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Posted at 06:21 PM in Acid Amnesty & Abortion, Young Bucks With T-Bones | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
It's not the usual routine on this blog to call out our corporate overlords for praise, but every now and then, one of them does something to advance the cause of progress and for the edification of the commonweal: In this case, (a) for finally being willing to violate a stupid TV taboo, and (b) effectively reminding us that a lot of our fellow citizens are still a bunch of racist assholes.
---Baron VPosted at 04:19 PM in White Man's Burden, Young Bucks With T-Bones | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Having been there and done that, take it from your humble blogger: creative people are not a fungible asset. You don't just "tell" a lifelong wordsmith to go be a photographer or a videocam operator or an on-air spokesmodel in addition to being a reporter without expecting a substantial drop in product quality. Sure, there may be the rare creative who can pull it off seamlessly, but most of these jobs---and photography in particular---are specialized skills that take years of training and practice to master. That's why Ansel Adams's photos of Half Dome are hanging in museums while my photos of Half Dome are, well, just JPEGs on a backup drive.
Workplace morale notwithstanding (and moves like this work wonders for it!), degrading product quality doesn't solve anything useful beyond saving management some money in the short term. But they'd have been wiser to lay off a couple of executives instead!
---Baron VPosted at 02:45 PM in America's Job Creators, Liberal Media Bias | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Hey, it's a solution, albeit an unproductive and utterly immoral one. But it needs to be forever pointed out that anyone who claims that "saving" Social Security
inevitably includes a mix of tax hikes and benefit cuts
is advocating more hardship and impoverishment for old people. Period. That's because Social Security is woefully underfunded and its monthly benefits need to be raised. A lot. How to find the money? Lift the payroll tax cap. Mint a coin. Cancel a contract for some fighter jets. Invade the Cayman Islands and seize all their banks. Or some combination thereof. But however we chose to do it, the money is there to increase Social Security benefits. We just need the political will to tap into the wealth, and the strength to continue ridiculing the awful persons who keep trying to convince us that austerity is some immutable Act of God and not a deliberate outcome of policy.
---Baron VPosted at 01:20 PM in Entitlement Reform, Serious Persons | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
It's always best to pick candidates with proven track records of success:
Mr. Wheeler, 37, was a key player in designing both the Bush and Obama administration’s response to the housing crisis, working for two former Treasury secretaries: Henry Paulson and Tim Geithner.He helped design what became the Obama administration’s signature loan modification effort, the Home Affordable Modification Program, which uses money from the 2008 bank rescue to subsidizes borrowers’ loan assistance plans.
Or candidates with a sterling pedigree:
Since fall 2010, Mr. Wheeler has worked at the Federal Reserve as chief of staff of the central bank’s office of financial stability. Before joining the Bush administration in 2008, he worked for Morgan Stanley and Bain & Co.
Meanwhile, proven track records.
---Baron VPosted at 12:50 PM in Entitlement Reform, Hayekian Modesty, Serious Persons, Skin in The Game | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Posted at 08:13 AM in Funemployment, Young Bucks With T-Bones | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Posted at 06:49 PM in Hitler Loved Infrastructure Spending Too | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Elaborating on the previous post, this is the social order that should have been overthrown, but wasn't:
[T]he least surprising development to anyone following Detroit’s woes has been Wall Street’s continued ability to squeeze money out of a city that can’t afford to keep its streetlights on or police its neighborhoods (there were almost as many murders in Detroit last year as there were in New York, a city with 11 times the population; Detroit officers are working 12-hour shifts with 10 percent pay cuts; and private businesses recently kicked in $8 million to buy the department new squad cars and ambulances).In recent years, Detroit’s water department has paid Wall Street banks hundreds of millions in termination fees alone in order to get out of bad municipal bond deals. (The city utility is so broke, it issued new bonds in order to pay the fees to get out of the old bonds!)
According to a recent Reuters article, since corporate bankruptcies have declined, investors specializing in “distressed” hedge funds have begun circling troubled municipalities, with no city “attracting more attention than Detroit.” One financial adviser quoted in the story sounded a note of caution to the would-be vultures, noting that unlike a corporation, “you can’t liquidate a city.”
But apparently no one informed Mr. Orr, whose spokesman, Bill Nowling, told The Detroit Free Press that the collection of the Detroit Institute of Arts, including works by van Gogh and Matisse, was being listed as an asset in the event of bankruptcy. “Creditors can really force the issue,” Mr. Nowling said. “If you go into court, they can object and say, ‘Hey, I’m taking a huge haircut, and you’ve got a billion dollars’ worth of art sitting over there.’ ”
Future historians will have to explain how our first African-American President, who campaigned for the office as a liberal anti-Wall Street reformer and who had a filibuster-proof majority in Congress, could have possibly allowed this to happen. But it was allowed to happen.
Lesson learned: Detroit should have defaulted when they still had the option, and so should every other municipality in America that's facing the same dilemma. Call it a taxpayers' rent strike.
---Baron VPosted at 06:28 PM in Looters and Moochers, Skin in The Game, Urban Hellholes, Young Bucks With T-Bones | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
If we're casting about for reasons why quote-unquote "liberal" media appears to be in some kind of ratings slump at present. Or, perhaps "disgust" is a more fitting description: As in, disgust at a political leadership class that had the votes and a landslide mandate to enact some of the most sweeping policy changes since the New Deal and who either (a) whined that they didn't have 60 votes, even when they actually did, or (b) punted altogether. Or, disgust at a political leadership class that campaigns as liberals and wins elections as liberals, then immediately governs like '70s-era Republicans (preferable to current Republicans, obviously, but not the reason why most people vote for Team Democrat). Or, maybe disgust at a political leadership class that inherited a Republic beset by high unemployment, a functionally insolvent and criminogenic banking system, an out-of-control national security-surveillance regime, an equally out-of-control energy sector that was roasting the planet for fun and profit, and a citizenry devastated by the state-sanctioned theft of their fortunes; and which, five years later, presides over a Republic beset by the same exact problems. Yes, unemployment has come down, but the jobs created since the Crash have mostly sucked, and the systemic root causes of all the other problems have gone completely unaddressed.
Compared to what this blog looked like in the early days, I rarely write much in any detail about the crazy people anymore (comparatively speaking) because they've followed a consistent and predictable ideological trajectory during this blog's lifetime, hence there's nothing to get outraged about anymore. Crazy is what they are and what they do. But Team Democrat---the alleged grown-up in the room---was supposed to be the antidote to crazy fever, the policy cure that would discard all the crazy people's worst policy prescriptions (i.e., all of them) and hit the reset button of government. Unfortunately, for the most part---whether due to incompetence, gullibility, or lack of political will---it hasn't happened. The President still continues to seek common ground with the crazy people while Team Democrat keep threatening to start governing as Democrats, but never does. So it's hard sometimes----as it surely must be be for many of us on the left---to avoid reaching the conclusion that the things we've worked so hard to achieve are simply lost causes, that the militarists, corporatists and oligarchs have won, and that our time on earth is better spent on things more existentially pressing (or socially more pleasurable) than watching Chris Hayes or reading Josh Marshall every day. I haven't embraced that degree of pessimism---not entirely, at least, yet---but it's understandable if other liberals have.
---Baron VPosted at 04:50 PM in Entitlement Reform, Funemployment, Serious Persons, Skin in The Game | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Have never really subscribed to Truther Conspiracy Theories, but I do believe---perhaps even, know?---that we still haven't been given an unvarnished account of what happened inside, say, the White House in the weeks and months that led up to the attacks. The fact that both the President and Vice-President refused to testify under oath in front of their own hand-picked committee pretty much confirms (to my mind) that if they had been pressed to provide a full accounting of what they knew, they'd either have had to invoke the Fifth, or incriminate/embarrass themselves to the extent that it would have initiated impeachment proceedings. My best guess is, they knew there was a hijacking---maybe more than one---in the works, and they did nothing to prevent from happening because the hijackers would simply fly the plane(s) to Damascus or Tripoli and demand a hostage exchange just like they always did in the good-old Cold War days, and even if a few of the hostages died when the Special Forces guys eventually stormed the plane and killed all the hijackers, the damage to national security would be minimal and it would give them the perfect pretense they needed to kick-start their war with Iraq. They guessed wrong, and thousands of people paid for their incompetence with their lives. Given how they governed, that scenario's always made the most sense to me.
---Baron VPosted at 03:30 PM in They Hate Us For Our Freedoms | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
The corporate overlords came to work early today; now your humble blogger must respond in kind. Because like freedom itself, Typepad isn't free! (Well, actually it is, but if you want the spiffy upgraded version like I've got, you pay a few shekels a month for it. Of course, if a few more of you clicked on the "Donate" button, it might not be a worry anymore!)
Posted at 08:44 AM in Real Americans | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Posted at 06:12 PM in Acid Amnesty & Abortion | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Seems like I've written this same post every day for the last six months, but once again: You wanna drive down health care costs, then drive down health-care costs. Otherwise you're just shifting vast piles of money from one pot to another. And we know how this works out in real life:
In order to avoid the Cadillac tax, which goes into effect in 2018, employers are already searching for ways to scale back on costs, including cutting health benefits and increasing plan prices. (Employers are also amping up spending on preventive care services, which is a good thing.) And as Bradley Herring, a health economist at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, told the Times, these health plan changes will likely affect a lot of people, not just the well-off; up to 75 percent of plans could be affected by the tax over the next ten years. "The reality is it is going to hit more and more people over time," he says.
And it will all be associated with Team Democrat. Heckuva job!
---Baron VPosted at 04:41 PM in Burdensome Regulations, Death Panels, Looters and Moochers, Skin in The Game | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Elaborating on the previous post, I don't think it's the least bit unreasonable to question the judgment of a Democratic President who has expended a considerable amount of time and political capital trying to win the hearts and minds of people who genuinely believe it is a good idea to impose
a 26 percent cut in the budget for the departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education. These agencies are losing a combined $43 billion relative to their 2012 budget, adjusted for inflation. Such cuts aren't merely unreasonable or inhumane, they're also likely to be operationally impossible.It's hard to see how this budget would allow the Department of Health and Human Services to put the Affordable Care Act into place in 2014. It's hard to see how the Department of Labor could keep going---even before these cuts, it's seen no inflation-adjusted increase since the 1970s. It's hard to see how the Department of Education could avoid deep cuts to Pell Grants, special education and aid to local schools, the agency's three largest budget items.
These people have wanted to abolish those departments for decades. Sequestration gave them the opportunity to do it on the installment plan by gradually defunding them. That's why they took up the President on his offer, and that's also why the veto pen had better stay sharp until 2017. Because if cuts like these ever went into effect, there are people who would literally die because of them.
---Baron VHave blogged about this before---somewhere in the distant past---but it probably bears repeating that sometimes it's easy for us to forget the historical significance of our 44th President just by virtue of who he is, and of the moral courage it must take for him to simply get out of bed each morning. And I'll also grant, as that essay notes, that much media criticism aimed at the President ("He won't lead!") is one-dimensionally witless. But in the end, we don't really gauge our Presidents by the content of their character but by their policy achievements, and I don't think it's being unreasonable to call out the President when he pushes for policies that we know will be harmful to the commonweal. That's not a knock on the man's personal fortitude, it's simply questioning his political judgment.
---Baron VPosted at 03:47 PM in Liberal Media Bias | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Everything Atrios says here is absolutely correct, but there's a complication: Private-equity guys generally don't do long-term investments because the yields they typically promise their investors aren't sustainable for the long term. They're not buying these homes to hang onto for ten or twenty years, they're buying them to create scarcity in the housing market, which drives up asset prices (this strategy seems to be working spectacularly well, it should be noted), and they'll flip all the assets as soon as valuation is sufficient to justify a sale. What happens to all the tenants in the newly acquired properties once private equity exits the market will likely depend on whatever renter protection laws exist in each of the 50 states, but it's probably not a stretch to predict there'll be no small number of evictions.
But either way, it's hard to see how they would care one way or another about attracting long-term tenants because they're not in the home-ownership business for the long haul. That ain't how they roll.
--Baron VPosted at 03:13 PM in America's Job Creators, Wealth Creation Strategies | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Posted at 09:45 AM in Acid Amnesty & Abortion | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
I'm past the point of believing that this epidemic of market-rigging is due to simple mundane incompetence on the part of our government. I mean, how else to explain why some financial institutions get busted for criminal acts while others that are equally guilty get a pass? I am guessing it's because most of our regulators, however unwittingly, abide by some unwritten rule that says that stealing massive amounts of money from investors is basically okay so long as you're willing to refund a percentage of the proceeds to the government every now and then. (No need to admit wrongdoing, however.) If you don't, though they'll come after you, and that's why some Costa Rican currency exchange gets indicted while a New York megabank pays a fine. This code of ethics undoubtedly makes the regulators' jobs a bit easier---and it certainly brightens their future employment prospects!---but it's kinda too bad for those of us who have to cough up more money for a loaf of bread so some commodities trader can scoop up billions of pennies in arbitrage every day.
---Baron VPosted at 08:43 AM in America's Job Creators, Burdensome Regulations, Market-Oriented Meliorism, Skin in The Game | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
This:
Democrats are preparing to escalate the dispute this summer by scheduling numerous confirmation votes in a short period of time. If, as Democrats expect, Republicans block those nominations, Mr. Obama and his allies hope the public will notice. With enough public pressure, some Democrats hope that they could change the Senate rules to prohibit filibusters on judicial nominations and in some other areas. "A single blocked nomination may not generate much publicity, but by blocking so many nominees at once, the Republicans are overplaying their hand," Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York, told reporters on Thursday. "The other side must be careful. If they think they can win a debate over whether the Senate should change its rules, they might very well be mistaken."
This is just another excuse to do nothing. The public doesn't pay attention to circuit-court appointments or cloture motions---most people don't even know what the hell they even are. Most people don't even get what the damn filibuster is all about.
You want to confirm some judges, then confirm some judges. I've never been too sanguine about filibuster reform, but if that's what it takes, then that's what it takes. But stop waiting for "public pressure" to change the game. We already saw how much good "public pressure" did to achieve some sensible background-check legislation, didn't we?
---Baron VPosted at 02:37 AM in Activist Judges, Roman Hruska's Revenge | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Because we could've had one here---actually three of them, built for free!---and the city fathers decided it was a bad thing because all the rail construction would, yep, make traffic worse. So we didn't get a monorail, and we got worse traffic anyway. Maybe we really always have been governed by idiots.
Posted at 06:17 PM in Hitler Loved Infrastructure Spending Too, Lazy Overpaid Government Workers | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)