Obama represents a potential break in the logjam of divided, narrow thinking and a return to basic American characteristics of playful invention to cope with even the most severe problems.
ECONOMICS: How Economists downplay substitution on the supply side, and discount American Innovation, American Ingenuity and American Temerity. Bad policy from flawed measurements. Flawed Measurements from biased, agenda-based ideology.
“The central problem confronting the new President is not the political issues of conflicting ideology nor the “choices” presented by well-intentioned economists; the real issue is leadership in seeing what economists call “waste” and imbalance” as opportunity.”
Empty steel and auto-making plants have an unequalled opportunity of leveraging an existing infrastructure to manufacture wind generators, new concept products and most importantly cars that are far ahead of the curve and exactly what consumers want.
Phoenix Motors Cars and other new entrants into the race for longer range high speed all-electric vehicles that can be recharged in minutes on the road, or with a few solar panels during the day at home have taken the ultimate risk and ultimate plunge and are doing very well in their development stage vehicles.
Too much wheat? Create incentives to find other uses. Of course we can help feed the world, but there are hundreds of other uses to produce energy, manufacture goods, create new products for building materials and dozens of possibilities that are probably lingering in the heads of some farmers right now. Those expensive subsidies could be turning a profit for government and farmers and provide an opportunity for small farmers to make money no matter how much surplus wheat is grown.
Subsidies: Whether it is for individuals going through rough times, businesses going through rough times, businesses being incentivized, there is an important element of risk that is being reduced for the recipients. This reduction of risk is worth a great deal of “value” to the recipients. What are they paying for it? If it is individual there are all kinds of community service that can be worked into almost anyone’s schedule. If it is a business, this value can be passed on to consumers in reduced prices or greater benefits. The point here is not to prescribe specific methods of payments but only to say that ANYONE who gets a benefit from the government should be paying for it through taxes, giving back to the community or providing financial or non-financial benefits to the marketplace and society.
That corn is being diverted to production of ethanol is a political pandering of the worst sort. What politicians and economists have both missed completely is not just that there are much better energy efficient alternative products from which to refine ethanol (cane sugar, cellulose, wheat etc) but that since we are able to produce so much corn, we can lower its price, keep the farmers happy and substitute uses such that farmers are making a good rate of return on VOLUME. This brings down food costs which increase the opportunities for consumers to pay their bills, save money and thus provide the capital that is currently being “borrowed” from other countries by issuance of increasingly worthless American paper, once called money.
Economists fail to recognize on the supply side that certain substitutions will routinely provide segments or tranches of demand for products wherein the exchange value might be low but the use value may be high. Taken collectively, this represents opportunity for even the smallest farmers and manufacturers.
Corn is a bastardized example of this process and a poor model, mostly because business schools, media and modern economists are not teaching substitution as a general application. They teach substitution only on the demand side where the inventiveness of the American consumer to adapt to changing quality and prices is assumed but the ingenuity and inventiveness of the American producer is dismissed.
Too much interest expense? This curse dating back to the early 1970’s has robbed the country and its citizens of much needed capital for savings, investment and consumption of goods and services that drive our economy. Government’s complicity in making legal (usurious rates and fees) what was always illegal and even criminal needs reversal.
Current plans to reduce mortgage payments and mortgage interest to the teaser rates that were forced down the throats of unsuspecting borrowers using the money from unsuspecting investors, reducing credit card interest and fees, banning payday loans that roll over into 450% loans etc.,. are all steps in the right direction of redirecting capital to where it needs to go without robbing the capitalists from receiving a fair return.
Reasonable minds may differ but they can come to agreement on a fair rate of return which maintains financial market liqudiidty without windfall profits to credit card issuers, payday lenders, oil companies, health-care, health insurance and drug companies.
These are the things that central bankers and investors around the world are watching and waiting for and it is only through aggressive innovation, which requires aggressive, innovative education techniques, that good old American ingenuity will once again save the day and the dollar.
DEMOCRACY INACTION (SIC)
May 18, 2008
EXPLAINING MORTGAGE MELTDOWN, IRAQ AND INEQUALITY OF WEALTH AND OPPORTUNITY
The truth we don’t want to hear is the same truth we shout down as unpatriotic. It is the essence of patriotism and good journalism to speak the truth and to back it up with solid facts that are congruent with the reality we experience in our daily lives. This piece by Moyers is the one of his best, and worth reading and re-reading.
Moyers: ‘Democracy in America Is a Series of Narrow Escapes, and We May Be Running Out of Luck’
By Bill Moyers, Doubleday
Posted on May 17, 2008, Printed on May 18, 2008
http://www.alternet.org/story/85521/
The following is an excerpt from Bill Moyers’ new book, “Moyers on Democracy” (Doubleday, 2008).
Democracy in America is a series of narrow escapes, and we may be running out of luck. The reigning presumption about the American experience, as the historian Lawrence Goodwyn has written, is grounded in the idea of progress, the conviction that the present is “better” than the past and the future will bring even more improvement. For all of its shortcomings, we keep telling ourselves, “The system works.”
Now all bets are off. We have fallen under the spell of money, faction, and fear, and the great American experience in creating a different future together has been subjugated to individual cunning in the pursuit of wealth and power -and to the claims of empire, with its ravenous demands and stuporous distractions. A sense of political impotence pervades the country — a mass resignation defined by Goodwyn as “believing the dogma of ‘democracy’ on a superficial public level but not believing it privately.” We hold elections, knowing they are unlikely to bring the corporate state under popular control. There is considerable vigor at local levels, but it has not been translated into new vistas of social possibility or the political will to address our most intractable challenges. Hope no longer seems the operative dynamic of America, and without hope we lose the talent and drive to cooperate in the shaping of our destiny.
The earth we share as our common gift, to be passed on in good condition to our children’s children, is being despoiled. Private wealth is growing as public needs increase apace. Our Constitution is perilously close to being consigned to the valley of the shadow of death, betrayed by a powerful cabal of secrecy-obsessed authoritarians. Terms like “liberty” and “individual freedom” invoked by generations of Americans who battled to widen the 1787 promise to “promote the general welfare” have been perverted to create a government primarily dedicated to the welfare of the state and the political class that runs it. Yes, Virginia, there is a class war and ordinary people are losing it. It isn’t necessary to be a Jeremiah crying aloud to a sinful Jerusalem that the Lord is about to afflict them for their sins of idolatry, or Cassandra, making a nuisance of herself as she wanders around King Priam’s palace grounds wailing “The Greeks are coming.” Or Socrates, the gadfly, stinging the rump of power with jabs of truth. Or even Paul Revere, if horses were still in fashion. You need only be a reporter with your eyes open to see what’s happening to our democracy. I have been lucky enough to spend my adult life as a journalist, acquiring a priceless education in the ways of the world, actually getting paid to practice one of my craft’s essential imperatives: connect the dots.
The conclusion that we are in trouble is unavoidable. I report the assault on nature evidenced in coal mining that tears the tops off mountains and dumps them into rivers, sacrificing the health and lives of those in the river valleys to short-term profit, and I see a link between that process and the stock-market frenzy which scorns long-term investments — genuine savings — in favor of quick turnovers and speculative bubbles whose inevitable bursting leaves insiders with stuffed pockets and millions of small stockholders, pensioners, and employees out of work, out of luck, and out of hope.
And then I see a connection between those disasters and the repeal of sixty-year-old banking and securities regulations designed during the Great Depression to prevent exactly that kind of human and economic damage. Who pushed for the removal of that firewall? An administration and Congress who are the political marionettes of the speculators, and who are well rewarded for their efforts with indispensable campaign contributions. Even honorable opponents of the practice get trapped in the web of an electoral system that effectively limits competition to those who can afford to spend millions in their run for office. Like it or not, candidates know that the largesse on which their political futures depend will last only as long as their votes are satisfactory to the sleek “bundlers” who turn the spigots of cash on and off.
The property qualifications for federal office that the framers of the Constitution expressly chose to exclude for demonstrating an unseemly “veneration for wealth” are now de facto in force and higher than the Founding Fathers could have imagined. “Money rules Our laws are the output of a system which clothes rascals in robes and honesty in rags. The parties lie to us and the political speakers mislead us.” Those words were spoken by Populist orator Mary Elizabeth Lease during the prairie revolt that swept the Great Plains slightly more than 120 years after the Constitution was signed. They are true today, and that too, spells trouble.
Then I draw a line to the statistics that show real wages lagging behind prices, the compensation of corporate barons soaring to heights unequaled anywhere among industrialized democracies, the relentless cheeseparing of federal funds devoted to public schools, to retraining for workers whose jobs have been exported, and to programs of food assistance and health care for poor children, all of which snatch away the ladder by which Americans with scant means but willing hands and hearts could work and save their way upward to middle-class independence. And I connect those numbers to our triumphant reactionaries’ campaigns against labor unions and higher minimum wages, and to their success in reframing the tax codes so as to strip them of their progressive character, laying the burdens of Atlas on a shrinking middle class awash in credit card debt as wage earners struggle to keep up with rising costs for health care, for college tuitions, for affordable housing — while huge inheritances go untouched, tax shelters abroad are legalized, rates on capital gains are slashed, and the rich get richer and with each increase in their wealth are able to buy themselves more influence over those who make and those who carry out the laws.
Edward R. Murrow told his generation of journalists: “No one can eliminate prejudices — just recognize them.” Here is my bias: extremes of wealth and poverty cannot be reconciled with a genuinely democratic politics. When the state becomes the guardian of power and privilege to the neglect of justice for the people as a whole, it mocks the very concept of government as proclaimed in the preamble to our Constitution; mocks Lincoln’s sacred belief in “government of the people, by the people, and for the people”; mocks the democratic notion of government as “a voluntary union for the common good” embodied in the great wave of reform that produced the Progressive Era and the two Roosevelts. In contrast, the philosophy popularized in the last quarter century that “freedom” simply means freedom to choose among competing brands of consumer goods, that taxes are an unfair theft from the pockets of the successful to reward the incompetent, and that the market will meet all human needs while government itself becomes the enabler of privilege — the philosophy of an earlier social Darwinism and laissez-faire capitalism dressed in new togs — is as subversive as Benedict Arnold’s betrayal of the Revolution he had once served. Again, Mary Lease: “The great evils which are cursing American society and undermining the foundations of the republic flow not from the legitimate operation of the great human government which our fathers gave us, but they come from tramping its plain provisions underfoot.”
Our democracy has prospered most when it was firmly anchored in the idea that “We the People” — not just a favored few — would identify and remedy common distempers and dilemmas and win the gamble our forebears undertook when they espoused the radical idea that people could govern themselves wisely. Whatever and whoever tries to supplant that with notions of a wholly privatized society of competitive consumers undermines a country that, as Gordon S. Wood puts it in his landmark book The Radicalism of the American Revolution, discovered its greatness “by creating a prosperous free society belonging to obscure people with their workaday concerns and their pecuniary pursuits of happiness” — a democracy that changed the lives of “hitherto neglected and despised masses of common laboring people.”
I wish I could say that journalists in general are showing the same interest in uncovering the dangerous linkages thwarting this democracy. It is not for lack of honest and courageous individuals who would risk their careers to speak truth to power — a modest risk compared to those of some journalists in authoritarian countries who have been jailed or murdered for the identical “crime.” But our journalists are not in control of the instruments they play. As conglomerates swallow up newspapers, magazines, publishing houses, and networks, and profit rather than product becomes the focus of corporate effort, news organizations — particularly in television — are folded into entertainment divisions. The “news hole” in the print media shrinks to make room for advertisements, and stories needed by informed citizens working together are pulled in favor of the latest celebrity scandals because the media moguls have decided that uncovering the inner workings of public and private power is boring and will drive viewers and readers away to greener pastures of pabulum. Good reporters and editors confront walls of resistance in trying to place serious and informative reports over which they have long labored. Media owners who should be sounding the trumpets of alarm on the battlements of democracy instead blow popular ditties through tin horns, undercutting the basis for their existence and their First Amendment rights.
Bill Moyers is the author of “Moyers on Democracy” (Doubleday, 2008) and the host of the PBS show, Bill Moyers Journal.
Truth, Trust and Confidence
May 16, 2008
The stock and trade of all financial institutions is the same: trust. When they fail to tell the truth, when they actually actively deceive the public, and when they actively participate in a worldwide scam leading to the mortgage meltdown, trust is eroded, perhaps beyond repair.
Now trust even between financial institutions is at an all-time low and the “objective” third parties upon which banks rely to set lending standards and judge their strategies are in doubt, to say the least. Libor, the interbank rate published in London in an index used worldwide is under close scrutiny because there are many questions of how it could be so wrong in the face of reality. Moody’s and other rating agencies have been lutred by profit motive and outright corruption into negotiating ratings instead of setting them through objective analysis.
Obama’s declaration that truth will be the standard of his Presidential administration is thus being greeted by even the most conservative pro-business, pro-bank publications with a mixture of hope and trepidation. can he really do it? Yes, if he means it. AND by all accounts, it appears as though he does indeed mean it.
That confidence in the U.S. dollar is at an all-time low is no surprise. But when countries start propping up currencies that are barely on the radar, you know that central bankers are thinking that the U.S. government is not doing enough to shore up the fundamentals of its economy. This translates to a lack of confidence that the dollar will recover. Like the price of oil headed inexorably toward $200 per barrel, the dollar is seen headed inexorably downward. This kind of thinking leads to self-fulfilling prophecy, so it needs to be taken seriously.
The plain fact is that we have $500 trillion in derivative securities that are treated, for the most part, as cash equivalents. In the face of a half-gig behemoth of private sector money supply, central bankers understand that their impact on monetary policy, money supply, credit, and economic growth is virtually out of reach. Like it or not, economic policy is in the hands of the private sector now.
More pretense of regulation from a corrupt government will produce less rather than more instability in the financial sector. Government is providing cover for wrongdoers rather than relief for everyone.
The dangers are obvious. The inevitable conclusion of this paradigm shift can already be seen: a massive shift in the distribution of wealth, with its attendant death grip on government policy and action.
The role of government — to be the referee in assuring a fair playing field — has been subverted beyond recognition.
The tangible results are that millions of homes are being foreclosed, tens of millions of people are being hit with economic losses, and despite even the calls of the conservative Economist magazine for a U.S. “Federal effort to streamline the states’ convoluted foreclosure laws” nothing has emerged thus far.
We are aware and I have assisted in the writing of emergency rules of civil procedure for foreclosures from initiation of proceedings through mediation and judgment. These rules have been submitted to Nevada, Florida and Arizona thus far. The Courts are warming to the idea, but it is likely that a uniform approach will not be adopted, leaving the country in a morass of hoops to jump through before borrowers and lenders and investors can be brought to the table to put a stop to the downward slide.
Under normal conditions, we would be the first to scream for better regulation, more enforcement and criminal prosecution arising from the massive fraud that killed the residential housing market, and severely damaged the rest of the credit markets worldwide. But we are of the opinion that this is an emergency that transcends normal government response. It is akin to the emergency of war where we are fighting for our very survival. Amnesty for every participant on the investor-lender side and on the borrower loan origination side is essential even if it gives a break to “speculators” and criminal minds that irresponsibly launched this plan to nowhere.
Only then will we demonstrate to central bankers around the world that we are serious about this crisis. Only then will they lose momentum is distancing themselves from the dollar.
Economics: The Cost of Racism
May 14, 2008
There are lots of things we do as human beings that are counterproductive in the sense of preventing ourselves from getting what we want. One of them is racism. Whether you harbor some small or large negative feeling toward one race or another consider this:
Negative red lining: In order to carry off the largest economic scam in history, bankers and Wall Street had to find a population that was deprived of sufficient education to know about the world, to know how to conduct their affairs legally, and to be able to reason things so they could make an informed decision.
It was obvious where they were going to find this demographic: (1) people who spoke no English and (2) black people, especially from the deep South. They were perfect targets and it all went “swimmingly” with everybody touting their new equity in their modest homes as though they were watching the ticker on the New York Stock Exchange.
People refinanced to take more money out of their house like an ATM machine, and they spent the money. But the value wasn’t really there, and neither is the income for original targets and then the secondary “refi” targets who got caught up in the whole frenzy. And now millions of lives are being uprooted, millions of jobs are being lost, and millions of people are stuck in retirement with insufficient income because of failed investments by their pension funds, their mutual funds et al..
You see, it is the poor in our country who are exposed, who are vulnerable. They are the ones that predators attack with tactics they could never get away with elsewhere. But the effects, if the predators succeed on a large scale, are felt by everyone. And they are felt deeply.
And the income isn’t there either for all the individuals, institutions, banks, government entities, corporations and other invetors who bought mortgage backed securities that were, for the most part, not worth the paper they were written on.
And the income isn’t there for people who earn a living wage but now find that it isn’t a living anymore because the value of the dollars they earn is also not worth the paper it is written on.
And so when these poor people protest that they were treated unfairly, the racist in us tends to turn a less sympathetic ear to them than to someone “like us.” That is where racism costs us.
By waiting for the shoe to drop on us instead of protecting those who could not protect themselves, by depriving people of the education they need to be able to avoid these predators, we have now created the worst possible outcome: nobody in the entire world trusts the United States policy on money and finance. And we lost our moral high ground to influence the policies of other nations.
And the benefits that we have long expected from our dominance of world finance is fast vanishing as the dollars we issued have turned into vast sweeping IOU’s to countries we could not imagine would have such power over us — China, S. Korea etc.
That Obama has come this far is amazing, even astonishing. Especially in view of the secrets we harbor, the driftwood of hundreds of years of shameful history and rationalization of that history. Notwithstanding all we have learned there are many among us who do not understand that we are wasting precious time and human resources when we withhold empathy, when we withhold funding for education, when we flee from those who are different.
How much money has been lost in home equity due to white flight? It was whites that lost the equity!
How much time and productivity did the South lose because they refused to allow blacks to participate in their economy or in education — even right after the civil war when it was ONLY the blacks that knew how to run the farms and plantations.
How much innovation did we lose by red lining employment opportunities in the North?
How many Einsteins have we completely missed amongst the black and Latin populations?
Racist Incidents Give Some Obama Campaigners Pause
By Kevin Merida
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, May 13, 2008; A01
Danielle Ross was alone in an empty room at the Obama campaign headquarters in Kokomo, Ind., a cellphone in one hand, a voter call list in the other. She was stretched out on the carpeted floor wearing laceless sky-blue Converses, stories from the trail on her mind. It was the day before Indiana’s primary, and she had just been chased by dogs while canvassing in a Kokomo suburb. But that was not the worst thing to occur since she postponed her sophomore year atMiddle Tennessee State University, in part to hopscotch America stumping for Barack Obama.
Here’s the worst: In Muncie, a factory town in the east-central part of Indiana, Ross and her cohorts were soliciting support for Obama at malls, on street corners and in a Wal-Mart parking lot, and they ran into “a horrible response,” as Ross put it, a level of anti-black sentiment that none of them had anticipated.
“The first person I encountered was like, ‘I’ll never vote for a black person,’ ” recalled Ross, who is white and just turned 20. “People just weren’t receptive.”
For all the hope and excitement Obama’s candidacy is generating, some of his field workers, phone-bank volunteers and campaign surrogates are encountering a raw racism and hostility that have gone largely unnoticed — and unreported — this election season. Doors have been slammed in their faces. They’ve been called racially derogatory names (including the white volunteers). And they’ve endured malicious rants and ugly stereotyping from people who can’t fathom that the senator from Illinois could become the first African American president.
The contrast between the large, adoring crowds Obama draws at public events and the gritty street-level work to win votes is stark. The candidate is largely insulated from the mean-spiritedness that some of his foot soldiers deal with away from the media spotlight.
Victoria Switzer, a retired social studies teacher, was on phone-bank duty one night during the Pennsylvania primary campaign. One night was all she could take: “It wasn’t pretty.” She made 60 calls to prospective voters in Susquehanna County, her home county, which is 98 percent white. The responses were dispiriting. One caller, Switzer remembers, said he couldn’t possibly vote for Obama and concluded: “Hang that darky from a tree!”
Documentary filmmaker Rory Kennedy, the daughter of the late Robert F. Kennedy, said she, too, came across “a lot of racism” when campaigning for Obama in Pennsylvania. One Pittsburgh union organizer told her he would not vote for Obama because he is black, and a white voter, she said, offered this frank reason for not backing Obama: “White people look out for white people, and black people look out for black people.”
Obama campaign officials say such incidents are isolated, that the experience of most volunteers and staffers has been overwhelmingly positive.
The campaign released this statement in response to questions about encounters with racism: “After campaigning for 15 months in nearly all 50 states, Barack Obama and our entire campaign have been nothing but impressed and encouraged by the core decency, kindness, and generosity of Americans from all walks of life. The last year has only reinforced Senator Obama’s view that this country is not as divided as our politics suggest.”
Campaign field work can be an exercise in confronting the fears, anxieties and prejudices of voters. Veterans of the civil rights movement know what this feels like, as do those who have been involved in battles over busing, immigration or abortion. But through the Obama campaign, some young people are having their first experience joining a cause and meeting cruel reaction.
On Election Day in Kokomo, a group of black high school students were holding up Obama signs along U.S. 31, a major thoroughfare. As drivers cruised by, a number of them rolled down their windows and yelled out a common racial slur for African Americans, according to Obama campaign staffers.
Frederick Murrell, a black Kokomo High School senior, was not there but heard what happened. He was more disappointed than surprised. During his own canvassing for Obama, Murrell said, he had “a lot of doors slammed” in his face. But taunting teenagers on a busy commercial strip in broad daylight? “I was very shocked at first,” Murrell said. “Then again, I wasn’t, because we have a lot of racism here.”
The bigotry has gone beyond words. In Vincennes, the Obama campaign office was vandalized at 2 a.m. on the eve of the primary, according to police. A large plate-glass window was smashed, an American flag stolen. Other windows were spray-painted with references to Obama’s controversial former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, and other political messages: “Hamas votes BHO” and “We don’t cling to guns or religion. Goddamn Wright.”
Ray McCormick was notified of the incident at about 2:45 a.m. A farmer and conservationist, McCormick had erected a giant billboard on a major highway on behalf of Farmers for Obama. He also was housing the Obama campaign worker manning the office. When McCormick arrived at the office, about two hours before he was due out of bed to plant corn, he grabbed his camera and wanted to alert the media. “I thought, this is a big deal.” But he was told Obama campaign officials didn’t want to make a big deal of the incident. McCormick took photos anyway and distributed some.
“The pictures represent what we are breaking through and overcoming,” he said. As McCormick, who is white, sees it, Obama is succeeding despite these incidents. Later, there would be bomb threats to three Obama campaign offices in Indiana, including the one in Vincennes, according to campaign sources.
Obama has not spoken much about racism during this campaign. He has sought to emphasize connections among Americans rather than divisions. He shrugged off safety concerns that led to early Secret Service protection and has told black senior citizens who worry that racists will do him harm: Don’t fret. Earlier in the campaign, a 68-year-old woman in Carson City, Nev., voiced concern that the country was not ready to elect an African American president.
“Will there be some folks who probably won’t vote for me because I am black? Of course,” Obama said, “just like there may be somebody who won’t vote for Hillary because she’s a woman or wouldn’t vote for John Edwards because they don’t like his accent. But the question is, ‘Can we get a majority of the American people to give us a fair hearing?’ “
Obama has won 30 of 50 Democratic contests so far, the kind of nationwide electoral triumph no black candidate has ever realized. That he is on the brink of capturing the Democratic nomination, some say, is a testament to how far the country has progressed in overcoming racism and evidence of Obama’s skill at bridging divides.
Obama has won five of 12 primaries in which black voters made up less than 10 percent of the electorate, and caucuses in states such as Idaho and Wyoming that are overwhelmingly white. But exit polls show he has struggled to attract white voters who didn’t attend college and earn less than $50,000 a year. Today, he and Hillary Clinton square off in West Virginia, a state where she is favored and where the votes of working-class whites will again be closely watched.
For the most part, Obama campaign workers say, the 2008 election cycle has been exhilarating. On the ground, the Obama campaign is being driven by youngsters, many of whom are imbued with an optimism undeterred by racial intolerance. “We’ve grown up in a different world,” says Danielle Ross. Field offices are staffed by 20-somethings who hold positions — state director, regional field director, field organizer — that are typically off limits to newcomers to presidential politics.
Gillian Bergeron, 23, was in charge of a five-county regional operation in northeastern Pennsylvania. The oldest member of her team was 27. At Scranton’s annual Saint Patrick’s Day parade, some of the green Obama signs distributed by staffers were burned along the parade route. That was the first signal that this wasn’t exactly Obama country. There would be others.
In a letter to the editor published in a local paper, Tunkhannock Borough Mayor Norm Ball explained his support of Hillary Clinton this way: “Barack Hussein Obama and all of his talk will do nothing for our country. There is so much that people don’t know about his upbringing in the Muslim world. His stepfather was a radical Muslim and the ranting of his minister against the white America, you can’t convince me that some of that didn’t rub off on him.
“No, I want a president that will salute our flag, and put their hand on the Bible when they take the oath of office.”
Obama’s campaign workers have grown wearily accustomed to the lies about the candidate’s supposed radical Muslim ties and lack of patriotism. But they are sometimes astonished when public officials such as Ball or others representing the campaign of their opponent traffic in these falsehoods.
Karen Seifert, a volunteer from New York, was outside of the largest polling location in Lackawanna County, Pa., on primary day when she was pressed by a Clinton volunteer to explain her backing of Obama. “I trust him,” Seifert replied. According to Seifert, the woman pointed to Obama’s face on Seifert’s T-shirt and said: “He’s a half-breed and he’s a Muslim. How can you trust that?”
* * *
Pollsters have found it difficult to accurately measure racial attitudes, as some voters are unwilling to acknowledge the role that race plays in their thinking. But some are not. Susan Dzimian, a Clinton supporter who owns residential properties, said outside a polling location in Kokomo that race was a factor in how she viewed Obama. “I think if it was somebody other than him, I’d accept it,” she said of a black candidate. “If Colin Powell had run, I would be willing to accept him.”
The previous evening, Dondra Ewing was driving the neighborhoods of Kokomo, looking to turn around voters like Dzimian. Ewing, 47, is a chain-smoking middle school guidance counselor, a black single mother of two and one of the most fiercely vigilant Obama volunteers in Kokomo, which was once a Ku Klux Klan stronghold. On July 4, 1923, Kokomo hosted the largest Klan gathering in history — an estimated 200,000 followers flocked to a local park. But these are not the 1920s, and Ewing believes she can persuade anybody to back Obama. Her mother, after all, was the first African American elected at-large to the school board in a community that is 10 percent black.
Kokomo, population 46,000, is another hard-hit Midwestern industrial town stung by layoffs. Longtimers wistfully remember the glory years of Continental Steel and speak mournfully about the jobs shipped overseas. Kokomo Sanitary Pottery, which made bathroom sinks and toilets, shut down a couple of months ago and took with it 150 jobs.
Aaron Roe, 23, was mowing lawns at a local cemetery recently, lamenting his $8-an-hour job with no benefits. He had earned a community college degree as an industrial electrician, but learned there was no electrical work to be found for someone with his experience, which is to say none. Politics wasn’t on his mind; frustration was. If he were to vote, it would not be for Obama, he said. “I just got a funny feeling about him,” Roe said, a feeling he couldn’t specify, except to say race wasn’t a part of it. “Race ain’t nothing,” said Roe, who is white. “It’s how they’re going to help the country.”
The Aaron Roes are exactly who Dondra Ewing was after: people with funny feelings.
At the Bradford Run Apartments, she found Robert Cox, a retiree who spent 30 years working for an electronics manufacturer making computer chips. He was in his suspenders, grilling shish kebab, which he had never eaten. “Something new,” Cox said, recommended by his son who was visiting from Colorado.
Ewing was selling him hard on Obama. “There are more than two families that can run the United States of America,” she said, “and their names aren’t Bush and Clinton.”
“Yeah, I know, I know,” Cox said, remaining noncommittal.
He opened the grill and peeked at the kebabs. “It’s not his race, because I got real good friends and all that,” Cox continued. “If anything would keep him from getting elected, it would be his name. It might turn off some older people.”
Like him?
“No, older than me,” said Cox, 66.
Ewing kept talking, until finally Cox said, “Probably Obama,” when asked directly how he would vote.
As she walked away, Ewing said: “I think we got him.”
But truthfully, she wasn’t feeling so sure.
Staff writer Peter Slevin and polling analyst Jennifer Agiesta contributed to this report.
Government Regulation vs. Private Sector Usurpation
May 13, 2008
Virtually ALL of the the decisions concerning money supply and “regulation” are being made in the private sector which is devoted to one thing by mission and by intent: transfer of wealth to the big dogs in the private sector. This clearly government function, as specifically expressed in the U.S. Constitution has been abandoned by government and usurped by the private sector.
By allowing tainted money into the political system, actions that had been plainly illegal, immoral and unethical have become a way of life, legalized by laws passed to satisfy legislator’s obligations to lobbyists. Obama’s call for reigning back the forces of money from the private sector is a call to arms and a call for alarms — to regulate and disclose the billions of dollars spent by credit/financial industries, oil and gas, coal, drugs, healthcare and crime (yes, crime because close examination shows that some private sectors will ONLY make money if the jails are full).
The purpose of government — to be the referree between capital and labor in a market allowing forces of supply, demand and innovation to determine outcome — has been abandoned and must be re-asserted. If not, we become a third world country where the rich live in electrified bunkers with their own security staff and the rest of the population remains hopeless poor and in debt. The risk of violent revolution, food riots and knee-jerk policies generated from fear or anger will be the rule rather than the exception. This is hardly the result intended by the framers of our constitution.
As the comments indicate, the Fed policy-making apparatus is in tatters.
- It lowers the Fed overnight rate and interest rates go up — something that was thought impossible by many people.
- It confronts hyper-inflation with a mixture of mentioning how serious the issue is and then lowers rates again, which we all know means increasing the money supply and increasing inflation. But then lenders still refuse to give loans to small business, homeowners and other key parts of the credit cycle that spur the economy.
- The plain fact is that the Fed is not having much effect at all on anything.
- It missed the opportunity to regulate and increase its influence to thwart the bubble in housing because politically it was expedient to do so in a Repiublican administration.
We all pay the price as the economy and our society commences the wrenching process of remaking itself with a solid foundation of productivity, more even distribution of purchasing power, less impulse purchasing, more saving, and the prospects of slower growth and recession here and abroad.
The FED is diminished, probably permanently. Up until now nobody has addressed the issue head-on that neither the Fed nor the U.S. Treasury, nor the Bureau of Engraving and Printing are having much impact on money supply, interest rates, prices or economic growth.
Virtually ALL of the the decisions concerning money supply and “regulation” are being made in the private sector which is devoted to one thing by mission and by intent: transfer of wealth to the big dogs in the private sector.
LONDON (MarketWatch) — Cleveland Federal Reserve Bank President Sandra Pianalto said Tuesday that inflation remains a top risk to the economic outlook, but that the Federal Reserve’s rate-cutting strategy likely wouldn’t stoke inflationary pressures. In a speech prepared for delivery in Paris, Pianalto said she finds herself in a “challenging environment” as a policymaker. “While even the core price measures in the United States are rising somewhat faster than I would prefer, and inflation presents a key risk to my outlook, I believe that the Federal Reserve’s policy strategy remains compatible with a low and stable inflation rate,” she said. Pianalto said it was important to distinguish between inflation and relative-price pressures.
Inflation: Truth vs. Myth
May 12, 2008
OBAMANOMICS VS NO ECONOMICS AT ALL
the government is charged with reporting on inflation when it has a vested interest in keep the reported inflation low both for political and financial reasons
The job of the Petitioner in bankruptcy to get a modification of the Chapter 13 plan is therefore double-whacked because of (1) a presumption against him which requires him to show a significant change in circumstances and (2) inaccurate government statistics which call you a liar when you say your basic expenses have shot up 25% just because of inflation.
Homeowners with ARM financing on their homes are triple whacked when the resets kick in. Those people in bankruptcy already should tell their lawyers to file an adversary proceeding based upon violations of TILA and RESPA. There are a number of steps you need to follow (see many posts and links on this blog) before you can file suit.
BKR attorneys are struggling with clients who are complaining that their payment plan is being negatively impacted by the surge in the cost of living. This surge has been understated by, for example, publication of the Consumer Price Index and other indices that are used to set increases in government and pension benefits like social security.
Thus the government is charged with reporting on inflation when it has a vested interest in keep the reported inflation low both for political and financial reasons. If they report it accurately, the government expenses will go up. Up until now, the fact that this was at the expense of the recipients of those benefits (which they paid into and are now being short-changed) has been felt, talked about but largely ignored. That too is coming up front and center. McCain’s statement “I’m not very good on economics” better change to “I just studied up on economics and it is very interesting, Here is what I learned.”
When inflation was comparatively low, even though understated. there wasn’t much conflict. Now, however, the basket of items used for the CPI is literaly out of touch with the real life experience of most Americans — something that Obama has started talking about and which McCain unfortunately doesn’t seem to know or care to know.
The job of the Petitioner in bankruptcy to get a modification of the Chapter 13 plan is therefore double-whacked because of (1) a presumption against him which requires him to show a significant change in circumstances and (2) inaccurate government statistics which call you a liar when you say your basic expenses have shot up 25% just because of inflation.
Homeowners with ARM financing on their homes are triple whacked when the resets kick in. Those people in bankruptcy already should tell their lawyers to file an adversary proceeding based upon violations of TILA and RESPA. There are a number of steps you need to follow (see links on this blog) before you can file suit.
COAL ECONOMICS AND POLITICS: REALITY CHECK
May 10, 2008
It is Obama who will ironically do the most to preserve the way of life in West Virginia, Kentucky and other states — even though they vote overwhelmingly against him out of fear, prejudice and disinformation
The reality is that coal is going to be with us for a while and perhaps permanently. Regardless of who is President, despite all the concerns about the noxious fumes and heat emanating from mining and firing coal, it will be many years before demand for coal decreases. Technology, innovation, and alternative energy sources will play an increasing role in providing the power to run our homes, offices, hospitals and factories. But the process will take many years and perhaps many decades before the time comes that demand for coal decreases.
Thus the people of West Virginia, Kentucky and other coal producing states are not in jeopardy — but their children or grandchildren might be doing something other than mining. This is the reality.
Politics being what it is, results in pandering to the worst fears of voters and getting them to believe that the candidate speaking is the only one who will not let coal mining decline and will fight to keep them in business. It is a lie.
No candidate can stop this progression and no candidate is going to fight in favor of coal, which is perceived now as a major source of emissions and heat. It is political suicide for a candidate to say what Clinton is saying anywhere outside of West Virginia. She doesn’t care because she has no chance of elected but she wants to make a big finish.
The problem with that is once again people are being mislead and are being coerced into voting against themselves. Coal’s survival depends not on running against global warming but running with it. Someone who promises to fight for you against the environmentalists is telling you a whopper.
But someone who promises innovation and technology dividends might just be the person who can save you in spite of yourselves. And supporting that person will hasten the resurgence of coal and your economic security as well as the economic security of your country, your children and your grandchildren.
Recapture of the heat from coal fired plants, some of which spew 650 degree or more superheated air into the atmosphere could turn any coal fired plant making steel, concrete or even electric power into augmented power.
Every coal fired plant could be a clean source of additional energy if we recapture the energy being wasted. Every emission being discarded randomly into the environment could be captured as well and buried where it will do no harm.
Paradoxically it is the resistance of the mining lobby and mining interests, who are ill-informed about Obama and ill-advised in their direction, who could derail what would otherwise be a perfect outcome for West Virginia and Kentucky.
The abundance of coal reserves in the U.S. could thus paradoxically become one of the major green initiatives of the next administration and congress. Who would lead this?
Fortunately, whether you vote for him or not, Obama is very likely to be our next President. It is fortunate because he is the first person in politics to break the logjam, break the hold of special interest lobby groups and actually use innovation, technology and creative -in depth thinking and action to create an army of 750,000 active volunteers, 1,300,000 donors who have freed him from having to respond to any BIG DOG, and who will use the same techniques to overwhelm the opposition.
Obama is unstoppable precisely because he alone understands the significance of community organizing and he is unique in being the only one who has a successful track record in doing it, even under the most despondent circumstances. In this case, the community to organize is more daunting than the South Side of Chicago — it is now the country and eventually the world. But the dynamics of despair, fear, hopelessness versus empowerment, hope and relevance are the same.
For him, American innovation and problem solving from the bottom up is his first priority. For every other candidate in recent years it has been through regulation and selling out to groups who already had too much power. With the support of the American people and indeed the world behind him, Obama is the one who can make this happen for coal and hundreds of other industries, large and small.
It is therefore Obama who will ironically do the most to preserve the way of life in West Virginia, Kentucky and other states — even though they vote overwhelmingly against him out of fear, prejudice and disinformation
Credit Markets: Trust, Confidence and Integrity
May 9, 2008
Another casualty of the Mortgage Meltdown induced paranoia that is sweeping the credit and money markets: Banks no longer trust the indexes which they have relied upon for decades. In other words, they don’t trust each other. And they don’t trust the people who report on what is happening out in the financial marketplace. The simple fact is that they do NOT know how much they are paying or how much they are going to pay, or the actual trend lines in inter-bank lending. This basically slips the rug out of the entire credit infrastructure.
What this means to the average Joe or Jane is that it adds uncertainty to an already chaotic marketplace. Uncertainty produces fear and fear produces increased risk aversion. Bottom Line: Interest rates are going up no matter what the central banks do. Loans will be harder to get. Asset values will decline because of the difficulty in obtaining financing that is usually associated with the purchase of those assets — like housing and mortgages.
In terms of policy, it means that decision-makers in government and the private sector need to be honest and straightforward in their reporting of data.
Making lemons appear to be lemonade is going to further erode trust and confidence in the financial systems.
THOSE WHO COUNSEL CAUTION IN GIVING THE PUBLIC THE REAL FACTS ARE PROLONGING THE AGONY. HISTORY SHOWS THAT WHEN THE BAD NEWS IS OUT AND THE PUBLIC BELIEVES THAT IT IS ALL OUT, THE PROCESS OF HEALING AND REJUVENATION BEGINS. Until then, we are headed at best for a limping economy, with declining prospects.
Pointing out sectors that have upticks does nothing to restore confidence in the overall system. Everyone understands that the failure here was systemic, not economic. Failure to address that issue will simply produce declining confidence in the markets until people start believing what they are told. They won’t believe it unless they can confirm it. And we all have access now to information that will confirm or deny the spin or reports that government and private sector leaders publish.
Time to fess up boys!!!!
