brainiac conspiracy

Birthday Greetings

Thirty years later, and I am still waiting for a reply to my marriage proposal. Oh well.

---Vitelius

Mr. Baron's Neighborhood

A view from my own window today: Outside the Israeli Consulate, Los Angeles, 5:00 pm.

---Vitelius

First as Tragedy, Then as Negro Jokes

In his epic Nixonland, Rick Perlstein makes a persuasive argument for considering Strom Thurmond as a kind of spiritutal godfather of modern-day Republicanism. And given the way that many of the geniuses in today's GOP are acting these days, it sure as heck seems like they're intent on realizing Strom's original vision in its most undistilled form. It couldn't be happening to a better bunch of guys.

---Vitelius

Gotta-Read of The Day

Vanity Fair. It's a lengthy retrospective, so here are some juicy bits.

First, Chauncey Gardner the Unitary Decider on bold and decisive leadership:

Michael Brown, director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency: Very shortly after 9/11 I was leading a briefing in the Roosevelt room about smallpox. The president was there, the vice president. Condi was there. The president didn't ask a lot of questions. Don't get me wrong---he did ask some questions. But the majority of the questions came from either Condi or the vice president. As the president was leaving the room, he turned to everybody and said, God help us all. We should all say very strong prayers tonight for guidance. It really stuck in my head. You're the president of the United States basically saying, I'm going to pray tonight, and I hope all of you pray, too, because this is much bigger than all of us.

The Brain Trust, on bipartisan decorum:

David Kuo, deputy director of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives: I went to a communications meeting the day after Jeffords switched. I remember feeling like I was looking at people who had won a reality-game ticket to head up the White House. There was this remarkable combination of hubris, excitement, and staggering ignorance.

Someone made the suggestion that perhaps the president should call the new majority leader. And it's like, Well, I'm not sure that's really necessary. Margaret Tutwiler [assistant to the president and special adviser for communications] was there, and I remember her sitting at the head of the table, her eyes just sort of wide, and she sort of lost it. She's like, Are you fricking kidding me? She goes, The president of the United States calls the new majority leader. The president of the United States calls the new minority leader, right? The president does these things because, you know, these things have to be done.

And, you know, people around the table---Karl [Rove], Karen [Hughes]---all these people were like, Oh, well, do we have to? It was like an absolutely serious debate.

The Strategist, on consensus-building:

Matthew Dowd: Karl wasn't receptive to ideas that would've called the country to certain things and brought them to a common purpose and a sense of shared sacrifice. Karl came from a perspective of: you defeat people in politics by calling one side bad and one side good.

The Attorney General, on honest government:

Jesselyn Radack, ethics adviser at the Department of Justice: I was called with the specific question of whether or not the F.B.I. on the ground could interrogate [Lindh] without counsel. And I had been told unambiguously that Lindh's parents had retained counsel for him. I gave that advice on a Friday, and the same attorney at Justice who inquired called back on Monday and said essentially, Oops, they did it anyway. They interrogated him anyway. What should we do now? My office was there to help correct mistakes. And I said, Well, this is an unethical interrogation, so you should seal it off and use it only for intelligence-gathering purposes or national security, but not for criminal prosecution.

A few weeks later, Attorney General Ashcroft held one of his dramatic press conferences, in which he announced a complaint being filed against Lindh. He was asked if Lindh had been permitted counsel. And he said, in effect, To our knowledge, the subject has not requested counsel. That was just completely false. About two weeks after that he held another press conference, because this was the first high-profile terrorism prosecution after 9/11. And in that press conference he was asked again about Lindh's rights, and he said that Lindh's rights had been carefully, scrupulously guarded, which, again, was contrary to the facts, and contrary to the picture that was circulating around the world of Lindh blindfolded, gagged, naked, bound to a board.

The Deciderer again, on the importance of strategic thinking in foreign relations:

Luis Moreno-Ocampo, prosecutor of the International Criminal Court: When I started at the I.C.C., in 2003, the Bush administration appeared hostile towards the court, as though we were radioactive. But what started with hostility over time became less so. All of a sudden the court was seen to be useful. On Darfur, for example, the administration could have vetoed the Security Council vote referring Darfur to my office. They didn't. That was a big change. But I've kept a respectful distance. They don't give me intelligence. They cannot control me. When I received the U.N. Commission report on Darfur, inside the boxes there was a sealed envelope which appeared to contain classified U.S. information. We returned it to the U.S. Embassy, without opening it.

Ironically, the hostility has helped in my dealings with countries that might otherwise perceive me to be in the pocket of the Americans. It has been one positive factor in the Arab and African worlds. The U.S. distance from the court seems to have had the very opposite effect of that intended---of strengthening it.

The SecDef, on professional responsibility:

Kenneth Adelman, a member of Donald Rumsfeld's advisory Defense Policy Board: So he says, It might be best if you got off the Defense Policy Board. You're very negative. I said, I am negative, Don. You're absolutely right. I'm not negative about our friendship. But I think your decisions have been abysmal when it really counted.

Start out with, you know, when you stood up there and said things---"Stuff happens." I said, That's your entry in Bartlett's. The only thing people will remember about you is "Stuff happens." I mean, how could you say that? "This is what free people do." This is not what free people do. This is what barbarians do. And I said, Do you realize what the looting did to us? It legitimized the idea that liberation comes with chaos rather than with freedom and a better life. And it demystified the potency of American forces. Plus, destroying, what, 30 percent of the infrastructure.

I said, You have 140,000 troops there, and they didn't do jack shit. I said, There was no order to stop the looting. And he says, There was an order. I said, Well, did you give the order? He says, I didn't give the order, but someone around here gave the order. I said, Who gave the order?

So he takes out his yellow pad of paper and he writes down---he says, I'm going to tell you. I'll get back to you and tell you. And I said, I'd like to know who gave the order, and write down the second question on your yellow pad there. Tell me why 140,000 U.S. troops in Iraq disobeyed the order. Write that down, too.

And so that was not a successful conversation.

It goes on. But give it a read anyway. It pretty much sums up the last eight years of our exquisite national nightmare.

---Vitelius

The Smartest F%@&!#% Guy in the Newsroom

Over at the Monthly today, Steve Benen provides a little memory jog, courtesy of Richard Clarke:

"We had a couple of meetings with the president, and there were detailed discussions and briefings on cyber-security and often terrorism, and on a classified program. With the cyber-security meeting, he seemed -- I was disturbed because he seemed to be trying to impress us, the people who were briefing him. It was as though he wanted these experts, these White House staff guys who had been around for a long time before he got there -- didn't want them buying the rumor that he wasn't too bright. He was trying -- sort of overly trying -- to show that he could ask good questions, and kind of yukking it up with Cheney.

"The contrast with having briefed his father and Clinton and Gore was so marked. And to be told, frankly, early in the administration, by Condi Rice and [her deputy] Steve Hadley, you know, Don't give the president a lot of long memos, he's not a big reader -- well, shit. I mean, the president of the United States is not a big reader?"

Steve comments:

Funny, just last week Karl Rove told us the president is a voracious reader, who reads dense texts "to relax and because he's curious," and for 35 years, George W. Bush has "always had a book nearby."

Which, one would assume, settles the matter. But lo and behold, along comes . . . this guy to explain that Bush really is an avid and voracious reader. Presumably because Karl Rove told him so. Now, I've been hard on Cohen in the past, and I'd normally excoriate him mercilessly over such obviously lazy work. But in the spirit of burgeoning post-partisanship, I'll simply say that if Rove insists it's true, that Bush agonizes over the writings of Albert Camus, well hey, that's fine and dandy with me, and bravo on such a keen and insightful column.

On a related note, I've recently finished writing my memoirs. Perhaps Richard Cohen will return the favor and review it in the Post next week.

---Vitelius

Birthday Greetings

Because they used to make those strings out of gut.

---Vitelius

One of These Things is Not Like the Other

Condi on Israel/Palestine: "We're leaving this in a lot better shape than we found it."

---Vitelius

Asleep at The Switch, Again

The scary thing is, this fella might not been the worst appointee Bush ever made. You can't really muck up the machinery when you're unconscious most of the time.

In 2006, Henshaw was replaced by Edwin G. Foulke Jr., a South Carolina lawyer and former Bush fundraiser who spent years defending companies cited by OSHA for safety and health violations.

Foulke quickly acquired a reputation inside the Labor Department as a man who literally fell asleep on the job: Eyewitnesses said they saw him suddenly doze off at staff meetings, during teleconferences, in one-on-one briefings, at retreats involving senior deputies, on the dais at a conference in Europe, at an award ceremony for a corporation and during an interview with a candidate for deputy regional administrator.

His top aides said they rustled papers, wore attention-getting garb, pounded the table for emphasis or gently kicked his leg, all to keep him awake. But, if these tactics failed, sometimes they just continued talking as if he were awake. "We'll be sitting there and things will fall out of his hands; people will go on talking like nothing ever happened," said a career official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to a reporter.

I have come to the conclusion that we are going to need some kind of Truth & Reconciliation Commission, not only to investigate war crimes but the entire executive branch of government. Is there any part of the bureaucracy that these people haven't contaminated over the last seven years? If President Obama does nothing else but clean out the regulatory rot over the next four years, it will in itself be a truly Augean feat.

---Vitelius

Because They Hate Us for Our Footwear

Making friends, one 12D at a time.

---Vitelius

Concern Troll of the Year

Thomas Friedman, 2008:

. . . we've fallen into a trend of diverting and rewarding the best of our collective I.Q. to people doing financial engineering rather than real engineering. These rocket scientists and engineers were designing complex financial instruments to make money out of money---rather than designing cars, phones, computers, teaching tools, Internet programs and medical equipment that could improve the lives and productivity of millions.

Thomas Friedman, 1999:

Think of participating in the global economy today like driving a Formula One race car, which gets faster and faster every year. Someone is always going to be running into the wall and crashing, especially when you have drivers who only a few years ago were riding a donkey . . . Whatever you've got, no matter how big or small---sell it, trade it, barter it, leverage it, rent it, but do something with it to turn a profit, improve your standard of living and get into the game.

The Apostle of Fiscal Compassion today:

Generally, I'd like to see fewer government dollars shoveled out and more creative tax incentives to stimulate the private sector to catalyze new industries and new markets. If we allow this money to be spent on pork, it will be the end of us.

And nine years ago:

Mr. Prime Minister, I have a confession to make. I helped oust your predecessor---and I didn't even know his name. You see, I was sitting home in my basement watching the Thai baht sink (and watching your predecessor completely mismanage your economy). So I called my broker and told him to get me out of East Asian emerging markets. I could have sold you out myself, via the Internet, but I decided to get my broker's advice instead. It's one dollar, one vote, Mr. Prime Minister. How does it feel to have Tom Friedman as a constituent?

At least Maureen Dowd doesn't pretend to be a serious commentator.

---Vitelius

First as Tragedy, Then as Privatization

The Shock Doctrine, in theory and practice, yet again.

---Vitelius

The Premature Death of E. coli Economics

Over at the Monthly, Hilzoy gets to the heart of California's budget crisis:

The problem isn't just the economy, and California's need to balance its budget. It's Proposition 13. Proposition 13 was cleverly designed to make it virtually impossible for California to raise taxes. Any tax increase requires a supermajority. Property taxes are fixed at 1% of assessed value, and assessments themselves are fixed at the time of purchase, and can rise only very slowly thereafter.

After 30 years, the consequences of Prop 13 are easy to gauge:

As a result of Proposition 13, there are obvious distortions in the real estate marketplace. For example, in 2003 financier Warren Buffett announced that he pays property taxes of $14,410, or 2.9 percent, on his $500,000 home in Omaha, Nebraska, but pays only $2,264, or 0.056 percent, on his $4 million home in California. Although Buffet is known as an astute investor, the low property taxes on his California home are not attributable to his investment prowess, but rather to Proposition 13.

Okay, property taxes go down. How does government make up the difference? Start relying more heavily, for one, on sales taxes. Hilzoy again:

This leads to all sorts of idiotic consequences. Back when I lived in California, one of the few ways of raising taxes available to cities and towns was to increase the sales tax by some fraction of a percent. Result? Cities and towns did this, and then tried desperately to induce people to set up car dealerships and other places where people sell big, expensive things. Did it make sense to have so many car dealerships? Who cares! It's revenue!

This, in turn, has been a contributing factor to a certain type of urban planning:

As cities have become dependent on the sales tax, it clearly has driven very poor land use decisions. That has a consequence, not only in terms of the "big box" super-store phenomena, but the kinds of jobs driven out of retail in turn reduce the disposable income, in essence, of our citizens. And it impedes growth by moving away from a job mix that otherwise would have a much higher manufacturing component. The irony is local government has the incentive, in the short term, to chase sales tax. In the long run, they actually are diminishing their revenue stream.

Other tax sources are not much more reliable:

[Prop 13] has also had many unintended effects, such as making the state increasingly reliant on more volatile sources of revenue, like the income tax. (Income taxes now account for nearly half of the state's general fund, up from less than a fifth forty years ago.) A primary cause of California's staggering thirty-eight-billion-dollar budget gap is a sharp decline in income-tax collections, specifically from levies on capital gains and stock options, which have fallen by more than two-thirds in the past three years.

And by creating a two-tier property tax system that would discourage homeowners from ever selling their property, Prop 13 would in theory tend to make residential property scarcer, and hence more expensive. Hilzoy, once more:

Likewise, people in California don't always sell their houses when it would normally make sense to do so, because as long as they stay in their existing house, the assessment will not rise much and their taxes will stay low, whereas if they buy a new house, it will be assessed at its purchase price, and their taxes will go up.

This has in fact been borne out in studies:

From 1970 to 2000, the average tenure of California homeowners and renters increased by 1.04 and .79 years relative to that of homeowners and renters in the control states. These figures represent increases in average tenure of 10 percent and 19 percent, respectively.

So, with residential real estate harder to find and more expensive to purchase, and cities re-zoning parcels from residential to commercial in the pursuit of increased sales tax revenues, prospective new home buyers have been forced to move further and further away from settled urban areas in search of affordable housing.

But back to 1978: the effects of 13 were felt almost immediately, and within ten years had taken a toll on all manner of public services:

In 1988 California had the most students per classroom (twenty-seven, including elementary grades) of any state in the nation. Although California had once boasted one of the best-funded school systems in all the states, a decade after Proposition 13 per pupil spending in California ranked forty-eighth out of the fifty states. Funding for K-12 education fell after the passage of Prop. 13, from $3,547 per pupil (adjusted for inflation) to $3,258 in fiscal year 1983, a decline of around 8 percent.

Naturally, the proposition's prime movers denied that it would have any effect on education spending. Not that they had any use for public education in the first place:

In his ballot argument, Jarvis asserted that Prop. 13 would have no negative effect; he even went so far as to claim that school funding would be basically untouched by the amendment, which a state judge ruled to be "misleading and perhaps even false" before striking the assertion from the ballot. It couldn't have mattered less to Jarvis what happened to education in California; during his 1977 mayoral run, he declared, "What we're really doing in the public school systems is nothing short of manufacturing people for the welfare rolls." Asked how he felt about the cancellations of summer school programs post-Prop. 13, Jarvis chided, "If they have a babysitting thing for nine months, I don't think they need it for three months more."

Asked what Prop. 13 would do to libraries during a televised debate three decades ago, Jarvis underscored his broad disdain for libraries . . . when he guessed that "63 percent of the graduates are illiterate, anyway", and would have no use for books.

If a certain amount of anti-government resentment seems to be present here, that's because, well, there was, as some supporters of Prop 13 expressed at the time:

We were just being hung up to dry with our property taxes, and the largest portion of which was going down to the county. And it bore no relation to flood control, street maintenance, or any of those things that related to property taxes which property taxes should go to. I mean, if they want to subsidize the welfare program and the health program of L.A. County and all their county hospitals and having all these people having children and all, if they want to do that it should be on a broader base. It shouldn't be just on your property . . .

As soon as somebody came in from Mexico or off the boat had a baby, then they were entitled to welfare. So we not only were paying all of their health bills but we were paying all their welfare bills and it was coming off our property tax.

Add it all up: A political movement stoked by race and class resentments, emanating from the white middle class and aimed primarily at punishing a government perceived as serving the interests of "them", not "us". Sound familiar? The end result is a two-tiered tax structure that rewards the propertied class at the expense of lower-income citizens, the renters and young people, and which forces governments to rely on unstable revenue sources and to implement models of urban planning that encourage endless rounds of new-housing construction, big-box retailing and exurban sprawl. This is turn aggravates the need for increased consumer spending, contributes to declining wages, and facilitates the growth of a financial services sector that underwrites all of this by the issuing and bonding of ever-escalating debt. Put it all together, and you have an economic template that was essentially grafted onto the nation as a whole during the Reagan Revolution. And who has really benefitted from all of this?

Between 1978 and 1983 Proposition 13 reduced taxes by about $41 billion from what they otherwise would have been. Homeowners received about 36 percent of the reduction, including $2 billion in the first year (fiscal 1979) alone. Landlords, farmers, and the owners of commercial and industrial property received 64 percent of the savings, including $4 billion in the first year. Southern California Edison, for example, saved $54 million in 1979, while Chevron saved $47 million. As a result of this tax shift, four years after the passage of Prop. 13 the homeowners, in contrast to business, were paying a greater share of the property tax burden. Of every $100 of property taxes collected, single-family residence owners were paying $44, up about 5 percent from 1978 and 37 percent from 1974. In short, business property received most of the benefits from Proposition 13, despite the fact that assessments on business property were only rising by single-digit figures per year.

Now, there were other factors at play, too, then and now. Property taxes for some middle- and upper middle-class Californians were going through the roof in the 1970s for a variety of reasons. The governor at the time (who never seems to go away) and the legislature dithered over solutions and failed to reach one, allowing crass opportunists like Howard Jarvis (who was a paid lobbyist for a real estate organization) to seep into the vacuum and play upon voters' anxieties and anger. And unlike most tax-cutting initiatives, Prop 13 marked the culmination of a genuine grass-roots movement that had been decades in forming: most big corporations and utility companies actually lobbied against Prop 13 at the time, fearing hefty increases sales and income taxes, even though they would become the measure's biggest beneficiaries over time.

The voters, too have made things even worse over the ensuing 30 years by mandating via ballot initiative all manner of expensive government projects---primarily related to prison construction---without providing any mechanism for actually paying for them:

Meanwhile, even as California voters have insisted on keeping property taxes low, they have made ever-increasing demands on the state budget. Proposition 98 mandated that education spending reflect inflation and population growth; Proposition 184 gave California one of the nation's toughest "three strikes and you're out" laws, resulting in billions of dollars of new prison spending; and Proposition 42 set aside proceeds from the state's gasoline tax to be used only on transportation projects. Last November, with California already facing a twenty-billion-dollar shortfall, voters approved measures to fund various housing programs, float a series of clean-water bonds, and increase spending on after-school programs. This last initiative, Proposition 49, necessitated some five hundred million dollars a year in new expenditures while providing no new revenues to pay for them. The campaign for Proposition 49 was led and, in part, financed by Arnold Schwarzenegger.

So there's been plenty of blame to go around over the years. But in the end, we in the Golden State are still saddled with this rotten law, the byproduct of some genuinely rotten people who preyed upon the anger of an anxious middle class, that has served as an incubator for the kind of E. coli conservatism that spread across the nation in the '80s and '90s, and which has now crippled the same middle class it was purportedly created to preserve. How our public services are ever to recover from it---absent repeated federal bailouts, and the floating of bonds that nobody want to buy anymore---is frankly beyond me. President Obama, got any ideas?

---Vitelius

Better Living Through Chemistry

Proof that there are better ways of getting cooperation with scary Muslim brown people, than, you know, torturing them.

And let's hope our new Commander gives this a good read, and some serous thought, before sending another two divisions as promised to a place the Soviet Army couldn't subjugate in ten years. Campaign pledges are disavowed all the time, after the election's over, in the name of expediency, and now's a good time to draw up a new game plan for Afghanistan instead of 20,000 more troops.

---Vitelius

The Karmic Residue from First Street N.E.

There would certainly be some sweet irony at play if one of the lamest Supreme Court decisions in history actually ends up helping people like Al Franekn to get elected to office in the future.

---Vitelius

Daddy's Home for Christmas

This was some pretty stiff competition. And any grown woman who still goes by "Cokie" is certainly a ripe candidate for ridicule.

Still, these inanities are all one-shot examples, not to be repeated. If you want an award based on cumulative achievement, I think you'd have to go with this memorable tableaux of political infantilism on display, from early in the year:

Chris Matthews: Does [Fred Thompson] have sex appeal? I'm looking at this guy and I'm trying to find out the new order of things, and what works for women and what doesn't. Does this guy have some sort of thing going for him that I should notice? . . . Gene, do you think there's a sex appeal for this guy, this sort of mature, older man, you know? He looks sort of seasoned and in charge of himself. What is this appeal? Because I keep star quality. You were throwing the word out, shining star, Ana Marie, before I checked you on it. . . . Can you smell the English leather on this guy, the Aqua Velva, the sort of mature man's shaving cream, or whatever, you know, after he shaved? Do you smell that sort of -- a little bit of cigar smoke? You know, whatever . . .

Lynn, let's talk for a minute---because I want to talk when we come back about Fred Thompson. It looks to me---and this is my seat-of-the-pants judgment---he looks like the daddy figure the Republican Party has been looking around for. He looks classic wise man. He has gravitas. He's no Dan Quayle, a guy---when he says something, he's got that Colin Powell feature, where you just sort of trust him. Is he going to jump in this race and take over? . . .

Let's talk about gritty New Hampshire. I love New Hampshire. I always brought my kids up there when they were young. It is a state that looks for toughness. [Addressing Pat Buchanan] You won up there. It looks for grit. It looks for the outsider a bit. It's great American state. It's really live for your guy.

Margaret Carlson: The Granite State looks for granite.

Matthews: They are looking for a tough guy who's got a little five o'clock shadow, like you. They're looking for a guy like you, Pat. Here is Fred Thompson going in there. John McCain certainly deserves to be president, based on his contribution to this country over the years, but he ran once. How many chances do you get? And in comes Fred Thompson, looking like the Daddy party, if there ever was a guy that looked like the Daddy party, the Republican. Can he win this thing?

Carlson: He does look like the dad. He has everything that Pat says. He's handsome, he's charming, he sounds like a president, he looks like a president. But Pat says he might not have the fire in the belly. That could help him, not having the hunger. Not being willing to do anything could help him.

Matthews: Gene McCarthy didn't have the fire in the belly. He did all right up there.

Buchanan: He was as tough as he could be. He was a tough guy.

Carlson: It could help him. And, you know, he's smart. He's articulate. He knows his lines. He can hit his mark

Buchanan: I don't think he could wait --

Carlson: Few people could start at -- few people could start even this late --

Matthews: OK, let me ask you this. We're having debates. MSNBC is going to have debates coming up within a month or so. They're going to have debates around the country. Is the season still open for him to get in, right now?

Buchanan: It is open right now, and -- but I think these guys who are saying they are going to wait until September and October may be waiting too long. That's taking a big risk.

Matthews: You think his door is open now?

Buchanan: I think his door is open now, yes.

Carlson: The theme song of Republicans should be "Some Day My Prince Will Come," and they're waiting and they're hoping. And so Fred Thompson is not late at all. His moment is here.

Matthews: Some day he will come along -- so it's Gershwin. Do you think he's coming now?

Carlson: I think he's coming soon.

Matthews: OK. I notice it used to be you had to look like an anchorman to get in the presidency. You needed to have a big thick head of hair. And he and Giuliani and McCain --

Buchanan: He looks like a big truck driver.

Matthews: With a semi behind him.

Buchanan: Looks like a Teamster, sure, a Teamster with -- a Southern guy, a Teamster. He's in from Tennessee. He's perfectly positioned, I think, but the question is, does he get in and does he -- really ready to do battle? Iowa, those things are very hard to do, Chris.

Matthews: OK, you put him up against Hillary in the general election, who wins?

Buchanan: He wins.

Carlson: Agreed.

Matthews: Margaret Carlson!

Carlson: Yes -- no, I --

Matthews: This is treason. Margaret, sisterhood! The sisterhood's at stake here. You're saying it -- you said it so quick.

Carlson: No, everyone -- everyone --

Buchanan: Al [Gore] was on the phone.

Carlson: I don't see anyone in the field now who can -- who can --

Matthews: Billie Jean [King] is on the phone. Billie Jean endorsed [Clinton] the other day.

Carlson: Oh, now that you have the tennis queen on, I'm sure she'll win. No, but the red pickup truck, the aura. He's smart. He has experience. He was -- he did --

Matthews: You know what I like about him? I interviewed him when he was running for the Senate. He was the underdog out in Tennessee, in Nashville. I said, "What hotel are you staying in?" He said, "What hotel are you staying at?" Some local -- we were both at, like, three-star hotels. He comes over, meets me for breakfast, no entourage, not another single person with him. This is when you fall in love with politicians. Maybe it's rehearsed, but -- and I said, well -- I'm doing a column in those days. I said, "What about your divorce?" And he -- "You want me to write about that?" You know, he says, "I prefer you wouldn't." I mean, I just like the fact that he has a little, you know, unhappiness in his past, maybe some, you know, some misbehavior problems, but he just says, you know, "I'd rather you didn't."

Carlson: He would be -- for the press, he would be the new McCain, because he does seem honest and open.

Matthews: The new McCain. John Lieber, are you watching? Margaret Carlson said that. We don't need a new model, we got a McCain!

Buchanan: But they love somebody fresh and new. And he's suddenly getting in the race. The press would love it.

Matthews: Ronald Reagan was right. All the other guys are wrong. Pat Brown was wrong. Everybody was wrong. People like real movie stars. And even though he's not big-time, he looks like a movie star. He's not just some guy that gets his picture in the paper. Thank you very much. Maybe -- maybe we'll get Harrison Ford next time.

Let that all sink in for a moment: I mean, consider the source here---not Chris Matthews, but the inspiration for all this churlish idolatry: Fred. Fucking. Thompson. Ladies and gentlemen, I believe we have a winnah!

---Vitelius

Tuesday Night Carol

Because it's the night before Christmas Eve.

---Vitelius

Profound Insight of the Day

Who knew that our 16th president was a Muslim too?

---Vitelius

Monday Night Christmas-Balls

Because the Baron needs to stop grousing and griping and get with the program. And for goodness' sake, don't miss Part 2 also.

---Vitelius

Educating the Proles

I had an interesting exchange at work the other day with an employee of mine. He's a very bright and creative-thinking guy, and one of my company's leading lights. He's been at his job for 10 years and his risen quickly through the ranks. He is also, as is often the case with guys his age, who came of age in the 1990s in the Orange County suburbs and exurbs of Los Angeles, a devout and dedicated dittohead, a fact which will become relevant later in this post.

Anyway, last year he earned yet another promotion, this time to a senior management position overseeing a small division within the company. Now, a promotion such as this would normally merit a fairly steep raise in salary, but that's not how a lot of companies handle that sort of thing anymore. Instead, he was given a choice between accepting either a modest raise---a few thousand dollars---or he could choose to forego the raise altogether and instead enroll in our management bonus incentive program that could possibly net him a good 25-percent increase in pay, assuming he met all of his productivity goals and the like. (It's a shame that corporations have learned how to use Sarbanes-Oxley's fraud directives to suppress wages, refusing to hand out all but the smallest raises to employees in the name of good corporate governance, but that's how it goes nowadays. Of course, this also allows the company to take a fair amount of compensation off their books for the current fiscal year since the bonus checks aren't typically passed out until well into the following year.)

Not unexpectedly for a fella with lots of drive and ambition, my employee elected to eschew the small salary bump in favor of the potentially lucrative bonus program. He did a terrific job over the past year, and while our company overall lost money, his division managed to turn a small profit.

Unfortunately, because our company did lose money overall last year, with substantial layoffs and budget cuts, the decision was made by the corporate board that no bonuses would be given out for 2008. And naturally, it fell upon me to inform my eligible employees as well. Coincidentally, it was the morning that the first round of federal bailout talks with the Detroit Three automakers fell apart.

"Did you hear the news this morning?" my eager employee asked me. "The union really screwed themselves over."

How so? I asked.

"The UAW sabotaged the bailout talks because they insisted the automakers have gotta keep paying $40 an hour so some guy can sweep out a shop floor. So now they won't get any money, and they'll all be out of work when GM goes under. Stupid fucking unions, just looking out for themselves."

I refrained from any comment, then gave him the news: No bonus checks this year.

My employee looked confused. "Wait a minute," he said. "You mean, after I decided to pass on a raise for a bonus package instead, I'm not getting any of it?"

I nodded yes.

"But my division made money. We launched more products and took on more responsibilities without raising costs. I even volunteered to help develop the company website, and post some blogs on it in my spare time. I went above and beyond . . . "

All true, I said.

"So, what you're basically telling me is, I screwed myself out of five thousand dollars this year."

Basically, yes, that's right.

"So . . . that's it? There's no recourse, or anyone I can talk to about this?"

Nope. Nobody's getting any bonuses this year. Not me, not my boss the VP, not his boss the President of the company . . .

My employee shook his head. "There's something about this that just doesn't sit right with me. I took the company's word at face value---you know, like, if I worked hard and showed determination, and increased sales and made the company money, then naturally I'd be rewarded for my efforts, that I'd have at least something to show for it."

In a just world, yes, I said.

My employee was now visibly agitated. "After all the nights of working overtime here, busting my ass, I mean, how can they do this?"

Because they can, I thought to myself. Because you're not in a union, asshole.

This little vignette, for me, is indicative of a much bigger public-perception problem that people like Barack Obama, and Hilda Solis, and folks like Ron Gettelfinger and Jim Hoffa and everyone else involved with organized labor will need to work very hard to solve over the next few years if labor is ever to start making significant gains in membership and political clout again. For the past thirty years, the Republican Party and their amen chorus on AM talk radio have done an outstanding job of belittling and demonizing organized labor to a entire generation of Americans, and until very recently, they've been allowed to get away with it without much protest from those of us on the Left. And while certain sectors of organized labor---the SEIU, for example---have been increasingly successful in organizing in recent years, there is still a long way to go. In particular, we need to figure out ways to educate folks like my ambitious young employee that organized labor isn't the parasitic growth on the American economy that Rush Limbaugh says it is but rather a rising tide that lifts the boats of enough workers to sustain a prosperous middle class. I'm not certain of exactly how this is to be done--if it even can be---but it's an issue I know that I'll be devoting more time to studying and researching, and most likely blogging on this site in the months ahead.

---Vitelius

Another Automaker That Deserves to Fail

Because, obviously, they're paying their union workers too much money, and not building the kinds of cars that people want to . . . no, wait.

---Vitelius