November 30, 2008
Hillary Agonistes
Let me put it this way: if Obama had selected Hillary as his vice-presidential candidate I wouldn't have voted for him. I'm not quite sure what I would've done but probably I wouldn't have voted at all, for the first time since 1984 (Mondale having been a dope and Ferraro a joke). I guess I feel strongly that the Clintons are never to be trusted. And that applies to Hillary at the State Department.
November 26, 2008
Foreign Policy Failure Foretold
One of Obama's serious character deficiencies seems to be that he believes he's smarter than everybody around him. I wonder whether that helps to make him comfortable by being unaware of others' ideological, venal, and frankly criminal motivations. In any case, despite — or perhaps because of — his delusions of brainy superiority he has accepted a charmingly naïve view of establishment virtues, particularly those accruing to the foreign policy and national security establishments. And, probably due to his lack of experience with the Federal bureaucracy, he also seems to believe that, when he is president, people will do what he tells them to do. These two cognitive errors have produced a situation where, by naming only creatures of the establishment to his foreign policy and national security staff, not a single one of them will think to question currently prevailing assumptions. Nor will they allow creative career bureaucrats to suggest alternatives. Moreover, if Obama were to push his staff to rethink things they would collectively resist. Just looking at who he's surrounded himself with, it's easy to predict, already, that the first year or two of Obama's presidency will be a foreign policy disaster.
November 24, 2008
More News from Nowhere
By Werther*
Amid a collapsing financial structure and the Bush regime at ebb tide, news from Iraq is so yesterday, like security moms and color-coded alerts from the Department of Homeland Security. Occasionally, however, bulletins appear apparently out of nowhere that re-focus our attention on the hidden forces behind official U.S. foreign policy.
November 23, 2008
The EP 2008 Survey [Now Closed]
Electric Politics — amazingly — is coming up on its third year. The very first EP podcast appeared in early January 2006; subsequently, slightly more than one podcast appeared per week, on an erratic schedule, until I shifted to the current weekly podcast schedule in late April 2006 with the regular Friday morning show (and occasional 'in-between' shows). Since then I have not missed a single week of production. Wow! Knock on wood, the EP podcast will be around for quite a few more years. To continue to improve the show and better serve you, the EP audience, I've been taking a non-scientific survey at approximate yearly intervals. Please help by taking the EP 2008 survey, here. This survey will remain open until Tuesday, December 2d. Once complete, I'll report a summary of the findings. Thanks very much for participating!
November 22, 2008
The Current Account Deficit
The basic problem with the U.S. economy is that we don't make things — usually high tech things — that can be exported. Consequently we live off foreign borrowings. In the long run that's unsustainable: either the situation will correct itself through gradual adjustments or we'll have a crash. Not a little crash, like we're having now. A Great Depression style crash. In a big picture view trade imbalances are part and parcel of income and wealth inequalities, tax policies that encourage looting of the American economy through offshoring and financial speculation, and misguided Federal spending priorities, so logically those things need to be fixed first. But heuristically it's critical to understand the basics of international financial plumbing. Unfortunately, not many people do. That's why I'm greatly encouraged by Barack Obama's (reported) choice of Tim Geithner as Treasury Secretary, by far the best choice for a cabinet position that he's made to date.
November 21, 2008
Amending the Constitution
The guys who wrote the U.S. Constitution couldn't — obviously — anticipate every contingency, nor were they perfect draftsmen. As written, for example, where the Constitution provides (Article II, Section 1, para. 6) for replacing a newly elected but not yet inaugurated president, in case of death or incapacity or other reasons of both president elect and vice president elect, it has the sitting Congress make the replacement, a Congress that may well have been repudiated by the people in the same election that had chosen the new president. The 20th Amendment, ratified in January 1933, fixed that, making the new Congress the one responsible. Similarly, an electoral college tie thrown into the House would, as fixed, appertain to the Congress most recently elected. Straightening out such procedural issues was a necessary and important part of the larger purpose of the 20th Amendment: to change the date of the presidential inauguration from March 4th to January 20th, thereby lessening the damage through inaction from excessively long presidential transitions during crises — as had happened between James Buchanan and Abraham Lincoln during the outbreak of the Civil War and between Herbert Hoover and Franklin Delano Roosevelt during the Great Depression.
November 17, 2008
Rescuing Detroit
When they've been flush with cash Detroit auto makers have increased executive compensation and dividends, as opposed to, for example, Japanese auto makers who reinvested in better, more fuel efficient technology. Detroit executives, the poor cousins to Wall Street, in recent years seized every easy way to enrich themselves at the expense of workers and customers. For these executives to cry foul in the current crisis is the height of hypocrisy. And the idea of just forking over a bunch of taxpayer money so that they can keep doing what they're doing would produce no good results. On the other hand the U.S. can't afford to lose its auto makers. The solution is pretty obvious: nationalize the firms that want help, entirely replace management, retool for high-tech, high efficiency cars and trucks, and sell them cheap. Keep union benefits as they are (or increase them) and bring unions into a partnership with the new management, intending Detroit to be a template for helping other unions around the country. Since we have socialism for Wall Street then we should sure have it for working people too.
Prince of the South Side
Chicago is a wonderful place — to my mind, the most livable city in America. Large, diverse, friendly, a city of neighborhoods. Two world class universities, a world class museum, a world class symphony orchestra, jazz, food, comedy clubs, theater, baseball and football. And, oh yes, Chicago politics. It's personal, take-no-prisoners, crony, corrupt machine politics. Though one of the most sophisticated examples of American machine politics, paradoxically Chicago is also among the most parochial. Its vision doesn't extend much beyond the cornfields of the plains.
November 12, 2008
Human Rights Versus Corporation Rights
A heads up on the EP Podcast schedule. Three Fridays out, November 28th, my guest will be Ted Nace. We'll be talking mainly about his on-going anti-coal activism but also about his most recent book Gangs of America: The Rise of Corporate Power and the Disabling of Democracy (Berrett-Koehler, 2003). The coal issue is fundamentally more important but here I want particularly to draw your attention to the book, which Ted makes available as a free download. Please download it. Read the first couple chapters. Probably you'll be hooked. Even if you might not then want to read all of it do read also the last couple chapters. He's a great writer, it's a good read, and it's one of the best — perhaps the best — disquisition on the nature, meaning, potential and alternatives to the corporation that I'm aware of. Most highly recommended!! You can thank me later.
Status Quo Ante (1993)
The political cartoonist KAL once drew a strip of Warren Christopher dancing around foot outlines representing U.S. policy (in its many guises) toward the former Yugoslavia. A very funny cartoon — I have the original somewhere, KAL sent it to me. The point being, Warren Christopher is 'Mr. Cautious.' And probably that's why Mr. Obama chose him to head up the transition team for the State Department: Warren isn't likely to break anything. But neither will he do anything interesting. It now seems, unfortunately, that the across-the-board priority of Obama's transition, as it was for much of his campaign, is flawless execution. At the expense of substance. And that's a pity because the person who never makes a mistake never learns anything really useful.
[This post may be OBE, as the Obama campaign now denies an AP story reporting Christopher's role.]
November 11, 2008
International Calling
Periodically I review the equipment and software I use to produce the EP podcast. And recently I found that the quality of Skype has improved, enough so that I will try using it for international calls. When I started EP, in early 2006, Skype sound quality wasn't up to the standards I'd set. Other podcasters, coming to podcasting from radio broadcasting, had concluded the same thing. But sometime last year Skype recoded the program and now sound quality is not too bad. Indeed, in certain circumstances perhaps actually better than regular land-lines.
November 9, 2008
As Are Angels
Somewhere between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries science blessed the notion that early pre-historical human communities developed as a result of the discovery of farming practices. According to this view, somewhat later on in social evolution, as a result of agricultural surplus, would-be social elites were able to seize political power and then reify it through various norms and institutions. Notably, to display their power elites began building extravagant monuments to themselves, a practice considered more or less normal even today.
November 8, 2008
Fair Game
OK, here's the deal: If Sarah Palin ever again evinces the slightest interest in becoming a presidential candidate then she's fair game. Otherwise, let Alaskans take care of her. The press should leave her alone. Tying up loose ends of stories about what a pathetic hillbilly idiot she is is one thing, but constantly blaming her for Republican defeat is something else. It's not fair. The press should blame John McCain for picking her and ask whether he'd intended all along to make her the scapegoat. Whatever, he should have known better. Riffle through McCain's many faults instead, until it's clear exactly how and why he made such a monstrous mistake.
November 6, 2008
52/46
What a great election! Historic, though still not completely counted. ‡ It's important to keep in mind how scary it is that even with such a huge turnout — especially with such a huge turnout — as many as 46% could vote for McCain. Those people spell trouble. So while I applaud and admire Barack Obama for his 50 state strategy and his thoughtful reaching out to those who didn't vote for him, I'd feel a lot more comfortable also having some kind of explicit containment aimed at the Deep South. And some serious investment everywhere in public education. It's either that or we risk becoming too stupid to govern ourselves.
November 1, 2008
Phooey On Early Voting
The idea behind having an election can be explained fully in very simple terms. A population collectively decides on a candidate or an issue at a given time. In practice, most political systems have an election day (see, for example, Article Two of the U.S. Constitution). Not election weeks or an election month. Election day. On election day everybody votes having, as a practical matter, the same information with which to make a decision. When, however, elections get extended through weeks or a month or more then people voting, say, at the beginning of October had not yet seen the McCain/Palin ticket rejected by a string of high profile Republicans, including General Colin Powell. To some, such facts might make a difference. Having voters vote at the beginning of October with a different fact set than voters voting in early November works fine if what you want is a rolling average of public judgments but if what you really want is a single collective decision then you've got a big problem.
