(posted to marketwatch, Nov 24, 2008):
Comment: jonesreport.com 2 hours ago (+14 Votes)
Excerpt: Obama's Economic Foxes To Guard Financial HenhouseNewly announced team consists of the very people who created the crisisSteve Watson, Infowars.net, Monday, Nov 24, 2008
Today President elect Obama officially introduces his economic team to the world. What many may fail to recognize, however, is the fact that those tasked with rescuing the economy are the very people who helped create the financial crisis in the first instance.
jonesreport.com wrote: We already know that the team will include Tim Geithneras Treasury Secretary; Lawrence Summers as head of the National Economic Council; Peter Orszag as director of The Office of Management and Budget; and Jason Furman, Austan Goolsbee and Jack Lew in other senior economic positions.The man that ties almost all these people together is former Treasury Secretary and current Citigroup executive Robert Rubin.Rubin is as much to blame for the creation of the current financial crisis as Alan Greenspan is, as both men ignored the advice of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) and strongly opposed the regulation of derivatives. Over-exposure to credit derivatives of mortgage-backed securities - or credit default swaps (CDS) was a key reason for the failure of Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch, American International Group, and Washington Mutual in 2008.At Citi, Rubin was one of the grand strategists of the speculation in securitized loans, on November 4, 2007, he became the Chairman there.Rubin is also currently co-chairman of the board of directors of the Council on Foreign Relations and a member of the Group of Thirty.Every one of the afore mentioned economic "experts" to be appointed by Obama, with the exception of Skull and Bones representative Austan Goolsbee, is a protégé of Rubin.Furthermore, as the New York Times pointed out in a weekend feature:Even the headhunters for Mr. Obama have Rubin ties: Michael Froman, Mr. Rubin's chief of staff in the Treasury Department who followed him to Citigroup, and James P. Rubin, Mr. Rubin's son. All three advisers - whom Mr. Obama will officially name on Monday and Tuesday - have been followers of the economic formula that came to be called Rubinomics: balanced budgets, free trade and financial deregulation, a combination that was credited with fueling the prosperity of the 1990s.(ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW) http://www.infowars.net/articles/november2008/241108Foxes.htmnews sources: rense.com, infowars.com, prisonplanet.com,informationclearinghouse.info, counterpunch.org, globalresearch.ca,georgewashington2.blogspot.com, bailoutsleuth.com
Reply: chutnerd 2 hours ago (+2 Votes)
chutnerd wrote: Thank you for the excellent post.It looks like we'll have to wait a few more years to see real CHANGE come to the financial system only after it is completely destroyed.
Reply: nzdugger 2 hours ago
nzdugger wrote: Well Jonesy, you got that right.The more things change, the more they stay the same. The question I have is this: How divergent is this mess? Perhaps Eastern economic forces can bring some sense to the global picture? I look forward to the G20 response.
My reply:
CNN interviewed Rubin as an expert commentator during the early stages of the bailout, and they introduced him as the "Former Secretary of the Treasury under Bill Clinton". (period) No mention of the fact that after Clinton signed the Phil Gramm legislation which enabled this disaster, Rubin resigned to go to Citicorp and engineer the big merger that got the whole ball rolling. If Obama allows these guys to direct his administration on economic policy, he will fail, and we all will fail. There is an alternate scenario (however improbable): he's picked a team of guys who know exactly how the racket works, and who's responsible for setting it up. They have the capacity to take it down and clean it out if they want to.
How many more times are we going to be told that a given company is "just too big to allow it to fail..."? We have a government run by people who have little or no first hand understanding of free-enterprise, and who consider debt a talking point. It isn't AIG or Citi they're rescuing, it's the exposure of their own incompetence as legislators, and their malfeasance in support of their preferred constituencies which is their primary concern.The strength of our currency is based on the belief by the rest of the world that our system of checks and balances works: that no individual cabal of self-interested perpetrators could ever usurp the credit of this nation for their own purposes. Over the past two months, we have watched the Bush administration and the corrupt leadership of Congress demonstrate that our system has failed. The only remaining credibility we have is based on the thin hope that our new President will have the courage to let the free-market cleanse itself, and impose legal sanctions on those who have plundered the good credit of this nation.The guilty include CEO's with 7 and 8-figure incomes, financial institutions which hand-off un-quantified risk to the public while skimming exorbitant commissions en-passante, labor unions and lawyers who game the system at every level and in every way imaginable, and finally voters who turn a blind eye to all of this, as long as their particular safe havens remain intact.The damage has already been done. The only remaining question is whether our leadership has the wisdom to take it's measure, and get about the job of repairing it, or continue to cover it up, and in the process rendering it lethal to the future of this country. The well is already going dry, as can be seen today in the weakening of the market for T-bills. Is a total collapse months away, or is it only weeks?
Commment: vimal99 vimal99 wrote:
I am not an economist but have a feeling that something seriously is wrong here. Mr Bush and coterie has weakened the capitalistic systems..(bailouts) by claiming to be capitalists and weakened democracy (wiretaps, gantanamo, patriotic act) by claiming to be a democracy. This is insane. These are the people with no character or morals but are guided solely by the demands of the situation. you dont bailout financial institutions, they will survive or perish driven by the market fundamentals. If one bank goes down another bank which is more efficient will take its place. All they have to do is to strenthen the insurance..(unemployment, FDIC etc) and let all these companies go down. Trying to prop up inefficient systems will only drag the pain much longer. Let them fail. They need not be paid on tax payers money. Please dont pay tax payers money to prop up companies. All this bailout money and money spent on war should go towards building infrastrucutre, education and alternate energy resources. This country has taken a wrong direction. The current acts of the administration are neither supported by market fundamentals or the future well being of the nation.
My Reply:
I agree with you in principle, there's just one problem: If it really was tax-payer money being used, it would be outrageous, but at least it would be paid for. The electorate would not tolerate throwing real money at these problems, and that in and of itself is the crux of the disaster.The simple fact is, all of this is being funded on the theory that our democracy is strong enough to remain the guarantor of abstracted wealth on this planet. Every time Congress takes another trip to the well, it undermines that theory a little more, and we won't know when the well has gone dry until it's too late. Unless Obama is willing to face down Reid, Pelosi, Frank and a rather long list of other thieves and thugs who are protecting themselves, we're headed for a disaster of unimaginable proportions.
The opportunity President-elect Obama has now is either to fix the fundamental problems in our economy, or to turn out yet another statistical solution, one which produces favorable numbers, but which does not fix the underlying problems. They are:
1. An economy based on credit.
We need to reward savings and investment, and discourage the use of credit as a basis for defining the things we value. One way to accomplish this is to require proof of the ability to carry credit before it is granted. Another is to limit the interests rates accordingly, on the theory that credit should only be granted to those who are reasonably able to pay it back. In other words, our economic principles and regulations should discourage profligacy.
2. Regulatory incompetence and misconduct.
Some of the major problems with regulations are selective and subjective enforcement. Those authorities imply choice on the part of human beings, and we know that authority, by it's nature, tends to become corrupt over time. Now that we have the ability to instantly calculate and communicate information, we should attempt to write regulations such that they may be applied using software to 100% of the transactions in a given venue.
Our massively complex tax-system is actually moving in this direction already: there is very capable software now which makes it possible for very ordinary citizens to compose and submit a perfect tax-return, at a very modest cost. The same principles can and should be applied to a wide range of financial transactions which are based on government funds or guarantees. By exploiting the government's position as holder of critical financial information about all people and corporations, software systems can be developed which protect individual privacy, while at the same time requiring that objective standards be met in the use of public funds.
3. A failed paradigm for free-enterprise.
The importance of free-enterprise is that it uses opportunity to fuel productivity. Capitalism distorts that purpose by reserving opportunity to those with excess capital. We need to change our definition of free-enterprise and focus on hours worked ahead of capital acquired. In order to do that, we need to change our tax-code so that corporations benefit when they create compensation systems which encourage their employees to put part of their compensation at risk, in return for a piece of the pie expressed in terms of profits and increased equity.
Trickle down economics fails because it attempts to commodotize the work force, and reserve variable compensation to the owners of capital. Opportunity is the critical resource in any free-enterprise system, and our government's role should be to regulate free-enterprise such that opportunity is widely available at all levels, not just at the top.
This principle is revolutionary in a sense, but it may also prove to be decisive where the future of our civlization is concerned. In 1939, the population of the world was less than 2-billion. We are now approaching 7-billion. When large populations of people, particularly young men, find themselves contemplating a future with little or no opportunity to achieve success, they become angry and in so doing, form the nutrient base of terrorism. We must re-tool free-enterprise to compensate those who make the best use of their productive hours each day, even if the things they do may not be the most exalted tasks contributing to the useful product of the corporation.
Andrew Sullivan wrote a column for The Atlantic called:
Top Ten Reasons Conservatives Should Vote for Barack Obama
You can (should) read it here:
As usual, I felt I had to add my two-cents worth:
Mr. Sullivan: As a Republican voter since 1971, I've spent the last 6 months writing blogs and posting comments on forums advocating that Republicans vote for Senator Obama. Nothing I've read has made the case better than your top-10 reasons. I would add however, that his conduct throughout this last month (October) provides the most compelling evidence in support of the proposition. It was a remarkable demonstration of his natural leadership ability, more by virtue of what he did not say and did not do, than what his opponent did do, and did say. I was angry at the bailout, and wanted Obama to oppose it. He was wise enough to recognize that it's better to pick your own time and place to fight a battle than to rush in, solely in defense of the principle, when there's little or nothing you can really do to influence the outcome. McCain on the other hand, did more damage trying to appear 'presidential' at that moment, than if he had done nothing at all. When McCain stepped up his attacks on Obama's fitness to serve as Commander in Chief, heaping ridicule on Obama in the process, I found it repugnant. It prompted me to go back and pore over the transcripts of the Cuban Missile Crisis (I was 10 years old at the time) that I found on-line. If ever there were an historical argument that proves the case for a President Obama, and against a President McCain, that was it. When I heard McCain declaring, in his most bellicose voice: "I was on an aircraft carrier during that crisis, I had a target and we were ready to go in...", I realized how fortunate we were that he was where he was: confined to the cockpit of his fighter jet, while JFK carefully navigated this country back from the brink of nuclear disaster, in part because he resisted the Joint Chief's pressure to strike at the Soviet missiles militarily. Ironically, in spite of Joe Biden's ill-advised commentary on the subject, he may be proven correct. The next President is very likely to face a serious test, one that might turn out to be the closest thing to a repeat since the Cuban Missile Crisis ended exactly 46 years ago. We've announced our intention to install defensive missiles in Poland, and Vladimir Putin has stated that if we do, Russia will remove them, by military means if necessary. I cannot imagine a more dangerous scenario than having our angry ex-fighter pilot, John McCain, occupying the Oval Office and determined to prove how tough he really is, if a confrontation materializes over this issue. Any Republicans capable of honest critical thinking should consider this, and ask themselves if they really want John McCain with his finger on the button in such a scenario. Yesterday, I filled in my Oregon ballot, voted for Obama and sent it in. To paraphrase Michelle Obama: this is the first time in eight Presidential elections I've voted that I really felt proud of the choice I had, and the choice I made. In my opinion, this election is the most important and perilous for the future of this country since 1860. Then, as now, voters had a choice between experienced candidates promoting the conventional wisdom, and inexperience, with a serendipitous helping of promise for a better future. They chose the latter, and we should too.
I voted for Senator Obama yesterday, and I voted against our incumbent Republican Senator, Gordon Smith, even though I actually prefer Smith to the Democrat who's challenging him here in Oregon. My vote against Senator Smith was a vote against vicious, dishonest partisanship which has become the hallmark of my party's conduct over the last 10 years or so. But my vote for Obama was different, and it was in no way intended to endorse the traditional liberal agenda of the Democratic party. Here's my post to the Howard Kurz column in the Washington Post today on that subject. Mr. Kurz suggested that a landslide victory for Obama would put pressure on him to deliver on that agenda, and I respectfully disagree:
As a Republican, who has already cast his ballot for Obama, I have news for Democrats who believe his election (if he is elected), is a blank check for the extreme left of their party: not going to happen. I didn't vote for Obama because he was an inspirational speaker, I voted for him because he is a very smart man, an exceptionally strong and effective leader, and above all, intellectually honest.Political platforms based on ideology and dogma are obsolete in the real world we live in now. The problems we face require pragmatic solutions that scale with a world population approaching 7-Billion. You may believe that Health Care is a right, but in reality, it's a service that costs money, and requires real people to deliver it, people who require payment for their services. It requires infrastructure that costs money, lots of it. I voted for Obama in part because I'm convinced that he recognizes the need for pragmatic critical thinking in order to devise solutions which are durable. If he wins (and he could still lose, believe me), he will have won because he persuaded a lot of independents, and no small number of Republicans like myself, that we have been ill-served by partisan politics, and in order for this country to survive and thrive, we need to form a consensus around the best solutions to these problems, even if they're not always the easiest or the ones that feel the best at first glance. At least that's the bet I placed when I marked the box next to Senator Obama's name on my Oregon ballot yesterday.
I didn't understand the fundamentals of our taxation system until Warren Buffet explained it just the other night on Charlie Rose. When John McCain says Obama wants to send checks to people who pay no taxes, it's a bald-face lie. In fact, the 95% majority who will be the beneficiaries of the Obama tax plan all pay taxes, in fact, they are, as a group, responsible for the majority of the tax revenue our government receives each year. To break that down: Income Taxes accounted for 45% (approximately $1.1-Trillion in 2007), and Payroll Taxes accounted for 34% (approximately $900-Billion in 2007). If you add $300-Billion in income taxes (a conservative estimate) paid by the middle class wage earners, you discover that the middle class is not only paying more taxes, they actually put in over 90% of the actual hours worked each year.
Yes, some wage-earners on the lower end of the scale will end up owing no Income Taxes, and they will still get a tax-credit under the Obama plan. But that money won't be coming out of someone elses pocket. It will come ouf of the Payroll Tax that individual paid through withholdings month after month each year. Putting aside the fact that we are in the process of handing over more than a Trillion dollars to private individuals who defrauded the nation, and paid themselves hundreds of billions in unwarrented compensation each year for the last 7 years or so, providing a tax-credit on taxes you've already paid hardly qualifies as socialism by any definition I'm familiar with. But Senator McCain, "Mr. Straight Talk" himself, has no qualms about trying to plant the impression that Senator Obama wants to use taxpayer money to provide handouts to deadbeats.
That's been the Republican mantra for quite some time: the only people who deserve to be wealthy are those who have enough excess income to invest it in stocks and bonds. And yes, those investments do create jobs in some cases, but only grudgingly. Do they create opportunity? Not if the owners of capital can help it. If you own a business, or you're a part of management at a corporation, you want your employees to function as much like a commodity as possible, particularly as it relates to the more laborious aspects of whatever business they are in. It is that impulse, the hording of opportunity which goes to the heart of what isn't working in our free-market, and explains the disaster that is in progress as we speak.
I did a calculation on Mr. Richard Fuld's compensation as CEO of Lehman Brothers in it's final year before going bankrupt, and althought we don't know the exact figure, he's admitted to compensation somewhere in the vicinity of $400-million this last year. If we assume Mr. Fuld put in 50 weeks at 40 hours per week, it works out to an hourly wage of $200,000 per hour. That's right: two-hundred thousand dollars per hour. That means if Mr. Fuld got stuck in traffic on a given day and arrived 15 minutes late to work, he cheated the company out of $50,000.
I'm definitely not a Socialist. I believe in free-enterprise, and the expression of that powerful concept that I see practiced in our country falls far short of it's potential. I actually disagree with Senator Obama's tax policy, because simply adjusting a wage-earner's tax burden down a few hundred dollars does nothing to really motivate that worker to excel. I would much prefer adjustments to our tax code which gave corporate management incentives to make variable compensation plans available to all of their employees, and tax the income they earn due to "sweat equity" at capital gains rates.
In other words: let the rich invest their excess income on Wall Street, but give the other 95% of our workforce the opportunity to invest their ingenuity and extra-effort when necessary in order to increase their productivity, and make the companies they work for more profitable. The thing which makes free-enteprise the most powerful economic force we know, is that it uses opportunity as an incentive to maximize each individual's productive potential. The more broadly we apply that principle, the more powerful the American economy will become.
That (my friends) is change we can all believe in!
As the subject of the Cuban Missile Crisis has emerged in forums on-line, I responded to a posting on the Washignton Post:
KMichaels wrote:JFK pretty much blew it. His military advisors pretty much had to kick his stupid arse into gear to finally get that moron to do something serious.
In fact, the successful conclusion of the crisis was due to Kennedy's unwillingness to follow the recommendation of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to attack the missile installations in Cuba. Kennedy correctly ascertained that Kruschev was very likely under a similar kind of pressure from his military advisers, which led to JFK to ignore the second formal communique from the Soviets, and agree to the first one instead. That insight is generally credited with averting the necessity to strike Cuba, an action which would have, very likely, precipitated a nuclear war. As for testing the next President, it's really not a matter of speculation anyway. Thanks to an incoherent foreign policy towards Russia and the former Soviet republics by the Bush administration, the next crisis is already locked and loaded: We have announced our intention to install defensive missiles in Poland, and Russia has stated flatly that if we do, they will use military means if necessary to remove them. Fortunately, while Senator McCain was reminding voters that he was strapped into the cockpit of his fighter plane back in 1962 ready to bomb Cuba, Senator Obama was holding a high-level conference on foreign policy and our national security (yesterday) in anticipation of the Poland invasion threat, and several other critical security issues he will face if elected. Fortunately, no one had to 'kick his arse' to organize that meeting, he planned for it quite some time ago.
After the latest McCain assertion that "he has been tested, and Obama has not..." I went on-line and re-read several different accounts of the Cuban Missile Crisis in October of 1962. (I was only ten-years old at the time, but I still remember the protracted national anxiety we lived through while our collective future as a nation was in doubt.) After taking it all in again, this time with more historical detail to draw upon, I'm glad John McCain was safely ensconced in his jet fighter on an aircraft carrier, and not occupying the Oval Office at the time. Were it not for a variety of diplomatic initiatives without pre-conditions, none of us might be here today.
It is, admittedly a highly subjective conclusion, but the last thing we needed in the White House back then was a President quick to draw lines in the sand, and enamored of the symbolism required to defend them. As one reads these minute by minute accounts of complex backroom negotiations, contingency planning, and public diplomacy, all occurring simultaneously, it's hard to place John McCain in the role that JFK actually played in leading us through this near-miss with nuclear war.
In fact, the Cuban Missile Crisis probably stands as the best argument in favor of a President Obama, and against a President McCain one could find in the recent history of this country. There was no clear victor when the confrontation subsided on October 29th, 1962. The Soviets withdrew their missiles from Cuba, and the United States stood down from it's plans to initiate "regime change" by removing Fidel Castro. Shortly thereafter, the United States removed it's nuclear missiles from Turkey on the basis of a verbal understanding that was not made public until 30 years later.
In short, the resolution of that crisis was a far cry from the "Total Victory with Honor" that Senator McCain insists is prerequisite to our exit strategy from Iraq. Instead, it was a pragmatic and nuanced solution to a problem with otherwise catastrophic potential. Now, which of the two candidates in this election does that best describe?
(Posted to the Washington Post, October 19, 2008):
John McCain loves to portray himself as the greatest champion of our volunteer military, but when it came time to vote to improve their education benefits, he voted against Jim Webb's New GI Bill. When he made the mistake four weeks ago of saying the fundamentals of our economy are strong, he covered for the remark by saying he was talking about the productivity and ingenuity of the American worker. But now that Senator Obama wants to adjust the tax code to favor those workers slightly, McCain is gleefully trying to attach the dirty word "Socialism" to his economic proposals.
The core value of any economy is defined by the productivity of it's workforce. All productive work depends upon at least one human being to lift a finger, whether it's to lift a shovel, push a button, or call a classroom full of children to order. Given a finite number of workers, there are only two ways to increase productivity: the invention of better tools, or by leveraging the ingenuity of the human beings who use them. The trickle-down theory of economic growth tends to emphasize the creation of newer and better tools by investing in their design and development, and then the building of new infrastructure which incorporates them. As such, maximizing the value of those tools tends to favor the reduction of the human beings required to operate them to the fewest in number, and at the least possible cost, in short, a commodity. That's why, when I hear John McCain earnestly proclaiming the fundamental value of the American worker, it strikes me as disingenuous at a minimum, and summarily hypocritical. In practice, any attempt to elevate those workers above the level of a human commodity is threatening to McCain brand of capitalism and free-enterprise, and hence he labels it Socialism.
What McCain may call socialism might also be described as recognizing the essential contribution that the ordinary worker contributes to making good on the capital investments of those who's only real work is to decide what to do with their excess income. A fundamental principle of capitalism is to organize the workforce based on 'guaranteed' fixed incomes, while reserving 100% of the variable income (the profits) for themselves. In effect the workers agree to a form of slavery (albeit of limited duration each working day), which goes to the foundation of the tension which exists between the owners of capital and the foot-soldiers they depend upon, not only to operate their machines, but to purchase the products those machines produce. This time honored bifurcation of free-enterprise relegates workers to a status not much different than the machines they operate, while isolating them from any chance of profiting by their own best efforts. What is missing, and sorely needed, is a means of harnessing that other source of potential productivity in our workforce: ingenuity and the accumulation of expertise.
What if it were possible for workers to share in the risk, and share in the profits of the companies they work for? Of course some companies do that already, and they call it profit sharing. But usually, it has nothing to do with risk, and profit shares are taxed as ordinary income. What if our tax-code were to recognize the discretionary investment of effort and ingenuity in the same way it recognizes the investment of risk capital? What if the law stipulated that companies which adopted uniform variable compensation rules for all of their employees, would be elegible for favorable tax treatment of all their profits?
In theory, workers could be offered an opportunity to put a portion of their fixed compensation at risk, in return for which they would receive a percentage of the annual profits of their company. That variable compensation could be taxed at capital gains rates, rather than the standard progressive income rates, thereby recognizing that 'incremental sweat equity' in the same way it recognizes investments of risk capital. It could be that variable compensation plans, combined with reduced tax rates could release un-tapped productivity that lies dormant in our economy.
One major goal of capitalism and free-enterprise should be to guarantee an ample supply of opportunity for those who are willing to work, in order to insure a stable society, and to create markets for products and services. However, we be sure we define opportunity to include the opportunity to excel, and to profit by the achievement of excellence. It's the difference between creating a society which merely insures each person's opportunity to survive, and one which leaves open a wide doorway which enables them to thrive as well.
We cannot win a war by dropping bombs on the civilians we are trying to protect. In one televised report, a former member of our military team who was an operator of our remote un-manned aircraft in the Middle East stated flatly: if the number of civilian casualties expected by an air-strike is 29 or less, we can go ahead and do it, otherwise we have to get approval from "The White House". Here's the latest report of civilian casualties inflicted by our high-tech fleet of robot aircraft:
The American military under Gen. David D. McKiernan, the top American commander in Afghanistan, initially insisted that only 5 to 7 civilians were killed but then ordered another investigation after new evidence emerged from the United Nations and reporters who visited the scene. A subsequent report by a Pentagon-based general, released last week, concluded that more than 30 civilians died.
The language of this news item is telling:
"the top American commander...insisted that only 5 to 7 civilians were killed..."
Imagine what the response would be in this country if an FBI or State police commander issued a similar statement after attempting to resolve a hostage scenario, or intercept "suspected terrorists" by dropping a bomb on a house in some neighborhood in an American city? The whole idea of the so-called "suspected safe-house" epitomizes all that is wrong about the way America wages war in foreign countries, particularly those where the natives are so different from us. We (or I should say, President Bush and those who share his mentality) simply don't attach the same importance to those populations of human beings as we do to those more familiar to us. That is a big part of why we are despised by so many around the world. We seem to think that because we have these very sophisticated weapons, we must use them at every opportunity. In fact, the consequences to our national security of doing so are dire, and potentially lethal.
Whenever I have brought this subject up, I have heard many friends and acquaintances respond by saying: "These things happen in war..." or words to that effect. I am certain those same people would respond differently if they were touched by "unintended collateral damage".
It's true, terrorist organizations routinely use civilians for cover. They hide weapons in Mosques and other buildings which for one reason or another are off-limits as targets for our forces. We know that, and when we contemplate taking military action in a context where we are likely to encounter this type of resistance, we have to take those things into account. That is one of the reasons we should think long and hard before initiating an action where we insert ourselves in a foreign country's civil conflict.
Nuclear weapons, and high-tech warfare generally have changed the rules of the game when it comes to exercising military power outside the boundaries of our own nation. Iraq and Afghanistan are not Germany or Japan. In spite of that, our Republican leadership seems determined to apply a World War II template to the use of our military, and in effect blame the enemy for not playing by the rules. If there is one overwhelming argument for not electing John McCain to be our next President, it is the very certainty that he embraces those dangerously obsolete notions.
CBS News 60-Minutes aired a segment this last week demonstrating how effective our military could be at neutralizing an organized militia in Sadr City in Iraq, by making the best possible use of these high-tech suveillance and precision bombing weapons we have developed. There may have been some civilian casualties, but obviously very few. Our military commanders and our outstanding soldiers get it. George Bush and John McCain don't.
Unfortunately, I must remind Senator Obama that a major reason for the groundswell of support he enjoys is the belief by many of us that he intends and is capable of effecting real change in this country, change not only to various legislative issues, but a change in some of the fundamental things we have come to believe about ourselves. On the economic front, we must admit that we have been living beyond our means, and substituting borrowing and credit for productivity, in order to sustain the illusion of prosperity we have become accustomed to. As for our place in the world and the use of our military, Americans have, to a fault, allowed a handful of our number to carry the entire burden for two wars, the outcomes of which are still in doubt.
We're long past the point where debating the wisdom of going to Iraq in the first place is productive. We face serious challenges in both countries, and the time has come for our next leader to bring us the bad news: unless more Americans are willing to enlist in our armed forces, and provide some relief to those who have been so unfairly extended (to compensate for the mistakes of George Bush and John McCain), we may very well find ourselves in a much larger conflict, with far more malignant consequences to our homeland than any we have seen so far.
I believe this bears directly on the ability of our President to trust the citizens of this country with the truth. Some truths may leave him the luxury of picking the right time to enunciate them, others, by their nature, may require that they be enunciated at the least comfortable moment, such as just before an election you suspect you may have already won. Lincoln faced this dilemma when it seemed the Emancipation Proclamation might be more opportune if it were saved for after the 1864 election. History strongly suggests that his decision to put it forward when he did, well before that crucial test, sealed the mandate he needed to change the future of this country for the better. Senator Obama must consider not only what he intends to do if elected, but the mandate he will require to succeed in what he tries to do, beginning on January 20th, 2009. Is there something more he needs to say to Americans now, before the election?
...Why did you wait till the last month of the campaign to tell us so?
A year ago, when I was a supporter of John McCain, I kept waiting to hear him start talking about the dismal failure of George Bush to prepare for our initiative in Iraq with a rational plan for our occupation, and more importantly, a coherent exit strategy. I thought Senator McCain would concur with Barack Obama's assessment of the situation in Afghanistan, and advocate for reinforcing the most critical front-line of the war on terror. I thought for sure this man of principle would also stand for the Constitution, and be an advocate for protecting the Bill of Rights from being torn asunder by an invasive and extra-Constitutional Patriot Act.
As far as the economy was concerned, since Senator McCain claims he was trying to correct the malfeasance taking place on Wall Street, particularly what was going on at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, I don't understand why he didn't use the elevated platform of the primary campaign to bring this message to the fore. He could have, and had he done so, it might have created enough public pressure to movtivate the Treasury Secretary to take action much sooner.
In January of 2007, it was already clear that the Bush administration had broken all previous records for increasing the national debt, with massive deficits caused by the expanding cost of the war in Iraq, and unrestrained spending domestically. If Senator McCain wanted to be the Maverick, he certainly had plenty of opportunities to put those issues in the public spotlight. Instead, he spent all of his primary campaigning and a big chunk of his campaigning as the nominee trying to make sure the die-hard, extreme right-wing Bush constituency was reassured that he was one of them. Only when the poll numbers started to turn against him has he suddenly put on the trappings of the Maverick, the opponent of business as usual, and wants independent voters to believe in "the real John McCain". We'll see how many are willing to buy it.
As far as I'm concerned, this campaign has accomplished everything it should have: it has produced two distinctly different candidates, different on most of the issues, but more importantly, it has revealed their differences intellectually, it has shed light on the substance of their skills as executives, their character, and their temperament as leaders.
In spite of the seemingly comfortable lead Senator Obama has today, I believe the actual vote will be perilously close. It is the most important presidential election since 1860, and I can only hope that on the day after this one, the state of Illinois will find itself 2 for 2. As that other President from Illinois told the Congress in December of 1862:
The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, we must think anew and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country.
No more true then than today.
Overall he (Petraeus) summed up the situation as "still hard but hopeful", saying that progress in Iraq was "a bit more durable" but that the situation there remained fragile.He said he did not know that he would ever use the word "victory": "This is not the sort of struggle where you take a hill, plant the flag and go home to a victory parade... it's not war with a simple slogan."He said al-Qaeda's efforts to portray its jihad in Iraq as going well were "disingenuous". It was, in fact "going poorly", he said.Of his strategy of establishing joint security stations in key locations, Gen Petraeus said that "you can't secure the people if you don't live with them".He said it was now fair to say that the Iraqis were standing up as US forces stood down. The confidence and capability of Iraqi forces had increased substantially, he said.
Ben Stein's suggestion on Larry King Live last night was the most sensible, simple and sure-fire way to recoup taxpayer money on the bailout I've heard yet: put a tax on the un-regulated insurance contracts called Credit Default Swaps (CDS) which are at the heart of the sub-prime mortgage taxpayer rip-off.
For those who are unfamiliar, a Credit Default Swap is essentially an insurance contract between two parties, where the first party (presumably the one who holds one or more sub-prime mortgages), pays the second party a premium in return for insurance that, in the event the borrower defaults, the second party pays off the face value of the mortgage.
Mr. Stein's proposal is simply to levy a tax on these transactions. The idea is not really all that radical. I happen to live in one of two states which does not have a state sales tax. In every other state, it is routine to tax commerce. What's wrong with enacting federal legislation taxing this particular form of commerce?
A secondary advantage of this proposal would be to force these transactions on to the record. The legislation could be written to include criminal penalties if it is determined later that any part of the original transaction involved fraud, or specific violations of federal statutes (such as the Truth in Lending Laws for example). This would give the incoming administration a tool for seeking out those responsible for the financial crisis and prosecuting them later.
(My letter to the National Review Online after Chris Buckley's resignation...)
I've been a voting Republican since July 1, 1971. I voted for George Bush in 2000. This time last year, I was a supporter of John McCain, and admiring him for his comeback from his first campaign disaster. He lost me for good when he voted against Jim Webb's New GI Bill, because it brought the funding for the education benefit up to date with the contemporary cost of going to college. He said that might harm the "retention rates" for non-commissioned members in our 'volunteer' army. (Perhaps he and Lindsay Graham consider the volunteer enlistment agreement an indenture as well.) I always admired William F. Buckley too, but never quite so much as when I heard his son had opted out of the dysfunctional campaign to elect a man who exhibits not only the early stages of mental deterioration quite common for people in their 70's, but many of the self-destructive tendencies that brought down the Nixon administration. When I see him speaking these days, I'm reminded of the movie "The Caine Mutiny", and Humphrey Bogart's marvelous portrayal of an aging Naval commander and war hero, complete with the nervous facial ticks masquerading as smiles, desperately trying to hang on to past glories, and all the while descending slowly into madness. It's plain to see for any who aspire to intellectual honesty, as WFB Jr. always did, but not to the die-hards and hate-mongers who control our party today. For them it's insufficient to agree to disagree, it's a scorched earth issue, worthy of a vendetta. As for Mr. Rove's questioning Senator Obama's qualifications for the Presidency, all of that was heard 148 years ago as well, when the Republican party nominated Abraham Lincoln. I've been reading Doris Kearns Goodwin's book about Lincoln, and the similarities between the two men from Illinois are striking (albeit Lincoln had no formal education). If you laid out their resumes' side-by-side, it would be hard to tell them apart, but for that one detail. The party establishment didn't think very highly of Lincoln at first, either. They even ridiculed his name, calling him 'Abram'. Nonetheless, in spite of his inadequate preparation for the job, it seems he did alright in the eyes of history. I did a little survey of polls on-line, and Lincoln beat out Washington and FDR as the consensus choice: our greatest President. But perhaps Mr. Rove is a better judge of character. I'm sure he would say: "Obama is no Abraham Lincoln..." (and I would agree, just not by such a wide margin). I suspect that today, the Conservatives in our party would brand Lincoln the worst (and best) example of a 'liberal fascist', in fact I'm sure of it. In kind, I wonder what Lincoln might have to say about his Republican party, circa 2008? Whatever he said, I'm sure it would be gracious. But perhaps our party is no longer the party of Lincoln, having become it seems, more the party of Booth.
As long as the subject of Obama cabinet appointees has come up (Jamie Dimon, JP Morgan Chase for Treasury), may I suggest one existing Bush cabinet member should, emphatically, be asked to remain at his post:
Defense Secretary, Robert Gates
Although I am no expert, as a citizen, and based on my limited visibility of specific actions he has taken in the job since Rumsfeld left, he's the best Secretary of Defense I've seen in my 50+ years. He's serious, he's honest, and he's devoid of the arrogance that has been the signature of the Bush administration. Another thing I like: he's not afraid to fire high-level subordinates if they don't perform. Strong executives tend to do that. The weaker they are, the less likely they are to risk firing a subordinate.
President Bush has promulgated the idea that he is "fiercely loyal to those who work for him...", which is one of the reasons given as to why Donald Rumsfeld was allowed to stay on as Defense Secretary, long after it was clear his vision of the Iraq initiative had been a disaster. Unfortunately, the "loyalty" label is often used as a cover story for the real reason: the incompetence of the guy at the top. Given the number of ex-Bush administration officials who have gone on to write tell-all books which have an incompetent President as their common thread, it's pretty easy to see why Bush would be reluctant to fire anyone.
Given the results of his tenure so far, I would say a President Obama could save himself a ton of time trying to find someone better able to deliver on this difficult job. Between Gates and General Petraeus, I'd say it's a toss-up which of the two have been the most instrumental in turning things around in Iraq.
That's a headline I would love to see, and certainly one that John McCain would not expect to see. Let me explain...
I've been challenging the Ayers smear campaign every day on-line in the major print media. I attack this fear and innuendo rhetoric by citing the fact that since 2003, the Bush administration has granted over 125,000 'moral waivers' to new enlistees in our military who have serious criminal records, many of whom are also members of organized gangs with names like 'Crips', 'Bloods' and 'Gangster Disciples'. It's about drawing a distinction between guilt by association, and the inference of a terrorist threat, and a real-world set of policies and actions which have led to real-world acts of terror here at home, by organizations which are, among other things, the terrorists we know.
Here's a link to my blog that provides details of that policy:
(http://my.barackobama.com/page/community/post/tedthomas/gGg7Fg)I believe these policies are seriously undermining our military by reducing the entry level standards to be a member of our armed forces. It's not just a policy that allows criminals to enlist in our armed forces, they have reduced the minimum educational requirements as well. I believe this reveals a degree of contempt for our military personnel on the part of Bush, McCain, and Lindsay Graham, all of whom opposed improving the education benefit for volunteers, and who have deliberately pursued policies designed to extend and exploit to the limit the enlistment contract in order to compensate for their own inability to contain and bring closure to the Iraq initiative. It is also profoundly hypocritical given the propensity of Senator McCain to wrap himself in our flag, and pose as the "true champion of our citizens in uniform".
I suggest that Senator Obama announce that he will end the practice of approving moral waivers on enlistees with criminal backgrounds, and discharge any enlistees who may have connections with domestic gang organizations. This would correct one of the most insidious aspects of this ill-considered policy, by restoring the expectation of all who enlist in the military that they are joining an elite corps that represents the best people in our country, rather than seeking out the dregs of our society from amongst those who have committed crimes. If we don't make this change, we will create a serious disincentive for the best among us to even consider volunteering for military service. What reasonable person would consider going into combat knowing that some of their comrades have a criminal history, or worse, have divided loyalties which include domestic terrorist organizations, aka: organized gangs?
He should announce tax credits for businesses who provide entry-level on the job training for returning Iraq veterans, and an extension of military health care benefits to veterans even after they have left the military and taken jobs in the private sector. By relieving prospective employers of the health-care costs of veterans, we create an incentive and an offset for training costs, and provide businesses with a means of sharing the burden of our foreign policy.
Finally, I think he should create a national recruiting campaign called the "Shared Service Initiative" under which Americans are encouraged to enlist in the reserves solely in order to relieve existing military personnel and their families of the crushing burden they have been asked to bear.The cost associated with these changes in policy can be offset by reducing the amount of money being paid to private contractors like Blackwater for security personnel in Iraq and Afghanistan. I contend that if Americans believe their service commitment is respected by the government, and that our leadership is willing to ask all of our Citizens to share the burdens of defending this country, the call will be answered. That is the tradition in this country, and the failure of the Bush administration to ask Americans to share the sacrifices of these two wars has undermined the bond of trust between the nation and those who go in harms way in service of their country.
I firmly believe these measures are called for regardless of their impact on the Presidential campaign. But I think it would be timely to announce them during the campaign as a way of refuting the misconception that Democrats are somehow less tuned-in to the issue of national security, and pointing out the egregious disregard that has been demonstrated by the Bush administration and by Senator McCain towards our military, albeit beneath the public radar for the most part.
Anyone who reads this, if you agree, please make some noise about it, and pass it on up the chain to the leadership of the campaign. We could still lose this election...
To argue over our current economic crisis in terms of Jobs and Taxes is to avoid the Elephant with the 800-pound Gorilla on it's back, standing over in the corner of the room. The dependence of this nation on unsecured credit, both at the consumer level and by our government, is as virulent a threat to the survival of our country as slavery was 148 years ago when Abraham Lincoln was seeking the Presidency.
Contrary to the way it has been reported in the media, the so-called melt-down of our financial markets is not a panic over cyclical economic conditions, it is the recognition by the global financial market that our democracy has been so compromised by financial opportunists and their corrupt political allies in Congress, that the US Dollar may no longer represent the safe haven for abstracted wealth that it has been for over two centuries. If we allow the last remaining good credit of this nation to be squandered in order to pay off the losses of those who gamed the system in order to line their own pockets, we risk a disaster far worse than the near term difficulties we face now.
We need to stop printing money and throwing it at this problem. We need to work our way out of the financial hole we have dug for ourselves with ingenuity and discipline, not an endless series of cash advances on the national credit card, along with a promise to put our financial house in order sometime in the distant future. That future is already upon us, thanks to the greed and gluttony of those on Wall Street, and their co-conspirators in Congress, on both sides of the aisle.
Unless the voters of this country find the will to oppose this continued policy of national profligacy, each of us voters will pay a harsh price for listening to the pundits and our political leadership as they tell us yet again: "trust us, everything will be ok..." If we agree to it again, the day of reckoning will be deferred again, but when it finally arrives, we will be left to cope with the consequences, while they will be safely removed to their respective safe havens, which they are constructing now with the last few dollars on our line of credit.
(posted to the New York Times, October 11, 2008)
One of the reasons this Republican has remained committed to Senator Obama is by observation of his rather amazing range of skills and his attention to the hard-work part of getting elected (as well as the fun stuff). When I hear Gov. Palin and Senator McCain ridiculing him for his lack of executive experience, I laugh. Here's an excerpt from Doris Kearns Goodwin's terrific book "Team of Rivals", which follows the young Abraham Lincoln from his first campaign for the Illinois state legislature, through his Presidency of this country:
Lincoln engaged in every aspect of the political process, from the most visionary to the most mundane. His experience taught him what every party boss has understood through the ages: the practical machinery of the party organization -- the distribution of ballots, the checklists, the rounding up of voters --- was as crucial as the broad ideology laid out in the platform. His 1840 campaign plan divided the party organization into three levels of command. The county captain was "to procure from the poll-books a separate list for each Precinct" of everyone who had previously voted the Whig slate. The list would then be divided by each precinct captain "into Sections of ten who reside most convenient to each other." The captain of each section would then be responsible to "see each man of his Section face to face, and procure his pledge...to vote as early on the day as possible."
Anyone who studies even a little bit about Lincoln can see that Obama has studied him a lot, and applies many of the principles that made Lincoln successful. As one who ran a statewide campaign for a Presidential nominee many years ago, I know how difficult it is to coordinate the actions of hundreds of people, many of whom are volunteers, along with some who are paid, and where most of the work is no fun at all. ("Clerical ditch digging" is how I would describe it.) Whether you like his policies or not, if you don't notice Senator Obama's prodigious talents and disciplined worth-ethic, you're fooling yourself.
I have neglected my day job in order to write these posts, and I doubt anyone reads them. Nonetheless, here are two critical isssues which might yet change the outcome of this election:
1. "He Still Won't Admit He Was Wrong on the Surge!"
I have yet to hear Senator Obama throw the left-cross this deserves. If he wants to win the foreign policy debate once and for all, this may be the way to do it.
It's impossible to explain to an audience all the absurd components of Senator McCain's argument that because Senator Obama would not endorse authorizing George W. Bush to send 30,000 more troops to Iraq, he must therfore (by inference) have also opposed the clear and hold force strategy, which had already been tried and proven successful in the fall of 2006, prior even to the invention of the term "Surge". It would be even more difficult to explain the actual origins of this strategy in 2005, and the fact that our military commanders had wanted to adopt this approach long before public pressure to change our tactics in Iraq forced the Bush administration to approve it.
However, by his tenacious and self-serving need to keep bringing this point up, Senator McCain has maneuvered himself into an uncomfortable position: in fact, the combination of events which have evolved in the last 6 months have made the argument that somehow Iraq is strategically more important than Afghanistan, not only weak, but dangeorusly wrong. The major threat to our security in the Middle East now is the precarious situation in Northwest Pakistan, as Senator Obama has been saying all along, but which is exponentially more dangerous now, due to the strengthening of Al Qaeda and the Taliban, and the transition to a new democratic government in Pakistan.
If you were Osama Bin Laden, the quickest means (and I would argue his only means) to preserve Al Qaeda and the movement it represents is to de-stabilize Pakistan, and either take over it's government entirely, or stage some sort of Coups d'etat which results in Bin Laden having control over some portion of Pakistan's nuclear arsenal. If that were to happen, or even if events in Pakistan were to begin moving in that direction, the amount of force on the ground under US authority would be critical to our ability to consider options able to deter such a catastrophically dangerous outcome.
We should already be re-positioning forces with that in mind, but we are incapable of doing so precisely because we are stuck in Iraq. Not only is a timetable for withdrawal from Iraq now essential to our security, the failure of the Bush administration to anticipate this chain of events is yet another example of it's gross negligence in foreign policy and of the Commander in Chief.
The risk scenarios we face here are so acute, some of them are better left unmentioned in the public debate. But the case for re-positioning our forces seems very strong (to me at least), and brings into sharp focus the error we committed by going into Iraq in the first place. But more to the point, we should have taken steps re-balance our forces by some means in the interim, long before now. If what John McCain refers to (incorrectly) as "the Surge" had been adopted a year or two earlier, when it was first proposed, we might well be in the draw-down phase already in Iraq, and far better prepared to prevent further deterioration of our position in Afghanistan. Here's the left-cross:
"Senator McCain still refuses to admit that our greatest national security risk in the Middle East may be found on the front-line of the war on terror, in Afghanistan, where it has been all along. By stretching our resources too thin, we are now at risk of being unable to consider the best possible options for dealing with Al Qaeda and the Taliban going forward. For the sake of preserving a talking point he believes makes him more electable, he's willing to ignore a perilous situation which is deteriorating as we speak."
Now more than ever.
2. "I'm going to buy up all those mortgages, that's my idea..."
It's difficult to challenge an idea as simpleminded and amateurish as this one without appearing simpleminded and amateurish as well. Of course the television news media has chipped in by polling voters to see whether they favor Senator McCain's "plan", and I gather that at least one such poll shows that voters do favor "it" (whatever "it" actually is). In fact, there is no simple solution to the economic problems we face, and particularly as it relates to the financial "industry" which appears to be as much the cause of the larger economic problems as it is a problem in and of itself. However, the near term risk for Senator Obama is that the McCain campaign may be able to leverage voter ignorance, and their thirst for any talking-point-sized solution to the financial mayhem many of us are experiencing, into a viable argument that McCain is better able to handle the financial emergency which is on everyone's mind at the moment.
I would argue that the current measures being taken by the Bush administration and the larger group of "finance ministers" from the G7, are demonstrating an underlying truth which would be impossible for any of them to admit: this melt-down is not a crisis of confidence in the US economy, it is a recognition by investors at large that the global financial industry, lead by the major firms on Wall Street, have constructed a rigged game, the rules of which limit the upside potential of all investors. On the downside, the rules are such that the operators of the game can speculate with the assets entrusted to them, and when their schemes go wrong, tacitly hold their governments hostage to the corrosive effects of near-term financial losses, and thereby effect bail-outs of many varieties in order to sustain the canard that the game itself is honest.
What should President Obama do about it? I believe he should consider an aggressive investigation into the individuals who perpetrated the sub-prime mortgage irregularities, and use whatever legal means available to expose their malfeasance, and recover assets they have acquried with the compensation they have extracted over the entire course of this loosely understood "racket" they have been operating. He should also draw upon expertise from those who are not part of the racket, but who understand how it works. Two good examples: David M. Walker, former Comptroller General of the GAO, and William Isaac, former head of the FDIC under Ronald Reagan.
Mr. Isaac published a plan for dealing with the bank insolvency problem in the Washington Post, prior to the original rejection of the bailout by the House. This essay describes a well reasoned, carefully thought out approach to managing the insolvency of a large number of financial institutions, modelled after the actions taken in the 80's during the Savings and Loan crisis. Here is the link:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/09/26/AR2008092602200.html
If he hasn't already, I believe Senator Obama should read this now, and perhaps get in touch with some of the many economists and financial experts who do not have a vested interest in the specific network of active financial companies who depend upon the status quo on Wall Street. What is sorely lacking in our current approach to this crisis is a lack of practical expertise and common sense, in favor of sweeping simplistic solutions enacted on the theory that any extraordinary moves by the government should solve the problems, and the more costly they are, the more effective the marketplace should believe them to be.
It may be that investors have become savvy enough to realize that stimulus packages and bailouts are synonyms for the same bankrupt methodology, namely, print more money. You don't need a degree in finance or economics to recognize that printing money to make up for real losses simply doesn't scale. If it did, no one would have to work at all!
I think Senator Obama should consider the possibility that the original rejection of the bailout by the House might have been the right response all along, because it reflected the strongly held belief by many (if not most) voters, that the people who gamed the system and lost, should be allowed to lose, even if that meant near-term hardships for the economy. Here's the best I have to offer if the subject of Senator McCain's "plan" comes up in the next debate:
"If we could solve our economic problems simply by printing more money, the voters of this country wouldn't need either of us. It took a long time and a long list of mistakes on both sides of the aisle to create this problem, and I'm not going to further exacerbate the problem of market uncertainty by offering up a set of steps I'm in no position to implement. As Lincoln said during his 1864 presidential campaign:"You don't change horses in the middle of the stream."Although I may not agree with the policies which got us into this predicament, we only have one President at a time, and we can only hope President Bush and Secretary Paulson are successful at getting us across the stream we're in at the moment. When and if I am elected, I will immediately confer with the President as to specific steps we might take to ensure a smooth transition."
"If we could solve our economic problems simply by printing more money, the voters of this country wouldn't need either of us. It took a long time and a long list of mistakes on both sides of the aisle to create this problem, and I'm not going to further exacerbate the problem of market uncertainty by offering up a set of steps I'm in no position to implement. As Lincoln said during his 1864 presidential campaign:
"You don't change horses in the middle of the stream."
Although I may not agree with the policies which got us into this predicament, we only have one President at a time, and we can only hope President Bush and Secretary Paulson are successful at getting us across the stream we're in at the moment. When and if I am elected, I will immediately confer with the President as to specific steps we might take to ensure a smooth transition."
As for the intermediate and long term, I say we should take our losses, and go forward determined to end our addiction to unsecured borrowing (private and public), and apply the rational and properly considered regulatory controls necessary to insure the legitimacy of our financial markets.
(Posted to the FoxNews website, October 10, 2008)
My fellow prisoners, you need to rewind your VCRs and replay the video of what happened from around Sep 28 to Oct 3. Every one of the people you saw up on Capitol Hill (arm in arm) were as rotten as the Politburo was before Gorbachev euthanized them for us (the most under-appreciated great man of the 20th century).
As for Senator McCain (who I supported for many years), can you think of one of his 'maverick ideals' he has not sold-out at least once during the last 8 years? Does he strike you as a man in control of himself, or the gaggle of demons (sexual and otherwise) he obviously struggles with? This is a guy with some of the same deep psychological flaws that drove Nixon and Hitler. Can you honestly say your're sure he isn't exhibiting the early stages of the dementia which routinely afflicts people in their elderly years?
Yes, the Democratic party is rotten. So is ours. We have a choice between a desperate and probably mentally impaired candidate who is hard-wired to corrupt business interests, and a smart, charismatic guy who has a long stake in the future of this country, and who has at least a fighting chance of displacing some of the thugs who now run our government. It's not a perfect choice, but for me at least, it's a clear one.
