20. May 2012 by admin.

Barbara Ehrenreich has written an essay in TomDispatch:

http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175543/tomgram:_barbara_ehrenreich,_looting_the_lives_of_the_poor/

Posted in Barbara Ehrenreich | No Comments »

20. May 2012 by admin.

In 1979, when I was finishing high school and starting college, I read Howard Ruff’s How to Prosper During the Coming Bad Years.  I was aware of inflation, was starting to understand what it meant, and I remember a few perilous months in early 1980 when the price of gold shot up, and it seemed at one point that the economy might go off the rails.

Now we face the same problems as back in 1979, only worse.  Howard Ruff has updated How to Prosper.  But we got through the last thirty years in mostly decent shape.  There was no hyperinflationary collapse.

Why is this time different?

More specifically, the bad things that we feared at the end of the 1970s never materialized.  Why should I worry this time?

Two thoughts:

• In 1979, we were still a productive country.  The Chinese were not in the business of manufacturing anything and everything for export.  There were still many businesses that were run in the interest of providing whatever goods or services they purported to provide, rather than making this quarter’s numbers.
• In 1980, Ronald Reagan was elected President.  Much has been written about how he turned the country around and made us prosperous again.  But he didn’t balance the budget, and indeed, first brought us into the era of huge deficits.  Reagan was every bit as inflationary as his predecessors, if not more.  But there’s one difference:
  • Under previous Presidents, inflationary spending went everywhere in the economy, and consumer prices went up along with everything else.  When the price of bread and gasoline go up, people get angry.
  • Under Reagan and subsequent Presidents, inflationary spending got directed into the investment markets.  Consumer prices still went up, but nowhere near as quickly as before.  But the stock market and the real estate market shot up.  When the prices of houses and stocks go up, people are happy, as they think they’re getting richer.

In 1979, we had margin for error.  That margin has been relentlessly squeezed out over the last 30 years.

Yes, it’s different this time.

Posted in Navel-gazing, Things Falling Apart, Money | No Comments »

13. May 2012 by admin.

Many years ago, before I entered the workforce, I understood that Social Security is not a retirement program.  It is a tax, whose proceeds are used to pay retirement and other benefits.  The difference is subtle but important.

In a real retirement plan, the money collected from you and/or your employer is invested over time.  In a defined-benefit plan, there is a commitment to pay you in the future at a specified rate.  In a defined-contribution retirement plan, the money is held in your name and invested.  But in either case, the money is invested in a productive enterprise, so that it will grow, and the amount paid in at the beginning is driven by the amount to be collected at the end.

Under Social Security, the money that you and your employer pay is lent to the rest of the government and spent.  The money that you ultimately receive in benefits is paid by current workers.  The vaunted ‘trust fund’ is an accounting fiction.  And the politicians who vote for new goodies can just as easily vote to take them away.

I didn’t know about defined-benefit and defined-contribution plans in 1979, when I was finishing high school.  But the rest of it, I knew back then.

And it wasn’t a deep dark secret: I read about it in books from the library and bookstores.

The government wants us to believe that Social Security is a pension plan.  They even send out statements every year with the benefits that we might receive, if the politicians don’t change their minds.  But it isn’t so.

Now, I’m roughly halfway through my working life.  With the recent discussions over the Social Security tax, it’s really clear that it’s fake.  (The employee share of Social Security tax was cut by a third a couple of years ago, as a temporary measure.  The cut was continued after raucous debate, as it was the only tax cut that reached the majority of ordinary Americans.  A real pension plan, driven by the need to pay people in the future, would never do that.)

Yet people still believe that Social Security represents a commitment for their retirement.

Now that I’m halfway through my working life, I would have liked to believe that Social Security would be there for me.

But now I’m sure that I will ultimately retire in a coffin.

Posted in Politics, Dysfunctional Government, Money | 3 Comments »

12. May 2012 by admin.

This week, President Obama, our Non-Leader, came off the fence and indicated that he was in favor of marriage between two people of the same gender.

On one level, it seems eminently reasonable.  Civil marriage gives a couple a passel of legal rights with respect to each other: inheritance, joint tax returns, access to medical data, etc.  If two men or two women are in a committed relationship, and want to avail themselves of these rights, they should be able to.

But outside of the legal definition, and the couple themselves, is such a couple really married?

Marriage has existed for eons as a basis for family and children.  It’s true that not every married couple has children, but if you have a man and a woman who presumably like each other’s company sleeping together, you have to at least admit the possibility.

Today, heterosexual marriage is not the ‘basis’ that it used to be: some 40% of the births in the United States are to unmarried women.   Admitting marriage between two men or two women would further erode the status of marriage as a benchmark for families.

And this is what many people worry about: not so much the rights of gay couples, but the impact of redefining ‘marriage’ so that it is no longer exclusively heterosexual.

Unfortunately, railing against it won’t help.  The societal forces that led us to consider gay marriage won’t go away if we pretend they don’t exist.  The Rick Santorum solution–if we legislate the morality of the 1950s, we’ll all be happy and prosperous again–won’t work.

While I acknowledge that gay marriage is an idea whose time has come, I don’t have to like it.

Posted in Popular Discontent, Politics | 9 Comments »

20. April 2012 by admin.

My parents were lifelong Democrats, and I’ve always been a registered Democrat.  While I’ve been bitterly disappointed with the party of late, and considered the alternative, I can’t bring myself to change to the other side.

Yesterday, I received an e-mail from the Democrats, offering me a bumper sticker:

Is the Democratic party totally incapable of identifying one positive characteristic about the party, its platform, or its candidate that people would want to post for the world?

In 2004, Bush’s campaign promise, in a nutshell, was ‘I will keep you safe.’   Kerry’s was, ‘I am not Bush.’  Kerry lost.

The Democrats will have to do better, or else they’re toast.

Posted in Politics, George Bush (43) | 1 Comment »

18. April 2012 by admin.

A New York State legislator has introduced a bill that would enable bus drivers and train crews on the subway and commuter railroads to carry Tasers to deter assaults.

The news report struck a nerve for me: a long time ago, when crime in New York City was at least twice as bad as it is now, I was a subway conductor.  At the time, conductors were required to watch the outside of the train move out of the station for a distance of three car lengths.  Many people cringed at that aspect of the job: you’re hanging out the window, uniformed, a target.

I had the job for a year, traveling under some of the worst neighborhoods in the city, and emerged from the experience pretty much unscathed.  I got spat on a few times, and simply washed it off at the end of the trip.  Someone tried to swipe my hat once; they failed.  And the most painful experience came when someone threw a pad of postcards at me.  Back then, some ads in the subway included pads of postcards for prospective customers to write in for more information.  When someone throws one at you while you’re on a moving train, it stings.

It was fun to do for a year, although I wouldn’t have wanted to spend the rest of my life at it.  Perhaps it was just because I was in my early twenties and felt indestructible, but the job didn’t seem very dangerous as long as you kept your wits about you.

Would I have wanted to be armed?  Absolutely not.   I don’t believe anything good would have come of it.

If transit workers had Tasers, for every bad guy subdued, there’d be at least five frazzled passengers zapped because their bus driver was having a bad day, ten fellow workers Tased in crew room hijinks, and probably a hundred passengers intimidated into silence.

It’s a bad idea.  Unfortunately, it’s been introduced in the New York State Legislature, where bad ideas never die.

Posted in Mass Transit, Occupational Danger, Dysfunctional Government | 4 Comments »

25. March 2012 by admin.

Last week, I was having a chat with a conservative friend.  He was my boss, years ago, and since retired.

“The conservatives say that one of the reasons we’re not doing so well is excessive government regulation,” I said.  ”Supposedly, if we ditch all these rules, we’ll unleash growth and create jobs.”

“Right.”

“But there are vast enterprises, with billions of dollars and tens of thousands of workers, associated with these regulations.  Not just the government bureaucrats, but private-sector consultants and others, all associated with the maintenance of and compliance with these regulations.  What happens to them?”

“That’s not my concern.  They’ll just have to find work for themselves in the new environment.  Did you expect the government to help them?”

No, I really didn’t expect the government to help them.  In fact, however onerous and pointless they may seem, most government regulations have a political constituency behind them, which will make them hard to get rid of.

But as much as I’d like to believe otherwise, it seems more likely that cutting government regulations will destroy more jobs than it creates.

Oh, bother.

Posted in Politics, Dysfunctional Government, Things Falling Apart | 1 Comment »

19. March 2012 by admin.

When Barack Obama was running for President, he had the entirely reasonable idea of letting the Bush tax cuts expire for those making over $200k/year.  In December 2010, he caved and signed on to an extension of the tax cuts for two more years, even though the government was (and still is) running huge deficits.

What happened?

Allow me a somewhat fanciful explanation:

Sometime after he was elected but before he was inaugurated, President-elect Obama was briefed on the realities of our world and the Presidency.  He was told the truth about terrorists and UFOs, the proper way to order an ICBM launch, and the location of the secret White House Coke machine.

I’ll speculate further that he was also given a briefing rather like the ‘primal forces of nature’ speech from the movie Network about how the US was doomed, and how he couldn’t raise taxes on the rich, or tweak entitlements, or do any of the practical things that one might think of to actually address the problems we face.  He was also informed in grisly detail of the consequences for proposing such heresies, or telling the American public the truth about what we are facing.

And so Barack Obama, apostle of Hope and Change, became yet another politician.

But we didn’t get that briefing.  We’re outside the corridors of power, watching our country crumble around us, wondering, if not about our next meal, where our meals will come from two years from now.

If we set aside, for a moment, our notions of what is politically correct or feasible, how could we restore productivity and prosperity?  Or is it really a lost cause?

Posted in Politics, Dysfunctional Government, Money, Barack Obama | 1 Comment »

15. March 2012 by admin.

Once upon a time, when I started keeping a Web journal (we didn’t yet call them ‘blogs’) back in 1999, I had time pretty much every day to write something interesting about the world around me.  It was a way to vent, and while I hoped that some pretty girl would read my stuff and become enchanted with me, I recognized that it would be a long shot.  (I ultimately did find the pretty girl, though; we’ve now been married for 11 years.)

Now, in 2012, I have too many things to do, and too little time and energy to do them all.   I’ve been lucky if I can write two posts a month.  From time to time, I’ve considered pulling the plug on this site.

I’ve written about the Bait and Switched forum at the Barbara Ehrenreich Web site, and how it was beset by spammers.  More recently, the forum software seems to have crapped out: when one tries to write a post there, one is greeted by an error message.  I’ve offered this site as an alternate venue, and several members of that group have signed up.  I hope we’ll have some interesting discussions about the economy, and the state of the world, and maybe, just maybe, find a way to make this not such a Harder World after all.

I don’t know how this will turn out, but I’m hopeful.

Posted in Blogging | 7 Comments »

26. February 2012 by admin.

The other day, my pajamas wore out.  Time for a new set.

Once upon a time, actually not that long ago, I went to Macy’s and bought a set of pajamas, a top and a bottom, in a cellophane bag.  I think the last set I bought that way, admittedly made in China, cost about $20.

But more recently, most of the stores have stopped selling pajamas as sets: you buy the top and the bottom separately.  So my wife and I looked around:

At Macy’s, they had a selection of designer pajamas, with the pants costing $19 to $38, made in China or El Salvador.  (At least El Salvador is on this side of the planet.)  The colors were blah: blue, yellow (charming, but not $38 worth), pink (for the man who’s really sure of his masculinity), and grey (looking rather like a pinstriped suit fabric: I tend to think of pajamas and pinstriped suits as mutually exclusive).

At jcp (the department store formerly known as J. C. Penney), they had Chinese pajama bottoms for $12.  I found a blue/green plaid pair: done.

But what if I wanted pajamas not from China or El Salvador, but the dear old United States?  At Macy’s and jcp, I’d be out of luck.

There’s American Apparel, with little stores in my part of Brooklyn.  I’ve actually never visited one: from the outside it looks like mostly women’s items.  But their Web site has pajama bottoms for… wait for it… $38, the same as the designer brands at Macy’s.

There’s Red Flannel Factory in Michigan, that offers pajamas in red flannel (you were expecting lime-green Kevlar?) for $43.  I’d probably feel better if I could see the goods first.

Some further searching uncovered the Vermont Flannel Company, ‘dedicated to world comfort.’  A few clicks yielded pictures of a beautiful array of pajama sets in a selection of colors.  But a set costs $83.60… if they had any in stock.

And then there’s BedHead Pajamas, based in Los Angeles (but with a shop in NYC).  Pajama bottoms are $78 with most sets around $140.

Trying to support American manufacturing is all well and good, but I can’t bring myself to pay triple the price.

Posted in Made in USA (or not), Life Goes On | 1 Comment »

11. February 2012 by admin.

Walking down the street near my office the other day, I found myself contemplating New York City taxicabs.  A few years ago, the cab scene was a monoculture of Ford Crown Victorias; there are plenty of them still around, but there are Toyotas and Ford Explorer SUVs and Transit Connect vans, which are wheelchair-accessible.  (Nothing by General Motors, though.  Weird.)

New York City is under a court order to make all its taxis wheelchair-accessible.  On a practical level, it seems absurd: the proportion of taxi passengers who use a wheelchair is so small that the cost difference for a wheelchair-accessible taxis works out to over $100,000 per wheelchair-using passenger.  Drivers don’t like the boxy vans that are commonly used: besides the issue of maneuverability in city traffic, they’re less conducive to conversation with passengers, which leads to smaller tips.

But we have the Americans with Disabilities Act, which mandates wheelchair-accessible taxis and buses and countless other things.  OK: it’s the law, so we have to accept it.

For a moment, I contemplated the New York City I grew up in: the seat of commerce and finance of the most productive and powerful nation on Earth.  We had big Checker cabs that were almost wheelchair-accessible.  It wouldn’t have taken much redesign to make it happen, back then.

If the world had gone forward as we imagined it would in the 1960s, we’d probably have wheelchair-accessible taxis, buses, subways, and everything else by now.   We’d consider it a statement of our power and prosperity that we could make these simple amenities accessible to everyone, and we wouldn’t begrudge the cost.  And if the world had gone forward as we imagined it in the 1960s, I’d be planning my next vacation on the Moon.

But it didn’t happen that way.  After the novelty of visiting the Moon wore off, we stopped doing it.  We stopped being productive, because it’s cheaper to do productive things elsewhere.  The prosperity that would have made such things as wheelchair-accessible taxis effortless faded away.  In its place we have the enforced stinginess of the bean counters.

If we were truly a rich country, we’d have wheelchair-accessible taxis as a matter of the corporate pride of the taxi operators.

But we’re not really as rich as we imagine, so we have wheelchair-accessible taxis by government fiat.

Or, we’ll get them, eventually.

Posted in New York City, Dysfunctional Government | No Comments »

5. February 2012 by admin.

One of the Web sites I follow regularly is the Barbara Ehrenreich forum from her book, Bait and Switch: The (Futile) Pursuit of the American Dream.  The book describes her unsuccessful efforts to secure a ‘middle-class’ job in corporate America, and the people she meets along the way.  The book came out before the financial crisis of 2008, and it was already clear that the corporate job that we once took as a mainstay of American life was going the way of the dodo.  When it came out, I had recently started my own business, and it was comforting to find out that I was not the only one who had been stomped on by my last employer.

There are about a half-dozen people on the forum who post regularly about the sorry state of employment in the US, and up until a month ago, that was OK.  But for the last few weeks, the forum has been taken over by ‘HicyacixGar,’ who generates useless posts about 50 times a day.  We’re down to one thread, as everything else is flooded by Hicaycix.

But I’m compelled to wonder: who or what is HicyacixGar?

OK, a spammer, but to what end?  The posts appear to be illicit ads for prescription drugs, but the Bait and Switch forum seems a thoroughly pointless target for a marketing effort.

Looking at the other fora on the Barbara Ehrenreich Web site, there is some spamming going on, but nowhere near as bad.  The Bait and Switch forum had been the most active, with the most interesting discussions.

So I wonder: is Hicyacix just a spammer, or does it represent a person or agency bent on suppressing discussion about the crappy state of the economy and employment?

Posted in Computers, Networking (computer) | 5 Comments »

30. January 2012 by admin.

In recent weeks, Congress has at least temporarily dropped efforts at preparing a law to address intellectual property (IP) and trade piracy: the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and Protect Intellectual Property Act (PIPA) have been dropped in response to widespread online protests.

That isn’t to say that IP piracy isn’t a  serious problem: it is.  But SOPA and PIPA were the wrong way of dealing with it.  Essentially they gave the government the power to subvert the normal operation of the Internet by making Web sites unavailable, to require Internet service providers (ISPs) to support such efforts, and the ability to do so without due process.

Now we find out that, a few months ago, the President signed the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), that supposedly requires all these things.  It requires ISPs to be the copyright police, interferes with efforts to import generic drugs, and all other manner of evil.

Well, maybe.

I’ve read the actual ACTA, as it was agreed to by various countries of the world, twice.  (It’s not terribly long: about 30 pages.)  I didn’t find any reference to ISPs having to be the police, or of any of the other evils that I had read about.  All it says is that member countries shall have laws in place to deal with trade and IP piracy.  The requirements for these laws are eerily similar to current US law.

Earlier versions had more troublesome requirements, but they didn’t make it into the final version.  Our leadership may go and enact more Draconian restrictions, but they could do that anyway.

So, yes, Internet freedom is under attack, as a long-term trend.  SOPA and PIPA may return in some form later this year, and there may be future versions of ACTA that will require ISPs to function as police.

But the current ACTA, not so much.

Posted in Politics, Networking (computer) | No Comments »

24. January 2012 by admin.

The last month has been a blur.  I pretty much missed the holidays: too much work, and when Christmas finally rolled around, I could hardly get out of bed.  We didn’t have a Christmas tree, and after New Year’s, I had working weekends with 22-hour workdays.  But last weekend was more or less normal, and my wife is still putting up with me, so it can’t be all bad.

Just after New  Year’s, someone introduced me to last year’s Duran Duran album, All You Need Is Now.  It is a pitcher of icewater in the desert of allegedly popular music.  OK: it’s a blast from the past, but what makes it so good?

I usually trip over myself when trying to write about music, so forgive me if this is a little clunky.  But Duran Duran’s music–when they’re not trying to be something else–speaks of a place of achievement, where logic and reason carries the day, where things work.   It makes you want to set aside your pains and complaints and go out and accomplish something.

And for that reason, the title track, ‘All You Need Is Now,’ is my belated Song of the Year for 2011.

Posted in Holidays, Navel-gazing, Music | No Comments »

10. December 2011 by admin.

In 2010, I voted for Carl Paladino, the Republican candidate, in the New York gubernatorial election.  He was the Tea Party candidate, and a bit of a nut, but I couldn’t to bring myself to vote for Andrew Cuomo, the Democratic candidate, because he was just another politician.  (That, and his father had been governor before him.)

I doubted that Paladino would actually win, and I was right.

But I was pleasantly surprised with the first few months of Governor Cuomo.  He stood up to the rest of the government and was able to balance the budget with no new taxes.  Even though I didn’t vote for him, I was pleased to see him succeed.

Until this week.

In 2009, New York passed a temporary income tax surcharge on those earning over about $200k/year.  The surcharge is set to expire at the end of this year.  It’s the mirror image of the Federal ‘Bush tax cuts’ in that it’s a temporary increase in tax rates.

For the last few months, Governor Cuomo was insisting that he would not renew the surcharge.  But he’s apparently been worn down.  In the last two weeks, he has been talking about ‘using the tax code to create new jobs.’  I have no idea what that means.

And now this week, we have new income tax rates.  The highest rate is now 8.82%, well above the pre-surcharge rate of 6.85%, but below the surcharged rate of 8.97%.  For the rest of us, we get a 0.2% rate cut, or about 3-4% of the average New Yorker’s state income taxes.

Oh, goody: I got a tax cut.  It’s not enough to even pay for my daily newspaper, but I’m supposed to be all happy about it.

And if I earned millions, I could still say I got a tax cut, at least with respect to last year’s tax rates.

I still can’t see for the life of me how such tweakage will create one single job.

Posted in New York State, Dysfunctional Government | 1 Comment »

6. December 2011 by admin.

A limited audit of the Federal Reserve Bank, conducted as part of recent ‘bank reform’ legislation, revealed that the Fed had lent some $16 trillion to US and foreign banks between 2007 and 2010.

This shouldn’t really be a surprise: bits and pieces about how the Federal Reserve was throwing money around in an effort to restart the economy appeared from time to time.  But since it’s a story that requires more than eight seconds to explain, the media didn’t really say very much about it.

OK: the Fed did what it’s supposedly intended to: maintain the money supply as the cornerstone of a functioning economy.  But in September 2008, when we were told that the would would come to an end if the government didn’t allocate $700 billion right this instant to bail out banks and insurance companies, we were being played for fools.

If the government hadn’t allocated the funds, the Fed would have.  It would make their $16 trillion pot a little more risky, which would have tweaked interest rates up a bit.  But life, and the economy, would have gone on.

We won’t get fooled again… I hope.

But beyond that, the actions of the Fed reveal that it doesn’t really matter what the government does: the Fed, and the banks, will do what they want anyway.

Posted in Dysfunctional Government, Money | No Comments »

4. December 2011 by admin.

One of my observations about the Occupy movement was that while it highlighted the growing disparity between rich and poor in this country, it didn’t have any practical suggestions for dealing with it.  But that wasn’t entirely true.  There was no agenda for directly addressing the problems, but there were two practical suggestions:

• Get money out of politics;
• Reform the banks.

These items were between the lines in a lot of discussions about the Occupy movement, and were a frequent subtext of many protesters’ placards, but never got much play in the media.

They’re worthy goals, although I can’t say that I agree with the methods the Occupiers would suggest to address them.

The essential concern of those who would want to get money out of politics is that, right now, we have politicians in the image of those who fund them: the very rich and the bankers.  I completely agree.

The usual solution is for government funding of campaigns.  But that won’t change the reality that politicians reflect their funding.  So instead of having politicians in the image of the bankers, we have politicians in the image of the previous government.  I’m not sure which is worse.

The bigger problem is the quality of political candidates.   In 2009, I was disappointed with Mayor Bloomberg.  He had finagled a change to the law enabling him to run for a third term.  He was actually doing pretty well, and had a decent shot at succeeding in a referendum to abolish term limits if it had been attempted in 2008.

But I voted for him anyway, because the other candidate, William Thompson, was worse.  Thompson represented the traditional approach to city government: raise taxes and pay off the unions.

A similar thing is happening now in the Presidential campaign.  The different Republican candidates all have their strengths and weaknesses.  But none of them is a compelling alternative to Obama, although some of them represent the lesser of two evils.  OK, maybe Ron Paul, but the party establishment seems to consider him an embarrassment.

Until we get better candidates, I’m not sure changes to campaign financing will help.

As far as reforming the banks, it sounds like a good idea: the regulated banks of the latter 20th century helped to make us prosperous, and when the regulations were removed, the banks promptly drove themselves into the ditch.  And indeed, new bank regulations were enacted into law this year.

But the regulations don’t seem to do very much, other than nibbling at the edges of minor inconveniences (like not having three weeks to pay one’s credit card bill), and making it harder for smaller banks to function (so that they can get swallowed by bigger banks).  Unfortunately, bank reform is in the hands of our… politicians.

Real bank reform, unfortunately, will have to wait for politicians capable of executing it.

Posted in Popular Discontent, Media | No Comments »

3. December 2011 by admin.

It’s December, and I’m getting nervous.

Not about getting people Christmas presents, or the vast pile of work at the office, although those are concerns.  It’s almost the end of the year, and I haven’t come across a single candidate for my Song of the Year.

Last year, it was easy: ‘Telephone,’ by Lady Gaga.  Yes, the record came out in late 2009, but I was first aware of the song in January 2010, which is what counts.  ’Telephone’ is exciting and propulsive, a good song to play in the back of your mind while bicycling.  I was thinking of disqualifying it after watching the music video of Lady Gaga and Beyoncé as mass murderers, but there was really no competition.

But this year… nothing.  A couple of times, the Song of the Year has been a James Bond theme, but the last James Bond movie came out in 2008.

This morning, I forced myself to sit through the new Lady Gaga video, ‘Marry the Night.’  The video is a pastiche of mental illness, physical fitness, and arson: spare me.  But, as with last year, I’ll give a pass if the song is good.

Which, alas, it isn’t.  There isn’t much of a melody, but it could have worked if it was presented clearly and assertively.  But there was more noise than music, and Gaga herself knew the words were mere poetic fluff (unlike ‘Telephone’) and couldn’t bring herself to sing them like she meant it.

The song might have gotten my attention with different lyrics, perhaps with a guy singing it, but not the way it was.  Not even close.

My first Song of the Year was in 1975, when I was 14: ‘Brazil’ by the Ritchie Family.  Through about 2000, there were generally several candidates every year.  But then things simply dried up.

I’ll find something.  Maybe.

Posted in Music | No Comments »

21. November 2011 by admin.

Last week, the Occupy Wall Street protesters were kicked out of Zuccotti Park, after an ‘occupation’ of two months.  They were allowed to return, but not to set up camp, a judge having determined that the First Amendment right to free speech does not include tents, sleeping bags, and generators.

On Thursday, they staged further protests, including a march into lower Manhattan and across the Brooklyn Bridge.  I actually had a meeting in lower Manhattan that day, and passed right under the protest on the subway, totally oblivious to what was happening.  The protest march unfolded on the evening news, with people making their way slowly towards the bridge.

Beyond that, I don’t know what happened.  I suspect the movement had realized it was reaching the point of diminishing returns, but didn’t know how to deal with it.

For my part, the biggest problem with the Occupy movement was that it didn’t have any solutions.  They’re right: the richest 1% are sucking the wealth from the remaining 99%.  OK: what do we >>do<< about it?

The unions attempted to latch onto the Occupy movement for their own ends, but it never really took, from what I could tell.  Alas, the traditional left-wing approach (tax the rich and share the goodies with the rest of us) has its own issues: merely tweaking the tax rates would not raise enough revenue to make a dent in our problems.

Until someone can suggest a compelling alternative to the yowling from our elected officials, we’re stuck.

Meanwhile…

This morning brought word that the super committee formed after August’s budget brouhaha failed to come up with a plan to cut $1.2T over the next ten years.  The cut in question is hardly Draconian: it’s about 3% of overall Federal spending, and represents merely a dent in our enormous continuing deficits.

Alas, the yowling continues….

Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »

16. November 2011 by admin.

I’ve been travelling a lot in the past month: it’s why I haven’t been able write a post for a while.  (It’s not just the travelling, it’s the load of things I have to do when I get there.)  But I’ve been thinking about airport security, and the people who say that it violates their Fourth Amendment rights.

I can’t say that I’ve had a genuinely bad airport security experience.  I’ve never been groped or had my things maliciously searched, and I’ve never had an encounter with airport security staff–anywhere–that wasn’t completely professional.  On the other hand, it isn’t necessarily a pleasant experience.

Anyhow, the Fourth Amendment states:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

OK: does airport security, as it’s currently practiced, constitute an ‘unreasonable search’?

While I rail against the government doing lots of things, I can’t rail against the principle of airport security.  Besides terrorists, there are other things that people might bring on airliners that are troublesome.  Everyone wants to get to their destination safely, and airport security is part of making that happen.   Perhaps it could be done better, smarter, or less obtrusively, but from where we’re starting, I’m not sure there are practical alternatives.

So there’s an obvious public interest involved, making airport searches reasonable.

But going further:

• A US airliner is private property.  If there were no TSA, wouldn’t airlines still have the right to search you before flying, to make sure you weren’t carrying anything dangerous?  (Indeed, isn’t that what the airlines did before 11 September?)
• I’ve traveled to other countries, and I’m not sure they have laws similar to our Fourth Amendment.  If I object to being searched in the US on Fourth Amendment grounds, does that objection go away when I travel from a place without a Fourth Amendment?

Yesterday morning, at the subway station on my way to work, the police had set up a random search table, with a TSA guy in his electric-blue shirt brandishing some kind of detection instrument.  I expected to be stopped: there were four cops and one TSA guy, and they looked like they needed something to do.  But they let me pass.

Searching people before they get on airplanes is unpleasant, but reasonable.

Searching people before a subway ride?  That’s worrisome.

Posted in Travel, Dysfunctional Government | No Comments »

12. September 2011 by admin.

Saturday night at about 10:00 pm, I was roused by the sound of explosions.  I wasn’t sure what it was, at first, whether we were under attack or it was just fireworks.  I hadn’t read anything in the newspapers about fireworks that night, and it seems in questionable taste to hold a fireworks event on the eve of our Day of National… whatever.

I flipped through the news channels on the tube.  There were no reports of anything untoward, although the Weather Channel showed a few seconds of live video of fireworks over the city.  OK, it’s fireworks, not terrorists, so I can relax.

Sunday morning, I was curious if there were any news reports of the fireworks the night before.  I searched around, and came up mostly empty.  I did find that the City had issued a permit for fireworks from a barge near Red Hook.  That explained the volume of the explosions (I live near Red Hook) and confirmed that the event was not my imagination.

The permit had been issued to ‘Kaynelive LLC,’ an event coordinator, but a visit to their Web site turned up nothing.  So the fireworks were a private event that had been contracted for.

Meanwhile, nothing appeared in Sunday’s papers, nor the newspaper Web sites this morning.

So who arranged for the show?

• Party promoters, staging an event where people pay to go to a party and hear music;
• The parents of a spoiled kid, throwing a Bar/Bat Mitzvah / quinceañera / sweet sixteen party;
• A radical Islamic group, thumbing their nose at the rest of us.

At this point, your guess is good as mine.

Posted in 11 September | No Comments »

7. September 2011 by admin.

The news media are bursting with reports reminding us that this coming Sunday is the tenth anniversary of 11 September 2001, a date which will live in infamy.

But for what?

Of course, I know damn right well what.  I was working in Manhattan that day, and had to walk home, across the Manhattan Bridge, seeing the column of smoke in the sky.  I still react to the video of the airplane slamming into the South Tower as a punch in the gut.  I remember the smell, the dust, the eerie quiet in the weeks that followed.

But there is one small question.  At times, I thought I knew the answer, but now, I’m not so sure:

How is it that three modern steel buildings all collapsed into neat little piles, dropping at near free-fall speed, covering little more than their own footprints?

I’ve always believed that it was within the power of our leadership to forestall the events of 11 September, but that they allowed it to happen in order to advance their own political agenda.  But if, for a moment, we ponder that small question, and set aside the official answer of jet-fuel fires, what comes out is horrifying.

If the Twin Towers and 7 WTC did not simply collapse, then our government took an event that might have killed hundreds and amplified it so as to kill thousands.  And if our leadership could kill thousands of Americans to score political points, what else are they capable of?

OK: that’s one alternative.  But if we step back from that, and return to the official version of what happened, then we have a government that in spite of clear warnings was simply asleep at the switch.

In other words, our leadership is either evil or stupid.

And that’s the tenth anniversary that we’re really observing.

Posted in 11 September, World Trade Center | No Comments »

6. September 2011 by admin.

It rained all day today; the high temperature for the day was 69 degrees after midnight, and then it got colder through the day.  That means that today is officially Retro-Rockets Day, the first genuinely cool day of the year.

I started using that expression to myself in high school: I got genuinely lazy during the summer, and when the first cool day arrived, generally some time in late August, I knew it was time to get out of my lazy summer orbit and prepare for school.

Many years ago, I worked as a subway conductor.  When the first cool day came around in August, my immediate reaction was to pull out the cool-weather uniform (long-sleeve shirt and jacket), perplexing most of my colleagues.  Even though my work didn’t really change with the seasons, I was still happy to see the first hint of fall.

Alas, I don’t have the luxury of lazy summers anymore, but I still celebrate Retro-Rockets day, at least within my own mind.  It’s better being productive when you’re not fighting the weather.

Posted in Weather, Navel-gazing | No Comments »

30. August 2011 by admin.

During the storm last weekend, the old song ‘Windy’ by The Association came to mind.  I remember it as a happy song from my childhood; I think one of our music teachers had the class sing it once.

Yesterday, while Googling around, I discovered that I have misunderstood the song for all these years.  Apparently, it’s really about a drug dealer.  And all the clever but flawed references to meteorology were actually references to a drug dealer and  the effects of his (her?) wares.

I doubt that I’ll ever be able to ask the songwriter’s intent, so I’ll go by the music.  There is music of druggies and music of achievement.  ’Windy’ is definitely the latter: it is propulsive, energetic, and has a real melody.  So I’ll believe that it’s a song about a pretty girl who enchants the beholder and doesn’t take crap from anyone.

And if you still want to believe that it’s about a drug dealer, I guess that’s your privilege.  It’s still a free country, at least in that respect.

Posted in Navel-gazing, Music | No Comments »

29. August 2011 by admin.

I know that Irene caused flooding and wind damage elsewhere, but in my little corner of Brooklyn, it was generally a dud.

It rained late Saturday night through most of Sunday morning, but with much less wind than I had been led to expect.  The power even stayed on.  It seemed like any of a hundred storms with no name and no press agent.

At 9:00 am yesterday, I put on my rain slicker and headed out.  There was moderate rain and some wind, and the Gowanus Canal was about 5′ over its normal level, causing some local flooding, but nothing dire.

In the afternoon, the report came that the subways might not be running for Monday morning.  The MTA posted pictures of flooding of their train yards near Coney Island and in Harlem.

In the evening, I went out for a walk with my wife.  The setting sun was finally breaking through the clouds, and it was windier than earlier in the day.  Weird.

And as I write this on Monday morning, the news reports that the subways are running again.  Let’s hope….

Posted in Weather, New York City | No Comments »

27. August 2011 by admin.

I missed writing about the earthquake earlier this week: I was on a business trip in the middle of Pennsylvania, when the room vibrated for a bit, as if there were a subway train passing underneath.  I suspected that it was an earthquake, but the power stayed on, nothing actually shook, and nothing further happened.  It was only afterward, when I watched the evening news, that the dimensions of the event were clearer.  My wife, in Brooklyn at the time, was unaware of it.

Anyhow, if the debt brouhaha and an earthquake were not enough, today we await the arrival of Hurricane Irene, which is now pounding North Carolina and headed north:

• The City has ordered the evacuation of locations in Zone A.  The zones are part of the citywide coastal storm plan, but there is no simple logic to them: it’s not like ‘five blocks from the water.’  You have to look it up on the map, or through the City Web site.  And while the map has been printed in the newspapers, it isn’t clear enough to resolve the details.  I live in Zone B: if I were two blocks south, I’d be in Zone A; if I were two blocks north, I’d be in Zone C; and if I were three blocks north, I wouldn’t be in any zone, and presumably safe from coastal flooding.  We live in a stout building, with windows high enough to escape any downed trees; we’re staying put.  I’m sure there will be plenty of confusion about evacuations today.
• Mass transit, including subways, buses, and commuter trains, will be shutting down completely after noon today.  It’s the first time that I can remember a total shutdown because of weather.

The latest reports suggest that the storm is weakening somewhat, and will probably hit the city as a tropical storm.  I figure that we have about a 50% chance of losing cable TV, and 30% of losing power.

Well, we’ll see.

Posted in Weather, New York City, Fearmongering | No Comments »

22. August 2011 by admin.

The Republicans, who consider the entire concept of taxation to be evil, have found a tax increase that they actually like.

Last December, in an effort to stimulate the economy, Congress passed a one-year reduction in the payroll tax.  The actual rules are a bit complicated, but basically, the roughly 8% Social Security/Medicare tax that every working American pays (including the nearly half that don’t earn enough to pay Federal income tax) was reduced to about 6%, a little more than a 25% reduction.

Now we’re looking for ways to cut spending, and the Republicans are proposing not to extend this tax break for another year.  If this were a package deal, together with ditching the Bush tax cuts, I’d be OK with it.

To be fair, the Republicans have a point: putting a few hundred extra dollars into the pockets of ordinary Americans (who don’t create jobs) won’t do much to pull the economy out of its slump.  On the other hand, putting thousands of extra dollars into the pockets of the richest Americans hasn’t helped much, either.

For my part, I’m not sure that tax cuts do that much to stimulate the economy, and I get annoyed with politicians of either stripe who push for tax cuts just to score votes.  But the underlying argument of the Republicans is mean-spirited: rich people’s money is valuable to the economy and not to be taxed, while poor people’s money ‘doesn’t create jobs,’ and therefore fair game.

Posted in Politics, Money, Barack Obama | No Comments »

20. August 2011 by admin.

A conservative friend of mine send me an essay railing at President Obama for being, among other things, a liar.  While I’m sure it was satisfying for the author of the essay to write it, and for many conservatives to read it, I wondered.  My mother taught me to be very careful when calling someone a liar, and while I can think of oodles of things that our President said that turned out to be not quite true on further inspection, I was hard-pressed to identify a real lie.  So I turned to the Web, where I found lots of help.  There was an article in Human Events listing the ‘top 10 Obama lies.’  So let’s have a look:

1.  Americans want higher taxes:  During the debate over raising the debt ceiling, President Obama said that 80% of Americans support including higher taxes as part of the deal.  But a Rasmussen poll taken the same week showed that only 34% believe a tax hike should be included in a debt-ceiling agreement.

I remember news reports that indicated that a majority did favor higher taxes.  And in fact, there was a Quinnipiac poll that reported 55% in favor of higher taxes on the wealthy and corporations to help address the debt.  Not quite the 80% reported by our President, but close enough by politician standards.

2.  Mother denied health insurance:  During his presidential campaign, Obama said that his mother died of cancer after being denied coverage for a preexisting condition…. But [she] had health insurance through her employer and was only denied disability insurance.

His mother was denied some form of insurance.  Again, close enough for political work.

3.  Tax restraint for middle and lower class:  Obama pledged during his campaign and throughout his presidency not to raise taxes on families making less than $250,000.  But ObamaCare’s individual mandate… a higher federal cigarette tax and countless other “fees” in the health care law… hit the middle and lower class.

The usual context of this statement is the Federal income tax, and in that context, Obama has been true to his word.  ObamaCare is a special case, about which I have more later, and if you don’t want to pay excise taxes on cigarettes, then don’t smoke.

4.  Shovel-ready jobs:  When Obama was selling his $787 billion stimulus package, he consistently bragged about how shovel-ready construction jobs would be funded across the nation.  Even the President later admitted…:  “There’s no such thing as shovel-ready projects.”

In my professional life, I’m involved with public works projects, and I know that there is no such thing as a ’shovel-ready’ job.  At best, there is a nearly-complete design on the shelf that is waiting for funding, and it would take a bare minimum of three months (and more practically 6-9 months) to finish the design, bid and award a contract, and start work.

But Obama is a politician, not an engineer, and if he hears from state and local politicians about all these projects they’d like to execute, but just need funding, he’s inclined to believe them. Alas, even allowing for a few months’ latency, there was no bump in employment as these ‘not-quite-shovel-ready’ jobs took hold.  So I’ll score this as one that he had to learn the hard way.

5.  Keep your doctor:  President Obama repeatedly pledged that under his health care measure, Americans would be able to keep their doctors.  However, with rising costs, many employers will dump their health care plans….

ObamaCare is an abomination for a variety of reasons.  But Obama is correct in noting that there is nothing in the health care legislation that will prevent you from seeing your current doctor or maintaining your current insurance.   (Whether you will be able to in real life is another matter, as many have pointed out.)

6.  No lobbyists:  During the 2008 presidential campaign, Obama said:  “We have the chance to tell all those corporate lobbyists that the days of them setting the agenda in Washington are over….”  At least a dozen former lobbyists got top jobs in his administration at the beginning of his presidency….

Every politician rails at lobbyists, and ultimately does nothing.  So what else is new?

7.  Foreign money in campaigns:  During his 2010 State of the Union address, and again during the 2010 midterm elections, Obama railed against foreign money influencing U.S. elections.  The only problem was that there was no evidence to support the charge….

Obama’s 2010 State of the Union address came a few days after the Citizens United Supreme Court decision ruling that allowed corporations and others to present ‘issue’ advertising during the political campaign cycle.  While such advertising cannot identify candidates by name, it can be readily associated with candidates.  And a foreign corporation could indeed present such advertising, if they really wanted to wade into the cesspool that is American politics.

8.  Arizona immigration law:  During the battle over Arizona’s immigration law, President Obama said:  “Now suddenly if you don’t have your papers and you took your kid out to get ice cream, you can be harassed, that’s something that could potentially happen.”

Well, if you were speeding on the way to the ice cream parlor, you might get stopped, and then you could get in trouble for not having your papers.  I don’t know if Arizona has a law (as in New York) enabling the police to stop and ticket you if you aren’t wearing your seat belt, but if it does, that would be another ’show me your papers’ moment.  The threshold is any infraction where the police would stop you and ask questions, not necessarily a crime.

9.  Transparency:  Obama pledged that transparency would be a top priority, but his administration refused to grant one-third of the Freedom of Information Act requests, according to an Associated Press analysis.  He also was dishonest about transparency when he said that health-care negotiations would be televised on C-SPAN and that he would wait five days to sign a bill so people would have a chance to read it online.

Stupid naive campaign promises, nothing more.

10.  Constitutional oath:  During his January 2009 inauguration, Barack Obama pledged to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States,” yet he has consistently ignored the 10th Amendment giving powers not enumerated in the Constitution to the states.  Exhibit No. 1: ObamaCare.

ObamaCare relies on a twisted interpretation of the Commerce Clause (’Congress shall have power to… regulate Commerce… among the several States;’) to require people to purchase insurance.  As far as the Tenth Amendment, I’m sure it isn’t the first time that the Federal government has imposed uniform standards on something across the states.

To take another Tenth Amendment example, consider Arizona’s immigration law.  The President can rail against it; he can have the Justice Department sue the state of Arizona in pursuit of what he believes to be right; but he can’t force Arizona to abandon its law.

Our President may question whether the Constitution allows him to do this or that, but I can’t identify any time where the President has simply disregarded or violated the Constitution.

*          *          *

My point in all of this is not to defend President Obama’s performance: he has been one of our most inept Presidents in a long time.  Yes, he’s more inept than President Carter, who had decent policies but couldn’t present them well.

But he’s no more a liar than the average politician.  Every politician overlooks inconvenient facts, makes pointless promises he has no intent in keeping, pontificates from ignorance (’shovel-ready jobs’), or engages in creative over- or understatement to advance his agenda.  Moreover, every President lives in a bubble, surrounded by advisors who tell him what he wants to hear.

I’m bitterly disappointed in President Obama.  I disagree with his policies, and I’m horrified by his non-leadership leadership style.  But if I call him a liar, I would also have to call almost all of his modern predecessors liars too.  The last President who wasn’t a liar was Jimmy Carter: it was perhaps the root of many of his problems.

Posted in Barack Obama | No Comments »

6. August 2011 by admin.

I’m sitting in the park on the Manhattan side of the Williamsburg Bridge.  It’s a pleasant summer afternoon, I’ve been riding my bike, and the endorphins are flowing: it’s all good.

When I was a kid, I lived near here, and my parents and I would go out on our bikes on Sunday morning.  It’s good to see that the park is, if anything, a little nicer than I remember it.

It’s been a crazy week with the alleged resolution of the debt brouhaha:

• Each side is now yowling that it was taken advantage of by the other.  Obama sold out to the Tea Party, while the Tea Partiers wimped out.
• On Wednesday, the government borrowed nearly a quarter of a trillion dollars, apparently making up for lost time.
• Some Republican (mainstream, not Tea Party) noted that the GOP was more than willing to let the deadline pass, until they considered that the Treasury, having to prioritize spending, would short the things that would make the public the angriest (like Social Security) so that they could blame the Republicans.  I find it hard to believe that the Obama administration would do that, but I suspect that a Republican administration would.
• After a 500-point drop on Thursday, the stock market had a barf-bag day on Friday.
• On Friday afternoon, after the markets closed, Standard and Poor’s downgraded US government debt from AAA to AA+.

But where does that leave us as far as the rest of the economy?  Sadly, not too well.  But that’s not really new.

The national government is a one-trick pony: there is only one thing it can do to address a sluggish economy: deficit spending.  Whether this takes the form of tax cuts or new spending programs, the goal is the same: provide loose money to encourage commerce and tide people over until new growth takes hold.

But in fact, the government spigot has been stuck on ‘loose’ for many years now.  Between the bailouts, the stimulus, tax cuts, and the Federal Reserve’s quantitative easing, we’ve delivered enough stimulation to launch the Empire State Building into orbit.  It hasn’t worked.

Now is the time to re-examine our premises and seek a new way forward.  It won’t be easy, and some of it will certainly be painful, but it’s still better than the alternative of yet more debt.

Posted in Dysfunctional Government, Life Goes On, Money | No Comments »

3. August 2011 by admin.

Yesterday, the Senate passed and the President signed into law a measure increasing the debt ceiling, and making present and future cuts in Federal spending–but no new taxes–averting the immediate crisis of a government unable to satisfy its $4 billion daily borrowing fix.  Everybody hates it, but then a good compromise leaves everybody mad.

Except that the plan doesn’t actually cut spending by a meaningful amount in the near term, and anything further in the future can be undone by the next Congress.

Moreover, it sets a dangerous precedent in that the next stage of spending cuts will be determined by a joint committee of Congress, with input from the President, and then be voted up or down with no debate or possibility of amendment.  On one level, since politicians don’t seem to have the intestinal fortitude to vote for serious spending cuts, this seems a practical necessity.

But the committee–called ’super Congress’ by some–has no constraints on what it can include in its ’spending cut’ package.  If they wanted to require all of us to wear lime-green underwear, they could.  For now, we can only hope that they’ll limit their concerns to things that will help the government’s finances.

OK, now that the circus is over, how about going back to the economy and creating jobs?

The economy is languishing, with growth in the first quarter restated at a 0.4% annual rate and the second quarter  at a 1.3% annual rate.  If you exclude banking/finance, and perhaps the oil companies, the rest of us are in a recession.

The government has one thing, and one thing only, it can do to stimulate the economy: it can make money looser.  It can do this by tax cuts (the Republican method) or new spending (the Democratic method), but either way, the intent is the same: to provide new money to encourage the private sector to invest and hire, or at least to tide people over.

But in spite of partisan bickering, the spigot has been stuck on ‘loose’ for a long time now.  Most Federal spending is preset before the budget process starts: Social Security, Medicare, and interest payments.  And the new plan is supposed to tighten things up, even if only incrementally.

So what can the government actually do to create jobs?

For my part, I have no idea.

Posted in Dysfunctional Government, Money | No Comments »

1. August 2011 by admin.

When I was four years old, something happened–I don’t remember exactly what–that led me to consider the fact that I would ultimately die.  I fretted about it for a couple of days, and then realized: people live to be 100, right?  100 is way more than four, so I have lots of time left.  I then set aside contemplating my own mortality for a long, long time.

Today is my fiftieth birthday: I’m halfway there.

I thought there was something witty that I was going to write about this, but now that I’m here in front of my keyboard, I’m drawing a blank.  Perhaps I’m getting flaky in my old age.

Anyway, it’s been an interesting first half, and as I sit here in the morning contemplating the day ahead, the second half should be interesting as well.

*          *          *

Last night, our alleged leadership came to an agreement on the debt ceiling.  I’m not sure I like it, but that’s a subject for another time.  In any case, the immediate emergency has been forestalled.

Posted in Navel-gazing | No Comments »

30. July 2011 by admin.

Yesterday,  the Republican-controlled House of Representatives passed a bill to raise the debt ceiling, begin to cut spending, and attempt to address the nation’s fiscal problems.  It was voted down in the Senate in less than two hours, with no serious debate.

Meanwhile, Our Fearless Leader, true to form, has left the details of the Democratic plan to Congress.  Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is working on such a plan, but the details aren’t there yet, and the House Republicans have already resolved to vote it down.

The headline on today’s Daily News reads ‘Bam: Call Your Reps.’  I would call my reps if I thought it would do any good.  Alas, they’re all solid Democrats, and won’t care.  Or my position will be swamped by many of my fellow constituents.

We’re in trouble now because our government made promises in the past that it now cannot keep.  This happened because the productive capacity of the country was left to rot.  We’ve been working around it for a couple of decades now, telling ourselves lies about ‘the service economy’ and blowing bubbles, but we’ve burned through our savings and our credit and now find ourselves no better off.

A limited government like ours cannot simply will productive capacity into being.  It can’t construct productive enterprises for itself, and it can’t force the private sector to create jobs.  Under the circumstances, the only alternative is to cut spending and find a way to back away from its promises while causing the least damage.

The Republican plan is an effort to do that.  I disagree with the Republican orthodoxy in that I believe that new, higher taxes will be necessary.  The Republicans will say that higher taxes merely encourage higher spending, but one of the lessons of the Reagan administration is that politicians will spend anyway.

If we can’t expect some adult leadership from our government, then we’re really done for.

Moreover, if you want to ask where our productive capacity went, part of it got crystallized into the wealth of the very. very rich.  If the government can return some of that through taxation into the circulating economy, that can only help the rest of us.

So while I don’t completely agree with the Republicans, at least they’re trying.

Posted in Dysfunctional Government, Money | No Comments »

27. July 2011 by admin.

Yesterday, my tasks at work were more graphical than verbal, and I found myself listening to talk radio again.  A while back, I had subscribed to XM, which got swallowed by Sirius (or was it the other way around), so I can access the XM/Sirius radio channels on my computer.  I had a choice of listening to left-wing talk radio or right-wing talk radio, and so spent about an hour with each.

The left-wing guy railed against the big corporations that are taking over the world and leaving nothing for the rest of us.  He had a guest with an opposing position.  The guest shouted; the host shouted; there was plenty of heat but no light.  It was a perfect mirror image of Sean Hannity.

The right wing guy bemoaned the freeloaders who were looking for the government to solve their problems, and the widespread lack of personal responsibility.

But I have to wonder: I’m sure that there are conservatives who worry about corporate overreach (many of our founding fathers had the same concerns), and I’m sure that there are liberals who are ticked off with the freeloaders who take no personal responsibility and abuse the system.  On a practical level, there’s probably more common ground than most of us care to admit.

Meanwhile, the circus continues in Washington.  A couple of plans to stave off default seem to be emerging.  Both are of the kick-the-can-down-the-road variety, with the Republican version (which seems more likely to pass at this point) having us do it all over again in six months.  But the Tea Party Republicans still consider it as cutting the government too much slack.

In my guts I feel like one of these proposals will get passed, and we’ll all allegedly heave a giant sigh of relief.  For my part, I’m not sure that ‘default’ is necessarily a bad thing.  First, it won’t be a real default: we’ll still pay interest on our debt, and almost certainly will continue to pay Social Security and the military.  Government contractors will probably be told to wait for payment, and parts of the government will get shut down.

But at that point there will be an actual, instead of a potential, problem.  We will have to face the naked reality of the situation, and actually do something.

If we’re worried about the country’s credit rating, the damage is already done, and will get worse if we kick the can down the road.  But a ‘default’ might actually help the situation because we’ll have to do something about it.

A ‘default’ will be disruptive and unpleasant.  But among the alternatives before us, it may be the least painful in the long term.

In any case, we’ll know in six days….

Posted in Media, Dysfunctional Government | No Comments »

23. July 2011 by admin.

The phone just rang a moment ago.  I checked the Called ID: an 866 number.

I let the phone ring.  After the fifth ring, it stopped.

In another time,  I looked at Caller ID as a convenience, and the thought that I might not answer the phone because of the incoming number seemed, well, cowardly.  If someone calls me with something unpleasant, I would take the call and face the music.

But now 95% of the calls on my landline phone are junk.  Sometimes, I’ll pick up and hear the other end of the call disconnect.  Or I’ll get an announcement from a machine.   My response is to blow into the phone.  A person will stop, believing that the line got noisy.  When the voice goes yammering on about how I can save money on my mortgage or get out of debt or whatever, I hang up.

If nobody speaks, I suspect that the machine has called me, and will now connect me with a representative.  If no voice comes on in two seconds, I hang up.

It turns out to be very rare that there’s actually a live voice at the other end that has placed the call and is waiting for a real answer.

My son has suggested that I ditch my landline phone and just use the cell phone.  He may have a point.  But having a home phone number always seemed to be part of the basic package of being an adult in this society, and I’m not quite ready to let that go.

But in the meantime, if it’s from a toll-free area code, or a place where I don’t have any relatives, I won’t answer.

OK, it’s cowardly.  But it works.

Posted in Telephone, Navel-gazing | No Comments »

21. July 2011 by admin.

It has been hot of late; today’s official high temperature in Central Park was 97 degrees.

And maybe ten years ago, that would have been it.  The weatherman would report the temperature, and the humidity, and leave you to figure out how miserable it was.

Today, in addition to the temperature, the weather reporters tell us the ‘heat index;’ some calculation based on the temperature and the humidity, supposedly to give a sense of how hot it feels.

I think the real reason is to make the weather reports scarier:  today is no hotter nor stickier than a 97-degree July day ten or fifteen years ago.  But by telling us that ‘the heat index is 110,’ it turns an ordinary hot day (common enough in mid-July) into almost an emergency.

If all my meetings got cancelled because of the heat, then maybe I’d feel different about it, but other than being hot, it was a normal workday, with all of my meetings going on as scheduled.  So it wasn’t an emergency, after all.

If one is more into conspiracy theories, one might believe that the use of the heat index is a scheme to make us believe that global warming is real.  I don’t know if it is or isn’t, but new fake temperatures do not help to clarify the issue.

I wish weather reporters would report the real temperature and then shut up: we already know that it’s hot and sticky.

It’s July in New York City, after all.  It’s supposed to be hot and sticky.

Posted in Weather, Media, Fearmongering | No Comments »

20. July 2011 by admin.

Last week, our President remarked that we have to “pull off the Band-Aid… eat our peas….” and address the issue of the debt ceiling.  Oddly, I can imagine House Speaker Boehner or someone on the Republican side saying the same thing, except that they have a better sense of playground rhetoric, and realize how it might be mocked by the other side.

Sean Hannity worries that if there is no deal to cut spending, America will become an oppressive socialist hellhole.  Meanwhile, the left wing worries that if there is no deal to preserve government funding, America will become an oppressive corporatist hellhole.

And finally, from the ‘Who Said This?’ department:

“The fact that we are here today to debate raising America ’s debt limit is a sign of leadership failure. It is a sign that the US Government can not pay its own bills. It is a sign that we now depend on ongoing financial assistance from foreign countries to finance our Government’s reckless fiscal policies. Increasing America ’s debt weakens us domestically and internationally. Leadership means that ‘the buck stops here.’ Instead, Washington is shifting the burden of bad choices today onto the backs of our children and grandchildren. America has a debt problem and a failure of leadership. Americans deserve better.”

No, it isn’t Boehner, nor House Majority Leader Eric Cantor: it’s Barack Obama, back in 2006, facing the same issue of raising the debt ceiling.

But Obama and the Democrats wimped out back then.

Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »

17. July 2011 by admin.

Before 2000, when politics were less polarized, I used to observe that given two candidates, one Republican and one Democrat, who were about evenly matched on the issues, I would vote for the Democrat.  I noted that while the Republican was a little closer to my views on the principles, the Democrat seemed more like the person I’d prefer to see in office: a little more humble, a little more trustworthy.

Some time after 2001 I read the thought somewhere that Republicans view power primarily as an opportunity, while Democrats see it more as a responsibility.

In our current debt-ceiling brouhaha, the Republicans like to point out that now-President Obama voted against a debt-ceiling increase while a Senator during the Bush administration.  But the Democrats relented then, at least partially because they saw maintaining a functioning government as part of their responsibility, even if a President they didn’t agree with was spending too much.

Since I last wrote, not much has changed in the current debt-ceiling drama, except that both sides have hardened their positions, and our President has gone out on a limb and suggested raising the retirement age for Social Security and making other entitlement tweaks.  But he isn’t supported by Democratic Congressional leadership, while the Republicans absolutely insist that there be no new taxes, because that kills jobs.

(There is a cogent rebuttal to that: the economy has become fractured, which portions doing really well, and most of us having trouble.  In that case, it is reasonable for the government to seek to fund itself by taxing the part doing really well more heavily.  Note that we’re not doing this to set up new programs, but to keep the promises we’ve already made.)

Some radicals on the right have suggested that we should ’starve the beast’ and relentlessly cut taxes until government can no longer function.  The Republicans have the opportunity to do that now.  They can remake government in their own image, if they can just tough it out for…

16 days.

Posted in Politics, Dysfunctional Government, Money | No Comments »

7. July 2011 by admin.

This afternoon, overtaken with a task that required relatively little actual thought, I turned on Rush Limbaugh.  It was instructive.

He played of a clip of some remarks by Republican Senator Marco Rubio of Florida:

… I want to know which one of these taxes they’re proposing will create jobs. I want to know how many jobs are going to be created by the plane tax. How many jobs are going to be created by the oil company tax I heard so much about. How many jobs are created by going after the millionaires and billionaires the president talks about? I want to know: How many jobs do they create?

The short answer is that taxes don’t create jobs, except maybe for tax accountants.  The longer answer is that the primary responsibility of government is to maintain an environment in which jobs are created, chiefly by the private sector.  And, as much as we would wish it otherwise, governments don’t–can’t–work for free.

Later, Rush discussed the difference between the ‘deficit’ and the ‘debt.’   His description was accurate: the ‘deficit’ is the amount in a specific timeframe that the government spends that it didn’t receive in taxes, while the ‘debt’ is the accumulated borrowings.  He further noted, accurately, that the government, even given the limits of the debt ceiling, is not in danger of defaulting on its debt.  Instead, hitting the debt ceiling would force the government to stop deficit spending.

But what he didn’t say was that if the government had to stop deficit spending, it  would necessarily have to shut itself down, and would probably have to cut entitlements.

I’m not sure the dittoheads on Social Security would be happy with that.

Posted in Rush Limbaugh, Dysfunctional Government, Money | No Comments »

6. July 2011 by admin.

I was watching Fox News this evening.  Yes, they’re a mouthpiece for the Republicans, but that can be helpful sometimes.  Tonight, they were rebutting Obama’s assertion that the Republicans have no ideas about how to address the deficit.

The Republicans, according to the report, are not against increasing government revenue.  The government can raise revenues by selling assets, or increasing user fees.  But tax increases of any kind, including getting rid of loopholes, regardless of how useless or stupid they may be, are absolutely off the table.

Usually, I disregard this as mere brinksmanship: they’re just playing chicken.  In New York, things like this happen with some regularity, and earlier this year, a Federal government shutdown was avoided with last-minute negotiations.

But we’re in a deep, deep hole: the Federal government is broke.  Getting out will be difficult and painful: it will take both tax increases and spending cuts, and we’re all going to get taken down a couple of notches.  We’re also going to learn the hard way that ‘entitlements’ are not ‘debts,’ and can be changed at the stroke of a pen.  In 2008, I had voted for Obama hoping that he would help us face our problems.  But he turned out to be just another politician.

We’re broke now: it’s just that we can juggle the books for another few weeks, until 2 August, before the country is officially in default.

What’s so difficult? I hear you cry.  Just raise the debt ceiling, like the last dozen times, and everything will be fine.  But the usual rationale is that after one raises the debt ceiling, the economy recovers, and the resulting growth cuts unemployment and covers the debt.  Unfortunately, that hasn’t been working for the last few years.  Our economy has lost the productive capacity that it would need to properly recover from our current situation.

So the alternatives are to negotiate some spending cuts, and possibly tax increases, and kick the can down the road for a few months, or to let a default happen.

If the default is inevitable, maybe it’s better for it to happen now:

• We’re all (except the very, very rich) stretched now, but it will be worse next year;
• If it happens now, we have a chance to stabilize the situation by next year’s elections.

And, perhaps, that is what is underneath the Republicans’ position.  They may want the default to take place, not out of malice, but because it is the least painful of the available alternatives.

I tend to doubt that this will be the usual game of chicken.

Posted in Dysfunctional Government, Money | No Comments »

3. July 2011 by admin.

Right now, the Federal government is running against the debt ceiling: on 2 August, it will no longer be able to borrow money, and be officially broke.  Timothy Geithner, Secretary of the Treasury, has cited Section 4 of the 14th Amendment as a reason that the government should keep borrowing anyway.  Let’s read it together, shall we?

*          *          *

The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned. But neither the United States nor any State shall assume or pay any debt or obligation incurred in aid of insurrection or rebellion against the United States, or any claim for the loss or emancipation of any slave; but all such debts, obligations and claims shall be held illegal and void.

*          *          *

The Amendment was enacted after the Civil War, and the former Confederate states were required to ratify it as a condition of readmission.  In that context, the meaning is clear: what the Union spent to fight the Civil War was a valid debt that could not be repudiated, but as for the debts of the Confederacy, or the value of slaves as assets, well, tough noogies.

OK: what does that mean now?

Debts of the United States that have been previously authorized cannot be repudiated.   So we have to continue paying interest on our outstanding debts.

But what if we’re in such bad shape that we need to take out new debt to service our existing debt?

In that case, perhaps, we could use the authority to coin money, if we hadn’t delegated it to the Federal Reserve.  But we’re not quite there, yet.

More practically, what the 14th Amendment tells us is that we do not have the option of failing to service our debts.  If we can’t create new debt, we have to take money that would be spent on other activities in order to pay the interest we owe.

So this means that everything else–defense, civilian administration, and even Social Security and Medicare–must be cut in order to pay our debts.

Even Social Security? I hear you cry.  You mean like poor little old ladies?

Alas, the little old ladies don’t have a Constitutional amendment.  Sorry.

Posted in Dysfunctional Government, Money | No Comments »

2. July 2011 by admin.

The other night, I found myself watching Up in the Air on the tube.  The movie, featuring George Clooney as a traveling ‘career transition counselor’ (i.e. telling downsized employees that they’ve been fired) resonates with me at the same time as it bothers me.  Is this what American business has come to, that the hot new field is helping other businesses destroy themselves?

In my own business, I’m busy: that’s part of why I don’t post here as often as I’d like to.  But I’m compelled to wonder how long it will last.  And I watch George Clooney do demolition, one downsizee at a time, as he wonders about being his own happy life of air travel being demolished as well.

About halfway through the movie, my wife came home and changed the channel.  ”Thanks, Ducky,” I told her.  ”You saved me from myself.”

*          *          *

Quickie Update: I did not need to wait for the rest of the summer for the Daily News to raise its price to match the Post.  It only took one week.

Posted in Navel-gazing, Movies | No Comments »

30. June 2011 by admin.

Today was Glenn Beck’s last broadcast on the Fox News network.  I’ve found him both entertaining and enlightening, and I’ll be sad to see him go.  At the end, he remarked that he was leaving now because it was his last chance to escape the business with his soul.

Yes, Glenn would run off at the mouth.  Although one could reasonably characterize his views as conservative, there was something more than that: he reminded us of what our country stands for, and why we should not let it go.

A half-hour later, I was watching Brian Williams on NBC.  Of course they have different roles, but there’s something more than that.

Glenn Beck asks us to think about what he was saying, and draw our own conclusions; Brian Williams tells us the events, and then what we’re supposed to think about them.   A few years ago, when we were playing the is-it-or-isn’t-it game about the recession, he reminded us incessantly that consumer spending was good for the economy, and the lack of it was obviously bad.

I’ll miss Glenn Beck; when Brian Williams is eventually replaced, as much as I like him now, I’ll just change the channel.  Or maybe I won’t.  Whatever.

Posted in Media | No Comments »

29. June 2011 by admin.

• This week, the New York Post raised the price of the daily paper to 75 cents from 50.  I’m sure its chief competition, the Daily News, will follow suit before the end of the summer.
• The back of my MetroCard features the word ‘optimism:’
  
  A line at the bottom of the card gives credit to Reed Seifer, under the MTA’s Arts for Transit program.  I’m compelled to ask:
  • Is this really art?
  • Did Reed Seifer actually get paid for suggesting the word ‘optimism’ on the back of a MetroCard?
  • If so, did the person responsible for that at the MTA lose his/her job as a result?  (Last I checked, they were crying broke!)
  • Are you now filled with optimism after reading this?
• For the last year or so, New York City has been giving restaurants and other food establishments ratings of ‘A,’ ‘B,’ or ‘C,’ based on their sanitary inspection results.  A restaurant in my neighborhood got written up in the newspaper for hiding their ‘C’ rating.  The next week, the sign was back up, but the orange ‘C’ had faded into invisibility.  It looked as if the sign had simply faded in the sun, but still I have to wonder….

Posted in New York City, Media, Money | No Comments »

26. June 2011 by admin.

No, not me.

A few weeks ago, after months of trying, my son finally found a job in a media office of some sort.  He was working as an office assistant, doing scanning and other tasks, and hoping that they would take him as a permanent employee (not there is actually any such thing in our era of employment at will).

The other day, he learned that the company would not take him as a permanent employee, and he was back in the street again.

I’ve been contemplating buying a new tablet computer, but on learning this, I shelved those plans.  He’s my son, and I don’t feel right enjoying a shiny new toy right now.   Instead, I’ll buy him driving lessons: he’s 25 and does not have his license.

Things are very different for him than for me.  Both of us grew up in the city, without cars in the household.  But I took driving lessons when I was 20, with my own money.  When I was 25, he was already one year old.

I wish I knew what to tell him, beyond the obvious, as he embarks on another job hunt that seems almost pointless.

Posted in Family, Life Goes On, Money | No Comments »

18. June 2011 by admin.

It’s been a long time since the last time I did this; too long.  It has been several years, probably even before I got married in 2001.

This morning, I’m pausing in the middle of my morning ride, pulling out my electronic thingie, and writing.  In 1999, the ‘thingie’ was a Psion Series 5; today, it’s an LG smartphone, which is far more capable, but the Psion had a much better keyboard.

I’m hot and sweaty, but the endorphins are flowing: I’m feeling good.

Back then, I would write about my latest strategy for finding a girlfriend.  The strategies never worked, but writing them down seemed to help at the time.  Now, I worry about the economy.  We’re in deep trouble, and nobody seems to want to address the real problem: that real productivity has moved out of the country, and what has come to replace it (finance, entertainment, education, health care) doesn’t generate the real value to provide jobs and support the government benefits that we set for ourselves in richer times.

But enough of that: I’m at the top of Prospect Park, the downgrade is calling, followed by a cool shower and lunch.

I’ll have to do this again sometime soon.

Posted in Navel-gazing | No Comments »

16. May 2011 by admin.

Last week, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) announced a new scheme, called PLAN (Personal Localized Alerting Network) for alerting the populace to emergencies through cell phone messages.  New phone will include programming to receive the messages, which will be broadcast from cell phone towers in the affected area.

Some have suggested that this is yet another way for the government to monitor one’s activities.  From the information in hand, it doesn’t look like that.  When you carry a cell phone and keep it turned on, the phone company knows where you are: it’s how you can receive calls.   From the information in hand, PLAN actually seems a step backward: the messages are addressed through cell phone towers, to whatever phones have the programming to receive the messages.  The receivers of the message are not localized, or even identified, by the transmission of a PLAN message.

Are we now so distrustful of the government that what is actually a public safety enhancement is viewed as a form of mind control?  Perhaps, but:

• The description of PLAN indicates that the system will provide ‘text-like messages.’  Well, is it a text message, or isn’t it?  Perhaps one could forward a brief audio message through PLAN, but the description is unclear.  I’m OK with a textual message, but having my phone interrupt me in the middle of a call is not so good.
• The description notes that there are three kinds of message that will be forwarded through PLAN: Amber Alerts (for child kidnapping), alerts involving imminent threats to safety of life (tornado warnings?), and Presidential messages.  A service provider may enable users to block the first two kinds of messages, but not Presidential alerts:
  • I’ve never liked the concept of the Amber Alert.  It reminds me of Fahrenheit 451, when the police enlist the help of the neighborhood to catch the fleeing Montag: OK, everyone drop what you’re doing and look out your front door… now!  It’s true that child kidnapping is very rare, and Amber Alerts are actually infrequent.  But we’ve created an infrastructure that could readily be abused at the whim of our leadership. So I’ll shut them off… for now, anyway.
  • I have to wonder what the President would tell the nation through an emergency text message.  Perhaps they’ll send out one every Fourth of July at noon, as a test.  But in an actual emergency, what would he tell us?  “Put your head between your legs, and kiss your ass goodbye”?

So no, I’m not going to hang onto my old cell phone just to duck out of PLAN.  Like anything else in our modern world, it can be used for good or for ill.

Posted in Dysfunctional Government, Fearmongering | No Comments »

11. May 2011 by admin.

President Obama was speaking in Texas the other day about immigration reform.  His proposals are dead on arrival in the Republican-controlled House and tepid Senate, but he was at it anyway:  “Maybe they’ll need a moat,” he said of the Republicans. “Maybe they’ll want alligators in the moat.”

He’s probably right.  But that isn’t the real problem.

One of the basic attributes of a nation is that it has the right to decide whether to allow people and things in and out.  We’ve failed at that for quite some time, and while there has been progress in building a fence (which, in itself, is not a bad idea), there are still wide open spaces that the Border Patrol cannot practically supervise, as well as criminal elements with a vested interest in moving across the border on their own terms.

But let’s imagine, for a wild moment, that today we installed a hermetically sealed border: nothing could get in or out unless the designated authorities allowed it.  Drug smugglers and terrorists are kept out; business travelers can pass through freely; other people can get in if they have the resources and patience.  Fine and dandy.

OK: what do we do about the roughly 12 million that are already here illegally?   Right now, the government doesn’t generally go looking around for illegal aliens.  If they cross paths with one, he might get deported, but maybe not.  But that satisfies nobody.

One approach is that favored by Obama, and Democrats in general: provide a path to legal residence, and ultimately citizenship, for those who are worthy of it (as demonstrated by living here peacefully, paying one’s taxes, otherwise not breaking the law, etc.).

It’s a practical solution.  It was so practical that it was actually done in the 1980s, under Ronald Reagan.  But we were supposed to couple that with reinforcing the border and making it harder for illegal immigrants to get jobs, and we didn’t really do that part.  So here we are again.

Some on the right have suggested mass deportations as a solution.  But that is a nonstarter for many practical reasons, most obviously because we would have to overtly turn our country into a police state in order to make sure we got everyone.  And as soon as an American citizen got deported inadvertently, all of the politicians who were responsible for the plan would be on their way out, routed by a groundswell of popular anger.

So the Republicans simply say ‘no amnesty,’ and nothing changes.  (Never mind, by the way, that providing a path to residence through paying a fine and filling out piles of paperwork does not constitute ‘amnesty.’)  And we have an underclass of scared people who are willing to work for very little, which drives down wages for the rest of us.  Is that what America stands for?

Perhaps not, but eerily, it’s what the Republicans stand for.  The modern Republican stands for lower taxes, less regulation, and less of everything that can get between a businessman and his profits.  If government policy can be used to lower wages, then that’s good, too.

But if what you really want (although won’t admit) is to keep a scared underclass on hand to lower wages, then a secure border isn’t really very helpful.  As for the criminals who might sneak across, the answer is simple: live somewhere else.

So while the Republicans profess to be defenders of the realm, they’re really defenders of the status quo, because that’s what best serves their real interests.

And if that weren’t enough, there’s also the other reason for ‘no amnesty’ that is more acceptable in polite company: if the currently illegal immigrants ultimately became citizens, they’d probably be Democrats.

Posted in Immigration, Dysfunctional Government, Barack Obama | 1 Comment »

9. May 2011 by admin.

The other day I found myself watching Coal, a reality TV show about life in a West Virginia coal mine.  For a couple of hours, it was engaging television, as we saw the rigors and practical problems of digging coal out of the ground.  The miners themselves are practical, salt-of-the-earth types, a reminder that we’re not yet a nation of empty airheads.  They speak with West Virginia accents, but I guess their parents told them not to mumble, so they’re actually more intelligible than many characters on TV.i

I remember an illustration of a coal mine from my third-grade social studies textbook.  It showed a little electric railroad operating in the mine to bring the workers in and the coal out.  The mine in Coal isn’t  like that: the passages are about 3.5 feet tall, so everyone must walk stooped over.  The vehicles are electric, but there is no railroad.  There is very little infrastructure to speak of: most of the electricity for the equipment comes from a cantankerous generator in a trailer.

The mine isn’t run by a big company.  The ‘president’ of the company leases the mine site from some unnamed source, and then has the challenge of generating enough cash flow to pay the lease, as well as the employees and other costs of running the business.  In any case, big companies don’t run coal mines by digging tunnels underground anymore.  They just dig and blast from the surface, making a really big hole, and then take the coal out.

I wonder about the economics of  running a mine as the basis for a TV show.  Given the dollar figures that they discuss, I would have expected that the fees paid by the TV producers would relieve a lot of the financial pressures on the mining business, and the payment to the employees would mean a significant boost to their paychecks.  But what sort of deal did they actually make?

It’s engaging television, and I’ll probably watch it again.  But it says something about our country that people doing hard work and actually producing something is now unusual enough to merit a TV show.

Posted in Television | No Comments »

4. May 2011 by admin.

Last Sunday, so the news reports tell us, a team of Navy Seals visited Osama bin Laden’s compound in Pakistan and killed him.  He was then buried at sea.

Yeah, right.

That, indeed, was my reaction.  My trust in government has eroded to the point where I’m reluctant to take such news seriously.  Osama bin Laden was the bogeyman of the last decade: Obama must be pretty desperate in the polls to tell us that he was gone.

But as more detailed reports came out yesterday, I’m willing to believe… just barely.  And I’m encouraged that our President has learned that being nice doesn’t always work: sometimes you have to use force.

Now, can we repeal the Patriot Act, disband the TSA, and peel those stupid flag decals off our subway trains?

Yeah, right….

Posted in Terrorism, Barack Obama | No Comments »

30. April 2011 by admin.

The other day, President Barack Obama released his long-form birth certificate, supposedly ending the controversy over whether or not he was actually born in Hawaii.  While I find myself opposed to his policies (even after I voted for him!), the whole ‘birther’ exercise seems pointless and stupid.  (And it isn’t over: some are asserting that the long-form birth certificate is itself a forgery, and 70% of the respondents in a poll in the Daily News assert that the release of the certificate does not close the issue.)

For my part, if competent authority saw fit to issue Obama a US passport–that indicates his place of birth as Hawaii–well before he became President, then he’s a US citizen, born in Hawaii.  He spent most of his youth and adolescence outside the US, and was therefore not steeped in American culture, but that doesn’t disqualify him to be President, and nevertheless, we voted for him.

In other news this week, both AlterNet.org and Glenn Beck (weird combination!) came forward with the a draft form proposed by the Department of State for new passport applicants.   The form asks for your immediate relatives (parents, siblings, children), every address you’ve lived at since birth, and every job you’ve held, including your supervisor’s name.

Once upon a time, I was a New York subway conductor.  Every day, I was assigned to a different route.  I guess my ’supervisor’ would have been the Crew Dispatcher, but I never met him and don’t remember his name.

If you weren’t born at a ‘medical facility,’ there is an additional series of questions, including your mother’s address one year before and after your birth, medical care she received, and other records of your birth.  (But if you were born at a medical facility, I guess you get the short-form birth certificate from your local Department of Vital records and you’re good to go.)

The reports don’t indicate the context in which the form will be used: whether it’s for all applicants, or just those who can’t otherwise document themselves.  The one context where the form would genuinely seem to be useful is for a child of illegal immigrants who is born in the US in someone’s house.  (As much as some may resent it, it’s still the law of the land, and even if the Constitution is changed, those already born here will still be citizens.)

But it will be genuinely be chilling if this form is required for all new passports, and freakish if it is required for renewals.

I guess I’ll find out when my passport runs out in two years.

If I have to fill out the form, I’ll have to find our who the Crew Dispatcher was.

Or can I just dig up a copy of my long-form birth certificate?

Posted in Politics, Dysfunctional Government, Barack Obama | No Comments »