Wednesday, June 29, 2005

Canadian tolerance

It demonstrates how different the directions of America and Canada are heading. In the U.S., the talk was all about getting out of a destructive, illegal war while Canada passed a law legalizing gay marriage and the transferability of these marriage licenses across the country.  With this decision, Canada becomes the 3rd country to legalize gay marriage.  It also demonstrates how backward the mainstream political culture is in the U.S.  When there are 11 states that have passed measures and constitutional amendments in the last election cycle re-defining marriage to be "between one man and one woman".  Despite being divisive and unnecessary, it shows the wrong-headedness of most of the Republican agenda.  Which way would I choose?  No war and no problem with gay marriage.

Tuesday, June 28, 2005

The Emperor is Naked

In Bush's speech today, he once again how out of touch he is with the reality in Iraq and the war on terrorism. He continues to assert that Iraq is part of the war on terror without mentioning that he is responsible for this. He speaks of the "clear path forward", when the Administration cannot even produce a coherent and consistent statement about the state and the expected length of the occupation. Cheney asserted that the insurgency is "in it's final throes" while Rumsfeld suggested that it may take 5, 6, 8, 10 or 12 years to defeat the insurgency. Every day, more people die and less order and reconstruction occurs. It is time to get out and acknowledge the illegality of the war in the first place and hold the Administration to account for the tremendous death and destruction that they caused in a domestic and international setting.

Monday, June 27, 2005

New Plutonium

Over the past 13 years, the U.S. has gotten its plutonium from the Russian stockpile on the condition that it not be used for military purposes. However, today, the government announced that it was going to start producing Plutonium 238 anew, something it hasn't done since the Cold War. The issue with the new plutonium production is not that it could signal a new atomic weapons build-up by the U.S. (the Bush Administration has clarified that desire previously). The real issue is the hypocrisy that it exposes in the Bush Administration. On the same day when the U.S. is worrying about any types of atomic activity by Iran (among others), the U.S. says that it will begin producing more refined plutonium. The same people making that decision have previously asserted that it is not ok for Iran to engage in what is claimed is a peaceful atomic program (which may or may not be true) have asserted the U.S.'s right to restart plutonium 238 enrichment as well as begin research into a new arsenal of nuclear weapons. No wonder the rest of the world refuses to believe or care about much of anything the U.S. government says. They have been shown to be hypocrites and liars.

Sunday, June 26, 2005

The Housing Bubble

In the article linked in the title, there is a fascinating chart that shows the decoupling of house prices with the 'owner equivalent rent', the amount the owners would charge if they rented the house. This value measures the consumption value of the house, the amount that the owners are paying themselves for rent, as opposed to the value of the house as an investment asset. In equilibrium the rates of growth in owner equivalent rent and the price of the house should be similar. In a speculative real estate market, the growth rate of the price exceeds the growth rate of the owner equivalent rent. This leads to what we see now, a housing boom that is resembling a bubble more and more. With the additions in types of funding, in particular the interest only loan, where the homeowner pays only the interest on the loan for the first 10 or so years, rests on the assumption that the value of the house, and therefore the price the owner can expect when it is sold exceeds the price paid. However, if the price has been artificially increased due to speculation, this type of loan can put the homeowner at a considerable risk. If the price of the house is less when it is sold then when it is purchased, the owner will be left with a lot of debt. In addition, with the refinancing boom as large as it is currently, where people are refinancing their mortgage to pay off other debt or pay for new purchases, there is an additional risk. If the housing boom stops and especially if the boom has created a bubble, the value of homes will fall significantly, reducing the net worth of people dramatically, while also increasing the debt they owe. If this phenomenon is widespread, and it appears that many people are suceptible, the resulting economic damage could spill over into the economy as a whole. If a large amount of people suddenly find themselves with less net worth and higher debt, they will cut their consumption. This cut in consumer spending would have a large impact today because the economy in the last few years has been fueled by consumer spending, often paid for by increasing debt, either in credit cards or home equity loans. If this consumer spending decreased, it could easily push the U.S. economy back into a recession that would have serious long-term consequences on median income and the distribution of income.

The American Secret Police

Within the last few days, the international backlash over the American program of rendition has heated up when an Italian judge issued arrest warrents for 13 CIA operatives over the kidnapping of an Egyptian cleric in 2003. The U.S. and Italian inteligence bureaus had been investigating the cleric, Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr, for training anti-U.S. militants for the soon-to-be-launched war in Iraq. The Italians charge that the rendition has hurt their ability to prosecute Nasr and also complain that the rendition amounted to an illegal kidnapping. They have sent the warrents to Interpol, thus compelling other countries to search for, and deport if found, the CIA operatives. In addition to the illegal kidnapping, the U.S. sent Nasr to Egypt, where he was allegedly tortured while in custody of the Egyptian police. The rendition program is stunningly and unquestionably illegal. It is essentially kidnapping, but it is also accompanied by handing over suspects to countries that are known as human rights violators. It is one of the increasingly large number of actions taken by the Bush Administration that should lead to their impeachment and hand-over to the International Criminal Court on human rights abuses and breaking international law. In addition, any information gained in the interrogations where due process is not present, and especially where torture is involved, is not very likely to be useful and is certainly not allowable in a court. The rendition program violates international (and probably U.S.) law and hurts any efforts to curtail terrorism around the world.

Tuesday, June 21, 2005

Appeasement and Compromise

Despite the instant reaction of Republicans to any check on their power ("just more Democratic obstructionism"), when the checks are eroded, the government embarks on the road to facism. There are some times when compromise is necessary, but when the Republicans try to paint opposition to their policies as a lack of compromising (i.e., compromise becomes immediate agreement to the ideas), then if a minority party goes along with this, it is not compromise, it is appeasement and it is dangerous. In a democracy, there needs to be true compromise that leads to most legislation being in between the extremes. Otherwise, the end of democracy is near.

Monday, June 20, 2005

Some Justice...

Today, two of the founders and top executives of Adelphia were sentenced to jail time. It has been part of a trend of executives being found guilty of the crimes that led to the rash of bankruptcies that began with Enron in the end of 2001. In addition to the conviction of the Rigases, Bernie Ebbers (Worldcom) and Dennis Koslowski (Tyco) have both been found guilty of fraud and other misdoings that led to their respective companies restatement of billions of dollars in earnings. It is a good sign that some of these white-collar criminals are looking forward to the prospect of jail time. However, it is interesting to note that the responsible party for the scandal that triggered the others, Enron's Kenneth Lay (a.k.a. Kenny Boy to Bush) has not been held accountable. There is also a remarkable silence from the White House about these decisions, which should be lauded as a restraint on the greedy motives driving many corporations. The two are not unrelated, I don't believe. Ken Lay was a major contributor to the 2000 election campaign of George W. Bush (he also donated his corporate jet to shuttle Bush around for some of the campaign). The Bush Administration also may not see the guilty verdicts and jail time as a good thing. They would prefer to see unfettered business, even when it results in abuses such as Enron, Worldcom and Tyco. In addition, Bush himself is guilty of similar practices that have gotten these CEOs in trouble. Firms under his control were bought out by firms owned by family friends at valuations higher than otherwise expected, shares were traded on insider information and the transactions not reported to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). In fact, the SEC was prepared to investigate Bush's insider trading, but could not because his father happened to be President at the time.

It's not going away

As much as the Bush Administration hopes it will go away (they claim it is "old news"), the Downing Street Memo and the more recenly released memos and their ramifications for the legality of the war are not fading into the past. The most striking thing displayed in these memos, although it was largely realized by the anti-war movement during the protests leading up to the war, is that Bush had his mind set on invading Iraq and was willing to fudge the intelligence that was missing and cherry-pick from what was available. As it turned out, the intelligence was largely correct on the WMD issue: there wasn't any. In lieu of that, the Administration has switched rationales for the war to "spreading democracy" and "liberation", although neither goal was presented initially in the selling of the war. Instead, what has happened is an occupation. A bloody, protracted occupation of a country that does not want American occupation. In addition to leaving Iraq, the Administration should be held accountable for waging an illegal war that has killed hundreds of American soldiers and thousands of Iraqis. I wonder where the Administration's hostility to the International Criminal Court came from. Perhaps their fears that they might be brought to justice under its laws.

Saturday, June 18, 2005

Alienate the World

Well, not content with the war in Iraq, the House Republicans have decided that there is more that they can do to piss off the rest of the world. In a moment reminiscent of the mid-1990s, when Jesse Helms led the Republican effort to de-fund the United Nations, House Republicans have passed a bill that would drastically cut funding to the U.N. if conditions are not met. On the whole, some of the conditions are not bad (whistle-blower protection, more transparency), but the Republicans seem unwilling to do anything in a multi-lateral way. Instead, they opt for aggressive unilateralism. What they do not appear to realize is that the U.N. is, at its core, a multi-lateral institution and therefore, if changes are going to be made to it, they have to be made multi-laterally. Most likely, the whole thing is a ploy to weaken the U.N. House Republicans sense (correctly, probably) that the U.N. will not make these changes just because the U.S. has decided to demand ransom money. What they hope will happen is that they will be able to flood the media in this country with talk of corruption (yet again, they bring up Oil-for-Food, but only in the context of Kofi Annan, not the American firms that were active partners with Saddam Hussein under the sanctions) and stubbornness by the rest of the world to try to build support within this country of cuttting off funding to the U.N. The rest of the world is sick of taking orders from the American government and Americans should be disgruntled (at least) that because of their government, they are seen by the rest of the world as pushy, bossy, arrogant, ignorant assholes.

Thursday, June 09, 2005

Allow the Patriot Act provisions to Expire

With the coming expiration of several provisions of the Patriot Act, Bush has been out to try to convince Americans and Congress that they are worth renewing. He is wrong. The Patriot Act was passed hastily and without the kind of review and deliberation that was necessary. It does little to improve the ability of law enforcement to catch terrorists, it's stated goal, and a lot to erode law-abiding Americans civil rights. For example, many cases in which it was used had nothing at all to do with terrorism, often they were for drug smuggling, not exactly the idea Congress had when it was passed. Supporters say that as long as we are not doing anything wrong we have nothing to fear from it. That is wrong because there is a constitutionally guaranteed protection from excessive and unwarrented government intrusion into people's personal lives and there are undoubtably cases in which innocent people's lives were intruded on, some cases even where they never know that they were being investigated, wiretapped or have their houses searched. There should never have to be a situation in which civil rights are traded for assurances of safety. For one it is a lie. It often creates a situation in which safety decreases. If the government can only wiretap someone's phone or search someone's house after going to a judge and getting a warrent, they will make sure that these efforts are not capricious because of the time committment of getting the warrent. If they do not need to go through such a process, there will be more unnecessary searches and wiretaps and a lower chance of actually catching terrorists.

Wednesday, June 08, 2005

The Bigotry Enforcers

It seems that the religious right has been emboldened to pursue more fully their ideas of theocracy and the destruction of any alternative viewpoints by expanding more into the public school system than they had in the past. Their aim this time is to kill any program that promotes any type of sexual education that is not biblically based or any program that offers the idea that it might not be morally wrong to be homosexual even going as far as to try to ban access to books that have a "homosexual theme" (i.e., they involve homosexuals in the plot). These are the new bigotry police. In the 1990s the enforcement was one of extreme, even ridiculous tolerance and change of language (remember that political correctness encouraged calling the things in the street 'personhole covers' instead of 'manhole covers'). Today, the bigotry police enforce the strict ideas they belive religion tells them: homosexuals are evil and there is a drive by homosexuals and homosexual sympathizers to indoctrinate the youth. These are the theocratic facists. They are the Christian equivalent of the Taliban, only they have not yet acquired the power to violently enforce their extremist beliefs.

One final postscript, if their ideas were in fact correct about the 'indoctrination' of youth into accepting and experiencing homosexual lifestyles, they are going about banning this the wrong way. If they really wanted to discourage homosexuality, they should have the schools teach it non-stop.

Thursday, June 02, 2005

Crazy Republicans

The link on the subject is a list of the 10 most dangerous books and it is telling of the ideology of the Republicans. It includes Karl Marx, Charles Darwin, Rachel Carson and Keynes, among others. It is a sign that anyone who criticizes religious dogma, unrestrained corporate power, the right of corporations to have their externalities remain external (i.e., they do not have to internalize the costs on society, like pollution) and a government that is responsive to economic fluctuations. It also shows their willingness to avoid certain inconvenient facts. In their description of Keynes' General Theory, they write, "When the business cycle threatens a contraction of industry, and thus of jobs, he argued, the government should run up deficits, borrowing and spending money to spur economic activity. FDR adopted the idea as U.S. policy, and the U.S. government now has a $2.6-trillion annual budget and an $8-trillion dollar debt." They neglect to mention that a vast share of this spending and debt was accumulated under Reagen, Bush Sr. and W, all Republican presidents with a particular distaste for Keynesian economics.