Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan are back. The rest of us will have to wait.
Category Archives: Essays
The Business Model
The health insurance companies are in the Health Care Industry, yet their business model is to spend as little money as possible on actually offering heath care. In other words, they make money by charging for coverage but denying health care.
Check out the last edition of the Bill Moyers Journal for three excellent pieces on Health Care: “Wendell Potter on Profits before Patients“, “Money, Politics and Health” and “Health Care Reform on the Table.”
Filed under Essays
Why is This News?
I just read that Liz Cheney “doesn’t believe her father did anything wrong in connection with a secret CIA operation.” Earlier today I wrote about the silliness in our political dialogue and this only furthers my point. So, really, why is what Liz Cheney thinks about her father newsworthy? I am sure the first person Dick-Just-Trust-Me-Cheney was going to confide in while hiding everything else from everyone else in the country was his daughter. “Daddie wouldn’t do that.”
Why is this news? Maybe we should hear what LaToya Jackson thinks.
Filed under Essays
Let the Silliness Go On
I should not be surprised by the total absence of seriousness in our political discourse. Between the Obama election and the economic crisis, the Republican insistence on “clinging to” outdated political and economic ideologies – i.e., cut taxes, cut spending, nothing more — has quickly moved from a lack of seriousness to pure silliness. To a certain extent this was expected after almost a decade of political hegemony in both the White House and Congress: the Republican political class was tired and out of ideas. Surely the same fate will befall the Democrats at the end of the Obama reign. In the meantime, we have to live through the rehashing of the Republican culture wars that have little to with reality and less to do with policy. Continue reading
Quack 22
If it is better to resign from elected office than become a Lame Duck, doesn’t that create a Lame Duck Catch 22 because you can’t become a Lame Duck unless you become an elected official and all elected officials become Lame Ducks? Continue reading
Filed under Essays
Above the Fray
In today’s Washington Post, the Mexican Army is accused of using “torture to battle drug traffickers.” The Mexican government itself has recognized the abuse, what the Post describes as “forced disappearances, acts of torture and illegal raids in pursuit of drug traffickers . . .” It is telling that the exact same behavior when perpetrated by the U.S. is not described by the Post or our government as a human rights abuse, torture, or in need of investigation.
The so-called liberal NPR has even admitted that when torture is perpetrated by foreign governments it is torture and when the U.S. government engages in the exact same behavior it is a valid information gathering technique. In a recent response to criticism by Glenn Greenwald for NPR’s official refusal to use the word “torture” with respect to American actions, NPR Ombudsman Alicia Shepard argued that the U.S. tactics are not torture because the tactics are used to “get information” whereas other countries torture because they use these same tactics as punishment.
Though I am not completely clear on how she would apply her “beating it out of him” is legit standard to the common criminals in Abu Ghraib who had nothing to do with the “War on Terror” and had no “beans to spill”. So, how would the NPR Ombudsman apply her standard to the Mexicans who have said that the entire purpose of the tactics was to get information. Would the Mexican activities therefore not amount to torture either?
So while the Mexican National Human Rights Commission is investigating these abuses as torture, our beloved President Obama, with the full support of the American Mullahs, is letting bygones be bygones and claiming all evidence of abuse is a state secret. The mainstream liberal press (the Post and NPR) is fully on board. Need I say more? It’s good to be above the fray.
Let the Show Trials Begin
Welcome to the Obama justice system where you can be found “not guilty” and still stay imprisoned for as long as the president wants. Now it’s hard for me to believe that Obama, with all of his legal training, does not understand the inherent dangers and inconsistencies in this position. But, like with the War in Afghanistan, Obama’s policy is completely based on political expediency — to prove he’s a tough guy and appease American blood lust and childish anxieties — and not on the validity of the policy.
People with Guns Kill
The incredibly powerful lobby, the NRA, is constantly reminding us, especially when there is yet another senseless murder, that guns don’t kill, people do.
That is true. But it is also true that while alcohol doesn’t drive a car into an accident, people who drive under the influence of alcohol do. We therefore heavily regulate the consumption of alcohol to save lives. But unlike alcohol, which is not specifically designed for driving, guns are made to kill.
Guns and people just don’t mix because while guns don’t kill, people with guns do.
Filed under Essays
Reflecting on Independence
Ever since I was a kid I always loved the Fourth of July. At first, of course, I liked the fact that my grandmother let us play with minor pyrotechnics (i.e., sparklers) that we’d put out in the pool with a sizzle. But, even at a young age I had an appreciation for the central figure of the holiday, the Declaration of Independence. And as I got older, I grew even more impressed with our founding document.
With such efficiency of language, the Declaration of Independence beautifully sets forth — what I believe to still be true up to the present day — the fundamental underlying relationship that ties the state to the people its governs. And being the inherently legal document that it was, the Declaration lists the ways in which the King of England had violated that bind, and therefore the people had a “[right and duty] to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.”
While watching the moving protests in the streets of Tehran and, at the same time listening to the same pundits who just recently wanted us to obliterate Iran now show the Iranians their heartfelt support, I kept thinking about America’s own revolutionary past and its present dislike for armed revolution. Continue reading
Filed under Digressions, Essays
On Barking and Biting
Sarah Palin’s resignation speech was even quirkier than Governor Sanford’s recent M.I.A. speech, and perhaps as embarrassingly unskilled as her interviews with Katie Curic. In less than a year, Sarah Barracuda, the self-proclaimed pit bull in lipstick, has gone from the realm of the cynical to the purely bizarre.
My first reaction after hearing Sarah Palin’s speech at the 2008 Republican Presidential Convention was that it was cynical, aggressive, arrogant, and mean spirited. The virtually unknown Alaskan governor got up on stage and delivered a series of boastful one-liners about her own superior toughness while ridiculing her opponent’s professional record.
If Judge Sotomayor thinks that she has an advantageous perspective over white men, well, Sarah Palin’s entire argument (and the image that McCain ticket ran on) was that as a gun-tooting, small town Christian hockey mom, she was tougher and more qualified than a mere city dwelling organizer with an All American education. And while Palin was on tour denouncing Obama for not being American enough, she was arguing behind the scenes with the McCain campaign to cover up her husband’s seven year membership in the Alaskan secessionist party. Interesting that the anti-Palin liberal press never reported on any of the two inconsistencies.
Now less than a year later, Sarah Barracuda is crying that the mainstream press is not nice, proving the old adage true that the pit bull, with or without lipstick, is all bark and no bite.
At the end of the day, though, I feel sorry for Sarah Palin. She was thrust into the national spotlight and, much like Susan Boyle, was completely unprepared intellectually or emotionally for Prime Time. Of course, her original lack of humility didn’t help.
Filed under Essays
Grave Error 