Justice Song at Twilight

The death of Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad, Pakistan on May 2 did two significant things. First, it rid the world of a man who, in my judgement, was a truly dangerous and deranged person. Second, it gave us a terrific opportunity to examine what we mean by the term "justice."

If what we mean by the word is the John Wayne-type of justice we see in westerns or the Old Testament "eye for an eye" justice that is being practiced by Jews and Muslims in the Middle East or the plain revenge killings popular among members of the Sicilian Mafia, then I would unhesitatingly agree with President Obama that bin Laden has been "brought to justice." But if we're talking about the kind of justice discussed in the New Testament, or the Constitution or American jurisprudence, then what happened to bin Laden is as far from justice as Abbottabad is from the World Trade Center.

After World War II, I watched newsreels of some of the biggest scumbags in world history stand trial in Nuremburg, Germany. Among them were people who participated, not in the murder of 3000 innocent people, but over six million. They stood or sat in court, listening to witnesses in front of a judge and were duly sentenced and, in some cases, executed. Later, even Israeli agents, after kidnapping Adolf Eichman from Argentina and taking him to Israel, put him on trial for the murder of hundreds of thousands of their fellow Jews. The key world here is "trial."

Regardless of how heinous a person's actions may be or what kind of person he or she may be, under American justice and, incidentally, the justice system of any advanced nation, a person must be judged. This means arguments for both sides must be heard and a verdict delivered. Here, there must also be a jury to hear the evidence. That's the way American Justice works.

Shooting an unarmed man in the head is not American Justice.

So let's not quibble over whether we're better off as a country - or a world - without Osama bin Laden. Let's instead debate what kind of country we want and be honest enough to admit it when we want it changed. If, for example, we think torture is justified if it results in a desired outcome, then be honest enough to say it. If assassination squads are needed for our country's survival, then change the law to permit it. Don't teach our children about things that don't exist - it's unfair to them.  Justice is justice. Murder is murder. Let's not confuse the issue with flag buttons or shouts of "USA! USA!"

If you believe in justice, then you have to believe in equal justice. If it's OK for us to shoot bin Laden, then why isn't it OK for some member of the Taliban to shoot President Obama? Because Obama is a good guy and bin Laden is a bad guy? You can call this idiotic because everyone knows our way of life is the best in the world, right? Our kind of justice is the best, right?

But you have to be able to back this up with evidence. In America, a person should be believed innocent until proven guilty. In America, a person's color, race or national origin shouldn't matter in a court of law. In America, a person is entitled to a trial before a jury of his/her peers. When Lee Harvey Oswald, accused of shooting President Kennedy, was gunned down by Jack Ruby before going to trial, many of us cheered. But the fact was Oswald was innocent when he died. He had not been proven guilty. Cumbersome, but that's the way our justice system works.

Think of this when we think of Osama bin Laden.

Religions don't kill people - guns kill people.

I just got back from Egypt, Jordan and Dubai and I can tell you that America's got one hell of a mess on its hands.

After backing one crooked bunch of sleazebags after another in the defense of "American interests," which generally turned out to be big oil companies, we're seeing a genuine desire for political freedom in danger of slipping out of control due to our snail-like acceptance of what should be our instinctive desire to advance liberty and self-determination.

To its credit, the Obama administration has been making appropriate noises to Hosni Mubarek, saying in effect that what we've approved of for almost thirty years is no longer nice and it would be better from him to listen to the people for a change. This is after our history of lauding Egypt's  King Farouk and his heavy-handed rule along with Iran's Shah and his secret police in exchange for carte-blanche treatment of petroleum firms and luxury living for corporate executives.

On top of this, despite cash transfusions of eight billion dollars a year of Americantaxpayers' money and Israel's repeated violations of U.N. directives, we've been getting the old thumb in the eye as Israel does whatever it pleases in Gaza. In the minds of many in the Middle East, the U.S. and Israel are the same thing. This isn't doing us any good in the region, althought it may be of great help in Florida and New York elections.

Naturally, both Israel and the Arab states feel that the land they want was given to them by God. If we're too stupid to observe our own Constitution (There shall be no law respecting the establishment of religion), then we should be smart enough to realize that every nation must accept the responsibility for its own actions. If we in the United States decide to back a crooked regime in the name of bigger profits for bigger corporations, then we have to be able to bear the responsibility for being looked upon as hypocrites. If Israel decides that any Jew in the world has the right to call Israel home - which is its right to do - then it has to be prepared to defend itself against a billion and a half Muslims who might be annoyed to see more settlements spring up on land they consider to be theirs.

Therefore, while some dimwits in America and elsewhere might be tempted to blame Islam for the bloodshed in the Middle East or Judaism for its expansionist desires, we have to remember that it isn't religions that account for the dead and the maimed - it's the fan clubs of the various religions, using the weapons provided by good business sense and a healthy desire for profit. After all, a cursory reading of the Bible will provide more gore than Fox News and MSNBC combined as thousands are slaughtered in the name of the merciful Diety that runs things. President Bush's ill-advised use of the word "crusade" brought back painful memories of mass murders in the name of Jesus, whom I recall having said something about the meek being blessed. Whether it be producers of crossbows or Uzis, the principle is the same - war means profits.

Religions don't kill people. In the Quran, Mohammed specifically commands respect for Christians and Jews as "people of the Book." Jews reserve a seat at the Seder table for the stranger at the gate and Christians are instructed to love their neighbors as themselves. This makes things hard for the Haters, but they keep trying.

Don't fall for it.

A(nother) Christmas Poem

'Twas the week before Christmas and folks filled with rancor

Were counting the ways that each bonus-filled banker

Could celebrate New Years either locked in a cell

Or counting their stash in a corner of hell.

And there, with the Devil, they'll study the book

On how to become a respectable crook

By dealing derivatives, hedge funds and swaps

And paying off senators, judges and cops.

They'll all have a party with pretzels and beer

To honor the others who soon would be here-

Come Greenspan, Bernanke and Geithner and Summers

And any Chicago free market newcomers

Who believe in the value of huge piles of stuff

With never a thought about what is enough.

With less for the many and more for the few

A nice little laissez-faire Christmas to you.

Ten Commandments Revisited

While dial-spinning the other day trying to find something on my radio that didn't sound like elephants passing gas, I happened upon one of the numerous mike-hugging preachers who try to lure people into heaven by promising them the same kind of lifestyle they themselves enjoy (send twnty dollars).

This particular specimen was railing against the secular humanists, liberals and/or Democrats who were responsible for America's going to hell in a handcar by treating the Ten Commandments as Ten Suggestions and not following them as the infallible Word of God. This preacher was of the opinion that the only way to save our country was to revert to the Bible, capitalism and ethics and thus go back to the good old days of moral government under Hoover, Johnson, Reagan, Nixon and George W. Bush.

As a tireless investigator, I thought this might be a good time to assist the Reverend by invstigating each one of the Commandments and look for role models in the sources mentioned, i.e. government, the financial sector and  various holy books of our major religions. Let's start with the first one: "Thou shalt have no other gods before me."

O.K. The first thing I had to do was design a measuring tool. I picked the popular media - newspapers, magazines, billboards and TV- to find out which was more important this Christmas/Hanukah/Kwanzaa season: religious observances or commercial enterprises. For every mention of Jesus, Moses or any other religious figure, there were literally hundreds of sales, discounts, smiling Santa Clauses, Rudolphs and Frostys, dancing to the accompaniment of matching songs. Since the holiday season represents about 40% of the music industry's total business and a similar percentage of retail sales, in the race between God and Mammon, Mammon is ahead by five lengths going into the home stretch and increasing the lead every minute. God may listen, but money talks.

This also takes care of the second commandment concerning graven images. The top image on the national flag pole isn't God. It may go by different names, like "the Bottom Line" or "Number One," but it looks an awful lot like a dollar sign.

The third forbids taking the name of God in vain. Have you listened to the radio or TV lately?

The fourth commandment tells us to keep the sabbath day holy. Presumably, this would discourage keeping stores open seven days a week or even on Christmas Day. Hey, how about business? You can't make money when you're closed.

Number five commands us to honor our fathers and mothers. We do. We have Mother's Day, Father's Day, Grandmother's Day, and any other day that can become a buying opportunity. We also make it a point of talking a lot about care for the aged and posting lousy scores in actually caring for them. Of course, it's a different story if you can afford five grand a month for a nursing home.

Six: "Thou shalt not kill." Are you kidding? It's part of our national policy. Today's news related our new philosophy of "Shooting more bad guys." Or people who are probably bad guys. Or people who might be bad guys or people who were walking next to some bad guys. Bumping off leaders we don't like is old hat. Unfortunately, we can't ask them to confirm or deny the charge. BTW, if you really want mass murder, try the Old Testament.

The seventh commandment advises us to stay away from adultery. Come on - what would happen to Congress and the NBA if people stopped cheating on their wives? Well, there's always golf......

Stealing (number eight) is a broad term. It isn't too much of an extension to include the whole banking industry.

False witness is the entire foundation of political campaigns and advertising. Call the other guy (or product) enough bad names and people will flock to your side. Psst - Obama's a Muslim.

Last, we have the prohibition against coveting your neighbor's house, wife, ass, etc. I maintain coveting is the basis for our entire economic system. If you covet something, you'll buy it or steal it(!). If you accept that what you have is good enough, the economy collapses. Try imagining a non-coveting society and think about cell phones, iPads, home theaters and new cars. If you experience a conflict, you'll understand the point.

The conclusion I've reached is that liberals or conservatives aren't to blame for our decline. It's the hypocrisy we are exposed to 24/7 and its effect on us. And only we can stop it - if we're willing to take the consequences.

A New and Better (?) Standard

After exhaustive study, I feel it's time to introduce a new measure of brain function. The old I.Q. standard has been so severely tested by people like George W. Bush and Sarah Palin, it seems there's a need to get a new measure which will yield more positive results, i.e. a score higher than the ambient temperature, The answer, I feel is the Rectal Intelligence Scale (RIS). This score is achieved when the head (and, therefore, the brain) of the subject is located in the traditional place where the sun doesn't shine. Since test results on the RIS depend on the kind of thinking resulting from the brain placement, the higher numbers generally reflect the most idiotic, illogical or asinine reasoning.

Hence, under the RIS, Mr. Bush would rank as one of the highest scorers in domestic policy and Mrs. Palin would lead the pack in foreig affairs. Neither political party nor world leader would consistently score higher or lower on a long-term basis, but all would occasionally have outstandingly high scores to which they could point with pride.

• boguseconomist's diary :: ::

Our Congress, for example, would have some remarkable scorers, particularly with the incoming "conservative" members of the House. The kind of reasoning that criticizes the tax giveaway to the banks under Greenspan, Geithner, Sommers and Bernanke while advocating less government regulation and oversight easily could raise a congressperson's RIS (RI Score) by several points all by itself. Coupling that with a stated desire to cut the budget while extending tax breaks to those who, among others, gleaned the most from the financial crisis, could jack it up further.

Points would be earned for anyone who spends large amounts of time condemning the idea of gays in the military when at the same time, we hear reports that our country is scoring 17th in education worldwide and worse than that in health care. Oh yes, let's not forget to award RIS points to those who rant against giving citizenship to foreigners who complete high school and a couple years of college. C'mon, these people might learn enough about the system to demand better educational opportunities for most citizens, the same system used by the other countries who are currently ahead of us.

Contributing to the high RIS ratings of people like Mitch McConnell and other defense hawks is the plain fact that the more money we pour into the corrupt snakepits of Iraq and Afghanistan, the richer the people get whose interest is keeping the war going as long as possible. This goes double for the high-minded people in our thriving defense industry who pay for countless ads telling us how much good they're doing for the country, but very little about how much their cost overruns, waste and lobbying money is costing us.

Speaking of RIS points, if someone could explain why giving billions of dollars to an Israeli government that has consistenly stuck its thumb in our eye and ignored more U.N. resolutions than Iraq did helps the United States, a good explanation would be worth a sizeable reduction.

Finally, if we adopted the RIS, the results could be published in the candidates' campaign literature, which would be informative, since the IQs of candidates is seldom, if ever, given out. If we're thought not to care about how smart a potential congressperson or president is, perhaps we might benefit from finding out how much of a horse's ass they might be.

The RIS examination would be composed and scored by a committee comprised of defrocked members of the Chamber of Commerce.

Sock it to Whom?

When legislators make noise about increasing costs to corporations, many liberals rejoice. Most of us know how the tax burden has shifted from business to worker since Ronald Reagan decided the government should get off backs in general, but mostly backs belonging to big business. Since the Democrats gained power, more of them have picked up on the fact that the American people are finally realizing that the Free Market is not equally free to all players. Therefore, it makes good political sense to rail against the bloated corporate bureaucracy even as they fend off the right-wing Birthers and Other Nuts who hate the bloated government bureaucracy.

The big secret is they know most of the charges aren't paid by companies; lots of them are paid by us. A good example might be AT&T, giant purveyor of communications. I happen to subscribe to AT&T as my cell phone carrier and I recently went on its web site to research my bill. After I finished, I noticed a severe pain in the area where I was sitting.

Let's take fees. I don't mean taxes, which I'm glad to pay to keep the government running; I mean fees to make AT&T richer. Here are a couple:

1. Federal Regulatory Fee. Don't let the name fool you. Far from a tax on the company, this fee is "designed to recover the annual fee imposed on AT&T by the Federal Communications Commission." In other words, the customer picks up AT&T's costs in addition to the monthly payment for the phone. But that's not all.

2.Telecommunications Relay Service (TRS). This is charged to recover the contributions AT&T is required to make into the Federal TRS fund. Once more, the ratepayers to the rescue!

3. How about the costs of keeping your number when you change companies? AT&T uses this as a bragging point - as does every other carrier. Well, the recovery of these costs will be coughed up by the customer, according to AT&T.

4.Of course, we shouldn't forget the Enhanced 911 and Wireless Tower Maintenance Costs. Customers are billed for these to reimburse AT&T for "enhanced technology to help emergency response agencies better determine the location of the customer calling 9-1-1" as well as helping the company recover costs associated with regulations relating to wire less towers, "including regulations imposed by the National Environmental Protection Act, Clean Water Act, endangered Species Act, etc. etc." Oh yes, we're also asked to help the company out with "inspections of marked and lighted cell towers."

There are lots more. We pay for notice requirements, network outage reporting, state-mandated annual reports, and the intra-island fee "imposed on AT&T by the Puerto Rico Telecommunication Regulatory Board." We also get to assist with payments to settle claims made by certain municipalities in Missouri.

However, the winner is the State Universal Service Fund Fee. It seems some states have asked the telecommunications industry to "ensure affordable telecommunications service for all consumers in the state, especially residents in high-cost rural areas and low-income customers." Sounds good, right? Well, nothing gets by the industry, folks. Although "all telecommunications providers are required to pay into these funds... their contributions may be recovered from customers."

Oh yes, there are also surcharges to reimburse the company for "specific government taxes or fees imposed on the company's gross receipts, sales and/or other property." These include 911 access, DEAF charges and other "favors" we read about that are bestowed on us by the benevolent folks at AT&T. We also pay for discounts given to schools and libraries out of the goodness of AT&T's corporate heart.

So when some congressperson goes into his or her spiel about "getting the big companies to pay their share," try to find out where he or she was when the loopholes got through allowing big companies like AT&T to pass on their costs to the poor suckers who are having trouble making ends meet and not, like AT&T, posting a 2008 profit of almost three and half billion dollars.

Conserberal

Are you a liberal or a conservative? If you have any brains at all, your answer should be "Yes."

I've been working for some time to get to the bottom of this question and I've had nothing but trouble. First off, while people are glad to tell me that they're one or the other, not a single person has been willing or able to tell me what it means. One woman I spoke with was convinced she was a conservative because she didn't believe in abortion. She did, however, favor government-run health care and higher taxes on the wealthy. Two hours later, a man who claimed to be a liberal proclaimed the merits of a welfare state, but defended the death penalty.

Some Republicans say that George Bush abandoned conservative principles by running up immense deficits. Democrats retort that Ronald Reagan tripled the national debt in eight years and therefore shouldn't be thought to be a conservative, either.

So what's a conservative? What's a liberal?

• boguseconomist's diary :: ::

Traditionally, conservatives have been advocates of limited government, balanced budgets with low taxes and more individual responsibility. Liberals have backed firmer business regulation, government assistance for the poor, universal health care and higher taxes on the well-off. Voters switched back and forth from one view to another.

I was born during the Hoover Administration (conservative) and raised during the Roosevelt Administration (liberal).

The definitions of both terms changed a lot after World War II. With the rise of huge corporations, conservatives gravitated to the side of the owners while liberals found themselves cheering the unions. At the same time, the racial divide in the United States caused people on the left to identify with the civil rights struggle while those on the right defended the status quo. It was around this time that people should have started to ask, "What do you call somebody who doesn't want black people to sit next to him in the movie house, but who belongs to a union?" Is that person a liberal or a conservative?

The more factors that got stirred into the American scene, the more confused the labeling got. Roe v. Wade was the biggest complicating factor and Watergate didn't help. As there became more reasons to say you were one or the other, more people began to use "liberal" and "conservative" to sell products, ideas and candidates. Pollsters jumped on the bandwagon. If you were Republican, you were conservative; if you were Democratic, you were liberal, etc.

Pretty soon, sub-labels appeared. Maybe you were a liberal Republican or a conservative Democrat. Some even started to use "Republicrat," although I never heard anyone say "Demoplican." One thing nobody did, however, was explain what any of these terms meant. That's why the Bogus Economist has coined the word "conserberal."

A conserberal believes that all people deserve to be left alone if what they're doing doesn't hurt anybody else. In the case of pregnancy, the operating word is "anybody." Whether life begins at conception or at the beginning of the third trimester or at birth is a medical question that should be decided by medical people. Anything else is a matter of religion. Religion should not make laws.

Conserberals think all people who enjoy living in the United States deserve to support it with an equal percentage of what they have to lose, i.e. their net worth. No deductions.

Businesses should be free to do anything legal as long as consumers are fully informed about what they're buying and the businesses accept responsibility for their products. Conserberals do not believe in "corporate personhood." If a CEO is drawing the pay, that's the person who should be cracking the rocks.

Conserberals feel that nobody should make a profit out of war. When the nation is at risk, everyone has the duty to defend it. This means universal military service. They also feel the National Rifle Association should stick to rifles.

If somebody is accused of committing a crime, the amount of money he/she has should have nothing to do with the quality of justice he/she receives. Conserberals also believe in public financing of elections. America should not be for sale.

There's a lot more, but you get the idea. We have enough labels that don't mean anything. That's why they deserve definition. It might take a lot more time to really find out what somebody believes, but then we'd be able to discuss things intelligently. And isn't that really another name for democracy?

Sandwich Board

Once upon a time - let's say during the last depression - people, mostly men, who were down on their luck and badly in need of food money, could make a couple of bucks by parading up and down some populated street while wearing a sandwich board. This device generally consisted of two large pieces of cardboard, attached with rope or string, and worn on the shoulders, making a sandwich of the person carrying it.

In the 30's, sandwich boards usually advertised eating establishments ("Eat at Joe's") or services ("Get Your Pants Pressed at Izzy's"). Sometimes, but not often, they directed the viewer to some upper class establishment, but in the main, these boards were aimed at the lower-income consumer and were carried by the still lower-income consumer.

In other words, people were paid to advertise a product. Izzy or Joe thought it worth while to use people as billboards in order to attract customers - a clever idea. But this was strictly amateur thinking compared to what the corporate Izzys and Joes of the world came up with for today's Tom, Dick or Harry.
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Once upon a time - let's say during the last depression - people, mostly men, who were down on their luck and badly in need of food money, could make a couple of bucks by parading up and down some populated street while wearing a sandwich board. This device generally consisted of two large pieces of cardboard, attached with rope or string, and worn on the shoulders, making a sandwich of the person carrying it. In the 30's, sandwich boards usually advertised eating establishments ("Eat at Joe's") or services ("Get Your Pants Pressed at Izzy's"). Sometimes, but not often, they directed the viewer to some upper class establishment, but in the main, these boards were aimed at the lower-income consumer and were carried by the still lower-income consumer. In other words, people were paid to advertise a product. Izzy or Joe thought it worth while to use people as billboards in order to attract customers - a clever idea. But this was strictly amateur thinking compared to what the corporate Izzys and Joes of the world came up with for today's Tom, Dick or Harry.

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* boguseconomist's diary :: ::
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I use males as examples because, at first, it was mostly males who bought into the idea of using themselves as boosters for, say, baseball or football teams. "Go, Dodgers!" on a baseball cap signified support and helped the wearer identify with the team. As these became more popular, the corporate world sat up and took notice. "Why," the CEOs said in the boardroom, "can't we get people to lay out good money to advertise our product? Our shoes are certainly as important as some bunch of overpaid ball-bobblers." And it was done. Pretty soon, a nice sweatshirt with a swoosh logo could set you back twenty smackers and let hundreds of people see your preference in sneakers, whether you wore Nike or not.

It didn't take the ladies long to follow. Pretty soon, blouses, sweatshirts, caps, socks, belts and almost anything else you could think of carried some corporate logo. Otherwise dignified women could be seen wearing warm-up suits proclaiming loyalty to Bum. Their escort might be advertising Big Dogs. Millions of dollars, instead of going out to the needy in exchange for their advertising services, were coming in to the seedy in their quest for more profit opportunities.

Try to imagine the guy with the sandwich board in 1933 being told that one day, instead of being paid to carry advertising around town, he'd be lining up to pay a company for the privilege of doing the same thing. You might get hit with the sandwich board.

I suggest a revolutionary capitalist principle: pay people for doing a job. If I'm going to wear a shirt promoting a product, I should be able to charge the manufacturer. This is already done in the case of cars. If I plaster a real estate sign on my car, that's advertising and it's either a business expense if it's my company or a source of income if I just let the company use my side panel. If it's good enough for the VW, why not the guy who drives it?

Parenthetically, why are we such suckers to let companies get away with this kind of crap? Maybe because the guys who run them are a lot smarter than we are. Maybe we should adopt their kind of thinking. If they won't pay me to flog their stuff, then to hell with them. I'll buy a T-shirt and a magic marker and do my own.

I won't tell you what it will say.

Christianity 101

I welcome anyone from the Right who will explain to me the difference between someone who will blow up a bunch of people in a mosque and a person who will go into a church and murder someone in cold blood because that person has offended his values.

I suggest that the Christian Taliban is as much - if not more - of a danger to the United States than Al Qaeda because the former thinks it is acting in the best interests of America while the latter is deliberately trying to destroy it.

We've already seen what happens when leaders of the country show a disregard for the Constitution. Now we see what happens when a blind religious belief leads to murder.

"Congress shall make NO law respecting the establishment of religion." What part of this is so hard for the holy nut-cases on the Right to understand?

Or does this qualify me for the Christian firing squad, too?

History is filled with reasons for executing people. The Catholic church in the middle ages explained that killing people was far better than letting them live in a sinful state and possibly corrupt other innocent souls. Hitler believed in racial purity and used the execution of millions of Jews to make the world cleaner and better. Other deluded nincompoops have blown away innocent people to make a political point or remind others of a particular religion's superiority.

We Americans have a little problem when it comes to these reasons. First, we like to consider the people killed instead of the killer(s). For instance, there has been very little written about the reasons for 9/11 while forests have been chopped down in describing every detail about the victims, the victim's families and the hometowns, neighbors and even pets of those who were murdered. It's understandable that we would mourn the loss of innocent lives, but had we truly examined the motives of those who hijacked the planes that fateful September day, we might have gotten a better picture of the whole Al Qaeda philosophy and thus have been spared what will go down as the most idiotic decisions in our history, to say nothing of the loss of more than four thousand American lives and many times more innocent Iranians and Afghans.

We should remember this as we remember Dr. Tiller. We should leave no stone unturned in investigating the hate mongering that caused an unbalanced man to enter a place of worship and take a human life. We should ask whether the Founders intended that anyone who was not certifiable could buy an automatic weapon and wipe out a doctor as others have wiped out high school students, college students and anyopne else within range.

It's time to extend the idea of "pro-life" beyond the abortion issue and ask whether our position on haters and gunners may be too wussy for our survival.

First Things First

I suppose it's a reasonable to ask why I would write a diary about politics after spending a few hours researching cell phones and calling plans. The reason is that I have found notable omissions in discussions of each of these indispensible parts of our national identity.

In the case of cell phones, I found at least a dozen blog entries that discussed at great length the ringtones, camera, bluetooth capability and web browser of a phone without once mentioning the words "call quality." In other words, there were people who write pages about a telephone without evaluating its main purpose - to make telephone calls.

Now I understand why reading headlines, exchanging photos, texting and checking one's stocks can be extremely important. But when these worthy goals become more important than speaking with another person, there might be a legitimate query that goes like this: "Why are calling it a cell PHONE?"

Like cell phones, we have the same attitude toward people running for positions ranging from dog catcher to President. In the case of the latter, we spend hundreds of pages and gallons of ink dissecting a candidate's housing, his or her favorite hobbies, clothing, decorating ideas, favorite music, etc. without once mentioning the matter of intelligence.

Now I can see that Barack Obama's choice of a First Dog might be worth a paragraph or two, but I feel a far more important factor is the intellectual power he would bring into a White House that hasn't had a whole lot of it lately. This goes for the folks running for Congress, some of whom seem to be less than the sharpest chisel in the tool box. I've read a number of articles that claim Americans don't like smart people, but prefer the kind of candidate "you can go out and have a beer with." Or shoot a moose with.

If this is true, we'd better get over it. The world we're looking at doesn't put a high value on dummies, except as people to exploit. If the United States is to prevail, it has to have montal horsepower not only at the highest level, but all along the line. To help achieve this, I present the Bogus Economist plan, which begins with a requirement that every candidate for office pass a test of basic knowledge given to kids before high school graduation.

If someone, for instance, can't locate Afghanistan on a blank map, I would question his or her ability to serve in the State Department. People who don't know anything about the metric system might be unfit for any job dealing with international trade. Writers who don't know the difference between "lose" and "loose" or "its" and "it's" shouldn't be thrust forward as representatives of a country who claims to value education.

If you don't think there is a problem, try reading a random sample of blog entries or the results of high school tests or presidential speeches.
As Robert Preston says in The Music Man, "We've got troubles, my friend, troubles right here in River City." When high schoolers don't know how many states there are in our country, how many feet in a mile, what the Electoral College is or who becomes president when both the President and the Vice-president die, we've got troubles. When (or if) people running our government - or wanting to - show this kind of non-thinking, we've got a potential disaster.

Giving a test of basic skills might weed out some legislative morons before they can do us real damage. This would give us time to go after the ethical morons, of whom we're hearing a lot of late. This, in turn, would allow us to focus on the executive morons. Above all, publicizing the results of these tests might raise our awareness of how important it is to have leaders who know how to think, to reason and - well - to lead.

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In politics, we spend hundreds of pages and gallons of ink dissecting a candidate's housing, his or her favorite hobbies, clothing, decorating ideas, favorite music, etc. without once mentioning the matter of intelligence.

Now I can see that Barack Obama's choice of a First Dog might be worth a paragraph or two, but I feel a far more important factor is the intellectual power he would bring into a White House that hasn't had a whole lot of it lately. This goes for the folks running for Congress, some of whom seem to be less than the sharpest chisel in the tool box. I've read a number of articles that claim Americans don't like smart people, but prefer the kind of candidate "you can go out and have a beer with." Or shoot a moose with.

If this is true, we'd better get over it. The world we're looking at doesn't put a high value on dummies, except as people to exploit. If the United States is to prevail, it has to have montal horsepower not only at the highest level, but all along the line. To help achieve this, I present the Bogus Economist plan, which begins with a requirement that every candidate for office pass a test of basic knowledge given to kids before high school graduation.

If someone, for instance, can't locate Afghanistan on a blank map, I would question his or her ability to serve in the State Department. People who don't know anything about the metric system might be unfit for any job dealing with international trade. Writers who don't know the difference between "lose" and "loose" or "its" and "it's" shouldn't be thrust forward as representatives of a country who claims to value education.

If you don't think there is a problem, try reading a random sample of blog entries or the results of high school tests or presidential speeches.
As Robert Preston says in The Music Man, "We've got troubles, my friend, troubles right here in River City." When high schoolers don't know how many states there are in our country, how many feet in a mile, what the Electoral College is or who becomes president when both the President and the Vice-president die, we've got troubles. When (or if) people running our government - or wanting to - show this kind of non-thinking, we've got a potential disaster.

Giving a test of basic skills might weed out some legislative morons before they can do us real damage. This would give us time to go after the ethical morons, of whom we're hearing a lot of late. This, in turn, would allow us to focus on the executive morons. Above all, publicizing the results of these tests might raise our awareness of how important it is to have leaders who know how to think, to reason and - well - to lead.

Another nail in the coffin

THE BOGUS ECONOMIST

The Bush definition of compassionate capitalist conservatism took another hit yesterday with two revelations. Firstly, it seems the White House, under advice of counsel (Attorney General Michael Mukasy) has invoked executive privilege when it comes to telling Congress how, when or why it allegedly exerted influence on the Environmental Protection Agency to refuse California's request to impose tougher emission standards than the current federal ones. Then it turns out that the same White House was informed as early as 2005 that there was an impending collapse in the home financing sector and, "under intense lobbying by the banking industry," refused to crack down on what was shown to be disastrous lending practices. Leading the lobbying effort were such luminaries as Washington Mutual, Lehman Brothers and Citibank, all either bankrupt or else face down in the public trough, seeking more taxpayer money.

I've been ranting about the changes in what we have come to call capitalism since I started a column in 2002. I pointed out that capitalism involves risk and responsibility, two items that have been conspicuously absent from the Bush policy manual since he took office. All the stuff I said has been said better by real rather than bogus economists. The point of this column is not to continue to flail at the dying horse, but to ask a trenchant question:

What does anyone propose to replace the tired, inefficient, greedy and morally bankrupt system we've been steadily undermining since at least 1941? That was the year, you'll recall, when entrepreneurs continued to sell scrap metal to Japan after Pearl Harbor until such sales were forbidden by law. The law of The Buck has ruled ever since. If something is not specifically controlled by laws, there will always be those who put profit ahead of country, religion, human life or anything else. They do it for a variety of reasons- greed, fear, need and survival. As long as a CEO has a Board of Directors answerable to shareholders and who is making a generous income so long as profits roll in, patriotism, loyalty or even humanity take back seats.

Everyone agrees that the communism of the former Soviet Union was a dismal failure, mostly because it was coupled with a brutal political system. Dictatorships can't afford free and open markets. Ironically, a free and open political system, such as the one we used to have here, is an invitation to a pretty nasty political system, such as the Cheney version of democracy.

Since both communism and capitalism have been susceptible to sucker punches from either market forces or political abuse, we plainly need another approach. Shall it be a form of socialism with private entrepreneurship encouraged for small business, but strict government regulation imposed on potential monopolies? Shall it permit private companies to operate social security, medicare and our infrastructure because of their alleged efficiency? Should limits be placed on the amount of lobbying that seems to affect what legislators enact - or not enact? What kind of balance should there be between what states want to do and what the federal government mandates - from medical marijuana to smog standards?

Stay tuned.

Turkey Day - for Turkeys

THE BOGUS ECONOMIST
Eat Up

Thanksgiving Day. A day to go to your nearby place of worship - if that was your thing - or just think of all the blessings this country provides, like democracy, freedom or any of the others. If you were so inclined, you could reflect on the symbolism of people of different beliefs sitting down together in peace, sharing a meal and perhaps some rudimentary exchange of ideas. That was then.

Now we have Turkey Day, a holiday from work wherein you can stuff yourself to the point of nausea and then go out and start your Christmas shopping, despite the fact the ads have been going for over a month. Thanksgiving Day is all about reflection; Turkey Day is all about consumption. At the risk of destroying the reputation of the Bogus Economist as a jolly, humorous old fart, replacing it with the image of a dour, sour and humorless old fart, I want to point out this transformation is a metaphor for the whole transformation of the American economy from a wonderland of opportunity to the morass of greed in which we're currently wallowing.

Belatedly. even magazines like Time and Newsweek, to say nothing of Harpers and The Economist, are pointing out the failings of the supply-side laissez-faire philosophy of the Friedman-Reagan-Greenspan school while also noting the fundamental errors of trusting the "invisible hand of the market" to put America's welfare ahead of the stockholders' insatiable thirst for more profit or the incentive for CEOs to do almost anything to provide it. The cost of all this is becoming more obvious by the day. Sadly but predictably, the only answer we're getting from the gurus of the invisible hand is "Go shopping," the same thing we heard from George W. Bush after 9/11. Another way of expressing this sentiment is Turkey Day.

Instead of advising Americans to really get down to the ways we can curtail our endless appetites and start putting a little away, if not for the rainy day that's already here then for the hurricane that may be coming, we're hearing that without spending everything we have and then some, our business structure may well collapse.
I haven't read a lot about questioning the kind of structure that's built on such a phony, shallow and transparent foundation.

Turkey Day is a perversion of our history, a travesty of our culture and a creature of Madison Avenue advertisers in the same way the "American Dream" is a twisting of our ideals into a salt-water taffy vision of big houses, overly complicated electronics and cars too big for the carports. We've lost the capacity to distinguish between what we need and what we want and, worse, between what we want and what we're told to want.

I advocate celebrating this Thanksgiving Day by thinking of what kind of country we want Barack Obama to lead. This might mean junking a lot of what we've been led to believe America is all about in terms of consumables, but also recapturing what our grandparents were taught were the unique qualities of The Lady With the Lamp standing proudly in New York harbor.

Happy Thanksgiving Day.


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Report from Europe

THE BOGUS ECONOMIST
Letter from Europe
Nov. 11, 2008

Whatever you've read about Europe's reaction to Obama's election, it's probably right. Everyone we've met in Burgundy, Paris, Rome, Genoa, Nice and Cremona have expressed delight at Obama's election and even gone so far as to congratulate my wife and me on having such a great new president!!

Although I accepted the congratultions modestly, I couldn't help feel a lot of the sentiment we received was sheer relief at the prospect of someone who wasn't George W. Bush. Some of our after-congratulations conversation boiled down to "How could you Americans have elected him a second time?" Damned if I knew.

In my typical Bogus Economist fashion, I started to wonder about that question and came up with something pretty simple: If the economy is doing OK and if people aren't being asked to give up much, the voters are inclined to stick with whatever they have, no matter how incompetent. In 2004, thanks in large part to borrowed money, taxpayers were doing fairly well and it took entirely too much effort to investigate where the money was coming from and risk finding the solution to the country's problems involved cuttin back on spending, boosting savings and driving things that didn't need to go from 0-60 in under eight seconds.

At a friend's house in Rome, I happened on a copy of Business Week from 2006. I think it ought to be prescribed reading in every economics class to read and review analysis from two to four year-old business journals. This particular one had an article discussing the weak housing market (compared to a year before) and the main hope for the future which involved continued consumer spending and, consequently, debt. I did not read a word in any of four magazines that day about that other "S" word - savings.

When it comes to America's welfare, almost every expert in consumer finance agrees that without some kind of personal savings account, consumers will be caught with their pants down in the event of any kind of downturn. Guess what? They didn't and they were.

Reluctantly, while reading the old Business Weeks, I came to the conclusion that choosing between what's good for the United States and what's good for big, multinational companies, there isn't even a contest. The idea expressed by Robert McNamara - what's good for General Motors is good for the United States - has been expanded to every major corporation and it's just plain wrong. I don't see any corporate logo anywhere on the American flag, nor do I read much about Exxon or Goldman Sachs in the Constitution.

With a new administration, I suggest the way to regain our position in the world is to present the image of a country, not a pitchman. To act as if the United States was nothing more than the sum of its corporate parts is an insult to the Flag, our veterans, our way of life and, most obviously, our leaders. Maybe one of the reasons our image has gone down the tubes so much in the last four years is that George W. Bush has acted more often as a guy who's looking for buyers than a guy who's looking for backers. We do not need another salesman for corporate America; we need a salesman for the right to call our president a dope whenever we feel like it.

Just as we bought the idea that communism is the opposite of democracy (instead of capitalism), we've been buying the idea that America is a nation founded on the dollar sign. Maybe our next president will remember that, as nations built on the sword will die by the sword, so will a nation built on the buck die by the buck.

That's what I hope to keep hearing from Europe - and, when I get home, from America.

The Bogus Economist (c) 2008

Silver lining?

THE BOGUS ECONOMIST Oct. 14, 2008

So far, I've read six (count them) six articles by very smart people telling us why the current economic septic tank we're seeing is really a blessing in disguise. That is, we're being taught a lesson about saving money instead of spending it, exactly the opposite advice we got from George W. Bush who, you'll recall, told us after 9/11 not to save money but to "go shopping."

Far be it for a Bogus Economist to contradict so sage a man as our President, but I maintain there's another and more basic lesson to be learned from our local, national and global greed-mongers and the governments who are currently pumping trillions of dollars, euros, yen and whatevers to save the banks and restore borrowing to the level it should be. Briefly, we should all take out our notebooks and write in capital letters: "PEOPLE ARE NOT IMPORTANT. BANKS ARE IMPORTANT."

Now I am not insulting or condemning banks, mortgage companies, hedge funds or investment firms. All I'm pointing out is that the bailout of large financial companies contrasts sharply with the actions of the U.S. Congress tightening bankruptcy rules for individuals who found themselves unable to meet their payments. It was pointed out that some of these individuals took advantage of bankruptcy laws to get out of paying their bills - horrors!!! The feeling was to make going broke more painful and therefore, lowering the frequency of these sleazy people ducking their responsibilities.

Now let's look at Bear Stearns, Freddie Mac, Ginnie Mae and Morgan Stanley, not to mention the unfortunate Lehman Brothers. Besides setting a record for inconsistency in the enforcement of the law, Treasury Secretary Paulson and what's left of the executive branch did everything except handstands to get their hands on almost a trillion bucks with which Mr., Paulson could do whatever he wanted without any review or limitations. Fortunately some of the members of Congress slipped out of their hypnotic state and crafted a more sensible plan whereby the taxpayers at least got something out of it, but the principle stood out loud and clear: If you're big enough and rich enough, you can't be allowed to go under. The only ones that go under the bus are those small enough not to tip the thing over.

Again, the argument about whether the world economy could survive without the huge investment banks will go on. I'm not as concerned about the economic question as I am about the human one: How important are people?

Under the present system, it seems Joe and Mary Sixpack (or the Blow family) only have worth for what they can spend and therefore keep the wheels of commerce turning at as fast a speed as possible. We might publicly urge people to go to church, go to school or go to the library, but where we really want them to go is where President Bush told us - shopping.

As the courts, with the enthusiastic backing of major businesses, more and more lean toward the concept of treating corporations as people, it has seemed to many that what were stressed involved corporations' rights, but not their responsibilities. In other words, if Mr. Sixpack (or Blow) has to meet certain standards, then make Bear Stearns meet the same standards. If Bear Stearns is too big to fail, then repossess it, much as the FHA can repossess a house.

As we wander through the maze of "The Market," let's remember its invisible hand is more than capable of giving us the finger. The Founding Fathers didn't mention corporations in the Constitution for a reason. People live, breathe and die. It is for them America was built.

The Bogus Economist (c) 2008

Getting Real

THE BOGUS ECONOMIST
Sept.7, 2008

It's been a while since I last posted. Frankly, I've been a little overwhelmed at the political hurricanes that have been rocking our ship of state. First, there was the battle between the first African-American and the first woman to seek the presidential nomination of one major party followed by the prospect of the oldest person and the least experienced running on the other.

Naturally, the omniverous media has seized on every minor flaw of all candidates, their wives, their kids and their relatives in order to titillate the jaded public, but it seems we have a couple of questions that are a lot more important to our future:

1. Is a person with Mrs. Palin's limited knowledge of economics and world affairs the person whose finger we want on the nuclear button?

2. Is this the time for a president who selects such a person?

3. Are we ready for the repeal of Roe V. Wade? Better, do we want any religious doctrine to determine our direction as a nation?

4. In a fervent plea for "change," have we forgotten why "change" is necessary?

For the last six years, I've written about the gradual increase in corporate control of our country and the incredible damage it's done to our prestige, our moral authority and the common people. Every day, we read about new malfeasance by some big Wall Street broker or another incident of criminal activity resulting from excessive activity by a congressional lobbyist.
Even Steven Pearlstein, economic writer for the Washington Post, has concluded the system is rife with rot and needs drastic surgery. The problem is that every time any reform begins, the monied interests shoot it down. Our job is to decide whether Obama/Biden or McCain/Palin can better guide us in regaining the high position we once held.

I belive it's time to forget the trivia, the attack ads and the other garbage spewed from the professional cesspool-mongers of the right as well as the left. This is our future we're talking about.

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Blazing Saddle(back)

THE BOGUS ECONOMIST
August 18,2008

Now that our two major presidential candidates have dutifully bowed before the altar of Orange County's Saddleback Baptist Church in an effort to win the votes of Christian evangelicals, perhaps we can step back and ask a couple of pertinent questions about our political system. Pastor Rick Warren, by now even more of a household word than previously, hosted Barack Obama and John McCain in the first face-to-face comparison of views on abortion, the economy and lots of other matters important to Evengelicals, including those who supposedly agree that Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion.

There were lots more minutes taken up with the economy and abortion than with the war or, for that matter, God. This is understandable, since Christianity prohibits killing in no uncertain terms and mentions something about rich men and camels both having trouble getting through eyes of needles and/or into heaven. These topics are pertinent since Pastor Warren is under pressure to disavow one of his more well-off congregants, Rupert Murdoch, for his alleged ownership of a number of European porn channels (no comments) and everyone knows starting wars on doubtful grounds isn't as immoral as adultery. That said, we have to give the gold (and silver) medal to Mr. McCain for his ringing statement that life begins "at conception."

If I were a lawyer listening to the Saddleback Warren Report, I'd take my wife out to dinner and buy a new outfit for each of my kids. Nothing since Affirmative Action brought the promise of so much legal action as McCain's position on pro-life. Consider a couple of possible cases:

1. Joanne "Bubbles" Murphy and her new husband, Harold, celebrate their honeymoon by checking into the Hotel Hotshot. They reserve the Honeymoon Suite and order the finest dinner and breakfast package the hotel offers. The next morning, after a highly passionate night, they come down for their honeymoon champagne breakfast, which was served by George after being prepared by Charles. Unbeknownst to "Bubbles," she is pregnant.
Anyone who has hefted a bottle of champagne (or beer) knows what's written on the label. Drinking alcohol for pregnant women carries the risk of birth defects. Inside "Bubbles" is a human being who, because of the champagne, is at risk of being born deformed. Could Joanne be arrested for child abuse? How about endangerment? Was George an accomplice? How about Charles? Perhaps Harold could be taken in, too, for escorting her into the bar. Multiply something like this by millions. What a bonanza for the legal profession!!

2. A couple of months after the honeymoon, a group of women at Joanne's workplace decide to throw a baby shower. Ten of them get together with the mother-to-be for a couple of hours of festivity, hors d'oeuvres and gossip. Some of them are smokers and the weather is lousy, do they don't go out on the porch.
You know what's written on the pack. Cancer, emphysema and lots of other stuff. Oh, yes, there's something there about pregnant women. How many of the ladies should go to the hoosegow?


See what I mean? Lawyers of the world, unite! There's a gold mine here. If life begins at conception, there's no way of knowing how many people should be charged when a lady gets on the bus. Are all children free or only those who have been born? Where's the cut-off age? Some places charge for all children. Does a person have an obligation to declare her pregnancy before going through the turnstile?

I know some of this sounds pretty silly, but have you checked out some of the laws we have on the books? In Cedar City, Utah, it's against the law to drink beer if your shoelace is untied. You need a hunting license in Cleveland to catch mice. You can't tie a giraffe to a streetlight or telegraph pole in Atlanta. And you think people won't go crazy if Uncle John's ideas catch on?

Frankly, I'm a little tired of all the dancing about what people believe in God-wise. That's their own business. If evangelicals want to invite McCain or Obama to answer questions, let them have the candidates make a CD and distribute it at Sunday services. It would be a hell of a lot cheaper.

I'm more interested in what these guys are going to do about the skyrocketing cost of food, the colossal rip-offs by tax cheats and the insane foreign policies that are passing for leadership. I have a great idea. How about rendering unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's?

God knows that would be a relief.

Hope Doesn't Spring Eternal

THE BOGUS ECONOMIST August 13, 2008


I've had it.

Eery four years, I arouse myself and try to imagine we're going to have an intelligent debate about the leadership of the free world and every four years I get shot down. This time, I was actually beginning to believe Barack Obama would be different - really different - and at last we would have someone with enough guts to tell us that not only is the holiday over, but we're going to have re-thinking who we are. Mr. O is still holding back. I'm seeing expediency sliding into the campaign driver's seat and bold initiatives moving to the back of the bus.

Sure, telling the truth might not be the way to get elected, but we've seen what happens when a candidate chooses the opposite. The last eight years should have taught us a lot.

Look, everybody, we're not the epitome of civilization, nor are we the only hope of the world. Our way is not the only way, nor is it even the best way for some people. We're citizens of a country that used to be based on something besides the almighty power of "business," and that's what made us great. Under the wreckage of 9/11, some of us discovered gold. Under perhaps the most benighted leadership we've ever had, we seem to have forgotten almost every moral and ethical principle we owned and abandoned the lot to the likes of Halliburton and Blackwater. The number of people who have suffered due to the weakening of governmental regulation are astronomical, including the folks who've lost their houses because of the tentacles of the banking "business," the people who have been screwed by the phamaceutical "business" and the possible extinction of human life through the manipulation of the energy "business."

Now we find out by courtesy of the General Accounting Office (GAO) that two-thirds of large corporations with sales revenues of more than two trillion dollars didn't pay income taxes every year and some didn't pay them at all. Here's what the GAO said:

"In 2005, after collectively making $2.5 trillion in sales, corporations gave a variety of reasons on their tax returns to account for the absence of taxable revenue. The most frequently listed included the cost of producing their goods, salary expenses and interest payments on their debt, the report said. The GAO did not analyze whether the firms had profits that should have been taxed."

The report went on that probably none of this was illegal. That burns me up more than the theft. The reason it's legal is that our legislators put "good business" ahead of the welfare of the United States ppopulation.

Reminder: If the corporations don't pay taxes, guess who does? Or is borrowing better?

Mr. Obama is now experiencing what most Republican candidates knew very well: you can talk about being a voice of the people, but it's the big boys who call the shots. Contributions to the Obama campaign, most of which used to come in dribs and drabs from Charlie and Mike, are now coming in large globs from Mr.Jones or Dr. Smith. More and more names have "CEO" after them.

If "the chief business of the United States is business," as president Calvin Coolidge once said, then it seems the sacrifices we're making are really a waste of human life. The people who identify the American Dream in terms of the size of their flat screen have bought into this and shame on them.

Reading about the billions of profits being made out of American lives doesn't do much for the phrase, "Business as usual." Dammit, it's business as usual that got us into the war to begin with. Putting profits ahead of principle runs against everything this nation is supposed to be.

Mr. Obama started off as a candidate who seemed to understand this. Now I'm starting to wonder.
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Celebrate

Aug.1, 2008

THE BOGUS ECONOMIST


January 20, 2009 will be a great day for the United States, not to mention the world.

Not only will George W. Borrow finally leave the White House, but we'll actually get a president who can speak coherent English, listen to ideas that don't emerge solely from (Dead Eye) Dick Cheney and actually consider taxing corporations as if they were people (which the law considers them to be). Good news, indeed. But how will we (and the world) mark the occasion?

One suggestion is a sober day of thanksgiving in which we express our gratitude to God that the country we love has actually survived eight years of avarice, corruption and constitutional destruction. True, we're in a recession, our fifth year of war and seeing increasing inflation and a housing crisis, but at least we're still reasonably sane with the exception of some of our lawmakers and a couple of our Supreme Court justices. This kind of solution would satisfy the religious Left and perhaps be a rallying point for those who were seeking a good reason to return to the Fold. I, being less of a religious mind set, have an alternative.

I propose January 20th, 2009 be set aside for the world's biggest party. The name of the celebration would be the Global Goodbye Bush Bash (GGBB). In it, people from the four corners of the earth would be invited to guzzle beer, kill chickens, dance, sing or otherwise mark in their own unique cultural manner the end of the Bush era. We might see camel races in parts of the Middle East, pasta contests in Italy, wine-drinking sprees in France or bull fights in Spain. All over the world people would have a chance to rejoice in the end of Bushiness and, hopefully, the start of new era of political sanity in the leadershp of the Free World.

It's clear that not everyone is going to be happy with the GGBB. Republicans who don't remember what conservatism used to be may shed a tear or two, CEOs at firms like Halliburton may try to drown their sorrows, dictators who have been propped up by U.S. taxpayers in the name of the War on Terror aren't going to be pleased and Ann Coulter will be absolutely miserable, but that's the way the ball bounces. Some countries may not participate out of genuine confusion. China won't know whether to tell its people to be happy or sad and may settle for just telling them to shut up. Pakistan will really have a problem as will Egypt.
India may not notice since they will be too busy making money and grooming themselves for world leadership, aided by American companies who are making out like bandits thanks to India's low wages.

In America, the Bush Bash should be a real occasion. Since less than 25% of the people like the way their president is running things and even fewer approve of his VIce-president ("So?"), we should see some genuine whing-dings. It's an open question whether Texas, the home of tailgate barbeques, will join in, but there are encouraging signs. It's agreed that Tom DeLay won't participate, nor will Harriet Myers. Karl Rove isn't expected to show up, either.
In other states, we probably won't get much response from Michael ("Heck of a job, Brownie") Brown, Alberto Gonzales may stay at home and Donald Rumsfeld isn't expected to show, even though everyone knows he's the life of the party.

All together, it should be a humongous thing. Tell your friends about it. Write to people overseas, have a Goodbye Bush Bash house party, write letters to editors. Spread the word. Just remember something like this doesn't happen often.

Only when we get sick and tired of second-rate leadership, tired platitudes and lies.

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THE BOGUS ECONOMIST July 19, 2008

BUSHNESS AS USUAL

I've been trying to figure out the Bush/Cheney mindset for the last eight years. To label Cheney as Machiavelli and Bush as Alfred E. Newman seemed to explain it at first, but as we took troops away from a war with something to win (hearts and minds- Afghanistan) and sent them to a war we started because we might have something to lose (oil reserves- Iraq), I began to suspect I was being much too simplistic. I became totally convinced when Mr. Bush began to use the phrase "vital American interests."

Sure, most people understood that the most "vital" thing about the war was black and sticky, but when we killed Saddam's kids and finally hung their dad, a lot of Americans were ready to be convinced we were really after a democratic form of government in Iraq and the oil was going to pay us back for the billions we spent seeing that statue go down. As the war dragged on and our casualties went into the thousands and Iraqi civilians were getting mowed down by the hundred thousands, we got tired of waiting for the guys we were helping to stop shooting at us, even if they really meant to shoot each other.

Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney continued to lead the cheering section for the war, even after the stories of graft, corruption, "collateral damage," Abu Graib and general moral decay began appearing in the papers. Our leaders continued to say that we were sacrificing our troops to bring "democracy" to Iraq. They're still saying it after the democratically-elected president of Iraq said he wants us out.

The only answer I can find for this seemingly endless stupidity and cupidity is that Bush and Cheney are sincerely trying to bring their idea of democracy to Iraq. The problem is they don't have the faintest idea what it is.

The confusion between capitalism and democracy is almost as old as the country itself. The extermination of the Indian tribes, slavery and almost every war we fought could be traced to a desire to make people rich, not free. A by-product of this, of course, was to build a powerhouse of production and a people who believed money was a symbol of success, which, of course, it is. Eventually, money came to be THE symbol of success.

When the Soviet Union emerged as a threat, we didn't use the word "dictatorship" to describe it. The leaders of the USSR were just as much dictators as the German one had been. The word used to describe the Soviet threat wasn't their political system, but their economic one - communism. In other words, we were told not to be as worried about how the Russians were being governed as who owned their factories.

If you should ask a hundred Americans - even today - what the opposite of democracy is, I'd bet ninety-eight of them would reply, "Communism." Wrong. Russia could have a free election tomorrow and the Communist Party would win in a landslide. They'd have a democratic communism.

Bush and Cheney identify our country with the system that made them rich - capitalism. As capitalists, they realize that the more shares of stock you have, the more votes you get. This explains Cheney's response to a statemen that a majority of Americans oppose the war in Iraq. I'm sure you remember his answer: "So?" We see an extension of what Charles Wilson, CEO of General Motors and later Secretary of Defense, said more than fifty years ago - "What's good for General Motors is good for the country." America means business- to some, literally.

The only two explanations I can come up with for the attempted demolition of the Constitution in pursuit of oil, power and private profit (see Halliburton, Blackwater, etc.) is either Bush and Cheney are traitors to our country and should be brought to trial or they really honest-to-God don't understand what this country was intended to represent.

When you're raised in a penthouse, you don't understand the tenement. When you never have understood the concept of equality under the law, you don't strain yourself to enforce it. If the end justifies the means in business, why not make it national policy.

This new understanding doesn't mean I like either Mr. Bush or Mr.Cheney one little bit more than I used to. It just means I understand a little better why I dislike them as much as I do.

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The Big Conspiracy

THE BOGUS ECONOMIST
July 12, 2008
The Big Conspiracy

I've always loved conspiracies. They're always so exciting and fraught with intrigue. The Kennedy Assassination Conspiracy, for instance, can be presented in so many different lights that we can see villains no matter where we look. The CIA is always good. Lyndon Johnson looks a little villainous. Castro, the Mob and the Miami Cubans come in for a share of suspicion and everyone has a great time and goes to bed convinced SOMEBODY HAD IT IN FOR JACK. It's pretty obvious Lee Harvey Owswald did, but the rest is just wheel-spinning, good old American conjecture.

The Iraq War Conspiracy was too simple. Bush was an idiot. Cheney was a power-mad fanatic, Rumsfeld was – Rumsfeld, and the Congress was too frightened of being thought guilty of original thinking to do any investigating on its own. This conspiracy idea barely lasted eight years before settling down to a dull pain in the butt of democracy. Now, frighteningly, the Bogus Economist has envisioned a scenario that, if it actually occurred, could keep us wondering for decades. I want to make it clear that I earnestly hope I'm so full of it my eyes turn brown, but I can't get the thought out of my mind.

When Barack Obama goes to Iraq, it will be an historic occasion to which the whole world will be tuned. For the first time in almost a decade, someone will be going to the Middle East to present something besides bombast and baloney. After the Bush era, millions of people may begin to get the idea that America stands for something besides Big Oil and Getting More. Furthermore, present and future enemies – who are convinced the U.S. is an enemy not only of Islam, but anyone and anything that differs from its own notion of the world as it should be, may be drawn into dialog.

Now look at a couple of troubling factors while Mr. Obama is getting ready to go to the Middle East:
1.Anyone with more intelligence than a doorknob knows there are those in this Administration who are after Iran's oil just as they were after Iraq's.
2.People who are betting on the Republicans to avoid an election disaster are also receiving weekly visitors with the permission of their doctors.. They are forbidden to have sharp objects, but can receive candy and flowers. They also cut out paper dolls.
With these in mind, what single event could turn the situation around, prep the American people for war and assure a Democratic defeat in November? How about this?

As Obama is addressing an Iraqi crowd, as he well might do, some semi-deranged nutcase tries to shoot him. Perhaps a bomb goes off. Panic ensues. The President makes a speech bewailing the attempt and broadly hints that it was Iran, not Iraq, behind the action. The fleet, which has been staging maneuvers in the Gulf, steams into position and begins preparations for military action. Vice-president Cheney gears up his propaganda machine, bringing Karl Rove back from Fox News, and, with the help of Rush Limbaugh, Bill O'Reilly and other non-combatant war buffs, stirs up the American people with a rehash of the Axis of Evil theory. Only people who understand the nature of bad people can save the United States from the Iranian Menace. This is no time for appeasement. This is the time for Republican leadership.

If anyone thinks no one in Washington is capable of something so rotten, think again. Recall the Bush primary campaign of 2000, where McCain, running strongly against Bush, was accused of having fathered an illegitimate black baby and of showing cowardice while in enemy hands. Remember Max Cleland, who lost both legs and an arm in combat, but was defeated for a Senate seat by a Republican who accused him of not showing sufficient patriotism. Who turned Swift Boat into a verb?
The long shadow of Richard Nixon is still present in White House halls. A little trick like this could be a piece of cake.

What happened to Mr. Obama would not be as important to the schemers as what could be done with the resultant rage of the American people. And nobody is capable of manipulating that rage better than the crew that has turned doublespeak into an art where it's bad to pay for things, but fine to borrow; where tax breaks for the wealthy are good for the economy, but better working conditions and better health benefits are inflationary.

This is what I meant when I wrote that I've never wanted more to be wrong. I don't like thinking like this. As someone who loves his country, I've seen what can happen when a bunch of tunnel-visioned would-be despots believe the end justifies the means. I don't think many of the people who have been active in despoiling our democracy are even aware of what they're doing. They probably think it's just part of doing business. It's a kind of Bottom Line.

I'm old enough to remember a group of gangsters who staged a fire in the German Reichstag which they blamed on communists, resulting in the rise of a strong leader who would put things right. I want my country to be better than that. I wish I could forget the stories about Weapons of Mass Destruction and an alliance between Saddam Hussein and Al Queda that got us into the longest war in our history. I wish I could believe again.

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