The Last Blog

I almost forgot to blog tonight. In fact if I hadn't reflexively checked my e-mail and found Katie's blog, I would've forgotten. I admit I'm sad school's just about over and now the dominant preoccupation has become figuring out what to do next. Worrying about homework already seems quaint.

Whatever the future holds, I'm going to miss this class even though, one of the several important things it's taught me is that I don’t really have a future as a blogger.

Defying high hopes, my Sunday night blog turned out to be predictably bad. Despite spending hours and trying really hard, I never got the hang of it. I actually seem to be getting worse as time goes by.

Almost always, I'd have been nurturing an idea during the week, only to toss it at the last minute after writing the first few lines. For some reason, when I nurture an idea over a whole week, it becomes complicated, idiosyncratic and unintelligible. For me it's better to begin from scratch about an issue that I identify as worthy of discussion, but from which I'm personally detached.

That isn't a promising method, I know. Bloggers are supposed to blog about thing's they're passionate about. But I've come to realize, during the last two semesters that most of my passionately held political and social beliefs, which seem very clear and straightforward to me initially, actually turn into personal, unsupportable vendettas and hunches, when examined critically.

Try as I might, I just can't think in terms of, and then craft persuasive arguments… even when I absolutely feel their correctness. Maybe I don’t have the patience. I don't know. But, without fail the more deeply I believe something, the more my writing becomes shrill and presumptuous.

I'm pretty convinced that it's hopeless, the other day I actually googled technical writer jobs…thinking, at least I might be able to write technical manuals… I could persuade people how to navigate their integrated home entertainment systems. That's a worthwhile service to humanity.

But as frustrating as realizing that I suck at blogging has been, it's been really good to be in this class. It's been very satisfying to experience discussion, disagreement and exploration of ideas beyond conventional conversational boundaries. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed interrupting folks in the middle of a thought, and being interrupted and proven wrong.

So, I'm using this last blog to say goodbye and good luck… and admit that I hope that I run into old classmates in the future and have the chance to interrupt them a few more times.

The Republicans should leave the FED alone

Lately the Republicans could more aptly be called The Opposite of the Democratic Party. They so often seem to define themselves by what they stand against, rather than what they stand for. Some examples:

When the Democrats wanted to extend unemployment benefits because of record breaking long-term unemployment, the Republicans decided that was a bad idea and came up with the notion that extending unemployment benefits somehow causes unemployment.

When the Democrats pursued a policy to protect American depositors from hidden fees and sudden arbitrary rule changes by consumer banks, the Republicans posited that Democrats were forcing banks to raise fees, because now they could no longer make money by punishing careless customers.

When the Democrats attempted to cut taxes for the economic groups most affected by the recession, Republicans claimed that only by additionally cutting taxes for those more or less unaffected by the recession could tax cuts spur investment.

For every move the Democrats have made, Republicans have seen fit to make a diametrically opposed countermove, whether it squares with their stated goal of lowering the deficit or not.

This contrariness can mostly be put down to everyday sleazy politics, but among the latest stances by prominent congressional Republicans lies one of the strangest counterintuitive policy declarations yet.

Senator Bob Corker (R., Tennessee), and Representatives Paul Ryan (R., Wisconsin) and Michael Pence (R., Indiana) have decided that because unemployment remains at record highs and inflation at record lows it is time for the Congress to change the mandate of the Federal Reserve. They want Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke to concern himself only with combating inflation and let unemployment take care of itself.

This is apparently a reaction to the Fed purchasing (with printed rather than borrowed money) $600 billion in U.S. Treasury securities in a quest to add monetary stimulus to the anemic economy (since with a Republican House of Representatives, more fiscal stimulus seems out of the question).

The three claim to be worried about inflation that might emerge later on. They obliquely site stagflation in the 1970s.

While the 70s are not remembered as the most prosperous time, America and the world in which it operates are in a very different place than they were in the disco decade.

In the 70s as Detroit pumped out unreliable, gas guzzling cars, an OPEC oil embargo raised the price of everything transported, heated, powered and made from oil. Wages remained stuck as prices rose.

But currently, the price of oil has risen and fallen and risen again without a demonstrable effect on inflation. The government has spent $700 billion in fiscal stimulus and unemployment has remained stubbornly high. Since the Fed began adding some of its newly printed $600 billion, the dollar has actually risen in value against other major currencies and inflation has remained at record lows, as have interest rates. As of yet there are no predictions of high inflation by major economists. Actually many economists fear deflation, or falling prices. This is because the usual reason for rising prices, is rising wages and unless you’re a CEO or an investment banker your paycheck has probably not risen for several years. That is if you're lucky enough to have a paycheck.

Which brings us back to the Republican suggestion that it's time to stop worrying about employment and start worrying about inflation, if the Republicans in question are sure of their convictions, they must be very deep economic thinkers to be able to see evidence for inflation that is somehow invisible to other economists.

One wonders what experience in macroeconomic policy the three legislators bring to bear in making such a weighty proposal for fundamental change at the largest and most important central banking institution in the world.

Well…

Senator Bob Corker was a real estate developer in Chattanooga Tennessee, with a degree in industrial management.

Representative Mike Pence was an attorney and talk show host prior to being elected.

Of the three only Paul Ryan has a college-level degree in economics and political science, but his only professional experience after college, besides interning for conservative politicians was three years working in one of the Koch Brother’s libertarian “think tanks.” No investors or businessmen seeking to forecast economic trends has ever sought his advice.

So I think it's appropriate for the Federal Reserve chairman and the American people to ignore their advice.

The Point of Pointlessness or Why I guess I’m guessing

I think I accurately imagine that I’m not being factual in this blog. Not that I think I’m any less factual than anyone else, just that I have no way of relating what I know to be facts. Actually, what I know to be facts are an indescribable, unstructured, confusing mass of impressions…beyond the scope of telling.

Telling, or writing (in this example), has, since its recorded beginning, been linear. One word follows the previous in order to create a meaning.

But my observations are not really linear. How could they be? A building is not linear. Cyberspace is not linear.

This linearity gives writing a slightly dishonest certainty. In writing, one thought must necessarily follow the other, in order to create sense. In the world one moment follows the next, but many hundreds of causes may or may not lie behind each occurrence, each circumstance.

Actually, a person has to choose to believe what they think they observe.

And actually, with the same mechanism one can choose to believe any number of things…like another person's money should belong to oneself, or that another person really deserves to be punched in the face or executed, people act on beliefs like this every day.

The truth is that any observable happenstance is likely to be connected with every other observable happenstance, caused by all the remaining observable happenstances…any interpretation of special important connections, necessarily depends on a personal opinion.

Not to mention the fact that the syntax of each sentence also imposes an unrealistic structure on spoken and written statements: a subject must take an action which sometimes affects an object, but causes and effects in the world are much more uncertain. When an abortion occurs, did the mother kill the fetus? Did the doctor kill the fetus? Did the disapproving parents kill the fetus? Did the person who impregnated the mother and refuse support kill the fetus? Or did the fetus just die? Or was he or she never alive, and therefore never killed? Choice of subject, and object are biased, personal, political decisions.

So ultimately, in order to write this blog, I admit I simply dreamed up, a set of connections, among phenomenon that I guess I observed. And so, right now, probably, is everyone else, who is bothering to make a sentence.

The point of this nearly pointless blog is that I don't have an opinion today, but that's okay and I guess I wish other people would occasionally consider not having an opinion either, based on the probability that their opinions are, in the end, just guesses anyway.

What If the flight to Security has a Crash Landing?

Could absurd prices, unreasonably low returns and hints of inflation finally burst the bond bubble?

Investors apparently seem to think that America is turning into Japan with long periods of no inflation or even deflation, but what if it isn't?

What if Fed policies designed to stimulate investment and fight deflation succeed enough to create just a small amount of inflation, what happens to bond investors paying through the teeth for inflation adjusted returns of around 1%?

Investors may not trust stocks after the flash crash, but the bigger worry should be bonds. A plunging bond market would erase billions and billions of net worth for Americans overnight.

James Montier, a blogger who works in asset allocation for asset manager GMO, is pointing out that the current state of the bond market resembles other bubbly periods with lemming-like investor behavior.

Last week Reuters reported that he warned a group of financial advisors at a conference in Copenhagen that bonds were no longer a safe investment.

“Everyone loves government bonds at the moment because they have just delivered some incredible 10 year returns, but flows into bond funds are now higher than equity fund flows at the height of the TMT bubble,” he said.

A chart from his blog illustrates his point.

The latest reports from Morningstar confirm this trend continues:

" Taxable-bond funds had solid inflows overall of $20.6 billion, but short-term bond funds have been supplanted in the rankings by world-bond and multisector bond funds, which absorbed $3.7 billion and $3.1 billion, respectively, in October."

According to this article by a director at the research department of Charles Schwab, intermediate bond funds tend to lose 4.5% for every percentage point rise in the fed funds rate. So if rates return to 5% (where they were just three and a half years ago), bond funds would lose about 23% of their value.

While high inflation is admittedly nowhere in sight right now, things could change quickly, after all the US is no stranger to low employment and high inflation caused by say...a spike in commodity prices.

Don't say you weren't warned.

Backlash to QE2 threatens Free Flow of Global Capital

Former Wharton Professor John M. Mason sees ominous signs at the recent Meeting of the G20, that restrictions on the freedom of capital could arise as developing nations react to the Fed's $600 billion quantitative easing. Countries fear QE2 will flood the world with American Money in search of higher returns and create bubbles in local economies. here's what he writes on Seeking Alpha:

"The foundation for the economic health of the world for the last fifty years has been the relatively free flow of capital begun in the 1960s. That consensus is being threatened now.

The extent of the problem is captured in the New York Times article by Landon Thomas, “Countries See Hazards in Free Flow of Capital.”

In China and Taiwan, regulators are imposing fresh restrictions on stock market investments by foreigners. In Brazil, officials have twice raised taxes on foreign investors. Even South Korea…pressure is building on the government to take similar steps.

As the leaders of the 20 major economic powers gather in Seoul, an increasing number of them have either imposed curbs or are in the process of doing so to slow the torrent of hot money into their markets…

Once a core policy commandment of the so-called Washing consensus and held dear by the United States Treasury, the International Monetary Fund, and global investment banks, the belief that unfettered capital flows are a boon for everyone—including the country on the receiving end—has been dealt a major blow."

read the whole article here

What Campaign Contributions Tell Us About the GOP’s Legislative Priorities

Beyond the obvious signature Republican issue of indefinitely perpetuating deficit-causing tax cuts for top tax-bracket Americans, John Boehner is laying out his priorities for his term as Speaker of the House and three issues are emerging as apparent centerpieces of his platform.

Lately he's spoken a lot about repealing health-care reform. Though it's unlikely that he will be able to accomplish this, recently he made a point of calling “ObamaCare” a “monstrosity.” Also he's made it very clear that he wants to undermine regulation of the financial industry, as passed by the current Congress and last but not least he's proclaimed that cap and trade, will die on the vine if he has anything to say about it.

His website explains his priorities nicely:

"He has been an ardent opponent of jobs killing "cap and trade" national energy tax, and is fighting to repeat repeal ObamaCare and replace it with reforms that will lower costs for families and small businesses, and protect jobs.

Earlier this year, Boehner--who opposed the trillion-dollar "stimulus" that didn't work--crafted an alternative "no-cost" plan to help create new jobs.

As John sees it, one of the biggest threats to the economy right now is uncertainty-uncertainty over taxes, over regulations, over the future. John's plans will help provide job creators with the certainty they need to invest, grow, and hire new workers.”

Boehner has also suggested that his good fortune in the midterm elections happened because the voters had issued "a repudiation of politicians who refuse to listen to the American people.”

This presumably means that Boehner regards himself as a politician who listens to the American people.

I thought would be interesting to see exactly which American people were supporting John Boehner's candidacy financially.

Of course, it turns out that, though Congressman Boehner prides himself on listening to the American people, the vast majority of his $3.7 million campaign war chest comes not from individuals but from various industry sponsored political action committees. While acknowledging that those industry-sponsored political action committees are probably staffed by American people, it seems important to note which PACS have an interest in his legislative initiatives.

It seems PACs that might be interested in health care legislation such as insurance, pharmaceuticals/health products, health professional organizations, hospitals/nursing homes, health services/HMOs seem to represent the largest portion of his contributors, having collectively given Representative Boehner $1,248,440 this year... 34% of his total war chest.

The next "most interested" group of political action committees seem to come from industries affected by financial reform, these include: securities and investment, commercial banking, finance and accounting. Collectively they contributed $706,966 or 19% of the total.

Finally the third most supportive group of political action committees seems to represent industries that would be affected by environmental and energy legislation. These included electrical utilities and oil and gas companies who collectively contributed 9% of the total or $356,850 to the House majority leader's campaign this year.

I know this blog is not going to surprise anyone, but somehow, it seems worthwhile to explicitly confirm what one suspects.

Election Nite 2010: Catch the action with Breitbart on ABC

ABC News is reaching out to Andrew Breitbart.

For anyone unfamiliar with who that is, he’s the right-wing blogger that got Shirley Sherrod fired with misleading, edited video. He made her appear to be a racist, so she lost her job.

Once upon a time he was a researcher for Arianna Huffington. For sometime now, however, he’s been less a journalist than a sort of impresario. He promotes and manages staged acts of journalistic theater that are gauged to generate distrust and nihilism about the media and politics.

According a statement by Andrew Morse, an ABC executive producer, “He (Breitbart) has been invited as one of several guests, from a variety of political persuasions to engage with a live studio audience that will be closely following the election results.”

In the same statement, which Mr. Morse released in order to placate his own outraged staff, he pointed out that Breitbart “is not being paid by ABC news. He has not been asked to analyze the results of the election.”

I’m sorry Mr. Morse, but that is just, not, good enough.

Decisions like this are apt to make observers wonder if ABC News has been taken-over, in secret, by skeptical philosophers for whom the possibility of truth is ultimately a false proposition.

I say this, because Andrew Breitbart is an unapologetic, serial fabricator. By his own admission, he holds conventional journalism and journalistic standards in utter contempt.

An example: On September 21^st of 2009, out of perverse curiosity, I read one of his habitual rants against the credibility of “mainstream media.” I was amazed. In the blog, he bragged about a sort of collaboration with Glenn Beck. Together they used the Acorn under-cover, fake-hooker video scandal to undermine the credibility of major news outlets like ABC that refused, at first, to report the deceptively edited video “sting” as hard news.

“Thus was born the multimedia, multi-platform strategy designed to force the reluctant hands of ABC, CBS, NBC, The New York Times and the Washington Post,” he crowed.

In the blog, Breitbart admitted that he had coached, the “activist” who made the video, put it on YouTube, told Beck and Fox about the “viral” clip, and come up with the plan to have Fox start reporting “a mainstream media cover-up” within 24 hours of the video appearing on the web. Then he bragged about his strategic sagacity on his blog.

Given this open antipathy towards the “mainstream media,” one has to wonder why he’s been given an opportunity to gain a wider audience by a news organization that has been the target of his manipulation and ridicule?

Is ABC News foolhardy, sleazy or clueless? Is the editorial staff unable to recognize the difference between passionate conservative advocacy and the calculated, strategic deception of Andrew Breitbart?

The unfortunate probability is that they have come to a decision that Breitbart’s likely contribution to conflict, drama and ratings is all that matters. There are just too many experienced editors in that newsroom for Breitbart’s inclusion to have been an oversight.

So now...If that is the way ABC intends to roll, I've got a pitch for Andrew Morse, Andrew Breitbart and any ABC executives that might be reading.

Why not double-down on spicy and innovative, political content?

My idea is for ABC to import a group of unemployed pot smoking teens to camp-out in a camera-ready Washington squat... The teens would have sex, fight, make-up and go on road trips to political rallies to rumble with Tea Partiers. I would call it “Real World: Liberal Activists.”

Think about it Andrew and Andrew, it’s genius… Political coverage might finally make money, and a new, lucrative, reality TV genre would come into being! It could even freshen up ABC’s stale weekday line-up!

Don't worry if a few wholly-invented, negative stereotypes get smuggled into the national discourse...that's actually the best part, because it would probably help ABC sell space for tons of secretly funded political ads!

It's time to get paid ABC, after all, it's only entertainment.

Shouldn't members of the Supreme Court at least pretend to avoid hobnobbing with interested parties?

Remember the days, before the Internet, cable news cycles, grassroots movements conceived in the boardrooms of PR firms and propaganda machines masquerading as think tanks? Now it seems like a distant mythical time of simplicity. It is probably the case that the past often seems less unsettled, less scary than the present, because it’s possible to know how it ended . All the same, when I was a teenager in the 80s, major institutions like the press and the government did at least appear to have standards of decorum and ethics, that seem absent today.

My father was an architect and I remember him telling me once, that he could not accept a job, because for some reason it would have caused the appearance of impropriety. In the 80s architecture jobs were few and far between, so foregoing a job for an abstract notion that had vaguely to do with his firm's image must have sucked.

But back in the day, people did things like that once in a while. Sometimes they even cared about the dignity of institutions where they worked. What a difference 20 years can make.

The New York Times reports that two of the richest men in America, the Koch brothers have been holding massive strategy sessions for the ultra-wealthy, and sympathetic media like Fox News and politicos like Jim DeMint. The gatherings are based on the need to "review strategies for combating the multitude of public policies that threaten to destroy America as we know it.” By threatening policies they mean public healthcare, campaign finance disclosures and limitations, banking reform, consumer protection, environmental protection etc. etc.

That the Koch brothers are holding these strategy sessions should not surprise anyone familiar with their past. They founded the Cato Institute which champions the “economic theory” that when taxes are lowered, the government magically receives more money from taxpayers. Their massive fortunes come from logging, oil, mining, and fertilizers, which are probably the four most environmentally damaging industries in existence. Is it surprising that they equate liberty with debunking the myth of global warming?

This doesn't bug me so much. The Koch brothers are free to use their many billions of dollars to throw as many ultra-posh, ultra-conservative soirées as they choose. More power to ‘em.

The thing that’s sad for this country is that some of the attendees of their right-wing shindigs are members of the Supreme Court of the United States: Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas.

Recently the Supreme Court ruled that the bulk of existing campaign-finance legislation is unconstitutional. Suddenly enormous, anonymous piles of cash can go straight into the service of "strategies for combating the multitude of public policies that threaten to destroy America as we know it."

One of the organizations that may further these strategies with the help of huge piles of secret funding is called “Liberty Central.”

Liberty Central’s website asks the websurfer if they are "ready to restore the greatness of America" and promises to connect them “with grassroots conservative and libertarian organizations."

Because of the Supreme Court's ruling on campaign finance we’ll never know who gave the money to start up liberty Central, which the Washington Post reports was mostly a single donation of $500,000.

We do, however, know who the leader of this intrepid group of libertarians is. It is Clarence Thomas’s wife, Ginni Thomas.

Given their shared views on things like polluter's rights and corporate freedom of speech, one wonders if liberty Central might not be looking towards the Koch Brothers for a little tiny fraction of those billions of dollars that they spend on conservative causes.

In another era a judge whose wife's business would be materially affected by a ruling before the court might have recused himself, but not these days. Clarence Thomas was content to sit on the bench and vote with fervor to allow his wife to take in as many anonymous donations as possible.

Nor does he seem to feel that it demeans the dignity of the court to attend formal partisan gatherings, that are centered on strategies for wealthy private institutions to change government policy.

But that's the era we live in, an era when many of those in power advocate for and benefit from lowering the barriers to conflict of interest in business and government.

Linda McMahon, Small Business and Federal Office

One thing that all politicians seem to stand up for is small business.

Lately, because of unemployment, the importance of small business is invoked by all sides in the tug-of-war over control of the House of Representatives and the Senate.

Glib political platitudes are mildly annoying, in general. But small businesses really do supply the majority of jobs. They are often the foundations that perpetuate communities. I’ve spent most of my adult life building, owning and running small businesses, so this particular empty rhetoric annoys me more than most.

That is why I would like every voter to know, and I will state, without fear of contradiction, that there is nothing less relevant, nothing more unimportant to a small business than a federal election.

The most famous small-business activist in the last election, Joe the plumber was after all a fake small businessman.

No matter what a candidate for federal office may tell you, their election will have nothing whatsoever to do with the success or failure of small businesses…except, perhaps, contractors specializing in federal contracts.

That's why I was so amused to hear Linda McMahon, who runs a very large, multi-national business, claim that a desire to help small business was partly behind her decision to run for the Senate.

"I think the best way that you can... incentivize small businesses so that they can grow is to keep money in their pocket... I think you keep money in the pocket of small businesses and entrepreneurs by reducing the tax burden," she said recently.

That's a lovely sentiment, but as far as small businesses are concerned it is local governments, state and municipal governments, that regulate, tax, penalize, zone and strangle small businesses. The federal government has almost nothing to do with it.

So if Linda McMahon wants to help small businesses, she should run for her local city council or, better yet, the zoning board. Because the real regulatory barriers to entry for start-up business are almost all local.

When I raised the capital for and opened my businesses, which happened to be bars, the single greatest expense beyond real estate was the local lawyers and expediters, who helped me navigate the local codes, which were numerous and onerous.

I had to pay these men almost half of my remaining budget, just to tell me what I was allowed to do. New York State dictated where I could be located and how I could purchase liquor, so that it could conveniently tax me at a rate upwards of 30% on every single drink I sold.

The city mandated what types of appliances I could buy, the size and location of my bathrooms, which contractors I was allowed to use, what hours I was allowed to remain open, what type of lighting fixtures were permissible, the fabric on furniture, the finish on the bar… almost every detail was a matter of concern for the City of New York.

And then there were the fines. I once paid $500 and spent 5 hours in court for the crime of failing to post a sign behind the bar that would've informed the bartenders that it's against the law to spit while serving drinks. These types of experiences occurred every couple of months, at random, until my heart-rate rose instinctively every time I received a piece of correspondence from a city or state agency.

So as anyone with a real neighborhood business can tell you, a compassionate fire chief or councilman can do a lot more to ease the burdens on small business than any US Senator.

Linda McMahon may be able to spend $50 million, to defeat Richard Blumenthal, but, as a senator, she won’t be able to do anything to really help small businesses.

A typical conversation about News

I have a friend who regularly appears on MSNBC, CNN, NPR, The News Hour with Jim Lehrer, and in the Times and the Wall Street Journal. He runs an economic think-tank and a small hedge fund. I'll call him Skipper, because I like that word, and I shouldn't write his name and it's annoying to keep writing My friend.

The other day, I met him before his work out, at a place called Joe’s, the science of coffee that sells very strong Coffee.

He began the conversation by saying that “the fourth estate (a.k.a. the press) is history.”

He was feeling cynical because he’d taken time to prepare for an interview about the latest jobs report and at the last minute the show had called it off because “there wasn’t enough ‘news’ in the report.”

He admitted that the number had not represented a dramatic shift, but said that beneath the surface there was actually newsworthy stuff, for example: the greatest number of jobs eliminated in the last month (some 50,000) were teaching jobs.

“So if a certain fact doesn’t fit into the ‘trend’ they were putting together as a narrative they don’t bother to report it,” he complained, gulping his coffee.

The next exhibit in his case against the integrity of journalism was his own father, a professor of physics. His father is from southern India, generally a democrat and tends towards the view that the global distribution of wealth is “not really fair.”

His father shocked him by saying “The other day I discovered that Clinton never really had budget surpluses… it was all accounting tricks.”

Skipper, who is acutely aware of Clinton’s budget surpluses, asked his father how he had come to this conclusion.

“Oh, I saw it on some news report,” his father had said.

Relaying the story, Skipper got really annoyed. “In a country that fires teachers to balance budgets, where a physicist who cares about politics, can’t even tell when a lie presented as news is false, what hope is there for a well informed public?” Skip wondered out loud.

“Clinton raised taxes very slightly, bought fewer aircraft carriers, happened to be in office during a rally in the stock market and was able to balance the budget. It isn’t rocket science to understand that, but somehow the press can’t manage to make a simple fact clear,” he vented and took another huge slurp of his Ethiopian-Sumatran blend.

Because he was frustrated, he didn’t realize at first that he was complaining as much about the people who watch the news as the people who report it.

Eventually, he modified his mild rant to target unsophisticated viewers and his point morphed into a sort of tree falling in the forest analogy.

“If economic reality is reported to a person who doesn’t understand economics (i.e. the average American voter) was it really reported?”

His frustration inspired him to continue asking absurd circular questions:

“If reality is complex, and America is busy firing teachers, what is the point of reporting reality?”

“If two journalist’s call each other liars and one is telling the truth, how does the average American tell the difference?”

Skipper was by now very amped on coffee. It’s a part of his workout regime to get his heart rate up. As he jogged off towards the gym he left me with following advise:

“Dude, why don’t you try this headline? Jobs report reveals- reality too complex. Americans unable to pay attention in class, fire 50,000 teachers last month.”

There is no point to this story, there is undoubtedly nothing that can change the fact that most Americans form opinions based on gut feeling and occasional TV watching.

Neo con man: Joe Lieberman and the next war

“Every day Saddam remains in power with chemical weapons, biological weapons, and the development of nuclear weapons is a day of danger for the United States.” - Joe Lieberman

In the end not one of those threats turned out to be current or credible.

It’s absurd to be surprised, by an easily observable pattern. If a person exhibits a characteristic, they are likely to repeat it. For example: don’t leave an alcoholic alone in a liquor store.

That’s why it’s so sad that the filibuster made Joe Lieberman indispensable to democrats in this last session of Congress… He should never have been left in charge of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security.

He was strangely determined, misguided and wrong on the facts when it came to security issues last time around and that promotion has allowed him to amplify the effects of those repeatable characteristics. Through the bully pulpit of his committee chairmanship, Lieberman has been adamant in attempting to revive the lot of the Neo-cons and their desire for constant conflict.

As far as Lieberman is concerned it is time to get ready to invade Iran.

Despite the fact that the country is already out of money from our last ill-conceived, poorly executed and ultimately murderous military expedition, he’s been on tour sowing the seeds for another bout of armed adventurism.

At the Council on Foreign Relations last week, he shared pearls of wisdom gathered on a Middle-East walkabout.

I have been struck as I have traveled in the region in recent months by what seems to me to be a heightened uneasiness about the future of American power there. Behind closed doors, one hears an unmistakable uncertainty about our resolve and staying power.

God forfend that American military virility be perceived as lacking staying power.

To prevent that, Lieberman believes we must again show the Muslim world just exactly how assertive the United States can be.

It is time to retire our ambiguous mantra about all options remaining on the table. It is time for our message to our friends and enemies in the region to become clearer: namely, that we will prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapons capability…with military force if we absolutely must.

I understand that Lieberman has a profound concern or the welfare of Israel, but is there really any evidence that Israel is safer post Iraq invasion? Is peace and stability really what a reasonable person would foresee as the result of a third US military invasion in the middle east?

No, it isn’t desirable for a despotic and dishonest regime like the theocracy of Iran to have fissionable materials, but is a financially exhausted, recession prone, culturally and politically fragmented United States really perpetually responsible for stability and security on the other side of the planet?

I think most Americans feel that deficits and unemployment are the real threats right now.

It’s time to focus on America’s decrepit infrastructure, profoundly diminished middle-class, and failing social safety net, and give regime change a rest.

Heroes Get Nothing

So you're sitting at a bar talking to a friend and you incautiously express the opinion that the New York City Fire Department is a pain the ass. Their sirens are too loud, the main thing they do is fine people for storing stuff in exit stairways and evict people living in commercial buildings. And, incidentally, it is far more dangerous to be a construction worker, delivery driver or garbage collector.

Should have kept your voice down.

Next thing you know you and your friend are surrounded by a screaming, drunk, steroid inflated, crew of heroes getting very loud and repeatedly violating your personal space. There are three at first and then four more come up to "show support." The band of New York's bravest are so close your face is getting moist with foul smelling spray saliva. They are informing you that you're a punk, a pussy, a piece of sh-t.

The bar owner who has a nose for when things are about to get out of hand decides to call the cops even though the first rule of bar ownership is never call the cops.

He might have mentioned intoxicated firemen, because three cops arrive in record time. They start calming the furious firefighters and getting between them and you and your friend. One of the largest heroes keeps craning his neck to look at you over the shoulder of the cop that's restraining him to say things like "you're fu*kin' lucky punk, I would have broke your fu*kin' neck for you!"

Eventually, the heroes decide to leave as a group after draining some complimentary beers.

On his way out, satisfied that things are under control, the head cop turns to the bar owner and says "You know what? I should really arrest these two jerk-offs, (referring to you and your terrified friend) those guys risk their lives every day and what do they get? Nothing!"

Hmmm...The heroes get Nothing?

Well, not exactly. While it is no doubt rougher for beginning heroes, the average salary in the NYFD last year was $94,571.00...not counting fringe benefits. The value of those benefits like family health insurance, paid sick leave etc. comes to $33,793.00 per hero. At least if the 2010 New York City budget is to be believed.

Additionally, after 20 years of heroism, they can retire at 50% of their last year's pay. And if they have disabilities which 72% of them manage to have, they retire at 75% -tax free. Interestingly most of those those disabled heroes are just able to work a significant amount of overtime on their final year despite their worsening disabilities.

That last burst of heroism pays off, according to this year's official reckoning the taxpayers of New York City paid $58,841.90 in pension commitments to retired firemen for every firefighter still on the job. The most of any group of City employees.

WORRIERS UNITE! Opportunities are not being acted upon, Details overlooked!

Labor Day: a time reflect on the state of Labor in America.

Atypically, at barbecues nationwide, Labor (or the lack of a demand for it) is actually a topic of conversation today.

If you have a job you’re supposed to feel lucky, no matter how boring, obnoxious and poorly compensated it is. If you like your job that means it is probably a very desirable job, so relaxing long enough to down a few hot dogs amongst friends is kind of a bad idea. If you’re wasting time reading this blog, you should perhaps realize you’re undermining yourself.

Why read someone else's opinion when you should be writing your own job-related blog right now, or at least tweeting. Optimally, you might research the people you’re likely to meet at any gatherings you’re going to. There’s never a bad time to network or develop clients. Approaching complete strangers with a thorough knowledge of their back round, interests and current professional activities can really give you an edge in terms of breaking the ice.

If you insist on clinging to the antiquated idea of relaxation for it’s own sake, it's probably a bad idea to kick back with the paper; some of the articles are likely to mention people who have lost good jobs, because they didn’t leverage their free-time, and use social engagements as a chance to mine new contacts.

Labor day is depressing. Reading about and reflecting on the current state of labor leads mostly to the conclusion that the jobs available now are either mind-numbing, repetitive and poorly compensated or a hectic, sleazy, tedious, scrabble to stay employed.