A few thoughts on Obama's new economic plan

AP - Under pressure to energize the economy, President Barack Obama will put job creation and American competitiveness at the center of his State of the Union address, promoting spending on education and research while pledging to trim the nation's soaring debt.

...And Obama may have been in better political shape pushing the now defunct (or at least "funct" over) health care program. At least that could justify itself, in spite of any inevitable waste or corruption, on a moral need. Building and economy, however, does inevitably involve a lot of rich types partying at the country club and extending a lot of expensive hospitality to merely possible customers. People already object to the banks' apparently premature spreading of wealth, and such savings institutions are the greatest cause for growth in investment captial.

Worse, with his health care program untested and this an obvious opportunity for media complaint, Obama may end up, in the public mind at least, as a two-time loser in spite of having only one program in place and that one being economic and therefore ambiguous in its end result.

Oddly though, to grow the economy, Obama may just want to bail out the banks again. Of course they're not in trouble currently, but that's not important. Active banking will increase the amount of investment capital available through a process of re-saving. Essentially, two-thirds of every dollar in every bank goes into some investment somewhere and ultimately ends up in the paychecks of the end-recipients on those projects. At least some of those recipients then save at least some of that money, and that point the banks receiving it record that income as part of their investment capital in spite of its presence on the records of the first bank as well. Through this necessary white lie of finance, the total number of dollars available for investment then grows, but in response to the needs of the market rather than any government guess about future markets.

Just a few thoughts.....

A few thoughts of U.S. trade with China

The U.S. probably cannot escape trade with China. These days, the process of making anything requiring more than on step to manufacture almost invariably crosses at least one nation's border, and usually more than one. Given the sheer cheapness of Chinese labor and currency then, some manufacturer somewhere will, at any given time, be buying parts or services from China, and Americans will be buying the end results.

Any law attempting to prevent such trans-national transactions will be a fiction. Foreign manufacturers supplying American ones with parts or services will, after all, have a legitimate right to use Chinese suppliers, and even in the face of such a law against trade with China, they would only have to purchase such things through a third party to grant themselves plausible deniability on location of supply. In light of this problem then we might as well grant ourselves access to that reserve of cheap resources and at least one non-military means to threaten the Chinese in times of conflict: embargo in its many, many forms.

Admittedly, Trade with China will be a little scary. As the world's largest economy under one decision-making body and a communist state with at least an ideological desire to hinder the U.S. and capitalism, China just might have at least some desire to harm the American economy. To do that in any greater way than currently, however, China would have to supply a controlling percentage of U.S. imports at prices too low for other suppliers to compete, and to deal with such a threat, we simply have to keep other trade partners such as Japan and The European Union in our economic little black book for use in the event of being monetarily "stood up." Without such a problem though, the added competition may ultimately give us better and cheaper goods from both the Chinese and our current trade partners.

Just a few thoughts....

A few thoughts on gay marriage

Almost all discussion of gay marriage has been on moral grounds--the rightness or wrongness of a union between two members of the same sex, whether considered in religious or secular terms. Unfortunately, I'm not a very good moralist, and so I'd like to present a somewhat more practical view: in my opinion, forcing gay unions into the same legal status as heterosexual ones is probably going to complicate matters such as entitlement, divorce, alimony and custody fantastically. To share a few of the possibilities:

1) Adultery is a grounds for divorce in both civil and canon law, but many gay couples do seek another member to their relationship to reproduce. Therefore, either courts will have to change the accepted definition of adultery to accommodate this practice, or gay couples will have to forgo the possibility of parenthood during any marriage. The first possibility may very well leave philanderers of either orientation able to exploit this new definition for their own purposes, but the second will certainly come under fire from gay-rights groups.

2) Alimony decisions may be arbitrary, but they are predictable. As a rule, without clinching evidence to the contrary the court will define any wife as a homemaker and grants her restitution. Defining one party of a same-sex marriage as the homemaker and the other as the breadwinner, however, will, almost undoubtedly, require a more random and arbitrary ruling. Expect a certain amount of injustice and confusion to result.

3) The very need to introduce another person into a gay marriage in order to have children will force courts to judge the parental rights of three people, one with only a step-relationship to the child and another without a marital relationship to anyone. Asserting the rights of either of these parties will set precedent affecting persons with similar relationships to the children of heterosexual marriages, and, obviously, at least some marital partners, sperm-donors or womb-renters are going to address the court over perceived and even real injustices.

In all, the legalization of gay marriage seems likely to put both heterosexuals and gays into a deeper legal mire, and in light of this, those in homosexual relationships may simply want to define themselves as the legal equivalent of a purchasing co-operative. In a sense, they are indeed that, and the sheer simplicity of that idea would present American law with a more copable set of questions.

Just a few thoughts.....

A few thoughts on Sarah Palin

After Sarah Palin's most recent interview, pundits, even conservative ones, are pronouncing her hopes for the presidency dead. Oddly though, nearly everyone once did the same for Dennis Kucinich's ambitions to be anything beyond a one-term mayor of Cleveland, and he currently represents Ohio's district 10, an area including that very city. Likewise, after failing to win the presidency in 1960, Nixon obviously did end up as a president.

These people don't just lay down and die, damn it. Hell, according to Wikipedia even Jerry Springer thought about throwing his sleazy hat back into the ring as late as 2003. Palin is not about to give up. In fact, she's keeping herself on the countries news-screens, and intentionally or not, she may even be developing a means to gain popularity. Given the usefulness of even bad publicity, after all, her gray publicity might be even more usable than that. She's basically been arguing about a set of non-issues, such as the semantic propriety of the words "blood libel," and a decent spin-doctor could easily twist even greater negatives than that into positives.

For me, though, Palin does face at least one serious political problem: she seems to have made herself less of a politician and more of a personality, less of a statesperson and more of a celebrity. I no longer hear people talking about her policies--and some have certainly inspired discussion!--but about Sarah the person: the wife, the mother and, only thereafter, the Governor. This focus on Palin the person has successfully distracted us from any real issues of her administration, but in doing so, it has also elevated each question about her to one on our acceptance of both her and her entire administration. As a result, then, any complaint about any of her decisions may become a challenge, not simply to some small number of decisions, but of her overall competence, and an opponent wiling to "go negative" may be able to keep her on the defensive--and a candidate on the defensive tends to lose support. Just ask Barak Obama.

Furthermore, on a moral level, her elevation of herself to celebrity leaves us less able to make informed choices about government under her. Personally, I sympathize with Ms. Palin in a number of ways. Like us, she seems to face problems in her marriage, family and job, and, like us, she may take hard-to-explain steps to solve them. On the other hand though, I can neither agree nor disagree with most of her policies; after all, I simply don't know them! My daily paper and even my My Yahoo page (geared for an absolute news junkie) feature stories on the dramas of Palin's life but nothing about her decisions. Hell, in light of this ignorance, she may already be running the risk of losing voters due to a small but unshrinkable doubt about her candidacy.

Just some thoughts.....

A few thoughts on Obama's health care plan

According to an article in yesterday's Michigan City News-Dispatch, the democrats have realized the tepidity of their "matter of policy" justifications for the proposed health care system, and to prevent Republicans from simply ridiculing it as more meaningless government spending, they will now be attempting to defend the program on moral grounds. Personally, of course, I love any attempt at ethical behavior, even one motivated by self-interest, but to actually reach a driveable stretch of The High Road, democrats should keep a very clear idea of at least three of the concerns of the common citizen in mind:

First, we, or a close relative or friend, have been down to the V.A. hospital, or the emergency room, or the office of the insurance agency chosen by our employer, and the people at that location denied us or our loved ones genuinely needed medical attention but granted seemingly superfluous care to those simply luckier or more able to con the system than ourselves. in light of this, we fear having to pay more than the current drain on our income to receive more of the unacceptable same.

Second, we also fear our own inability to predict the effects of a bill too long to read, memorize or interpret. The thing probably has no specific clause mandating a jail sentence for leaving one's tonsils in place of course, but able and motivated government officials just might be able to find a way to bring some sort of consequence on those refusing procedures. We unfortunately have no way of foreseeing such an outcome, though, and so we live in tension.

Oh yeah, and as a last point, we also fear crafty recipients of health care benefits exploiting this larger system as a form of welfare. Each of us knows at least one person already purposely striving to meeting the letter of the law of current program's requirements to gain some sort of government benefits, and we fear their use of this larger aid program in a similar but more expensive way. This may not be a humane viewpoint of course, but it does reflect the ugly reality before our eyes.

Answering these issues just might give health care supporters the chance to usher in a new and progressive social program into American life, and failing to do so may leave the public at the very least scratching its head. As a citizen, I ask them to try.

Just a few thoughts....

A few thought's on North Korea's Nuclear Arsenal

"I think they"--North Korea--"will come to the point where they can no longer sustain the burden of military expenditures," Chun Yung-woo [South Korean nuclear envoy] told "PBS NewsHour.

Chun's statement above could be nothing more than a show of unconcern in the face of a growing North Korean nuclear potential. On the other hand though, it just might show a real understanding of North Korea's reason's for bringing China, the U.S., Russia, Japan and South Korea to the bargaining table: North Korea apparently needs everything....

North Korea's "Army First" policy appears, at least according to the news, to have made that country pre-existingly poor, even for a Marxist state, and a recent set of destructive floods cannot have helped them to rise above that poverty. Worse though, according to a report on NPR a few months ago, defectors from The People's Republic of That Place Next to China have reported corruption rife enough to be the most important source of income for most officials; the waste of even the few economic resources available for recovery must be vast!

North Korean leader Kim Il-Jong probably has his hands tied in dealing with these problems. No government, especially not an authoritarian one such as his, has ever seemed to find the real markets (read: the real material needs) of its society through legislation. The process is just too slow and clumsy. Worse, the large number of regulations and laws normally imposed on any effort at production in such a country will hinder and perhaps even halt any initiative for the re-development of even poorly directed production. The corruption is, of course, just the rancid icing on the out-of-date cake. It may actually be nothing more than a final superfluous barrier to an already impossible goal.

Some experts see Kim as too deluded to understand his country's situation or too self-serving to care, but he could also just fit Kissinger's description of many Asian leaders, a follower of Confucius attemting to rule though some self-perceived virtue and assuming the inevitability of a positive outcome given this trait. In any of these cases though--in fact in any case other than his complete recognition of his supposed situation--Jong will not go down without a fight, and given a North Korean nuclear capacity, that could be a hard fight indeed.

The fight, though, just might be a diplomatic one. Jong might be using the threat of developing nuclear weaponry as a means to drag the super-powers and the countries most vulnerable to his threat to the bargaining table to extort aid. Even a lunatic, a nepotist or a Son of Heaven would see the pragmatic benefit of such a plan, and it would spare him the expense of actually developing nukes.

Given this situation, we probably don't have to give in to his demands, though. With China as his backer, he, like China, may lack any real delivery system for his bombs. Furthermore, the mysterious launching of a missile from the West Coast last November may have been a message to Jong on our own capacity and willingness to vaporize his cities and defenses in the face of his supposed threat. Certainly he stopped rattling nuclear sabers after that launch. We can bargain with him, then, from a position of strength, and our position may only strengthen with time. Japan and South Korea may be somewhat afraid of North Korea, but China and Russia seem tired of the whole damn nation. The Russians are probably too busy with their own problems to turn their attention to China's half-pint, and since the breakdown of Korean forces brought the American Army to the Chinese border in 1950, the Chinese at least seem to have viewed their southern neighbor as a political liability. Rather than risk confrontation with the U.S. over the interests of another state then, China and Russia may be more likely to pressure their fellow communist state into being less of a headache. In other words, North Korea may end up trying to negotiate without any support for its interests other than its possibly disproven nuclear threat. She may be in no position to demand anything at all.

Just a few thoughts....

A few thoughts on the deficit

Oddly, I will not comment on the budget itself. The thing is not, after all, a single entity, a budget, but a massed set of thousands of pieces; and each piece has earned the approval of at least one congressperson and the acceptance of one or more congressional committees. Each part then, at least presents itself as serving the supposed legitimate interest of somebody's constituency. Beyond that, I would also drive readers crazy trying to justify or invalidate legislation meant to meet the needs of some distant place. I couldn't possibly get through all the minutae of the thing.

Of course, Congress is in roughly the same shape. Not even a single member of the House or the Senate--nor even a single one of their aides--will have read the entire bill; and, like me, none of them will even have a means to determine the supposed purpose and justification for any expenditure at all. Regardless of that though, congress has already voted for the thing and now, paradoxically, will start to eliminate parts of it in an effort to please voters. Of course, all during this process, various economists and statisticians will make justifications and recriminations over each line of text, but, unfortunately, they will only rarely state any justification for their opinion beyond their supposed status as experts. Because of this, and in hopes of provoking a little thought on the matter, I'd like to present the following set of questions to ask about the passing or repeal of any expenditure:

1) Does this bill cut any exiting government expenditure?. To name one example: The government faces certain losses for uncollected medical and legal fees through the burden of "bad debt," a means for professionals and others to deduct unpaid bills from their taxes. Therefore, the cost of medicade, medicare, V.A. health care and supplied legal services is at least somewhat smaller than the sum paid for them, and other services may have similar deductions. A real tab of the "cost" of any government expenditure must account for this sort of figure.

2) How much did this expenditure shrink the economy? All taxes end up in somebody's paycheck, and that person will, of course, either spend or save that money, ultimately stimulating the economy to at least some degree. To determine the economic loss from taxation then, the supposed experts will have to determine the difference between the stimulation expectable from the spending and savings of the money's original possesor to the stimulation expectable from the spending and savings of the ultimate recipient.

3) What is the total dollar benefit of this expenditure to the economy? Roads obviously foster trade, but the police, the E.P.A., welfare, health care and legal aid all prevent losses in productivity due to disruptions from crime or the ill health or workers. They therefore operate at a cost less than the gross payments to them, and statisticians and economists must therefore figure this dollar amount into their assessments of the worth of any of these programs. Again, examples of such cost/benefit relationships probably do not stop with those listed....

But then, the list of considerations probably doesn't stop with this list, either....

A few thoughts of revolt in Tunisia

According to one source:

(AP) TUNIS, Tunisia – After 23 years of iron-fisted rule, the president of Tunisia was driven from power Friday by violent protests over soaring unemployment and corruption. Virtually unprecedented in modern Arab history, the populist uprising sent an ominous message to authoritarian governments that dominate the region.

Well, Americans are once again welcoming a supposedly anti-despotic revolution in the Middle East. I do of course hope for the Tunisians to secure the blessings of liberty to themselves and their posterity, but unlike the the reporter above, I have some knowledge of such precedents for this event as the Shah's ouster and the Moroccans revolution against the French. None of these produced a one-man one-vote system of anything, and so, to judge from experience, even after this coup, Tunisia may well be in for more of the depressing same.

Certainly the Tunisians are not demonstrating enough love of freedom to inspire hope. They did not fight long or hard to remove their despot. They do not seem to have established militias or a secondary government. Instead, they just seem to have rioted in order to drive out a very driveable old man. Worse though, they did not fight to end over-government but to establish a government strong enough to control the economy and create jobs. In light of this apparent unconcern for their liberties then, the Tunisians are unlikely to make the many daily sacrifices necessary to maintain them, and their future government may well therefore be another unelected weight upon their lives. In fact, given their stated goals, a tyrant promising jobs, land and bread may find himself not simply unopposed but welcomed. Certainly current authorities are facing no real opposition:

(http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/A/AF_TUNISIA_RIOTS?SITE=NMALJ&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT), "plainclothes police were seen hustling some people off the streets of Tunis, which was under curfew. One was clubbed, another was dragged on the ground."

A Few Thoughts on Snow in Hawaii

Scientists have been discussing green-house gasses and global warming since the seventies, and on paper their ideas look good. Carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide and methane all do trap infra-red light as heat, and so a surplus of any of these gasses should raise the temperature of the Earth. Heck, in confirmation of this idea, we do see a general rising of temperatures; but, strangely, we also see signs of increased cold. Snow has fallen in Hawaii, Iraq, South Africa, Argentina and, for the first time ever, in Thailand. Clearly, something else just may be going on, perhaps an increase in climactic variability, a set of many changes to the environment from all the many different effects of humanity on that environment. In other words, we may not be facing global warming so much as global weirdening.

Now any increase in the variability of weather such as global weirdening would be very likely to escape the notice of scientist. A scientist running an experiment is almost always looking for changes in something's average rather than its deviation, and so he or she is likely to ignore record highs and lows of temperature as mere distractions from the real data of a stable average temperature. In such a situation, however, that "stability" of temperature may be the result of increases in the number of both high and low temperatures rather than a continuation of of previous ones. Worse though, in not noticing the degree of variability in temperature, meteorologists may well be ignoring the more impactful consequences of a less predictable environment. Farmers, economists and city planners, after all, may be able to take effective measures against simply a continued heating and drying, but each new possibility for change will increase the expense, effort, loss and suffering of those people. Worse still, having such extremes occurring so near to each other may well create further problems. Tornadoes, for one example, result from the meeting of hot and cool air massed, and global weirdening should indeed increase such meetings. Interestingly, much of the world is at least reporting an increase in the number of tornadoes....

A few thoughts on Jared Lee Loughner

Some news have suggested that the inflammatory political rhetoric so common today may have fueled Jared Lee Loughner's homicidal rage, and these news-writers and -editors are asking us to sheath such verbal weaponry in order not to arm further such psychos. Unfortunately though, judging any words by the reaction of the people least able to cope with them ignores a simple fact: anyone, like Loughner, unable even to sit in a class or walk a dog is likely to find something to be an idiot about, regardless of the media available to them. Furthermore, even the utter elimination of negative speech in politics will not elevate the rhetoric used; politicians will simply find politer ways to imply the necessity of removing their opponents from the political landscape and will thus simply probably motivate murder by the maladapted in a more gentle way. Dedicated politicians upholding a good cause, however, will lack at least one means to express the emotional force of their cause, and the electorate will still remain unprepared to face such verbal manipulation from their candidates.

How 'bout we just uphold critical thinking? We have to use it in other parts of out live....