It's a Desert in the Political Center

Bravo. Well said. So why do we settle for this?

http://campaignstops.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/09/27/the-unraveling-of-government/?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20120928

If you're not speaking out, you're not paying attention

Today's story is a farm bill hammered out in secrecy and planned to be slipped into another bill and voted on without debate.  That, as I recall, is not how policy is supposed to be made in a democracy.  You can read here.
DesMoines Register

The question, to me, is whether I'm willing to take responsibility for knowing what's going on, for educating myself, and for doing something about it.  Emails to legislators work.  Social media helps spread information.  And unless I'm willing to make the effort to be aware and then spread the word, I have no right to complain.

It's hard work.  We can't possibly know all that's going on but we can pay attention to what other people reveal.  Then comes the harder work - getting educated.  Knowing the pros and cons and learning the questions to ask.  And next step is to start talking.  Bring up whatever concerns we encounter - whether they're the environmental risks of hydraulic fracturing, the unhealthy impact of mass production and chemicals on our food supply, the inextricable ties between policy makers and big business, the failure of our educational system and the destruction of the middle class. 

It's good work.  It's essential work.

Watching the Jobs Go

This may just be too depressing - but look anyway. If you hide your head in the sand, you can't help, can you? There's a place you can go to see what jobs have been lost.

http://layofftracker.blogspot.com/

Why do you need to know this, you ask? Is it necessary to bury ourselves in this misery up to our necks just to feel connected? Well, maybe. But there's another reason.

Most of the problems this country has had stemmed from blind trust. We believed what we were told. Some of us were naive, some just gullible, others too lazy to check the facts. Or some combination of the above. Those days are over if we want things to get better. It's time to take responsibility, check the facts, know what's really going on and then make sure the people we elect to take action hear whatever opinion we have. Those opinions have extra gravitas because they're informed opinions, not knee-jerk "I heard it from him/her so it MUST be true!"

I know a guy who says his father used to yell at him for spouting out other people's opinions as fact. "Papagallo!" his dad hollered. (That's Italian for parrot.) "Make up your own mind!"

Good advice, America. Good advice, planet. Blindly following whoever sounds good or makes us feel better has gotten us into nothing but trouble. Any institution that insists on blind faith has some explaining to do. We are thinking creatures. We reason - or we should. Think, study and form your own conclusions.

So back to the litany of misery - we need to know what jobs are being lost and where. We need to be informed about how bad things are. We need to know if it's urgent. Because if we sit back and wait for politicians to make it all better with no pressure from us, we're going right over a cliff. And we will be the ones to blame.

YES! The good side of the economy!

It's almost horrible, yet somehow very comforting. For the first time ever, poor people are happier than rich people.

How can this be, you ask? Well, it actually makes sense. If you're poor, nothing's changed for you, has it? Life was tough before and it's still tough. In fact, prices are coming down a bit.

But if you're rich, whoa Nellie! You're scared to death - you might lose your job - maybe you invested your big bucks with a shyster - maybe your stocks have tanked. You might become gasp MIDDLE CLASS!

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-henry-sterry/poor-people-happier-than_b_164772.html

Now of course nobody's talking about the middle class - we working shlumps who go to school, get a job and then work fifty weeks a year fifty hours a week to make ends meet and try to afford a vacation once every five years or so.

We didn't lose anything with Bernie Madoff. Most of us don't have any stocks, except for maybe a 401K through work that's now worthless. Our lives go on as before, except maybe it's becoming less likely that our kids will be able to get the education we had. The other big change is that we're not talking about retirement anymore. We don't expect to retire. Even if we want to. We're going to be working until the day we die and we just hope we can stay healthy and keep going.

Maybe this economy will level out the playing field a little. Maybe it's time we finally realize we're all in this together - and maybe it's time to grow up, reach out and all work together.

Are you listening, Congress?


Thanks to the Huffington Post for this one.

Why I Love Rachel Maddow

I'm no groupie. I'm not a gay activist. I hate television and I hate myself when I sit in front of it, mindlessly flipping around.

But I love Rachel Maddow and an hour with her makes me feel pretty damned good about our chances.

Rachel, if you have somehow missed her, is the snarky host of MSNBC's The Rachel Maddow Show. She's got a radio show on Air America. She's the smart ass kid you wanted on your softball team, and she's all grown up and poking holes in political stupidity - no matter what side of the aisle it's on.

Ignore what MSNBC's done to make her acceptable to mainstream America - turned a shortstop into a glamor girl with flappy eyelashes. Listen to her.

She's intelligent, she backs up her opinions with fact, and she cares. When she's outraged, she doesn't mince any words. But she never descends into shrill rants. Take a note, Fox News. Aw, let's be even handed here - Keith Olbermann might want to borrow a page from his protege as well.

Last night, Rachel discussed the stimulus.

She devoted her show to debunking what she called "bull pucky" arguments against the stimulus plan, and arguing against the compromises that were made to get it past the GOP objections.

She gave facts and figures showing that tax cuts don't stimulate the economy nearly as well as infrastructure spending and funding food stamps. And she was clearly outraged that common sense gets shouted down by partisan fighting. She cited studies I've heard before but she gave them a national voice, and she said what I've been thinking myself. If Congress can't shut up, grow up and get to work bailing out this boat, it's time to toss them overboard.

And I'm predicting when this time passes, when history looks back, Rachel Maddow, along with Jon Stewart, are going to prove to be two of the most important voices for this era.









http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26315908/

Tranmission Transition

The Big Three automakers have come back with their best deal. They drove their own vehicles to DC to present it, leaving the corporate jets behind. They want more money than they first asked for, they're willing to give up their salaries at the top, but they're going to cut thousands of jobs.

This isn't working for me.

I got an email from Michael Moore this morning and he's got a much better idea.

Accept, he says, that the car companies will go through whatever money they get and need more. It's logic. No one's going to buy cars anytime soon.

So, instead, stop making cars. Start manufacturing mass transit and electric cars. Retool and create what we're going to buy or need once we come out of this.

How do companies going broke do it? Instead of giving them money, he proposes a government takeover. Buy them. Put capable auto people in charge with marching orders to put that massive manufacturing machine to work making something that will have value in a new economy.

It's brilliant. Keep people working, keep the revenues those plants generate in taxes coming in through some carefully crafted plan - either real tax dollars or credits to state and local governments.

I wrote to the Obama transition team this morning and passed the idea along. And I can't tell you how amazing it feels to be asked what I think by a president-elect, and know he's actually having people reading the responses and making use of them.

Haven't written to the team yet? Go to change.gov
They're waiting to hear from you.

Oh, Never Mind.

At the end of September Chicken Little announced the sky was falling. Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson wanted money - a lot of money - to prevent catastrophe on Wall Street. Ask me no questions, I'll tell you no lies, Paulson suggested. No strings, no questions, no oversight.

Congress, in one of the few times it managed to overcome its lack of a spine, said no.
No way.

But as Wall Street continued its free fall, it was clear Washington couldn't stand by and do nothing. So they passed the Troubled Asses Regulation Pogrom. TARP was given 700 billion dollars to buy up "illiquid assets"...junk, in other words, that no one wanted to get stuck with. But nothing was going to be done for homeowners across the country who were losing their homes. It would, they hoped, trickle down.

That never did work, but the country is still so enamored of Ronald Reagan that they won't admit it.

So now it's November. Wall Street is still crashing, we have a new president-elect, our outgoing president wants to stay the course, and Paulson has already spent much of the money. AIG's got to be happy - they've gotten a healthy infusion of cash. Of course they're frittering it away and giving the 24 hour news cycle fuel for another turn.

Paulson says the original strategy isn't working. We noticed. And he's already got a whole lot less money to spend than he did. Now he's going to give it to banks. Our president-elect wants an auto bailout. The guy sitting in the Oval Office until January doesn't.

I'm no fan of Detroit, but it doesn't seem like we can afford to let an industry that employs three million people go broke. They've got us over a barrel.

Have you looked at real estate ads in California lately? Look at houses for rent. Look at houses for sale. See what this really looks like. "Live in the style you're used to - for less!" promises one ad. "$200/month off NOW!" says another. "Good credit required...income of 100K verified before approval." It's an economy sliding out of control. It's worse in some places than others, but it's going to spread.

And Hank Paulson's the guy holding the money. Unfortunately, not only does he not know what he can do to help, he seems to be one of those people who won't listen to anyone else. So we'll just keep sliding until January, then hope the Obama transition team has come up with a brilliant plan to help us dig in. And if he has an idea and Congress fights him, there's going to have to be an outcry so loud that they don't dare fight us.

You Must Be Joking

They did it. They passed the bailout plan. But not before tacking on 150 BILLION dollars more in garbage to get the House Republicans to approve it.
I am outraged.
THIS is democracy?
Shame on them. Shame on them all.

Disaster Averted

I tried to watch the vice presidential debate. I started to, saw that Biden was taking the approving uncle tactic in dealing with Palin and concentrating on her running mate and breathed. It was going to be alright. He was tiptoeing through a minefield there and not many people appreciate how hard it must have been.

If he attacked her, he'd be 'mean'. If he pointed out instances where she's lied or bent the truth about her own record, he'd be attacking her because she was a woman. Biden played it smart. He didn't let her get away with charges that weren't true, but he watched her with what appeared to be genuine approval as she fielded questions we all know she was totally unprepared for just a week or two ago.

As for Palin, she didn't humiliate herself. She dodged questions she didn't want to answer and sometimes she got away with it. She painted herself as an expert on energy. But she was coherent and if there wasn't much substance there, at least she didn't sound stupid.
I saw that much before I crashed. Two days at a hospital with your son make these debates a lot less compelling.

So the pundits today say it's back in the laps of the presidential candidates. As it should be.
And as I'm writing this perhaps the House has voted on the latest version of the bailout.
But I wonder if anyone's paying attention to Ralph Nader. He may not be a viable presidential candidate, but there's no arguing he does his homework. He's got an idea that would help the current Wall Street mess without charging us, the people who can't afford to bail them out.

You can read it here.

Dandelion Salad

or more analysis here:

Now Public

Just because an idea comes from someone outside the system doesn't make it a bad one. In fact, it might make it a very good one indeed. I wonder if anyone will listen.