Barack, I hardly know ye

Here's another one of my letters to the editor of the SB NewsPress. I'll update with info if it's published in the hardcopy paper.

Update: The letter appeared in the NewsPress on August 5, 2009.

To the editor:

A liberal’s assessment of Obama’s brief tenure.

His Sotomayor nomination rocks. However…

The economy. I grant that he’s not had nearly enough time to reverse the disastrous impact of decades of America’s profligate, credit-addicted consumption, but he’s hearkening to the same persons and institutions to effect “change” that created and fed on those now-entrenched cultural/economic memes. While he seeks to improve our financial straits—to constrain our unregulated markets, to cure our loss of decent-paying jobs and widening earnings disparities—there’s little prospect of stemming America’s decline so long as he employs the tools crafted by the same folks who wrecked—and profited from the wreckage of—our nation’s economy.

Our “security.” His rhetoric occasionally feels satisfying, but his actions—the buildup in Afghanistan/Pakistan, the still-growing Pentagon budget, the continuing secrecy—are doggedly similar to those of his predecessors. He also promotes America’s global-policing role, thereby energizing the “military-industrial complex” that Eisenhower warned about five decades ago. Indeed, but for his recent (and politically safe) elimination of some Pentagon-derided F-22’s, Obama’s foreign/military policy appears as pugnacious as Reagan’s.

Surely he’s too well schooled to be ignorant of an acutely salient lesson of history: empires invariably decline due to consumptive over-indulgence and militaristic over-reach. Therefore, his failure to activate true “change” must be the result of something in his character that is ultimately ruinous of meaningful achievement: fear.

After suffering through eight years of an executive who acted through ignorant arrogance, must we now endure one who suffers from informed cowardice?

Well, whadda you know!

The feds are finally getting back to some serious antitrust enforcement. It's actually quite a modest start. By way of background (not related in the NYT story), the loosening of antitrust enforcement began many years before Bush II, with the slow turning away by the US Supreme Court from truly aggressive rulings favoring competition between businesses as the means to create a healthy climate for the marketplace. The "Chicago school" (based on Milton Friedman's concept of unrestrained capitalism) took over, the most salient disciple of which was Professor (now federal appellate judge) Richard Posner and influenced the course of judicial as well as administrative decision-making, creating the doctrine that consumers benefit more from economies and efficiencies of scale than from competition among equals. There began a long history of approvals of huge mergers that created "too big to fail" entities: not just banks but conglomerates that spanned many business arenas.





Well, maybe we've learned that "bigness is badness," to repeat an adage that used to dominate antitrust thinking. I hope so, because it has gotten so that entry into some low-investment businesses is becoming prohibitively costly, almost impossible. With high rentals of huge malls, massive chains of retailers and suppliers, how, really, could a small entrepreneur begin, for example, a sandwich shop or a burger joint? What about a carpeting outlet or a clothing stor?





As I said, a modest start, but a start toward once reducing the power of the monied and vested interests in America.

Okay, I'll chime in

I've been quiet for a while, I know. My laptop died, and I'm awaiting a new one. Also, there's been so much noise on the airwaves about the election protests in Iran that I feel rationality has been muted, although I've not been without my own ideas on the subject. Here they are, extended and stated much better than I could by Professor Juan Cole.

Good for Britain

Looks like they're going to investigate pre-Iraq-war shenanigans. Let's hope it's a thorough study, and that it shows the Bush administration's role in that tragedy.

I'm grateful that somebody's watching

because otherwise I wouldn't have been able to follow the US "timetable" for withdrawal from Iraqi cities by the end of this month, and from Iraq by 2012. The answer: don't count on either.

There's no explanation for this...

except for the dominance of the military-industrial-political complex.

Iran's democracy

It was on Bush's "axis of evil," but when it comes to presidential debates, it beats our version hands down.

"New beginnings"

I just watched Obama's speech in Cairo. I teared up at the end. I realize now why I voted for the guy, and why I'm proud that we elected him our president. In case you missed it, and want to be moved, here's a link to the C-Span presentation of it.

http://www.c-span.org/Watch/Media/2009/06/04/HP/R/19357/Pres+Obama+Speaks+to+the+Muslim+World+From+Cairo.aspx

Norman Lear speaks

Not just a fine creator, an oracle. This video is directed to the first President Bush:

I couldn't resist

Here's another letter I wrote to the SB NewsPress, which, if it's published I'll be surprised and will update accordingly.

To the editor:

A few days ago, George W. Bush gave a speech to the graduating class of a New Mexico high school. It was the first time ever that he said something with which I heartily agree, and so I cannot help but pass it on. Commenting on what it felt like now that he was no longer President of the United States, he said, "frankly, it's a liberating feeling."

What's in a name?

In Iraq, when are city limits not city limits?

Sometimes you find an essay that says it

better than you can. Howard Zinn's is such an essay (actually, transcribed from a speech).

Good news

I used to be a knowledgeable antitrust lawyer. Back in the day, I prosecuted class-action lawsuits against price-fixers in the bread business and the title insurance industry; I fought tie-in sales and market-allocation schemes on behalf of consumers and small businesses. I used to know the law in these areas and I used it, I think, to positive effect.

But over the years the law eroded, erosion caused by both the opinons of a neglectful US Supreme Court and an indifferent bunch of enforcers in the federal government, from the Department of Justice Antitrust Division to the Federal Trade Commission.

Now, finally, this will change. Perhaps because of a realization that the prior policies have caused the phenomenon of "too big to fail" corporations, perhaps because of the dominating impact of some segments of our economy upon our national wellbeing--we're in for some serious re-thinking of our antitrust policy. It's long overdue, but it's welcome.

I'm worried, very worried...

Without citing a score of essays which say what I'm about to, I tremble when I think of the prospect of a new round of economic decay based on the collapse of commercial real-estate paper, credit-card paper and related gambling slips (derivatives). There are thousands of commercial mortgage- and lease-defaults as well as millions of consumer-debt defaults imminent, which, together with a new round of residential mortgage defaults as "teaser" mortgages re-set, will cause the bank bastards to return to Congress with a bigger hat in hand, and this time there may not be the majority to support their bailout.

If that happens--and it's likely--we're in for a long, hard slog, and worse.

Does David Brooks have something here?

If so--as to this writer--ouch!

Very interesting cyber-development

It's certainly worthwhile, but I wonder if it can tell me where I left my wallet, and a related question, why did I come into this room?

How bad is this recession?

The worst one ever, by far. Check out these charts.

Specter's switch

A rat deserting? A reader of wall-writing? A come-to-Jesus-er? A flip-flopper? Does it matter why, so long as 60 votes, counting Franken and sans Lieberman, are assured?

What's it all about, Alfie?

When Michael Caine is considering leaving Britain because of the prospect of its increasing its tax rate on the highest incomes, we know the end of civilization is near. Except, as you'll note from the body of the article, he's done it before, as have many of Britain's leading actors in the past.

Question: What do Americans who earn those obscenely high incomes do to avoid income tax? Could it be?--yes, it could--that the US tax rate for the wealthy is relatively low? Could it be?--yes, it could--that our tax system has built-in devices for avoiding or deferring tax that aren't available in other systems? Could it be?--yes, it could--that even as we struggle with enormous government deficits, we are a tax haven?

Here's the Telegraph article that's referred to in the above blog.

Now wait a goddam minute!

This worldwide recession thing is getting really scary when it leads to this.