Rules of the Game

Well, dang! Just when I thought I'd gotten a handle on the whole free-market thing, they went and changed the rules on me. You see, the way those smooth guys on Fox explained it, when you have something of value, instead of letting the government set the price, you put it on the market and let some invisible hand tell you what it's worth. Sounds good to me.

Let's say I have a copy of "Abbey Road" with all the Beatles' signatures on it. I put it on eBay and let all the people who want it bid on it. When the price gets as high as I think it's going to get, I sell it. Perfect.

So just as I'm getting to understand how it works, along comes Rod Blagojevich.

Now Rod is a firm believer in that ol' invisible hand. He's got something of value. He doesn't want the government to set the price. So he puts it on the market and runs his own private eBay to sell it to the highest bidder. Just like they say on Fox. And along comes that nasty ol' government and nails him on seventeen counts and the guy's liable to spend five hundred years in the clink - for what? Following the same kind of private enterprise that works for dope dealers and pimps - the law of supply and demand. The whole idea of the invisible hand.

When you stop and think about it, what did Rod do that most politicians don't? Every couple of years, these people go out and promise everything under the sun to folks who have lots of money in exchange for television and newspaper ads telling voters why he (she) is better than that lousy rat running against him (her). Usually, the person who gets the most money, wins. That's what the election is about. Listen to the news. Instead of telling people what a candidate stands for, we hear about the size of his "war chest." Money is the invisible hand of the election.

So Rod used the invisible hand without the glove of respectibility. He put a seat in the U.S. Senate up for bids and got caught with his not-so-invisible hand in the cookie jar. Not that he's alone. There's a possiblity that the guy in the cell next to him could be the last Governor of Illinois, George Ryan, who was likewise canned for corruption in 2006. Sort of a transplanted version of the Illinois State House.

Anyway, Ryan said he never did anything wrong. "I simply didn't do enough," Ryan said, "I should have been more vigilant. I should have been more watchful. I should have been a lot of things, I guess." So should Rod.

It's that invisible hand again. You've got to watch the damn thing or it'll sneak and use one of its fingers on you. Rod wasn't vigilant enough.

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The Ultimate Free Rides

In the past few weeks, the subject of the federal deficit has taken up more space than even vital issues like Sarah Palin's e-mails, the NBA finals and the latest doings on reality TV.

The Republicans, always on the prowl for ways to embarrass the President, have pointed out the evils of spending too much money on child care, nutrition, social security, medicare and even NPR. All of these, according to Boehner and Friends, are contributing to the downfall of the USA and the joy of those Muslim devils at Al Queda, the Taliban, the Arab world and anywhere people live who aren't Good Christians.

However, conspicuous by their absence have been other ways to trim the deficit. Since the GOP has already taken off the table any unmentionable tax hikes for their biggest contrinutors, I have a few modest proposals:

First, has anyone come up with a good reason why churches and church-related businesses should not pay the same rate as the people who attend them? The U.S. Constitution says that there shouldn't be any law respecting the establishment of religion. I'd say that giving tax breaks is certainly one way the government recognizes the importance of religion over, say, other forms of entertainment. We have numerous businesses, from wineries to food products, all merrily coasting along because they are run by churches. Why? The same question might be asked about social clubs like the Elks or the Moose.

If I had to rent an apartment instead of owning a condominium, I wouldn't have any kind of tax break on my rent. So why should I get a tax break on the interest I pay for owning a house? Am I better than the renters? Or is the tax break an incentive for those who bought the American Dream argument and went into hock up to their eyeballs to own what turned out to be a depreciating asset? If this loophole in the tax laws was taken away, all people who want to live a comfortable life would be treated the same. We could chose whether to own or rent with no penalties or rewards for one decision over another.

Corporations that move their offices offshore to avoid U.S. taxes account for millions in lost revenue to the Treasury, but why hasn't anyone plugged this particularly egregious act of freeloading? And how about the cruise ships who, although owned by U.S. companies, register their ships in the Bahamas or Cayman Islands and allow all of the non-cruisers to pay their taxes for them? The same goes for most of the tax loopholes in our swiss-cheese tax system. The middle class pays for the rich.

It seems that calling for simple fairness these days is viewed as radical left-wing thinking by segments of the body politic and most of them seem to belong to the legions of the Right. They want lower taxes and less regulation, but they're willing to have anyone except themselves pay for it. And the media don't say a word.

When are the American people going to call for an "American spring?"

The Valley of the Wolves

In a web article from CNN entitled "The No-Vacation Nation," it was pointed out that American workers have less time off with more strings attached when they do than any other industrial nation on earth. There is no law in the U.S., as opposed to other countries, that mandates a set number of days or weeks for leisure by people who work for a living. The article goes on to say "That makes the U.S. the only advanced nation in the world that doesn't guarantee its workers annual leave," according to a report titled  by the Center for Economic and Policy Research, a liberal policy group.

This might be a good time to examine this lack of free time in the light of the conservative mantra of individual freedom. Is this vaunted freedom basically the freedom from the burden of being able to take four weeks off to be with one's family or the freedom to choose which cell phone you have to take with you when one is on vacation so that continual contact can be kept with the office? The standing gag in American work places is that a vacation just means you can work from somewhere else.

So, are four or six week mandadted vacations a socialist plot? Well, no. Of course, if you think Germany, France and Switzerland are socialist, you may have a point. A better explanation is that Americans have been so thoroughly brainwashed by the Lords of the Marketplace that they actually like to have less time off. Only 57% of U.S. workers use up all of the days they're entitled to, compared with 89% of workers in France, a recent Reuters/Ipsos poll found. Why?

People who have been taken prisoners often develop the Swedish Syndrome, a phenomenon where the hostages express empathy and have positive feelings towards their captors. Is it possible that we've got the same kind of thing cooking right here at home? Why else could we see the hostility expressed for the company or the boss mixed with the voluntary overtime and weekend work that sometimes results in divorce and parentless kids? Promotion? Ambition? The mystique that the harder you work, the faster you'll advance? Ask the people who busted their butts for years only to find themselves laid off becaise of a corporate merger or an unexplained "downsizing."

The unwelcome truth is that America has become a nation driven by an all-consuming love of money. Nothing, or very little, of honesty, ethics or morals can survive the Darwinian drive for survival, not of the fittest, but the most ruthless. "Dog eat dog" isn't just an accidental turn of phrase. "It's a jungle out there" isn't a joke.

American corporate culture has castrated its labor unions (and is still in the process). It has elevated corporate greed to a religion. It continues to bribe and otherwise pressure governments, both federal and state, to tighten the noose around workers' rights as opposed to increased profits for multinational business. We're now seeing outright attacks on any attempts to organize workers by circulating horror stories about some few (but egregious) abuses of power while ignoring the equally appalling horror stories about corporate tax dodges, arbitrary firings, power grabs and outright purchases of elected officials.

Yes, we're a no-vacation nation. And we'll continue to be as long as we keep acting like sheep in the Valley of the Wolves.

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