Systemic Sanity

Systemic Sanity's New Site

2009-06-19T17:37:00Z

This blog has moved. I am now blogging at http://rodneyjowen.wordpress.com/
I intend to keep this blog open as a reservoir for archived work. Please visit the new site to see what's on my mind.

The New American Auto Industry

2009-06-04T16:08:00Z

As I look at the automotive industry as it exists today--GM and Chrysler filing Chapter 11 after big govt. bailouts--my first thought is that Ford is the big domestic winner in all this. I can envision Ford being the Harley Davidson of the auto industry, the last great American Motor Company. But upon further consideration, Ford may be the big loser in the end, simply because they did all the right(?) things. By taking out loans instead of government bailouts and by working on business strategies instead of bankruptcies they may end up at a severe disadvantage. After all, Ford has to repay those loans, and all other debts while the other two have their debts erased. There is something inherently wrong with this. But then again, comparing them to Harley Davidson reminds me of why my 80s’ vintage Honda is a CB700 instead of a CB750. After years of steadily getting their asses kicked by the Japanese, who were putting out much superior products, Harley went to the Reagan administration and asked for protective tariffs. The government proceeded to put an import tax on any imported motorcycle over 700cc. The Japanese followed suite by retooling their 750s to be 700s. In the case of my motorcycle that was a good thing because Honda simply de-stroked the 750 to 699cc which has the same effect as boring out a 650 to 700--more power in a smaller package. My CB700 is much quicker and has more torque than the 750 models that preceded and followed it.
But, back to today. I would like to see Ford succeed. Not because I am a Ford fan. I’m not. I would also like to see them make a better product, and I have since the mid-seventies when all the domestic companies started making junk. I would like to see Ford succeed because they have tried to do this the right way, without government bailouts or bankruptcy. Further, I don’t think America can really support three major auto industries. Not with the quality that is being imported these days. In my opinion there may be a smaller role in the 21^st century economy for some of the GM products--a really smaller role. Chrysler should fold and shut the doors. Ford could be the big one of the formerly big three. But that scenario is for an ideal world without so much government intervention and goofy laws. In this world, who knows? I do believe that in ten years that landscape will be extremely different. And I will likely still be driving my 97 Toyota Tacoma and my 86 Honda CB700.

The Logic of Human Action

2009-04-20T15:31:00Z

According to Ludwig Von Mises, Human Action is axiomatic. “Action is the essence of [man’s] nature and existence, his means of preserving his life and raising himself above the level of animals and plants.” In short, humans act. We act to satisfy our desires and our desires are what drive us. There is no existence for us without acting. Obviously we act for basic functions, food, sleep, survival. Further, we act on needs and desires beyond those of survival. Cheese puffs and jazz are not necessary for survival, but we may pursue them just the same. Why? Because we have desires and we have a methodology for meeting them: action. But, because we can satisfy many of our desires, is it logical to do so? It could be argued that a diet of nothing but cheese puffs and jazz at dangerously loud levels is illogical as that wouldn’t be healthy. But Mises further says that “Human action is always rational…when applied to the ultimate ends of action, the terms rational and irrational are inappropriate and meaningless.” We eat the junk food and turn up the stereo because that is what we want and because we can. If we know the consequences beforehand and do it anyway we are acting rationally, because we are using the means available to acquire the end we want and are obviously accepting of the risk of weight gain and loss of hearing. If we don’t know the consequences beforehand we are acting rationally for the same reason and are ignorant of the risks.

Human action is simply the means one uses to reach a desired end. Rational or irrational are value judgments made by an outside agent. The particular action chosen may not be the most appropriate or expedient for attaining the end sought, but it is the action itself that is important. Action as a means to a given end is only rational. We humans have the ability to control our environment. We are not victims unless we chose to be, and it is choice that empowers us. Indeed making or not making a choice is action itself, and is always rational. It is rational because we are exercising our free will; we are manipulating our environment as best we can. We may find later that we didn’t make the best choice or take the most efficient action. But that should only influence our future choices and actions. We always work with the knowledge available to us at the time. If we learn from our actions or other associated circumstances we should be that much more prepared for future choices and actions.

We live in a cause and effect, but not necessarily a mechanistic, world. We are not determined beings. We ourselves do the determining. However, we do make mistakes. We often make the wrong choices, act in ways that are not in our best interest. But that is not Mises’ point. Mises would say that those are values judgments, right or wrong. But deciding to act and acting accordingly are our means by which we reach a desired end. In hindsight we often reflect on our choices and decide that we did not take the most expedient path, or that unexpected side effects are not worth the cost required to reach the end sought. But it is we who do the choosing, we who do the acting. We may open ourselves to divine guidance and act on what we perceive to be inspired ideas. But we do the acting. The fact that we have free will, freedom of choice, and the intelligence to utilize these is what separates us from others in God’s kingdom. Divine guidance, while obviously relatyed, is another subject altogether, outside the realm of this entry, but one I should approach at another time.

This is a controversial concept. However, if we keep within the range of Mises’ teaching and understand his meaning it makes perfect sense. The wild card here is value judgment. Mises says that each person has his/her own values, and any judgment from outside is inappropriate. I couldn’t agree more.

Source: Human Action http://mises.org/Books/humanaction.pdf

Hope, Greed and Fear: The Psychology behind the Financial Crisis. From Knowledge at Wharton

2009-04-20T14:57:00Z

This is from the "Knowledge at Wharton" website from the Wharton School of Business at The University of Pennsylvania.

It can be found here:

http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article.cfm?articleid=2204

Hope, Greed and Fear: The Psychology behind the Financial Crisis

Published: April 15, 2009 in Knowledge@Wharton

To explain the current economic crisis, the world of finance has a particular lexicon -- including, for example, credit default swaps, mark-to-market and securitized subprime mortgages. Psychologists, on the other hand, might use very different terms: hope, greed and fear.

The language of psychology helps to address the fact that behind every cut-and-dried statistic about falling home prices and other indicators of economic decline, lies an ever-shifting horde of homeowners, bankers, business owners, unwitting investors -- in short, people. And people often pay no heed to fine-tuned economic models by doing things that are not rational, are not in their best interest, and are justified not by numbers -- but by emotion.

"There are spreadsheets and financial statements and models and rules and regulations," said Carolyn Marvin, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg School for Communications. "On the other hand, there are these feelings we have."

Emotion, it can be argued, not only helped to lead America into the current economic crisis but may also be helping to keep it there. At a recent conference called, "Crisis of Confidence: The Recession and the Economy of Fear," sponsored by the University of Pennsylvania's Department of Psychiatry and the Psychoanalytic Center of Philadelphia, an interdisciplinary panel explored the psychological elements behind today's economy.

"Is there a systematic way to think about our feelings when it comes to the economy?" asked Marvin, the panel moderator. The word "confidence" itself has a double edge to it, encompassing optimism on the one hand and delusion on the other. And could there be a psychological tinge to economic vocabulary itself? "The powers that be are avoiding the word 'depression,'" Marvin pointed out, "which describes not only a state of the market but certainly a clinical condition."

Psychological factors are at work behind the crisis, the panel agreed, although each focused on a different element: mania and over-optimism behind the housing bubble, a lack of self-control by consumers hooked on debt, and the shock and feelings of betrayal of many Americans who thought they were making safe investments, but now find themselves facing a frightening and uncertain future.

'An Aspect of Mania'

Like so many others in history, today's economic crisis began with a bubble, according to Wharton finance professor Richard Herring. "Bubbles occur when people are willing to buy something simply because they believe they can sell it for a higher price. [Bubbles] often have an aspect of mania."

Property bubbles are nothing new, said Herring, who presented a chart of home prices during a 400-year period in Herengracht, a canal area in central Amsterdam. Over those centuries, real home prices increased annually by only 0.2% on average, "but in between, [they were] up 100%, down 50%. There was huge volatility."

Real estate booms and busts happen in very long cycles -- on average about every 20 years. Consequently, when housing prices are going up, few remember that they ever went down. This was certainly the case in the recent crisis, since housing prices only went up between 1975 and 2006. According to Herring, property markets are especially prone to booms and busts because of their nature: They have no central clearinghouse of information about prices, transaction costs are high and trading is infrequent, and the supply of property is relatively fixed in the short term. Because the cycles are decades long, it is difficult to tell what a piece of property should be worth in the long run. "We really don't know what the price should be, so it's always difficult to tell whether you are looking at a bubble or simply improving fundamentals of the economy."

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Housing booms and busts are "almost always linked to the banking system," Herring added. "When something good happens in an economy, it tends to drive up real estate prices, and banks tend to lend to support that, because people now have collateral." Optimism about rising prices feeds the frenzy, and as an increasing number of novice investors enter the market, prices and enthusiasm also increase. "You get into this upward spiral that can take you a very long way for a very long time. You may ask where the supervisors and regulators are in all of this, and often, they tend to support it. They really like to see loans that are collateralized by real estate because it's tangible."

Call it "the fallacy of misplaced concreteness," Herring quipped, showing a slide of a half-built skyscraper from a recent property boom-gone-bust in Thailand, "but really it's the fallacy of misplaced concrete." Again, emotion plays heavily into the cycle. People suffer "disaster myopia," either because they simply can't imagine a downturn happening, or they assume the probability of it happening is so low that it really isn't worth worrying about, Herring stated.

Ever-rising Home Prices

"I think we agree that over-optimism is perhaps a lot of what got us into this mess," said Wharton business and public policy professor Jeremy Tobacman, a panel participant. "There was rampant over-optimism about housing prices."

Tobacman pointed to a survey by Case and Shiller in 2003 of homeowner attitudes in four major markets -- Boston, Milwaukee, Los Angeles and San Francisco. In all four markets, more than 80% of homeowners surveyed said they believed home prices would rise over the next few years. When homeowners were asked how much they expected the price to change in the next months, mean responses ranged from 7.2% in Boston to 10.5% in Los Angeles.

"Even more astonishing than these one-year numbers are the numbers for decades," Tobacman noted. When faced with the question, "On average over the next 10 years, how much do you expect the value of your property to change each year?" homeowners in Milwaukee said they expected prices to rise by 11.7%. Homeowners in San Francisco said they expected a 15.7% return.

People often make poor economic choices because they are overly optimistic about what they will do in the future, Tobacman said. For example, people transfer credit card balances over to cards with high long-term interest rates because they believe they will pay everything off before the much lower teaser rate expires. (Most don't.) Borrowers who default on payday loans typically pay interest amounting to 90% of the loan's principal before they finally give up and stop making payments.

One study of a health club found that members who worked out on average just four times a month chose to pay a monthly membership fee of $85, even though the gym also offered a pay-as-you-go rate of $10 per visit. "When people are polled about their beliefs [as to] what they're going to do, there is a radical refusal to accept reality," said Tobacman. "Myopia may be willful in that we don't want to contemplate undesired outcomes."

In the recent bubble, both buyers and lenders were overly optimistic about what the future would bring. Buyers ignored the possibility that they might not be able to keep up on payments because they assumed the prices of homes would go up and they would be able to sell or refinance. Likewise, lenders ignored the possibility of default because rising home prices had made it easy to get bad loans off the books. Tobacman shared a quote from John Kenneth Galbraith's The Great Crash, a history of the events leading up to the Great Depression: "The bankers were also a source of encouragement to those who wished to believe in the permanence of the boom. A great many of them abandoned their historic role as the guardians of the nation's fiscal pessimism and enjoyed a brief respite of optimism."

Said Tobacman: "I think the question is, when exactly does this powerful impetus to believe in a rosy future get disciplined by the market and when does it get out of hand?"

The explosion of consumer debt behind the crisis is also an issue of self-control, University of Pennsylvania psychology professor Angela Lee Duckworth noted. "It's a perennial human problem, to delay gratification. We all struggle, from little children to the oldest and wisest, with the problem of self-control."

Duckworth defined self-control as the ability to negotiate a situation in which there are two choices and one is obviously superior, but the other choice is nevertheless more tempting. For example, a dieter faced with a chocolate cake knows that it is best not to eat it, but often makes a choice to eat it anyway. In the case of the housing bubble, homebuyers failed to exercise self-control when they bought larger homes than they knew they could afford. Lenders failed to exercise self-control when they chose to write shaky mortgages in order to bank short-term profits.

For years, Americans have saved less and consumed more, Duckworth said. She pointed to the conclusion of a recent editorial in The Wall Street Journal by Chapman University research associate Steven Gjerstand and Chapman University economics professor and 2002 Nobel Laureate Vernon L. Smith: "A financial crisis that originates in consumer debt, especially in consumer debt concentrated at the low end of the wealth and income distribution, can be transmitted quickly and forcefully into the financial system. It appears that we're witnessing the second great consumer debt crash, the end of a massive consumption binge," the editorial stated.

Added Duckworth: "It seems that my father was right during those conversations around the dinner table when he would say, 'Americans are living beyond their means.' I guess we were. And I think that's in part because all human beings want to live beyond their means."

Self-control is an aptitude that changes dramatically over a lifetime, according to Duckworth. This is because the prefrontal cortex, the area of the brain that allows human beings to control impulses and delay gratification, matures more slowly than other parts of the brain. "Sub cortical regions and the brain stem are more or less online as soon as you're born, if not very soon after ... so emotion and impulse in these areas are functioning at full throttle" right away, she said. But the prefrontal cortex is not fully developed until a person is much older -- somewhere in the late 20s and possibly as late as the early 50s.

"There's a lag problem here, where we have our emotions and we have our impulses ... but you have to wait until you're at least 25 before the frontal cortex is in great shape to actually rein in those lower-level desires."

Studies by psychologist Walter Mischel that measure how well a preschool child could delay gratification (asking the child to choose between eating one marshmallow now or getting two later) predicted a range of outcomes that happened later in life, from SAT scores to divorce to use of crack cocaine, Duckworth noted. "I think that these almost unbelievable findings are in fact believable, because Walter Mischel was able to distill in a simple testing situation the classic human dilemma that we all face every day, which is: more later, or a little bit now?"

These and later studies on delayed gratification have shown that self-discipline is a bigger predictor of later success than other factors such as I.Q., Duckworth stated. A better understanding of the psychology of self-control could help "develop government policies that would presumably accommodate the realities of human nature."

A Question of Trust

"What happens when the bubble breaks, as it inevitably does?" Herring asked. The pendulum swings back to the other extreme. "People find it all too easy to imagine that bad things can happen to the market and they withdraw. And they tend to overshoot. They will act very, very risk averse for quite a long time until they are persuaded that [real estate] is once again a safe asset to hold."

According to David M. Sachs, a training and supervision analyst at the Psychoanalytic Center of Philadelphia, the crisis today is not one of confidence, but one of trust. "Abusive financial practices were unchecked by personal moral controls that prohibit individual criminal behavior, as in the case of [Bernard] Madoff, and by complex financial manipulations, as in the case of AIG." The public, expecting to be protected from such abuse, has suffered a trauma of loss similar to that after 9/11. "Normal expectations of what is safe and dependable were abruptly shattered," Sachs noted. "As is typical of post-traumatic states, planning for the future could not be based on old assumptions about what is safe and what is dangerous. A radical reversal of how to be gratified occurred."

People now feel more gratified saving money than spending it, Sachs suggested. They have trouble trusting promises from the government because they feel the government has let them down.

He framed his argument with a fictional patient named Betty Q. Public, a librarian with two teenage children and a husband, John, who had recently lost his job. "She felt betrayed because she and her husband had invested conservatively and were double-crossed by dishonest, greedy businessmen, and now she distrusted the government that had failed to protect them from corporate dishonesty. Not only that, but she had little trust in things turning around soon enough to enable her and her husband to accomplish their previous goals.

"By no means a sophisticated economist, she knew ... that some people had become fantastically wealthy by misusing other people's money -- hers included," Sachs said. "In short, John and Betty had done everything right and were being punished, while the dishonest people were going unpunished."

Helping an individual recover from a traumatic experience provides a useful analogy for understanding how to help the economy recover from its own traumatic experience, Sachs pointed out. The public will need to "hold the perpetrators of the economic disaster responsible and take what actions they can to prevent them from harming the economy again." In addition, the public will have to see proof that government and business leaders can behave responsibly before they will trust them again, he argued.

"Once a person has been traumatized, promises ... are experienced as dangerous -- not safe -- because they require trust to believe," said Sachs. "It is up to the victim to decide when she can trust again. This takes time."

Conscience of a Classical Liberal

2009-03-15T19:30:00Z

I realize I have painted myself in a corner politically. By being an Independent I am usually at odds with whoever happens to be President. Yes, that can be convenient in that I don’t have to defend “my President”, the guy I voted for. But honestly I don’t mind that. I voted for Reagan in 80 and Clinton in 92 and 96. And I felt then, as I do now, that I voted my conscience given my political mind at the time, my understanding of the issues, and my choices. However, several unrelated issues coalesced in the late 90s that gave me reason to reevaluate my political thinking. Partly the statist actions of the Clinton Administration--Waco, Ruby Ridge, Bosnia, Iraq--rubbed me the wrong way. Another big thing for me was re-reading and understanding Ayn Rand and Thomas Jefferson. The result for me was a realization that individualism is important, even in a democratic system--in many ways more so in a democratic system. That being the case I found it important for me to really vote my conscience. That means voting for the person most likely to represent my political values, rather than settling for the lesser of two evils, even if said person doesn’t have a chance in hell. I made that decision because I felt it more important to express my values at the polls than to settle for a person I disagree with, but who is definitely better than the other guy. I just can’t do that anymore.

I have over the years considered myself as fiscally conservative and socially liberal. My positions have changed over time but mainly to the extremes at the edges. In other words I have become even more fiscally conservative and more socially liberal over time. I am registered as unaffiliated, or independent. Philosophically I consider myself a classical liberal. My concern with libertarianism is the tendency to anarchy. I understand the theoretical underpinnings of market anarchy and I find most of it extremely interesting. But I am at this time in my life a classical liberal. I still envision some function, albeit limited, for the state. Contrary to public mythology, that does not make me a conservative. Conservatives can find all kinds of diabolical uses for the state. In fact most of the people who in the current political climate consider themselves conservative are more rightly fascist.

This brings me to my current gripe with the political status quo. I find it hilarious that public conservatives like Rush Limbaugh and Glen Beck are all of a sudden fans of Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged. I liken this to the uneducated itinerant preacher who claims all kinds of scientific facts are revealed in the pages of the Bible. The preacher, like these conservatives, is sincere in his beliefs, but none of them really understand the literary underpinnings of their sources. Typically these conservatives are doing to Rand what they have done to Thomas Jefferson for years. They take what is convenient and disregard the rest. Limited government is only limited government when it’s always limited. Typically these blow-hards are driving Obama into the ground for big spending and lack of fiscal restraint. It’s not that I disagree with their arguments, but they speak with forked tongues. Where were they when “W” was spending like a drunken sailor? We can all rightly condemn the new Democratic majority as they take the country ever closer to Socialism. But the greatest blame falls on the Republicans for allowing their President to drive this country into the ground to begin with. If they are unhappy with the way the country is going they should accept the fact that they laid the groundwork for it with eight years of “Neo-conservatism”.

I don’t like the direction in which the country is heading. I intend to criticize Obama and Congress as they make decisions and take actions I disagree with. I disagreed with and criticized Bush also. That doesn’t make for a convenient situation where I can just always criticize those in charge. It makes for a very inconvenient situation where we still have an administration that doesn’t reflect my values. I didn’t vote for Obama (or McCain), but I would criticize him even if I did. That in my opinion is the proper role for citizens in a participative democracy. The previous eight years almost ruined this country. It is incumbent on all of us to try to bring this country back to our foundation values again. Hopefully we can make progress in that direction.

ImmiGREAT from Bureaucrash

2008-12-11T14:47:00Z

This is a re-print of information available at our friends Bureaucrash, found at: http://social.bureaucrash.com/page/page/show?id=2310103%3APage%3A4286#section14

I had to share this because I think it is crucially important, and because I couldn't have said it better myself. This typifies the way I think about immigration.

ImmiGREAT

Thanks in large-part to misinformation and the rhetoric that accompanies protectionist legislation passed with the support of Big Labor and other rent-seeking groups, immigration has become a divisive topic. As was seen between East and West Berlin decades ago and the United States and Mexico today, this sometimes results in the construction of physical barriers to prevent the free movement of individuals. Yet, fortunately there are some reasonable voices in this discussion, helping to point out how immigration restrictions only further entrench governments and negate individual rights, not to mention severely hampering the economy.

Why we support free and open immigration:

Immigration restrictions violate the natural rights of each individual. Restricting where a person can live or work based on the geographical location where they were born hearkens back to the days when governments imposed similar restrictions on another factor outside of an individual’s control – their skin color. We should be concerned about the welfare of all persons, not just those who happen to be born within a certain arbitrary political boundary.

Immigration restrictions violate self-ownership. An individual has the right to reach an agreement with an employer, whether he happens to be born 50, 500, or 5,000 miles away. To allow the government to prevent such a contract violates each individual’s rights. Because, if the government has the authority to say who can work for who, we are slaves.

Immigration, like free trade, improves the economy. Robust immigration helps to raise the standard of living. Any limit on the potential pool of mental and physical labor only diminishes the market's potential for wealth creation. Free and open immigration allows for the dynamism and entrepreneurship of the market to be more-fully realized as individuals are free to specialize in areas that they excel, found businesses, and innovate. And they provide a positive externality, creating jobs and goods and services. A rising tide raises all ships.

Allowing for immigration is a peaceful way to pressure tyrannical States to shape-up. Rights are not granted by the government. An individual born in North Korea, Brazil, the United States, Germany, and Nigeria all have the same rights. But, since governments usurp rights, those living under the most repressive regimes often move to less-restrictive areas, seeking a better life for themselves and their families. If the best and brightest from a particular country are emigrating elsewhere, even the most authoritarian of governments realize the loss of talent and are forced to become less-burdensome – something that helps individuals still living in those countries.

Immigrants internalize the ideas of freedom. They know firsthand the stifling effects of burdensome, corrupt governments. By uprooting their family and moving to a new area, they have demonstrated that they value individual liberty, personal responsibility, and markets. They have, quite literally, voted with their feet. They remind each of us of the importance of liberty, and of the importance of preserving that liberty.

Immigrate? No. ImmiGREAT!

Let 'Em All Fail

2008-12-05T21:01:00Z

The fact that the so-called Big Three have the gumption to go to Washington to ask us, the taxpayers, via our so-called representatives, to bail them out of the mess they have gotten themselves into is just further proof of my contention that we are now living in some sort of bizarro world that upon serious contemplation would totally blow the mind right out of its socket. Who are these people and why is anyone seriously considering this? Granted they are using their best scare tactics, ripped right from the annals of Bush communication doctrine. But, rightfully considered, all this fear and loathing over the auto industry is even more ridiculous than what was proposed to rob and steal for the Wall Street boys. And you can believe if Hank Paulson or Condi Rice (etc, etc, etc) had the ties to Detroit that they have with Wall Street, Saudi Arabia, Big Oil Houston….the fear mongering would be cranked up to full speed, along with the support of CNN, MSNBC, FOX, et al. It’s hard to say today, but I expect congress will cave before it’s over. The only real resistance is basically what we saw over the Wall Street Bail. The real conservatives, Ron Paul, Richard Shelby, have and will oppose this on principle. But as weak as that opposition is now it will all but disappear once the Democrats are in the majority.

But this isn’t really a matter of left/right, or conservative/liberal as it is an orientation to governmental finance and supply. A Democrat would have never been able to spend the massive amounts that Reagan, Bush I, Bush Jr. have. Now, some 28 years after Reagan, the idea of fiscal responsibility is an anachronism much like constitutional values and civil liberties. In a nutshell this is highway robbery. The government takes money from its citizens via the threat of violence, and then passes that money around to friends, relatives, associates, and donors. Then, through some pretty weak rhetorical acts, attempts to convince its victims that all its actions are in the victim’s best interest. What is really mind blowing is that so many people buy this baloney, even when they know something’s not right. A CNN poll says over 60% oppose bailing out the Big Three. What is revealing about that poll is not the majority that opposes it, but that it’s not a bigger majority.

Please steal my money. I only had to work my ass off for it. Take it and build bombs that destroy ancient civilizations and kill innocent people. Be sure and give some of it to your cronies and supporters. Send some to foreign countries too, please. You can even spend more than you take, because I’m sure I’ll have more to offer you later. In the meantime borrow from other countries, maybe even some of the ones you give my money to. You’ll have to pay them eventually because they have big guns also. Just come back and ask for some more. It’s OK. Really, it is. I don’t need it. It’s only money. If I run out I know you’ll be there for me.

The Economic Crisis, and some options

2008-10-29T18:36:00Z

We all need to start thinking, listening, talking, writing, and whatever else to get ourselves out of the financial mess our leaders have gotten us into. Juan Enriquez and Pop!Tech are offering a good start. Follow the link below and watch the video. It is sobering to say the least. Above all it is a good start.

Click: Juan Enriquez

Alfred E Newman for President

2008-10-28T20:39:00Z

Generals gathered in their masses,
just like witches at black masses.
Evil minds that plot destruction,
sorcerers of death's construction.
In the fields the bodies burning,
as the war machine keeps turning.
Death and hatred to mankind,
poisoning their brainwashed minds.
Oh lord, yeah!

Politicians hide themselves away.
They only started the war.
Why should they go out to fight?
They leave that role to the poor, yeah.

Time will tell on their power minds,
making war just for fun.
Treating people just like pawns in chess,
wait till their judgement day comes, yeah.

Now in darkness world stops turning,
ashes where the bodies burning.
No more War Pigs have the power,
Hand of God has struck the hour.
Day of judgement, God is calling,
on their knees the war pigs crawling.
Begging mercies for their sins,
Satan, laughing, spreads his wings.
Oh lord, yeah!
               --Black Sabbath, War Pigs

On the eve of this momentous election I can't help but think of 
Sabbath's lyrics, so appropriate right now.  Because unless 
everyone has forgotten we are still at war, and that war[s] is 
as illegal now as it ever was.  But in the midst of the 
financial crisis and the hopes of replacing arguably the USA's 
worst president ever we seem to have forgotten that.  Having 
said that, I must turn my attention to the farce that poses 
as democracy.

I don't know if the candidates have everybody fooled, if our 
system is just so pitiful, or if the electorate is just mindless.  
I see conservatives who really believe in the principles of 
their political faith supporting McCain, just as they supported 
Bush, who gladly took them and the rest of us to the cleaners.  
The unstated should be plainly clear here: federal bailouts, 
nationalizing banks and industry, spending like a drunk sailor 
is not conservative.  If any given Democrat had tried to pull 
off half the things King George has domestically he would have 
been tarred and feathered long ago.  Quite a new twist on the 
concept of only Nixon being able to go to China.

On the other hand I see many liberals, who I know personally to 
be anti-war at the least, pacifist at best, supporting 
Obama/Biden, despite the latter's public vows to continue the 
maintenance and growth of the War Machine.  I'm sure the instant 
justification is the old lesser of two evils.  But that very 
concept is what got us in to this fix in the first place.  
The only redeeming factor to any of this may be, ironically, 
that if the Democrats win the Whitehouse and control of 
Congress, a minority Republican Party may be a better check 
on excess than the minority Democratic Party has ever been.

I don't mean to play-down the significance of the financial fiasco.  
It is and will be the determining event for many of us.  Our world 
will likely never be the same as it has been for the last 15 years 
or so.  I am visualizing the living standards of the 1970's as being 
more the norm.  Unfortunately, the Government has identified the 
problem and offered to be our great night in shining armour--again.  
Dare we ever forget that the excesses of government played as much 
if not more a role in the formation of this mess as anything.  And 
the absolute fortune we have wasted killing and being killed by West 
Asians will never come back to us, and only takes away from our 
options for domestic stabilization.

Surely there's a better way.  Alfred E Newman, where are you when 
we need you?

Georgie, Fannie, Freddie, and the Hen House

2008-09-09T21:29:00Z

The bailout of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac is nothing if not complete proof that the good old US of A is a socialist country. But let me modify that, a National Socialist country. There is a difference, which I will get into below. First, Georgie and his henchmen have just bailed out a load of corrupt businessmen and placed the bill at the taxpayer’s feet. This is the same Georgie who has spent more of our money indiscriminately than any other President in history, and has run up the greatest debts of any President in history. And somehow he still has supporters and they still consider themselves conservatives. I have asked before and I must ask again, “What are they conserving?” The only thing I can see that they are conserving is the war machine and their corrupt friend’s money. The one thing they are not doing is serving the people of this country. They never have.

National Socialism is a totalitarian, expansionist, military state, which sponsors corporatism. If that doesn’t describe America right now I don’t know what does.

But there is more to the story. There are deeper levels to the Fannie/Freddie bail. As this country gets deeper and deeper in debt we have to borrow money from someone. As it so happens we currently borrow the most from the nation from which we also buy the most: China. And that borrowing is arranged through bonds issued by Fannie/Freddie. So, if these two government props were to fail, as any other market entity that made bad decisions would and should, not only would the housing crises get worse, and all those big-wig gamblers lose their backsides, but Amerika would lose its ability to manipulate the ‘trade deficit/spending debt’ tight rope it has been walking for many years.

Do you ever wonder how it is that big business can take chances that small businesses would never consider? Do you ever wonder how Amerika keeps functioning even as it runs massive spending debts, and massive trade deficits? Are you curious as to what is so damn important about Fannie/Freddie anyway?

Our omnipotent leaders have coddled a communist country with a terrible human rights record and given them most-favored trade status, just so they could ultimately trade away the jobs of Americans for the ability to borrow funds so they can finance war and empire building with the blood of the children of these workers whose jobs they pawned away. Then as things get rough and the chickens began coming home to roost, they dropped the interest rates to artificially low levels to stimulate economic growth, the side affect of which is increased risk-taking and financial irresponsibility. Then, as things get rough and once again the chickens decide to come home, Big Daddy steps in one more time and buys the whole hen house. But you have to know sooner or later those chickens are coming home. And there will be hell to pay when they get here.

The Scene and My Reaction

2008-09-05T02:41:00Z

Now, with each wing of the only real political party in America having declared their respective nominees we have to endure the endless stream of baloney that follows between now and November. There are two sure things we can count on: 1) It will be an historical inauguration. We will either see the first black male president, or the first female vice president. 2) After the inauguration everything will pretty much be more of the same. The same, despite the fact that the Democrats are determined to convince everyone that they are as Republican as the Republicans with their convention focus on faith and a hawkish VP., and despite the Republicans actually campaigning as a party of change, when McCain is more Bush-Doctrinaire than Bush himself; the same Bush responsible for screwing everything up so bad that the need for change has never been greater.

The things that won’t change regardless of the next president:

The government will continue to increase its control over our lives.

Our foreign policy will continue to be meddlesome, aggressive, and immoral.

The victims of American oppression will continue to strike back; the government will call it terrorism and will thus justify even more oppression.

Social Security will become less and less stable as crooked officials loot it to pay an ever increasing pile of bills.

The blowback from years of Fed mismanagement will continue to hit hard, specifically on working and middle class families.

The police state will grow.

The IRS will become even more aggressive as it looks for money to pay for Bush’s wars.

Politicians will be responsible for all the above but will tell the sheeple (voting public) that they are: working to reduce the size of government; looking out for the working and middle class; protecting us from foes foreign and domestic; balancing the budget; reinventing social security; respecting of the constitution; going to fix the [fill in the blank] problem; doing the best that they can to [fill in the blank], and would if it weren’t for the other party.

As long as the voting public believes the lies, supports the liars, goes to the polls, and expects anything other than what we now have they are collectively living out the definition of insanity: doing the same thing and expecting different results. Then again, perhaps they are satisfied with the status quo. I say they, because I can’t bring myself to be a contributing member of this insanity. For the time being I am exercising my constitutional right to not vote. That in itself is a vote. It is a simple, silent message. I refuse to play along. I’m not interested in either of these parties, their candidates, or what they plan to do with the unwarranted power they have once they attain the highest office in the land. I will offer my relentless dissent. I will continue to educate myself and share with others. I will work for a better vision for this country. But I will not support the vision of the major parties. Any lesser evil is still an evil.

Martin Schram on Veterans Under Siege

2008-07-21T19:11:00Z

Veterans For Common Sense Director Paul Sullivan reviews Martin Schram's Veterans Under Siege: How America Deceives and Dishonors Those Who Fight Our Battles

Below is a link to this crucially important book review by one of America's true heroes. Day-to-day Paul is out fighting for those this country has tossed aside like so many discarded beer bottles. Thanks Paul.

*Paul Sullivan's Review for VCS

Getting Beyond the Same Old, Same Old

2008-07-20T18:53:00Z

Why, if the Iraqis have asked us to leave, or at least to present a timetable, is the president reluctant? Why, indeed. If there is anyone left out there who hasn’t figured it out yet, here’s a clue: We are not really fighting terrorism there, or searching for weapons of mass destruction aimed at US soil, or freeing the Iraqis from dictatorship, or making the world safer. In fact our presence there is the antithesis of all these propositions. In the eyes of the Iraqis we are the terrorists. They were much better off without us than they are with us. The only weapons of mass destruction in Iraq are what we have brought in and used on their innocent people. We deposed and oversaw the execution of Sadam, although I have still yet to find how that is anything less than a war crime. And if anything our presence in Iraq has made that country, our country, and the world at large, less safe. That’s the political reality, and somehow most people in this country either know this and shrug their shoulders, or stubbornly insist on believing the mythology that got us there, generally for partisan reasons. The result? A bunch of the same old, same old. Neither of the men likely to become president in 2009 will do much, if anything, about it. Congress definitely won’t. We the people are all but powerless to do anything outside the system, and the system is still part and parcel a product of the mythology.

The greatest problem we face is the big disconnect between our government and the people of this country. The government is long out of control and citizen input is a joke. Orwell is a footnote by now. The media are bought and paid for and serve a populace with other, more important things on its mind: Britney’s baby, American Idol, Obama’s church life; Flash: Baby born with no head, and survives; Elvis and the UFOs that abduct small children out West. They deliver the news that inquiring minds want to know, because in reality, there are very few inquiring minds. Yes the information is there, outside the normal channels for those who really do want to know. But once they find the truth they are either quiet or branded as kooks and conspiracy theorists for getting too far outside the box of current social standards. Better to keep your mouth shut, do your job, don’t complain or think for yourself, and never mind that man behind the curtain.

I think our choices of action are limited, but we still have our minds. We can and should think for ourselves and encourage others to. We can speak out and share the truth, even with those with their heads in the sand, especially them. We can refuse to vote for idiots who promise more of the same. Non-voting is an effective method of passive resistance. Refuse to support the mainstream media. Buy and display a peace sign. Offer young people intelligent alternatives to military service. Debunk the myth that enlisting in the military is synonymous with serving one’s country. One may be serving Saudi Arabia, or Israel, or General Dynamics, or Raytheon, or Exxon-Mobil, but one in today’s military is NOT serving his/her country.

More than anything we should believe in peace and live peaceful lives. Gandhi said that peace is the way. We can make it our way by letting our lives speak. If that’s the most we can do now, then we will at least know we are doing our part.

Jesse Helms, RIP

2008-07-04T17:21:00Z

Jesse Helms has died at 86. Oddly, he died on the fourth of July, the same day that Thomas Jefferson and John Adams died, and the day we celebrate as Independence Day; the day America declared its independence from monarchical rule. I say that’s odd because I consider the birth of America as the beginning of an experiment in self-rule, a beginning with good potential. And I consider Jefferson and Adams as philosophers and statesmen who believed in this potential and who worked to see it happen. While I recognize that Helms and his conservative supporters see themselves as a continuation of that dream, I don’t see them that way, never have, never will.

Helms was a part of what the historian Dan Carter, in his study of George Wallace, labeled The Politics of Rage. This politics was the platform wherefrom the worst components of my beloved South rose to national attention, and indeed helped to dominate politics—and still do. Helms, like Wallace, tapped into the tremendous anger that gripped the South as its black citizens began to demand equal and unconditional treatment. While Wallace is the poster child of this movement, he was nothing more than an opportunistic chameleon. Carter notes the New York Times as saying that Ronald Reagan rode to power on the wave that Wallace created. But Wallace was not so much a part of some social movement, or counter movement as he was power-hungry and willing to win at any cost. Wallace had no firm principles outside of political success, whatever that might mean. Wallace saw and tapped into the rage that was present. Helms, on the other hand, was the rage. And while the civil rights crusade succeeded, the rage is ever present and certainly not limited to civil rights anger. Helms represents the worst of political conservatism, a politics whereby the state limits some of its citizens while favoring others, uses its monopoly on violence to impose an arbitrary moral standard on all citizens, and robs these citizens through taxation to change the rest of the world through even greater violence, war.

Back to the beginning with good potential: the Helmsian conservatives aren’t the only political group to spoil this potential. The so-called ultraliberal socialistic New Dealers he opposed so ferociously did their part as well. And I am sure he knew in his heart that it was in the best interest of his country to do what was necessary to curb their influence and to block their policies when he could. The one thing that can be said about Jesse, even by his political opponents, is that he was principled. It was a good thing that somebody opposed the goofy New Deal/Great Society socialism of the past fifty years. But Helms was more than opposition, he also proposed change, and reversion. His was the same politics in operation, just with different aims.

Jesse Helms will be remembered for a long time. I am sorry for his friends and family and I am sure he was loved. At the same time his politics were despised and will always be by a large portion of our country. But it is as virulent as ever, just look at the Bush/Cheney regime for good example. My hope is not that we won’t be ruled by social conservatives, but that we won’t be ruled by anyone, liberal or conservative. I still believe in that lofty but simple Jeffersonian ideal of self-rule. And I believe that no Jesse, or LBJ, or JFK, or Reagan, or Bush, or Obama will ever deliver that. If we truly want freedom, real freedom, perhaps we should look back to 1776and try again. Now that’s conservatism.

Booms and Busts by Rich Karlgaard

2008-07-03T18:25:00Z

Dig this commentary by Rich Karlgaard of Forbes, and weigh in:
http://blogs.forbes.com/digitalrules/2008/06/booms-and-busts.html
...

Beyond Form

2008-05-11T16:29:00Z

That we might make sense of our world we use form. Form defines, describes, and gathers all the loose ends of our chaotic existence so that we can easily function within this chaos without giving up hope, or losing our minds. But still we must understand that underneath it all there is chaos.

Religion uses form to explain the inexplicable. True religious experience is just that, experience. As such it really defies explanation. Consequently, over time people have related their experiences through allegory, metaphor, and parable which do very little in clearly relating these experiences to others; hence the beginning of confusion. To clear the confusion, religious leaders, intent on leading, have taken these poetic explications and created models of form—generally in the shape of scripture, rules, traditions, ceremony, and hard and fast belief systems to which one must subscribe. But behind the form there is the chaos of the Universe, or God, or the Tao, or Jah, or the Void. Ancient Taoists said that the Tao was beyond comprehension. Even the early Christian Church referred to the mystery of God. But mankind is not happy with mysteries. In his book, “The Way of Peace”, Deepak Chopra notes that in the beginning God created man and we have been returning the favor ever since. It is undeniable that humans are uncomfortable with ambiguity. Yet that doesn’t change the fact that we live in a mysterious and ambiguous universe. The practice of Zen Buddhism is that of sitting, learning to be one with the moment, embracing chaos, which is the essence of enlightenment.

In the martial arts we use form, or kata in Japanese, in much the same sense. Form is used as a teaching tool to understand the concepts and techniques of the fighting and healing arts. But the reality of combat and illness is chaos. It is of course insane to try and stick to choreography in a critical situation. But the purpose of the form is preparation, to teach the body to act in a different way when the time is right. The purpose of yoga and qigong is preventive medicine. The secret is not in taming the chaos as one might imagine, but changing the functioning of the body so that it goes with the flow, not fight against it. This is the secret of Taoism. All the great martial arts masters go beyond form. From the outside their forms may even appear as sloppy and haphazard, but actual sparring reveals something altogether different. Like the Buddhist, the martial master seeks to be one with the moment, to embrace chaos.

Our social lives are no different. The world is chaotic and unpredictable. In the search for sensible control of the environment we created formal governments. Like our religious organizations, the purpose behind government is control. But government is also form. The formal rationale for government is most devious, in the sense that most people don’t think that we can survive without it, that somehow the form of government is necessary. But we should be clear about this. Government doesn’t control the chaos of the world—it controls the people of the world. The world is still chaotic. In fact we shouldn’t want it any other way. The goal of Buddhism, like that of the martial arts, is to recognize, accept, and embrace the chaos of existence and then, as the ancient Taoist taught, go with the flow. The great shell game of government is the propagation of the idea that we cannot coexist peacefully without being controlled by a higher authority. Yet Jesus taught that the Kingdom of Heaven is within. We already have the inherent capability to deal with anything the world throws at us. The forms of religion and martial arts, among others, are instructive in finding and utilizing this capability. The form of government is only instructive in squelching it.

The Season of Importance

2008-03-23T18:29:00Z

As the winter becomes spring, and the political season becomes an annoying reality, the talking heads are spinning and digging dirt. Meanwhile the economy seems to be in real trouble, which to some degree can be traced back to talking heads reminding everyone that we are in a recession. The more we think that way, the more we fear the results and curb spending, which only confirms our fears and their predictions. I think there is much about the economy that is important to each and every one of us. On the other hand, there is much about the macro view that we can do little if anything about, and the macro inevitably influences the micro. I think the best we can do individually is play it smart and honest, and pay close attention to the things of real importance.

The best news of real importance so far this year is the upcoming Iron Man movie and the reunion tour of Return to Forever. Everything else is secondary and relative in importance. Iron Man is the marginalized but enormously important Marvel Comics character. From the trailer previews I’ve seen, this will be a major movie for Superhero Geeks. Iron Man (Tony Stark in the day-to-day), like his black sheep brothers Spider Man and The Daredevil, is portrayed as human in his frustrations, weaknesses, and confusion—things most of us struggle with day in and day out. In the original comic series, Stark was an Arms Manufacturer and early ardent anti-Communist. However, as is the case with many of us, he reconsidered the morality of war, and in his case of manufacturing weapons for the military. Now, keep in mind, Iron Man is a true-blue superhero, intent on protecting the innocent from the bad guys. It’s just that Stark, like most of Stan Lee’s characters, is conscientious and contemplative. He, like many Americans, has had to reconsider who the bad guys are. I’m not sure the new movie will accent that. But I expect it to be a major movie, a target for summer entertainment.

In that vein, the reunion of Return To Forever is monumental. Made up of Chic Corea, Stanley Clark, Al DiMeola, and Lenny White, Return To Forever, is a supergroup of profound proportions. But this isn’t your Glimmer Twins-Aerosmith-Black Sabbath—grade supergroup. This is jazz fusion; music for music connoisseurs. The thing about good music, great music, is that words don’t do it justice. To that end I recommend a peek on Youtube at Return To Forever past and present: http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=return+to+forever&search=Search.

If only all of life were as simple and pleasing as good comics and acid jazz.

Our Bizzaro World

2007-10-24T01:17:00Z

Reading current affairs magazines, watching cable network news, or listening to the discussions on NPR talk shows can only leave you with the odd impression that we are living in some sort of Bizzaro World, where not only do the other inhabitants of this world not realize that their Emperor has no clothes, they believe what they are told regardless of how ridiculous it is. There is absolutely no doubt in any reasonable person’s mind that invading Iraq was an illegal mistake. Yet, there are still books written that seek where we went wrong. There are people who stand a very good chance of being the next executive who are sure they would do it again, only better.

Invading Iraq was wrong. It was illegal. Rumsfield/Bush/Wolfowitz/Cheney were intent on invading Iraq years before 9/11. All this hoopla about “weapons of mass destruction, or Sadam’s ties with Al Queda” has always been propaganda. Nobody gave the Administration bad intelligence. They took what was there and made it fit their plans. What wasn’t there they made up. Any “Hero” with grand designs on the throne still thrusting their chests out and waving the bloody shirt should have their heads examined. They certainly don’t need to lead this nation further down the septic rabbit hole of war, torture, deficits, and police state.

Even given all we now know we still hear people discussing Iraq as if there is even the slightest possibility that it may have been a good idea. Enough is enough. It was a bad idea. Even if you originally thought it was a good idea, it’s OK to admit now that it wasn’t. It is understandable that people were scared in the aftermath of 9/11. What I don’t understand is why people refuse to look the truth square in the eye. Blowback is a real thing. America has been pushing people around, especially in the Middle East, for many years. Can anyone really blame them for fighting back? That’s what 9/11 was all about. They don’t hate us for our freedoms, as the big dummy is fond of saying. They hate us because we don’t mind our own business, we mind theirs.

In the midst of our election year confusion we hear tough guy chicken hawks blowing on about how they will protect us from the “terrorists” if they get the chance to be king. The greatest terrorist on the world stage right now is the king. Bush has presided over one of the bloodiest regimes in modern history. No one really wants to hear that, but consider the facts. America invaded an innocent country that posed no threat to us. We destroyed their governance, killed thousands and thousands of innocent people, tortured their soldiers, and created an anarchical situation in which a civil war has bloomed. If someone did that in America we would call them terrorists. Why wouldn’t we? What is the difference?

This is not news, this is the way it is and I believe that most people understand that. But still we discuss the issues as if the Administration’s lies had some amount of credibility. What is even worse, it’s happening all over again with Iran. The people of Germany are good people, they always have been (all people are good people). It was Hitler and his Administration that initiated the violence that led to WW II. But the German people went along with it, debated it, some supported it, some left, others buried their heads in the sand. In hindsight we can see that the Germans of WW II were not evil, they were misled, misinformed, and worst of all subject to a dictator. Are we willing to look in the national mirror to see what’s happening here? Is it really that far-fetched to consider that we may be in the same situation ourselves? Or is it easier to bury our heads in the sand? I think that discussing the obvious as if it were something else is a bad case of head burial. I think it’s time to call it as it is. It’s time to address the realities of our situation, as ugly as they may be.

The Padilla Tragedy

2007-09-07T00:11:00Z

The conviction of Jose Padilla should be troubling to every American citizen. It is a direct vindication of the Bush Administration’s total disregard for the rule of law. Unfortunately too many of our fellows are short-sighted, preferring the emotional to the rational. It’s easy to equate Padilla with Bin Laden and 9/11, and thus to see him as something to be feared or as a perfect target for some deranged form of collective vengeance. But this country is supposed to be a nation of laws, subject to the rational and non-prejudiced rule of hard-fast law, not a monarchy subject to the whims and obsessions of the prince.

I will grant that there is much that is troubling with the concept of rational individuals being subjected to laws that are written by other individuals, or groups of individuals, with the primary intent being control. That is a philosophical argument that will have to wait for another forum. The fact of the matter is that we supposedly live in a constitutional republic and, like it or not, a constitutional republic should have authority over its citizenry through, and only through, the edict of law. Law should be conceived and written by elected representatives of the citizenry. And law should, as much as anything else, protect these citizens. The Padilla case only proves the folly of this and lends further credence to my contention that what we actually have in America is a subtle but definite dictatorship.

Padilla, a US citizen, was held for 3-1/2 years in a Navy brig in South Carolina, in solitary confinement in a 9 foot by 7 foot cell, without charges. He was not charged at all for 3-1/2 years. He was blindfolded, chained in awkward positions, injected with psychotic drugs and interrogated. And let me repeat myself, every citizen deserves the protection of the law, is innocent until proven guilty. This guy never had a chance. It doesn’t matter if he was guilty, until he was proven guilty. At that point it may be appropriate to sentence him. But he deserves equal protection until that point.

Throughout American legal history there are reams of examples of people being wrongly charged. Their only protection has been our liberal legal system which grants equal protection to all and innocence until guilt is proven. Padilla was denied this by Bush and his henchmen who are all too happy to see such troubling structures destroyed. But the fact remains that Padilla was a United States citizen. If it can be denied him it can be denied any of us. Which means that no matter how honest and patriotic you may be, if you cross the wrong person or simply find yourself in the wrong place at the wrong time you can be subject to the same treatment Padilla found. Justice should be blind. Blindness in this sense should be permanent and definite, not arbitrary or at-will.

In May of this year the President laid out the justification for martial law through The National Security Presidential Directive/NSPD 51. This gives George Bush the right and ability to rule the United States through martial law indefinitely. Now this may or may not happen. But, as with the Padilla case, what really matters is that they have that ability. This is not a government of the people. It’s not even close. And we the people are in bad, bad trouble if we lose Habeas Corpus and any say in how our government is run.