I read the Obama speech calling for more troops for Afghanistan and Pakistan, and I don't think I learned anything new. Like everyone, I've got a bunch of questions; but, I've also got some ideas.
1) Why does Holbrooke keep popping up with everything? I could swear that he popped up in dealing with Israel, North Korea, etc. Do our adversaries ask for this guy? I keep thinking we must have someone that both parties are amenable to, oh, in case, we think ceasefires and peace are in our mutual interest. Seriously, we need someone who is going to wow the other side...
2) We've been fighting a ragtag group of people living in caves for the past seven years with what.. hundreds of billions of dollars.. and that isn't working, so we need more money and more time. I don't get this one. I'm guessing eliminating the enemy is impossible, so lets figure out a way to manage the situation better.
3) Finally, idea time. Instead of this whole nation building thing, I think we can get by with organized sports. The crux of the matter is young men with too much time on their hands - they need a competitive arena to expel their aggression and at the same time, win recognition. Other sorts of institutions - government, schools, jobs, etc - are beholden to too many biases, likely produce disgruntled losers, and just take too long.
So I guess to help the peace effort, I'm going to look to support soccer clinics in the tribal regions.
I read the majority opinion, and glanced over the dissent and Scalia's concurring. My thoughts:
Refusing to certify test results is not equal to intentional discrimination (disparate treatment). Were minorities promoted over whites contrary to the test results, it would be intentional discrimination. In this instance, no party is better or worse off because the tests were invalidated; it is merely the expectation of being better/worse off. While I agree that disparate treatment to avoid disparate impact is unfair, canceling everyone's test scores cannot be considered disparate treatment. You have in fact treated everyone the same. The grounds of reversing the decision lies in a unjustified disparate treatment finding, and so I disagree with the basis of the decision.Cancelling the scores did have a disparate impact on white test takers, who can and did file suit. In a zero sum game, necessarily by not making losers of one group, we've not made winners of another. The key here is significant statistical disparity. Whether there is a fire is up for debate, but certainly there is a great deal of smoke.Finally, I want to address equal protection and Title VII, per Scalia's opinion. To me, the essence of Title VII is to address large disparities between the haves and have-nots. When our statistics show day-in and day-out pernicious gaps based on race, class, and gender, Title VII tells us that we must ameliorate them. The equal protection clause is about process, so we resort not to tinkering but to meaningful change. Change is meaningful when the gaps subside and people, on both sides, accept the new process as fair. I disagree with Scalia's vision that the two are in conflict; they are, in fact, complements that tell us we must make progress towards equality.
After hearing all the hubbub around the US boycott of the UN Conference on Racism, I decided to read the doc for myself - http://www.un.org/durbanreview2009/pdf/DDPA_full_text.pdf. My initial response was wide-eyed skepticism, but upon careful reflection, the United States really has no excuse to boycott this event.
The first excuse is that the declaration can be used to ban language defamatory to Islam. While the document could be used as a cover for any type of avoidance of criticism, I could not find one binding article in the declaration.
The same argument applies to the Palestine-Israel issue. This declaration could certainly be invoked to criticize any person for practically any transgression. Yet the plight of the Palestinian people, which matters, takes up only one statement of acknowledgement, which hardly constitutes an attack on Israel.
We fear inflammatory rhetoric because no matter how outrageous, it may ring of truth. And I agree that passionate accussations, while they may play politically well at home, only serves to divide the sensitive egos who parade on the international stage.
While I understand that the Obama administration has to carefully deploy its political capital, I think it is to our serious regret that we boycott this event. To people whose plights are covered by the declaration, who have no power at home, putting a pen to this document to affirm its ideals shows that we wish to move forward, in spite of the risk of some harsh words from our colleagues.
I think, fundamentally, the challenge that we have is religious. This is a Christian nation and western culture (modernity) and Christianity are so intertwined, that it is impossible to think of American society without thinking of Christianity. The problems we face now and in the future are because we've lost our national religion, and I think President Obama, having come from a non-religious household and having grown up a skeptic, understands the path that only organized religion can show.
We have to redefine the separation of church and state, toward the church. We should start thinking of how we can involve every American in their local church. Now, I am not a particularly religious man. I believe in science, evolution, Big Bang, etc. I agree symbolically and metaphorically with many Christian teachings, but I care not to argue about what is real and what is metaphor. The entire nitpicking over facts is what caused religion's decline in the first place, so I say we just suspend reality when we discuss religion.
Lets blur fiction and nonfiction. Lets change the way churches deliver their message so that we scientists and rationalists do not have to feel uncomfortable/wrong about religion. The alternative is what we have now: loose morality, a weak social fabric, a focus on individual and materialistic gain, and behavior based on a cold world of cause and effect.
The concept of saving is to forgo present consumption for future consumption, usually by investing in consumption producing assets. These assets include fertile land to produce bountiful food, a functioning environment to produce clean air and water, healthy communities that are safe and foster healthy social relationships, and good schools/churches to raise upstanding citizens. If we do fiscal stimulus, I hope it goes into these things. The problem with money is that it has no inherent value. Tinkering with the monetary system rather than the underlying issues does not solve anything. The irony is apparent when there is enough food but people still go hungry, enough houses but people still go homeless, enough knowledge but people are still uneducated. There is a value system that we as a culture need to enforce, and our inability to do so will result in our decline. While there will be a panoply of fiscal fixes forthcoming to stimulate the economy - expansionary monetary policy, increased government spending, increased monetary velocity, lower taxes - I hope our government makes clear that these are all smoke and mirrors. We need a more educated citizenry, and propping up our portfolios, our housing prices, or our car purchases does not lead us there.
The auto industry is in the news a bit, and there is a nasty pattern developing. Years and years ago, I mailed my senator requesting she support raising the CAFE standards. Can't, she said, too many jobs will be lost. Now, the industry is threatening that if we don't infuse it with cash, too many jobs will be lost. Looking into the future, it'll be another request and another threat that too many jobs will be lost.
The problem is "too many jobs will be lost." The solution is to get rid of the people who make that threat, which I am guessing are the domestic automaker executives. Give the money to Toyota and Honda so they can buy the Big 3 assets and keep people employed. That solves the overcapacity problem.
Now, if Toyota and Honda start yammering because overcapacity seems to be a sympton of high fixed costs, the government needs to switch to more of a variable cost model or smack them with some regulation. The funny thing is that plenty of high fixed company do just fine with variable demand, so I guess they really just are mistakes on the Big 3's part. I think they'll survive, but they'll just be a shell of their former size; a lot like our portfolios these days.
As we close to within 2 months of the general elections, I find the lack of an offensive gameplan from the Obama campaign discouraging. McCain, with his selection of Pallin, has added some pizzazz to his campaign and injected energy to an otherwise lethargic base. Regardless of how the mudslinging goes, the Right is fired up with the possibility of a mommy VP. Snowmobile races, shotgun weddings, brother-in-law dismissals -- there's a good amount of exciting baggage here. And people love excitement.
What hasn't changed though is that the Republican are mismanaging nitwits, and I find it hard to believe that even diehard supporters believe that McCain/Pallin are more competent than Obama/Biden. Lets see - we're in a bear market, economy is in a recession, housing is pretty much in depression, occupying two Middle Eastern nations at who knows what cost, letting Russia grab back its satellites - can the Democrats try to pin this on Bush/McCain?
McCain doesn't know much about the economy, doesn't know how many houses he's got, probably would invade a few more countries, and would not be able to get the US any more respect on the international scene. A Republican administration would mean gridlock, and what the country needs is change, and it is the sea of Democrats who will bring about that change. Simple hey?
I just watched the first post-primary ad spot, and was not particularly impressed.
Thematically, it compares poorly to McCain. John McCain went to war for his country and then served as POW. Barack took jobs and loans to make it through college and then passed up Wall Street jobs. I can't think of a worse misstep in terms of being out-of-step generationally and class-wise. Was the ad created by a group of 20 and 30-something NYC Ivy League grads? I think he needs a more diverse group of people who'll have better judgement on messaging.
When I think of Bush-Gore and then Bush-Kerry, I remember how Bush's ad people just made him to an average American who everyone could identify with and how the Democrats generally made their candidate into a pompous asshole (excuse my language). Al came across wooden and intellectually snobbish. Kerry came across more blueblood than Al and totally contrived with that forced smile. I'd hate to think it, but Barack's leaning towards an appearance of elitism if this messaging keeps up, especially after he's passed on public financing. Not that the RNC is poor, but you can be sure the RNC will make it look like its poor and the DNC has so much money that Barack doesn't even need public money.
Please please please focus more on how you related to people's trouble (closing steel plants) and sought to make institutional progress. The ideas of sob stories or passing up privilege as sacrifice are nonstarters.
As this primary winds down and I look forward to November, I find myself leaning more and more toward a Barack-Hillary ticket. They are compatible on key issues and bring perspectives on race and gender that have long been neglected. The other two key issues are class and religion, and I think the second will be the most difficult to address.
I still think the USA is at the top in terms of class mobility due to our excellent public school system and free market economy. We are a young nation of immigrants, and as long as we remember that our culture is steeped in a diversity of people and of experiences, this country will do fine. We must stop barricading ourselves from immigrants, worried that they may take our jobs, for complacency leads to uncompetitiveness. Our goal should be to foster diversity in strongly bonded family communities, and to encourage exploration and movement, especially among young people.
Religion is a tougher nut to crack. We are a nation founded on the principle of religious tolerance yet our elected and appointed leaders are often professed Christians. We expressly separate church and state, yet our foreign policy favors Christianity over Islam. Part of the problem is that we are a young nation, and we find our history in religious rather than historical parables. But world history is rich with culture, especially when read from differing perspectives and not just those of the privileged.
With the typhoon in Myanmar and the earthquake in China, natural disasters are on my mind. The sad thing is that our human differences are the cause of so much paralysis when it comes to relief efforts.
The Hurricane Katrina aftermath, laced with race and class, is still fresh on my mind, yet it seems that there is a collective forgetting of those lessons. No, the United States and its allied Western powers cannot just barge into a country, no matter the intention. It is as if your house has been robbed, and some large, aggressive stranger who has been hostile to you in the past suddenly pounds on the door, demanding to be let in to document the destruction and assist in the clean-up.
Certainly, the first step is to publicly offer condolences and sympathy, and arrange for transfer of aid, such as forgiveness of debt, suspension of capital payments and donation of resources that can be infrastructurally supported (e.g., oil, food, etc). It is expensive to run a country, especially after a disaster, and the less a country has to worry about external obligations, the better.
The second step is to get the neighbors to chip in; both in terms of manpower and resources. Empowering local communities to be self sufficient becomes all the more important in our foreign policy. Forget the "lets be isolationist" and if something comes up, "lets drop in our forces" policy that seems to have been around ever since the Cold War.
Then once the neighbors are in, the third step is to deploy a truly multilateral effort to help while respecting the privacy, hurt, confusion, shame? of the affected government. I am amazed that the world does not follow such a reasonable policy, and as an American, saddened that our government is unable to lead in such a manner.
I'm trying to get up to speed on my Guantanamo torture knowledge, and sadly, the stuff I'm seeing is bad. It just confirms my political leanings. First, Hilary Clinton can't even come out against torture. Just like the Eliot Spitzer case, she "needs more info". I'm curious to how she makes decisions. Second, the Supreme Court decision was another 5-4 split (absent Roberts). I haven't read the docket so I can't comment on the reasons. The only high profile organization I could find denoucing the US on this matter is the International Red Cross. I'm looking for a US organization to support.
I understand that torture at Guantanamo isn't going to be on the tops of people's minds, but basic human rights is a cornerstone of civilized society. As far as I can tell, we've just thrown a bunch of foreigners into dungeons willy nilly. Whatever happened to the Enlightenment?
I certainly hope that Barack's strategizers are astute enough to have a plan for when a repressed politician inevitably caters to long simmering desires and your opponent is careless enough to campaign on a platform of decisionmaking yet makes a stupid remark such as "let's wait and see". Here's the plan of attack:1) Take position of moral outrage. Really, Barack should be furious and the whole NY Democrat should be ashamed of the crap that they put the people through. This is why you vote for a nice family man from the Midwest and not some New Yorker whose husband has already strayed a few times.2) Fault Hillary for "let's wait and see". I mean, you could have used that during the Iraq war, but it is pretty obvious that Spitzer got caught fucking a hooker. He's not denying it, not questioning the definition of "is". Why is Hillary so tolerant of extramarital affairs? The lady obviously hasn't a spine, can't stand for anything, and also makes poor judgement calls.3) Segue into how you're not going to be caught with your pants down or your hand in the cookie jar because you've reformed from your wild party days. This is the one thing about Bush -- he's already burnt out on crazy shit. Hillary is uptight and repressed, and down the line, you'll get crackhead decision-making (excuse the adjective) just like Spitzer. I mean look at Iraq and Iran; she's just angling for more conflict to work our her own lack of fun loving accomplishment.
Good luck!
This articles -- http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/05/nyregion/05incentive.html -- asks how can you motivate children to excel academically. The ideal situation is to persuade children of the concept of delayed gratification: work a little now for a greater reward in the future. A key problem, however, is that our corporate structure is too focused on instant gratification: quarterly earnings, five year plans, etc. We've succumbed to a "get rich quick" consumer mentality that is reinforced by a system that craves unsustainable earnings growth. Even for the precocious children who can see past the hype, there is still so much lack of support along the way. Do family, close friends, and role models do enough to reward this behavior? Will society look past race, class, gender when this person needs to find a job, find a home, raise a family? Some people still naively believe there is intrinsic value in education or that hard work leads to success. If we value something, we should spend money for it. It is hypocripsy to value something and not fund it because of money's corrupting effects.Concepts like college, a good stable job, and owning a home are beyond the grasp of segments of our population. Money, certainly, is not. One issue that I have is that cash is seen as something to be spent. If we can give them a debit card linked to an interest bearing account, we will have taught them so much more.
My economic plan is for the middle class: too rich not to manage their money and too cheap to hire a financial advisor to do it. Here are some tips to take advantage of all those loopholes that you hear about but never thought you could take advantage of...
1) Move all your interest bearing savings into dividend bearing assets. Interest is taxed as ordinary income, whereas dividends/long term gains are taxed at a reduced rate. So not only do you get a higher return on say preferred stock, you pay lower taxes. Non-qualified dividends and interest suck until the Democrats let the dividend rate cut lapse.
2) Shop around for a mortgage. I pay several hundred dollars less every month on my mortgage than my neighbors, who got mortgages for the same balance at the same time. The reason is that I got an ARM with a 5 year teaser rate. Lenders aren't discounting ARMs as much as they use to, but it is amazing that people don't pay attention to something that can save hundreds of dollars a month.
3) Take advantage of the credit crunch. The Fed is dropping interest rates and corporate liquidity is drying up. This means you can get a couple of hundred basis points switching into high grade corporate debt. I am looking at CITs 2-year at 6.25 vs. government/GSE at probably 3 and some change.
All the above has some risk.
