha Arafat.

Since she was then seeking a Senate seat the resulting brouhaha caused her to "re-think" her positions.

"I'm a very strong supporter of Israel," Clinton said back in February 2000.

On Thursday, as Secretary of State she had yet another about face in the form of angry messages demanding Israel speed up aid to Gaza. Jewish leaders are furious.

"I am very surprised, frankly, at this statement from the United States government and from the secretary of state," said Mortimer Zuckerman, publisher of the New York Daily News and member of the NYC Jewish Community Relations Council.

"I liked her a lot more as a senator from New York," Assemblyman Dov Hikind, D-Brooklyn, said. "Now, I wonder as I used to wonder who the real Hillary Clinton is."

Clinton's decision to hammer Israel comes as the Clintons and President Barack Obama are planning to give the Palestinians $900 million toward the rebuilding of Gaza in the wake of the Israeli offensive that was sparked by Hamas rocket fire.

Apparently not.

John Lennon: I Am the Walrus

(Courtesy of Rebecca Glasscock)

Watch Amazing Oscar-Nominated Short "I Met the Walrus"
TruthOut



Background/Description for the Video

A Teaching Moment...

I normally have a post each semester about what I'm teaching. This semester I've let events get away from me a bit, but no time like the present. The courses I'm teaching this semester are Diplomacy 750: Defense Statecraft, and Diplomacy 600: History of Strategic Thought (DIP 600 is a catch all for courses that don't have their own number).

This is the fourth time I've taught Defense Statecraft, and the course has changed a bit each time. I think I revised the list a bit more this last time than previously, in part because I shifted some readings to other courses, and in part just because I wanted to update. For example, I moved Clausewitz from Defense Statecraft to History of Strategic Thought, mainly because I didn't think the students (about 10 are taking both courses) needed to read Clausewitz twice in the same semester. This has gone okay so far; I've noticed several times now that I find references to Clausewitz as I revise and prepare DIP 750 lectures. I exchanged Stephen Biddle's treatment of the Afghan War for his treatment of the 2006 Lebanon War, which worked out pretty well; both are outstanding, and both make essentially the same point, but the latter is more up to date. I'm using three new texts for the airpower week (including one by Charles Dunlap), and I added a separate week for chemical and biological warfare. I kept the structure of the last five weeks (all of which concern the bureaucratic and industrial components of the defense complex) the same, but changed out most of the readings, in part because I got bored of them and in part because they had become outdated. We're in week 6 right now, and I haven't really had the opportunity to regret any of those decisions thus far. We'll see how the absence of Clausewitz works out for the rest of the course.

History of Strategic Thought is a new course, developed from the concept of an old "Great Books" course that hadn't been taught at Patterson for many years. This course is reading heavy and lecture light, and I've been conducting it as a graduate seminar, which is unusual at Patterson. Thus far, things have worked out pretty well; Thucydides and Sun Tzu were big hits, although Delbruck didn't work out quite so well. While much of the course focuses on original source material, not all of it does; in a couple of cases I relied on contemporary works (Trachtenberg's History and Strategy, for example) that did a good job of summarizing a particular body of thought. History of Strategic Thought is a very nice change of pace from Defense Statecraft, and I've generally been pleased with the course of the course thus far.

Joe Biden Stimulus Czar: God Help Us All

Joe Biden was just appointed the Stimulus Czar by President Obama.

President Obama has turned to his own vice president to oversee
implementation of the $787 billion economic stimulus package, part of which will be available this week for state Medicaid programs.

Obama announced his decision before the National Governors Association in Washington on Monday, saying Vice President Joe Biden will help ensure the distribution of the money is not just swift, "but also efficient and effective."

"The fact that I'm asking my vice president to personally lead this effort shows how important it is for our country and future to get this right," he said.

Let me put this in perspective. Citizens Against Government Waste, the group that specializes in being a watch dog against wasteful government spending, routinely put Biden in a select group the worst wasteful spenders while he was in Congress. In other words, we will have someone that has a long history of supporting endless amounts of wasteful spending be in charge of making sure that $787 Billion be spent efficiently, without corruption, and without waste. If that isn't the definition of the fox guarding the henhouse, I don't know what is.

There's another way to look at it. The biggest organization that Joe Biden has ever been responsible for before this was the Senate Foreign Relation's Committee. Between staff and other legislators this would be a group of several hundred. Now, with no other experience of leading anything else, he will be responsible for implementing a plan that will involve millions of people and nearly a trillion Dollars worth of spending. I know I feel good about how this will be managed.

President Obama confuses a lifetime in Congress with being a prerequisite for spending other people's money well as opposed to merely being able to spend other people's money. Joe Biden has absolutely no significant qualification to oversee the spending of nearly a trillion Dollars, though to be fair, almost no one does. (which is part of the problem)

Death in the Afternoon

I've just read (actually re-read -- first time was about 20 years ago) Hemingway's Death in the Afternoon, his 1932 study of the Spanish bullfight. There's a lot of interesting stuff in the book, even if you have no interest in bullfighting per se, and the man certainly writes beautifully when he's in the mood and not toppling into self-parody.

One thing that struck me in particular this time was -- on the evidence of this book anyway -- Hemingway's tremendous anxiety about male same-sex attraction. There are three or four passages that engage in egregious bashing of male homosexuality, and they are all the more striking because they appear more or less apropos of nothing -- all of a sudden Hemingway is for no apparent reason freaking out about some French novelist or Yale graduate or El Greco being a maricon.

I don't know much about Hemingway's life and have only read four or five of his books and a few short stories, but obviously you don't have to be an expert to figure out that the guy was obsessed with, and wracked with anxiety about, what it means to be a real man. If he had been born 60 years later he would have made one hell of a war blogger (to be fair I believe he was actually wounded in WWI, so I guess that automatically disqualifies him).

The most dangerous airport in the world?

No, not KLIA. Airports are made to be safe, very safe. That's why you have the most sophisticated CCTVs at airports, and metal detectors, roaming K9 squads, uniformed and undercover security personnel, traffic cops, VVIP bodyguards, other uniformed people (immigration, customs, pilots), etc etc. In some airports, you have soldiers guarding the parameters.

Why? Simply because an airport is a high-security zone. Airport security officers are dealing daily with potential terrorists, hijackers, bombers, etc.

KLIA had a relatively good record where security is concerned but blogger-journo Ahmad A. Talib discovered upon returning from Gaza the other day that touts and cheating cabbies may not be our only worries. A group of Peruvian crooks have been going about robbing arriving passengers, he found out later. This was after his Vaio, which survived 9 days of the war in Gaza, was nicked from right under his nose.

But what really pissed Ahmad off is finding out that the CCTV wasn't working ...!

Read his experience in CCTV at KLIA: Is that the cartoon network?

Are Republicans Ready to Mount a Comeback in the Northeast?

By Stuart Rothenberg

It’s so widely accepted as a truth that the Republican Party is clinically dead in the Northeast that no warnings to the contrary would even get a second look. But like so many other sweeping generalizations with more than a grain of truth, the death of the GOP in the Mid-Atlantic and New England states has been greatly exaggerated.

True, over the past decade, the GOP has been slaughtered in New England. Republicans don’t control a single state legislative chamber in the six-state region, and Democrats now hold all 21 of New England’s House seats after losing their last holdout, Rep. Christopher Shays, in southwestern Connecticut last year.

Democrats also hold nine of the region’s 12 Senate seats and hope to pick up a 10th in New Hampshire next year.

In the Mid-Atlantic, things aren’t much better for Republicans. New York, New Jersey, Delaware and Maryland each send two Democrats to the Senate, while Pennsylvania has one Democrat and one Republican, Arlen Specter — who is a top Democratic target in 2010. The GOP controls the Pennsylvania state Senate, but Democrats have a majority in each of the region’s other legislative chambers.

In the House, Republicans hold only one of Maryland’s eight districts, five of New Jersey’s 13 districts and just three of New York’s 29 districts. The GOP holds all of Delaware’s (OK, it’s just one), but only seven of Pennsylvania’s 19 House seats.

And in the 12 states in New England and the Mid-Atlantic, the GOP holds just three governorships: Rhode Island, Connecticut and Vermont.

But 2010 could be the start of a comeback for the GOP in the Northeast, in part because the party suffered such complete devastation that a bit of a rebound seems close to inevitable.

First, two of the party’s three governors are eligible to seek re-election, and Jim Douglas in Vermont and Jodi Rell in Connecticut are expected to do so. Rell is wildly popular and a solid favorite for another term, while Douglas is a more narrow favorite.

The GOP is likely to lose the Rhode Island governorship after holding it, somewhat surprisingly, for 16 years in a row. But Pennsylvania’s open governorship offers the GOP an excellent opportunity for a takeover, and Republicans may even be competitive in the race for Maine’s open governorship.

In New York, Republican Jim Tedisco is favored to win appointed Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand’s (D) open Congressional seat, adding to the GOP ranks in the state. Businessman Richard Hanna (R) came within an eyelash of upsetting Rep. Michael Arcuri (D) in November, and Republicans are certain to make another run at the two-term Democrat next year.

Assemblyman Greg Ball (R) is entering the race in New York’s 19th district (which stretches from Westchester almost to Poughkeepsie), giving the party a credible nominee against two-term Rep. John Hall (D) in a GOP-leaning district, and if the party can recruit a strong challenger to Rep. Eric Massa in the 29th district, the freshman Democrat could have major problems.

In statewide contests, Gillibrand could face a nasty Senate primary, as could Gov. David Paterson (D), giving Republicans two opportunities. The Democratic nominees would be favored in both races, but a strong GOP bid in either contest would boost party morale, helping further recruitment down the road and down the ballot.

In New Jersey, polling shows the favorite for the GOP gubernatorial nomination, former U.S. attorney Chris Christie, being a formidable opponent for Gov. Jon Corzine (D) later this year, especially given the state’s economic problems.

In Connecticut, Sen. Chris Dodd (D) suddenly looks weaker than ever, primarily because of allegations that he benefited from special treatment given to him by mortgage lender Countrywide Financial. Former Rep. Rob Simmons (R) is considering a run, and while he would be an underdog, he would at the very least be the most formidable GOP Senate candidate in Connecticut since Lowell Weicker in 1988.

If the National Republican Congressional Committee can recruit state Sen. John McKinney, 44, to run against freshman Rep. Jim Himes (D) in Connecticut’s 4th district, the GOP would also have a top-tier contest in the state. McKinney, the youngest child of former Rep. Stewart McKinney (R-Conn.), is in his fifth term in the state Senate, where he is Minority Leader.

Republicans will make major efforts to win back Maryland’s 1st district and Pennsylvania’s 10th — two seats that the party never should have lost because each remains very Republican territory. While the open New Hampshire Senate seat of retiring Sen. Judd Gregg (R) gives Democrats another opportunity for a gain in New England, Rep. Paul Hodes’ (D) Senate bid opens up his House seat, giving Republicans an excellent opportunity to win back another seat in the region.

I’m certainly not predicting major Republican gains in the Northeast, but given the avalanche of discussion about the death of the Republican Party from Maryland to Maine, it’s at the very least worth noting that, though fundamentally far weaker than it was 30 or 40 years ago, the GOP can still contest many races in the New England and Mid-Atlantic states.

It’s possible that 2009 and 2010 could be the beginning of a rebound for the party. While Democrats will continue to hold a clear advantage in the region, Republicans have the potential to become relevant once again.


This column first appeared in Roll Call on February 23, 2009. 2009 © Roll Call Inc. All rights reserved. Reprinted with permission.

Post-Fox Sime Darby

Bloggers had dinner with Tun Musa Hitam, the Sime Darby chairman, and Group Chief Executive Ahmad Zubir Murshid last night.

I agreed to the meeting for three reasons:

1. I have always liked Musa Hitam
2. I believe in constructive engagement between bloggers and the blogged
3. Fox Communications is no longer in the picture

Read The Scribe's take here. I hope to update this posting soon.

Updates:
Ena on Musa Hitam turning 75 this April, here.
De Minimis says "spinning won't help dodgy deals" here

Infighting

Is it me or are things getting just a little bit panicky in the Number 10 bunker? We have now had days of speculation as to who will succeed Gordon Brown either when he loses the General Election or even before.

Today's Independent does not fill one with confidence that things are under control in the Labour camp. They report that the Party's General Election co-ordinator, Douglas Alexander has warned that Labour is heading for opposition unless cabinet ministers stop manoeuvring for position:

Douglas Alexander protested that the infighting had angered and dismayed Labour activists who wanted ministers to concentrate on steering Britain through the recession.

His candid admission of the tensions around the cabinet table follows a week of growing speculation about Gordon Brown’s successor after the election.

Harriet Harman, the deputy Labour leader, has been accused by cabinet colleagues of undermining Mr Brown by appearing to position herself for a future leadership bid.

Ed Balls, the Schools Secretary, has faced charges that he is raising his profile for the same reason, while Alan Johnson, the Health Secretary, is being championed by many Labour MPs for being best-placed to take on David Cameron. Yvette Cooper, the Treasury Chief Secretary and Mr Balls’ wife, has even been floated as a surprise candidate for the leadership.

Hazel Blears has also piled in: “All this political positioning just helps the Tories,” she said. “My message to my colleagues is simple: get a grip. Our first loyalty is to the British people. If they think that we are more interested in our own jobs than theirs, they will not forgive us. If the mindset is all about what happens after some future election defeat, then the game’s up.”

The paper says that Labour’s nightmare scenario is that the party comes third behind the Liberal Democrats in the local elections and European elections in June. They believe that could trigger speculation of a final bid to unseat Mr Brown, in what would be an effort to limit the damage in the general election, which must be held by June 2010.

This seems quite a good scenario to me and one that is increasingly looking likely in the absence of any leadership from Gordon Brown himself.

It ain't over ...

Updated 2pm, 23/2/08
It Is Over, says Najib.
Read here.

Original posting:
Labu again? While many of us who campaigned against the Labu LCCT thought it's all over, Apanama remains the cynical one. Read his latest posting h e r e and you might just wonder who really has the last say with regards to Labu.

p.s. I heard Tony Fernandes had an audience recently with the statesman Dr M, a big opponent of the Labu project, but it could have been on anything. Like thanking the former PM for giving him the big break ...

Today In Tilting At Windmills

The mortgage deduction is indeed bad policy. Alas, it's pretty much an object lesson in path dependence; when you get policies like this wrong it's almost impossible to get rid of them. But making it less regressive is potentially viable and better than nothing.

Who are your going to believe? The Henrietta Hughes story.

Is It Time To Update Sherman Anti Trust?

One of the terms that I want to never hear again after this crisis is over is "too big to fail". If there is one thing that I want the American economy to never again face is any company that is viewed as "too big to fail". Our country has created all sorts of entities that are now too big to fail. Both Fannie/Freddie were created by the government, and it was the government that allowed them to dominate mortgage securitization and thus became too big to fail. Banking deregulation allowed financial institutions to be able to sell a major variety of financial products. It also lead to a period of consolidation and mergers. As such, we created a series of financial institutions, and with it a whole financial system, that was too big to fail. Finally, the auto industry it self is to vital to fail and so, with only three American players, all its players are too big to fail.

In the future, the country must do everything that it can to prevent ever again being held hostage to any company that can demand a handout by proclaiming that they are too big to fail. Never again should the country be held hostage to the corruption and incompetence of AIG and Citigroup. From now on, our economy must rid itself forever of any company that is too big to fail. I am not only a capitalist at heart but a true believer in free markets. Nothing is less capitalistic or free market than a company that is too big to fail. Such companies enjoy advantages that other companies don't. Furthermore, they have an inherent moral hazard as each of these companies expect to be bailed out if they fail because they are too big to fail.

In my opinion, the Sherman Anti Trust Act is one of the most important laws in the history of our nation. It is one of the greatest protectors of the free market. That's because it keeps companies from getting so big that they stifle competition. Some companies that fell under the discretion of Sherman include Standard Oil and AT&T.

Yet, the Sherman Act also put a lot of power and discretion into the hands of the government. In its idealistic it protects competition, but in reality it is open to abuse by any out of control government. So, Sherman could be updated to include any company that is too big to fail, but that update would also be open to abuse.

Such a law would be in many ways the anti thesis of everything I believe in. To update Sherman to include companies that are too big to fail would consolidate an obscene amount of new power in the hands of the government. As such, a new law would have to be narrowly defined to determine just how it would be determined that a company is truly to big too fail.

In fact, Sherman wouldn't even necessarily need to even be updated. Regulators already have to give green lights to mergers, however, these regulators allowed companies like Citigroup to grow so big that they became to big too fail. I believe there is room here for constructive legislation that can also be crafted so that power doesn't spin out of control. I do know for sure that to big too fail must be a thing of the past. Whether that is through new legislation or through a more refined regulatory attitude, our government must be committed to ending such companies.

David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson: Doing Film History

Doing Film History
by David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson
David Bordwell's Website on Cinema

Nearly everybody loves movies. We aren’t surprised that people rush to see the latest hit or rent a cult favorite from the video store. But there are some people who seek out old movies. And among those fans there’s a still smaller group studying them.

Let’s call “old movies” anything older than twenty years. This of course creates a moving target. Baby boomers like us don’t really consider The Godfather or M*A*S*H to be old movies, but many twentysomethings today will probably consider Pulp Fiction (1994) to be old — maybe because they saw it when they were in their teens. Our twenty-year cutoff is arbitrary, but in many cases that won’t matter. Everybody agrees that La Grande Illusion from 1935 is an old movie, though it still seems fresh and vital.

Now for the real question. Why would anyone be interested in watching and studying old movies?

Ask a film historian, professional or amateur, and you’ll get a variety of answers. For one thing, old films provide the same sorts of insights that we get from watching contemporary movies. Some offer intense artistic experiences or penetrating visions of human life in other times and places. Some are documents of everyday existence or of extraordinary historical events that continue to reverberate in our times. Still other old movies are resolutely strange. They resist assimilation to our current habits of thought. They force us to acknowledge that films can be radically different from what we are used to. They ask us to adjust our field of view to accommodate what was, astonishingly, taken for granted by people in earlier eras.

Another reason to study old movies is that film history encompasses more than just films. By studying how films were made and received, we discover how creators and audiences responded to their moment in history. By searching for social and cultural influences on films, we understand better the ways in which films bear the traces of the societies that made and consumed them. Film history opens up a range of important issues in politics, culture, and the arts—both “high” and “popular.”

Yet another answer to our question is this: Studying old movies and the times in which they were made is intrinsically fun. As a relatively new field of academic research (no more than sixty years old), film history has the excitement of a young discipline. Over the past few decades, many lost films have been recovered, little-known genres explored, and neglected filmmakers reevaluated. Ambitious retrospectives have revealed entire national cinemas that had been largely ignored. Even television, with some cable stations devoted wholly to the cinema of the past, brings into our living rooms movies that were previously rare and little-known.

And much more remains to be discovered. There are more old movies than new ones and, hence, many more chances for fascinating viewing experiences.

We think that studying film history is so interesting and important that during the late 1980s we began to write a book surveying the field. The first edition of Film History: An Introduction appeared in 1994, the second in 2003, and the third will be published in spring of 2009. In this book we have tried to introduce the history of cinema as it is conceived, written, and taught by its most accomplished scholars. But the book isn’t a distillation of all film history. We have had to rule out certain types of cinema that are important, most notably educational, industrial, scientific, and pornographic films. We limit our scope to theatrical fiction films, documentary films, experimental or avant-garde filmmaking, and animation—realms of filmmaking that are most frequently studied in college courses.

Researchers are fond of saying that there is no film history, only film histories. For some, this means that there can be no intelligible, coherent “grand narrative” that puts all the facts into place. The history of avant-garde film does not fit neatly into the history of color technology or the development of the Western or the life of John Ford. For others, film history means that historians work from various perspectives and with different interests and purposes.

We agree with both points. There is no Big Story of Film History that accounts for all events, causes, and consequences. And the variety of historical approaches guarantees that historians will draw diverse conclusions.

We also think that research into film history involves asking a series of questions and searching for evidence in order to answer them in the course of an argument. When historians focus on different questions, turn up different evidence, and formulate different explanations, we derive not a single history but a diverse set of historical arguments.

To Read the Rest of the Essay

Tautology Is Not A Plan

I'm not really sure about why there seems to be an endless market for op-eds in which Will Saletan informs us that the answer to political conflict just happens to coincide with Will Saletan's normative positions on all the issues. Although, to be fair, his position is not entirely unchanged. For example, now that the Democrats control all three branches of government federal elections are apparently no longer referenda on abortion -- instead, it's crucial that Democrats above all expect that abortion is profoundly icky because the nation's Moral Sage Will Saletan says it is. Amazing.

You know what I want (or maybe you don't)

One uncomfortable truth about this still incredibly rich country is that fully half of middle-aged and older Americans own essentially nothing. The median 50-year-old has no retirement savings to speak of. Not "inadequate savings to retire comfortably with," but none, or so close to none as to make no difference.

Arguments about Social Security and Medicare often manage to avoid any contact with this fact.

Of course as soon as the Dow gets to 36,000 these problems will seem less acute.

From Colony to Superpower XII: The Calm Before...

Chapter XII of From Colony to Superpower covers the period between 1932 and 1941. This is, as far as I can recall, the first time that Herring has broken up a presidential administration across chapters. This is, of course, a sensible enough move in the context of the Roosevelt administration...

Herring goes into some detail on international efforts to ameliorate the Great Depression. FDR does not come off well; he has little interest in accomodation with Europe, and minimal diplomatic skill. Given the immense size of the US economy relative to any European economy, this pretty much doomed the effort to create a multilateral response to the Depression. In fairness to Roosevelt, the international economy was not nearly as institutionalized in the 1930s as it would be post-war, but I suspect, nevertheless, that much good could have been accomplished by focusing on the disaster that was overtaking the entire Atlantic community, rather than to disaggregate the problem into a series of separate, national disasters. Although Roosevelt certainly understood the nature of the crisis, he may not have fully grasped its international dimension, or the possibility that international action could remedy, if not solve, certain aspects of the Depression.

Wholly apart from the Depression, the decade 1931-1940 was, of course, quite eventful. Roosevelt followed Hoover's non-confrontational policy with Japan over Manchuria, but he did break with precedent by extending full diplomatic recognition to the Soviet Union. Herring doesn't dwell overmuch on Roosevelt's conduct of relations with Japan, hitting the high points and moving on. It does merit note that Roosevelt's Asia policy was well within the American mainstream in the first half of the twentieth century; the US strongly preferred access to China, and was willing to take a number of steps short of war to preserve that access. What changed between 1931 and 1941 was the Japanese invasion of China, and then (perhaps more important) Japan's linkage with the European Axis and Japan's seizure of French Indochina. The notion that Roosevelt "forced" Japan into war hardly merits attention; Japan was dependent on US resources in order to pursue its conquest of China and SE Asia. In response to US pressure it could have abandoned such policies; while the outcome of the oil embargo was predictable, it doesn't follow that Roosevelt was responsible for the Japanese decision.

While the US maintained diplomatic relations with Germany well into the Second World War (although the US ambassador was recalled in 1938), there was never much question as to where Roosevelt's sympathies lay. Herring's account doesn't differ from most other accounts of this period in suggesting that Roosevelt was willing to take reasonable risks on behalf of the United Kingdom, and that he identified Nazi Germany as a serious threat to American security. These steps are familiar; exchange of military information, loans, arms exports, Lend Lease, and eventually direct cooperation in the anti-submarine war. By December 1941, the United States was already de facto at war with Germany; Hitler's declaration of war simply made things official, and opened American coastal shipping to U-boat devastation.

US relations with Latin America reached a high point during this decade. The US didn't have the means to muck around in Central America or the Caribbean, nor did Roosevelt have much of a taste for such adventurism. The result was the Good Neighbor policy, which minimized chances for intervention while continuing to push trade contact. The situation became somewhat more complicated with the rise of German influence in Latin America, leading the US to make a variety of trade and political concessions in return for the excision of German capital and advisors. For example, Mexican nationalization of US owned oil assets in 1938 brought hardly a peep from the US, as long as Mexico agreed to minimize its contacts with Japan and the European Axis. Military-to-military connections (these would eventually grow into the School of the Americas) also began during this period.

More soon...

Jim Bunning Explained

With apologies to Marmaduke, it seems worth noting that Jim Bunning is an asshole.

Magic Bullet Still Missing in Energy Independence

The president made clear that energy independence will be one of his priorities. He laid out a world in which our country was free of our dependence on foreign oil.

It begins with energy.

We know the country that harnesses the power of clean, renewable energy will lead the 21st century. And yet, it is China that has launched the largest effort in history to make their economy energy efficient. We invented solar technology, but we've fallen behind countries like Germany and Japan in producing it. New plug-in hybrids roll off our assembly lines, but they will run on batteries made in Korea.

Well I do not accept a future where the jobs and industries of tomorrow take root beyond our borders - and I know you don't either. It is time for America to lead again.Thanks to our recovery plan, we will double this nation's supply of renewable energy in the next three years. We have also made the largest investment in basic research funding in American history - an investment that will spur not only new discoveries in energy, but breakthroughs in medicine, science, and technology.

We will soon lay down thousands of miles of power lines that can carry new energy to cities and towns across this country. And we will put Americans to work making our homes and buildings more efficient so that we can save billions of dollars on our energy bills.

But to truly transform our economy, protect our security, and save our planet from the ravages of climate change, we need to ultimately make clean, renewable energy the profitable kind of energy. So I ask this Congress to send me legislation that places a market-based cap on carbon pollution and drives the production of more renewable energy in America. And to support that innovation, we will invest fifteen billion dollars a year to develop technologies like wind power and solar power; advanced biofuels, clean coal, and more fuel-efficient cars and trucks built right here in America.

The President believes that energy independence comes from the government spending tens of billions of Dollars on investment, infrastructure, and research. The President believes that all that is necessary for energy independence is a full commitment by the government. If only it were that simple.

The President, along with most that attempt to solve this problem, continue, in my opinion, to miss the big problem. The bulk of our dependence continues to be oil to fuel our automobiles. There are, and always have been, an abundance of alternatives to fuel derived from oil: hydrogen, biofuels, ethanol, battery, etc. The problem has never been research. It isn't even will. The problem is that there is a monopoly on the manner in which fuel is delivered.(the oil companies) Not only is there a monopoly but that monopoly has created a system in which competition has little chance for success.

In any given neighborhood, there is a gas station every four to eight blocks. Each of these gas stations delivers gas from oil. Every once in a while, there will be an alternative like ethanol but not often. As such, for any alternative fuel vehicle to have any hope of mass market success, fuel must be as readily available for that car as it is for a car fueled by oil. At this year's Chicago Auto Show, Saturn produced a concept car that was a hybrid, electric and bio fuels. This is a concept a long way from being real because there is absolutely no place to fill up on gas from bio fuels. As I have said before, the oil companies have no interest in bringing an alternative fuel to the market. The oil companies will continue to only have fuel made from oil readily available every four to eight blocks. Because of that convenience, it is nearly impossible for any alternative fuel to have any mass appeal. If it is nearly impossible to re fuel, that automobile will NOT have any mass appeal. The problem was in fact crystallized at a Pickens Plan townhall meeting.

This was illustrated by something that Rahm Emanuel said while introducing Mr. Pickens. He mentioned that in 2005, he and Senator Obama secured $1.8 million for the city of Chicago, and that money went to build four, YES FOUR, natural gas fuel stations. Furthermore, Congressman Emanuel seems to think that he actually did something worthwhile. In fact, Congressman Emanuel illustrated the problem as I see it in attempting to move this country from oil to alternative sources as it relates to automobiles. Those four natural gas fuel stations would compete with about ten thousand regular fuel stations that provide gas derived from oil.

How can alternative energy sources compete when oil is so readily available as a fueling option?

We can spend billions and even trillions on investment, infrastructure, and research however all of it will be useless, unless someone figures out a way to bring alternative fuels to the market in a way that is at least close to as convenient as gas from oil is now. Since the oil companies themselves refuse to engage in this, all the government money in the world will have little effect.

Peter Thompson: Face to Faith

Face to faith: Religion is not a delusion but a quest for 'home'. Let's locate this here on earth
by Peter Thompson
The Guardian (United Kingdom)



According to Ernst Bloch, "only an atheist can be a good Christian and only a Christian can be a good atheist." Since Bloch's death in 1977, he has been largely forgotten as a significant contributor to the debate about the role of religion in society. But in an age when theism is constantly in the news, it is time for a more considered atheistic response to the reawakening of faith than those of Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens. What Bloch meant was that the Aunt Sally atheism as practised by those writers brings us no further in understanding either the historical or social roots of religion. For him it was not enough to posit religious belief as a delusion. The basis of belief, he said, rests in a social context.

So far, so Marxist. But where Bloch differed from other Marxists was in his insistence that it was not possible to simply dismiss religion as "the sigh of the oppressed creature in a hostile world" without recognising that the sigh contained the pre-illumination of a different and better world. The familiar reproach towards Marxism that it is simply a materialist version of religious belief was thus inverted by Bloch to state that, on the contrary, religious belief was always a form of social liberation which had misunderstood itself due to its historical untimeliness. Of course, the death of Marxism may partly explain the absence of Bloch's ideas from the philosophical scene, but that does not obviate the need to examine those ideas, not least because the demise of Marxism as a social alternative is arguably one of the factors which has contributed to the re-emergence of religion as a reaction to the new world order.

The resurrection of God presents a challenge to those such as Dawkins and Hitchens because they continue to perceive religion as an opiate which is handed out by states and their tame priests and mullahs in order to keep people quiet, rather than as a home-grown product consumed by people in order to dull the pain not only of global economic disadvantage but also of a deep, yet unidentifiable sense of loss. And again it is Bloch who gives us a clue as to where this sense of loss resides. In The Principle of Hope he states that what drives us forward is the paradoxical desire to find our way back to somewhere we have never been: home.

To Read the Rest of the Commentary

Light at the End of the (Gas) Tunnel?

Ukrainian Radio is reporting that prime ministers Tymoshenko and Putin may have come to the beginnings of a settlement that would get gas flowing to Europe. Tymoshenko dispatched a telegram (telegrams still get used these days?) to Moscow in which "she guaranteed that the total volume of natural gas that Russia will give to the Ukrainian gas transportation system will be delivered to the European Union countries, except for eight percent of gas which is used for work of gas pumping aggregates of the transportation system. ... the Ukrainian Government gives the Russian Government guarantees of payment for natural gas that will be used for technical needs immediately after setting a price of Russian natural gas for Ukraine." The report concludes that "Yuliya Tymoshenko believes that finding of a compromise is possible."

Tymoshenko seems to be rising in Western estimations in contrast to President Yushchenko. The Economist notes, President Viktor Yushchenko has undermined the efforts of his prime minister, Yulia Tymoshenko, to do a deal. He has tried to shore up his own flagging support by fulminating against Russia.

So if Tymoshenko and Putin get a firm deal when they meet this weekend, her stock goes up not just in Ukraine but in Europe. So it will be interesting to see what happens.

Countering the Mortgage Bailout: Ethically, Philosophically, and Economically

If you listen to most defenders of the President's $275 billion bailout of troubled mortgage borrowers it is a "yeah but" argument. Yes, we may be bailing out those that overbought, but we need to do it to stabilize housing. Yes, this maybe rewarding bad behavior, but everyone suffers from mass foreclosures. Yes, many of these borrowers likely lied to get a loan in the first place, but our banking system requires that these toxic loans be replaced. It's a sort of desperate times call for desperate action argument. For an example, here is how two leading Democrats put it.

Rep. Bruce Braley (D-Iowa), who founded the House Populist Caucus, says the president has actually gone “to great lengths” not to reward people who have been irresponsible, and that the plan is really an effort to stem another wave of foreclosures in order to stabilize the housing market, which would be to everyone’s benefit.

Michigan Gov. Jennifer M. Granholm, also a Democrat, agrees: “This is not directed at those who didn’t play by the rules,” she says. “It’s directed at trying to fix a system so everyone can stay in their homes and so that everyone’s community is not negatively affected by the foreclosures that are popping up all over that neighborhood.”

All of this rhetoric may sound reasonable but in fact, this mortgage bailout fails not only ethically, but philosophically and mostly importantly economically.

Ethically, the President has assured everyone that this plan will only help those that "played by the rules". Not only is this something that all politicians say, but the numbers simply don't add up. President Obama promises to save up to 9 million homeowners. We aren't in this mess because people played by the rules and fell on hard times. We are in this mess because people lied on their applications and simply overbought. To help 9 million borrowers is to help many that overbought. To only help those that fell on hard times is to only help a few hundred thousand. Furthermore, that help would do little to stabilize housing. Now, we can have a philosophical debate on whether or not someone that lost their job or got sick should get a better mortgage, but in fact that debate is moot. This plan will mostly help those that simply overbought. The numbers tell the story.

Philosophically, this bailout creates a moral hazard. It rewards bad behavior. That's just the long and short of it. In order to qualify for a loan modification, the process is nearly the reverse of a regular qualification. You want to show an inability to pay your current mortgage in order to get a better one. If someone gets a mortgage they can't afford and then is rewarded with a better one, that only encourages more people to get mortgages they can't afford.

The most important argument is the economic one. That's because supporters want all of us to forget the ethical and philosophical one because they tell us that we need to swallow them for the greater good. The problem is that there is no greater good. First, there are those that say this is the only way to stabilize housing and thus that is good for everyone. This is very misleading. First, if you are a renter, you want to see housing dropping as it is. Second, stable housing is only good for those looking to sell immediately. If you plan on being in your property for five ten or even twenty years, a housing crash is of little consequence. Rather, what you really want is to reach a bottom as quickly as possible. The only way to do that is to see all of these troubled borrowers dealt with as soon as possible.

Foreclosures do bring down property values but they only bring them down for six to twelve months. So, it is really only those looking to sell right now that are hurt. Plus, for every foreclosure there is a buyer. If the government steps in to save a borrower, there is a real estate investor that is unable to get a property at a cheap value. So, this idea that stemming foreclosures helps everyone is dubious at best and disingenuous at worst.

Finally, there is the argument that banks need this in order to remove all of these toxic assets. All you need to do is look at recent loan modification history to understand how frivolous that argument is.

Many borrowers who received help with mortgage modifications earlier this year tended to re-default on their payments, a top U.S. banking regulator said on Monday, citing recent data.

"The results, I confess, were somewhat surprising, and not in a good way," John Dugan, head of the U.S. Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, said in prepared remarks for a U.S. housing forum.

"Put simply, it shows that over half of mortgage modifications seemed not to be working after six months."

The latest figures on loans that have been modified in the last twelve months show that more than half go into default within six months. To understand how much of a problem this is for the system, one needs to have a perspective on how good a deals these loan modifications are. Borrowers average rates at about 5%. Often, they have their balances reduced. Rates can be as low as one percent. To offer deals that good on a mass scale, banks would need to have re default rates of less than one percent. Fannie/Freddie loans aren't that good and if their default rates pass one percent that becomes a problem. Yet, default rates approach 50 percent on loan modifications. That is an untennable figure. If the default rates came anywhere near that in the President's program, we truly would turn a crisis into a catastrophe. Banks simply can't sustain a mass of loans at 2%, 3%, 4%, and 5% and have half of them default. They aren't making nearly enough on each loan to sustain those default rates.

Furthermore, with default rates anywhere near there, the housing market wouldn't stabilize anyway. We would still have 30%, 40%, or 50% of these nine million homeowners get defaulted. We would just do it with banks carrying the other half at below market rates. That's truly a recipe for economic disaster.

NATO Half Full? (and North Korea too)

Secretary of State Clinton sees the positive side of the news from the NATO ministerial meeting. Asked by James Rosen whether she thought the committment by the other 26 alliance members to send an additional 1,400 troops was a "disappointingly low figure"--signaling that, so far, the Obama team has been no more successful than the Bush one in convincing Europeans to take up more of the burden--she replied:

Well, we are only at the beginning of that process. Secretary Gates knew that there were some who were ready to commit now, and [he] obviously made the ask. But we are in the midst of our policy review, and I think that a number of countries are waiting to see more specifically what our plan is, why we think their contribution of troops would be helpful. But also, it's important, James, to point out that we want their civilian help as well. We want their help training the Afghan army; we want their help training the Afghan police. So there's going to be a number of ways people can contribute.

I found it interesting that the fallback is to go back to the old "we provide the military and they can provide more civilian help" divide, which is something I thought we were trying to move away from.

Also interesting to read the discussion about North Korea and it reminds me of known unknowns and unknown unknowns. On a North Korean enriched uranium program: "I am going to be as, as, as clear as I can be about this. I think that there is a, a sense among many who have studied this that there may be some program, somewhere. But no one can point to any specific location. Nor can they point to any specific outcome of whatever might have gone on, if anything did."

Illinois' Corruption Dance Continues

Illinois' new Governor, Pat Quinn, became the latest in a long line of Illinois powerbrokers to ask that U.S. Senator Roland Burris resign.

Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn says Sen. Roland Burris should resign his post for the good of the state. Quinn said Friday that his fellow Democrat, Burris, is an honorable man. But he says controversy surrounding Burris' appointment has cast a shadow over his service in the Senate.

"It was a gigantic mistake for him (Burris) to take the appointment in the first place," Quinn told a news conference.

Quinn joins the Comptroller, US Congresswoman Jan Schakowski as well as both newspapers, the Sun Times and Chicago Tribune, among a host of politicians and media that are now demanding that Burris resign. Judging by the righteous indignation all these folks now exhibity, I almost forgot how all of them referred to Burris not but two months ago., almost. Let's remember, when Burris was first selected by Blago, most everyone in the state was very careful not to impugn Burris' character. In fact, no one had a problem with Burris' selection per se, or even the process by which Blago ultimately selected him. They all just had a problem with the fact that Blago selected anyone at all. Yet, it was universally understood that even though Burris accepted the nomination of an obviously corrupt Governor, he was himself a man of unquestioned integrity.

My, how times have changed? Now, it is Burris' integrity that is being questioned. What's really remarkable about Burris' behavior is that it might be even more brazen than Blago's. Burris knew full well that Blago was being taped. He knew full well that a full investigation was being conducted into what sorts of quid pro quos were agreed to in relation to this seat. He was even under oath. Yet, that didn't stop him from lying blatantly regardless.

Now, when one politician commits such a brazen act of corruption, we could chalk it up to their own character flaws. When two politicians commit such brazen acts of corruption in such proximity, we all must come to the realization that it is the environment that surrounds them that causes them to think they can get away with it.

So, now the political class in Illinois will each take their turns letting the public know that what Burris did was unacceptable. Expect most every politician to demand his resignation over the next week. In fact, soon after, Burris will realize that his gig is up and he will resign. Make no mistake, none of them have any serious intentions of confronting the systemic corruption that allows for such consistent acts of brazen corruption. In fact, most are themselves players in this corruption.

In fact, only John Kass, of the Tribune, asks another relevant question about the Burris scandal.

Burris' few lies to a state impeachment committee are nothing compared with the hundreds of millions devoured by corruption in the Daley administration. And Madigan still hasn't been held to account for his flunky, state Rep. Barbara Flynn Currie (D-Madigan), holding onto the bombshell Burris affidavit—the one in which Burris revealed his earlier lies under oath—by slipping it into her desk drawer.

That the powers that be originally wanted to bury Burris' subsequent addendum to his original affidavit is something that you are likely not hear just about anyone except Kass address. That's because John Kass is part of an exclusive club here in Illinois. He is a genuine anti corruption individual. The rest of them only tell the rest of us what they think we want to hear, or usually, what it becomes obvious they all need to say. (in this case that what Burris did is unacceptable and he needs to resign) Most have no intention of doing nothing more than going through the motions when it comes to corruption.

So, the corruption dance will continue. The Illinois media and political class will again be shocked, shocked I say, that there is corruption in our state. They will all demand that Burris resign and then everyone, short of Kass, will go back to business as usual...until the next scandal that demands comment occurs that is.

Preserve Fantasy Raptor Jobs

Would shutting down the Raptor really put 95000 people out of work? No. David Axe has the data:

Problem is, that 95,000 number counts indirect employment at firms for whom the F-22 program is just one of many clients. And it also counts Lockheed assembly workers who are in high demand for other aviation projects. In fact, ending Raptor production today might not result in a single unemployed aerospace worker.

Not to belabor the point, but this is one of the things that Mark Bowden might have bothered to research when writing his Atlantic article about the F-22. Unfortunately, he did not; rather, he uncritically repeated claims made by pilots and manufacturers (neither groups are noted for supplying informed, unbiased economic data) as to the aircraft's merits and economic impact. I would say that Bowden's article is singularly terrible (see James Fallows on this point), but for the fact that the article is a near repeat of Robert Kaplan's.... affectionate take on the B-2.

In any case, the F-22 topic of the day is that the Air Force has requested another 60 Raptors, which is a substantial reduction from what the Air Force wanted (380 fighters), but a substantial increase over what some defense analysts are willing to give. It's fair to say that my own thinking on this issue has evolved. While the United States is unlikely to face a crisis of air superiority in the short or medium term, it's true enough that foreign designs have become competitive with the best US air superiority aircraft, short of the F-22. Better training still gives the US a substantial edge, but it is nice to have the best aircraft available. I have also become steadily more disillusioned with the progress of the F-35 Lightning II; it's becoming apparent that the capabilities gap between the F-22 and the F-35 will be huge, but the price tag gap won't be very large at all.

Thus, while the entire F-22 project may have been a serious misallocation of resources, I don't think it naturally follows that buying an additional sixty aircraft, at this point, is a terrible idea. From an initial position it probably would have made more sense to continue production of advanced F-15s and F-16s. From where we are now, though, there seems to be little point in taking a step back. I doubt very much that there will ever be a manned air superiority aircraft better than the F-22; it will probably be the last of its kind.

Cross-posted to TAPPED.

Ziga Vodovnik: An Interview with Howard Zinn on Anarchism

An Interview with Howard Zinn on Anarchism: Rebels Against Tyranny
By ZIGA VODOVNIK
Counterpunch



...

ZV: Anarchism is in this respect rightly opposing representative democracy since it is still form of tyranny – tyranny of majority. They object to the notion of majority vote, noting that the views of the majority do not always coincide with the morally right one. Thoreau once wrote that we have an obligation to act according to the dictates of our conscience, even if the latter goes against the majority opinion or the laws of the society. Do you agree with this?

HZ: Absolutely. Rousseau once said, if I am part of a group of 100 people, do 99 people have the right to sentence me to death, just because they are majority? No, majorities can be wrong, majorities can overrule rights of minorities. If majorities ruled, we could still have slavery. 80% of the population once enslaved 20% of the population. While run by majority rule that is ok. That is very flawed notion of what democracy is. Democracy has to take into account several things – proportionate requirements of people, not just needs of the majority, but also needs of the minority. And also has to take into account that majority, especially in societies where the media manipulates public opinion, can be totally wrong and evil. So yes, people have to act according to conscience and not by majority vote.

ZV: Where do you see the historical origins of anarchism in the United States?

HZ: One of the problems with dealing with anarchism is that there are many people whose ideas are anarchist, but who do not necessarily call themselves anarchists. The word was first used by Proudhon in the middle of the 19th century, but actually there were anarchist ideas that proceeded Proudhon, those in Europe and also in the United States. For instance, there are some ideas of Thomas Paine, who was not an anarchist, who would not call himself an anarchist, but he was suspicious of government. Also Henry David Thoreau. He does not know the word anarchism, and does not use the word anarchism, but Thoreau’s ideas are very close to anarchism. He is very hostile to all forms of government. If we trace origins of anarchism in the United States, then probably Thoreau is the closest you can come to an early American anarchist. You do not really encounter anarchism until after the Civil War, when you have European anarchists, especially German anarchists, coming to the United States. They actually begin to organize. The first time that anarchism has an organized force and becomes publicly known in the United States is in Chicago at the time of Haymarket Affair.

ZV: Where do you see the main inspiration of contemporary anarchism in the United States? What is your opinion about the Transcendentalism – i.e., Henry D. Thoreau, Ralph W. Emerson, Walt Whitman, Margaret Fuller, et al. – as an inspiration in this perspective?

HZ: Well, the Transcendentalism is, we might say, an early form of anarchism. The Transcendentalists also did not call themselves anarchists, but there are anarchist ideas in their thinking and in their literature. In many ways Herman Melville shows some of those anarchist ideas. They were all suspicious of authority. We might say that the Transcendentalism played a role in creating an atmosphere of skepticism towards authority, towards government.
Unfortunately, today there is no real organized anarchist movement in the United States. There are many important groups or collectives that call themselves anarchist, but they are small. I remember that in 1960s there was an anarchist collective here in Boston that consisted of fifteen (sic!) people, but then they split. But in 1960s the idea of anarchism became more important in connection with the movements of 1960s.

ZV: Most of the creative energy for radical politics is nowadays coming from anarchism, but only few of the people involved in the movement actually call themselves “anarchists”. Where do you see the main reason for this? Are activists ashamed to identify themselves with this intellectual tradition, or rather they are true to the commitment that real emancipation needs emancipation from any label?

HZ: The term anarchism has become associated with two phenomena with which real anarchist don’t want to associate themselves with. One is violence, and the other is disorder or chaos. The popular conception of anarchism is on the one hand bomb-throwing and terrorism, and on the other hand no rules, no regulations, no discipline, everybody does what they want, confusion, etc. That is why there is a reluctance to use the term anarchism. But actually the ideas of anarchism are incorporated in the way the movements of the 1960s began to think.

I think that probably the best manifestation of that was in the civil rights movement with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee – SNCC. SNCC without knowing about anarchism as philosophy embodied the characteristics of anarchism. They were decentralized. Other civil rights organizations, for example Seven Christian Leadership Conference, were centralized organizations with a leader – Martin Luther King. National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) were based in New York, and also had some kind of centralized organization. SNCC, on the other hand, was totally decentralized. It had what they called field secretaries, who worked in little towns all over the South, with great deal of autonomy. They had an office in Atlanta, Georgia, but the office was not a strong centralized authority. The people who were working out in the field – in Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Mississippi – they were very much on their own. They were working together with local people, with grassroots people. And so there is no one leader for SNCC, and also great suspicion of government.

They could not depend on government to help them, to support them, even though the government of the time, in the early 1960s, was considered to be progressive, liberal. John F. Kennedy especially. But they looked at John F. Kennedy, they saw how he behaved. John F. Kennedy was not supporting the Southern movement for equal rights for Black people. He was appointing the segregationists judges in the South, he was allowing southern segregationists to do whatever they wanted to do. So SNCC was decentralized, anti-government, without leadership, but they did not have a vision of a future society like the anarchists. They were not thinking long term, they were not asking what kind of society shall we have in the future. They were really concentrated on immediate problem of racial segregation. But their attitude, the way they worked, the way they were organized, was along, you might say, anarchist lines.

ZV: Do you thing that pejorative (mis)usage of the word anarchism is direct consequence of the fact that the ideas that people can be free, was and is very frightening to those in power?

HZ: No doubt! No doubt that anarchist ideas are frightening to those in power. People in power can tolerate liberal ideas. They can tolerate ideas that call for reforms, but they cannot tolerate the idea that there will be no state, no central authority. So it is very important for them to ridicule the idea of anarchism to create this impression of anarchism as violent and chaotic. It is useful for them, yes.

To Read the Entire Interview

God: Knock It Off!

(Courtesy of Ear Candle Productions)

Spamamusement

Framing Reality: Rhetoric, Language and Concepts (archive)

(Rough archive compiled for my students--suggestions of other sources, websites, documentaries and books/essay are appreciated)

Framing Reality: Rhetoric, Language and Concepts

Rob Pope: Communication (English Studies)

Matthew Nisbet: What is Framing? (How media influences and shapes science-policy debates)

Jon May: Social Constructionism (Geography)

Slavoj Zizek: The Enchainments of Meaning (Critical Theory)

Defining and Using Words/Concepts (Notes/Comments by Michael Benton)

Thinking About Writing and Language (bibliography)

Collective Memory: Remembrance and Representation (bibliography)

W. Lance Bennett, Regina G. Lawrence, and Steven Livingston: An excerpt from When the Press Fails: Political Power and the News Media from Iraq to Katrina (Communication Studies of News Media Framing)

W. Lance Bennet: Political Communication Resources

Brian Holmes: Imaginary Maps, Global Solidarities (Maps: Framing Reality)

The Christian Century: Protecting Against Media Bias

Stephen Ledman: Robert McChesney's: The Political Economy Of Media, Part 1 (Political Economy of Media)

Robert W. McChesney: Rich Media, Poor Democracy (Political Economy of Media)

Notes/Resources on Rich Media, Poor Democracy (Michael Benton)

Jay Rosen: The News About the News (Journalism)

Douglas Rushkoff: Coercion—Why We Listen to What They Say (Media Studies)

Noam Chomsky (Political Propaganda and Media Framing—global perspective)

Howard Zinn (History and Media)

Nancy Snow (American persuasion, influence and propaganda—on a global perspective)

Media Czech: Fun and Games at the Creation Museum (Religious Rhetoric/Museum Exhibits)

The Language of the War on Terror (archive)

Deleuze and Guattari: Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia (Experimental theorization on how traditional psychological/psychoanalytic theories have shaped our reality)

Chalmers Johnson: Nemesis—The Last Days of the American Republic (Political Rhetoric of American Militarism). A Democracy Now interview of Chalmers Johnson about the book Interview of Chalmers Johnson: “Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic.” Also: Inverted Totalitarianism: A New Way of Understanding How the U.S. Is Controlled

Corporate Greenwashing ("astroturf organizations": corporate framing of their businesses as “green” to fool concerned environmentalist consumers)

Naomi Klein: Shock Doctrine—The Rise of Disaster Capitalism (rhetoric of the free-market economic revolution and its influence on American political/military/foreign policy worldwide) and a Democracy Now interview with Klein about the book and various video lectures by Klein on the subject

Ruth Shagoury Hubbard: The Truth About Helen Keller (selective framing of historical figures)

Thinking About Culture, Nationalism, War, Empire, Rhetoric and Media (archive)

Myths and Falsehoods About Oil Prices (Economic Framing)

David Brin: "Star Wars" despots vs. "Star Trek" populists (narrative framing)

Philip K. Dick: "If you can control the meaning of words, you can control the people who use the words" (Science Fiction Author Reflecting on the Framing of Reality)

Cormac Deane: The Embedded Screen and the State of Exception--Counterterrorist Narratives and the War on Terror (Framing in Entertainment Media)