nancylebov | Outliving the US: the comments

Outliving the US: the comments

The other day, I asked whether people expected to outlive the US, and got some very interesting replies.

The most noticeable similarity was that no one expected anything good to come of an end to the US, which probably supports the idea that the US is very stable.

tahkhleet posted a substantial core dump about politics and the state of the culture. I'm feeling rather swamped. This is unfair. Overloading people is *my* job.

Still, I'm going to pick out some bits. However, I recommend reading the whole thing.

Is Obama genuinely that awful? I'm disappointed that he isn't prosecuting those responsible for torture (and NPR did a bit about how he used the word torture before he was elected, but has dropped it since then). Is he letting *everything* important slide?

I'd have thought he's at least smart enough to take a lesson from what Katrina did to Bush's reputation.

Two "do my homework" questions:

Are his foreign policy advisors really all hawks?

How did he handle things when he was a community organizer? Did he get useful work done?
Slightly different angle about the financial elite: One of my friends believes that credentialism is part of the problem. The most likely way to get one of those very well-paid jobs is to be totally focused on the exhausting work of getting the right degrees. Aside from

tahkhleet's point that only someone who's got bad values will be willing to do the work, getting the credentials means being totally focused on incentives rather than paying attention to the larger system.

Back to my pov: Having a system which makes room for competence is a very subtle problem. If people are totally shielded from consequences, whoever is good at social climbing will get the rewards, and the quality of work goes to hell. If there is too much effort to make sure the right thing is done, people game the measurement system, and the work goes to heck.

Genocide: I've been wondering for a while whether I'll see a nation commit auto-genocide (over 75% of population killed). It just seems as though people go nuts that way occasionally, and people are much more dependent on infrastructure than they used to be. Still, I don't know that the elites are dreaming of wiping a lot of the rest of us out, though worries about overpopulation can be read that way.

For purposes of this discussion, it isn't necessary that the elites would actually benefit from genocide, just whether enough of them strongly believe they would.

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Right.

OK, this usually ends badly, but I will try.

In the last hundred days, the Obama Administration has:

1) Reversed the Bush Admin policy on stem cell research,

2) Reversed policy on Guantanamo,

3) Developed stimulus legislation designed not merely to introduce capital, but to fundamentally restructure significant sectors of the economy,

4) Expanded S-CHIP,

5) Proposed and implemented a mortgage rescue fund,

6) Proposed significant credit card regulation to prevent predatory practices,

7) Proposed a mammoth budget with significant health care reform as its centerpiece,

8) Managed the DTV transition tolerably well,

9) Begun redeployment of military assets from Iraq to Afghanistan,

10) Reversed Bush Administration determination on greenhouse gasses,

That's off the top of my head. For anyone of these you can argue that it is not going right, he's too timid, he's not going fast enough, he's too protective of incumbent interests, or whatever substantive argument you may have. But it seems a trifle unfair to call this "autopilot."

The process of implementation is further hampered by the inability to fill key political appointments for a variety of reasons (some self-inflicted, others less so). To take one dramatic example, we did not have a Secretary of HHS until today. This nomination was delayed because of conservative opposition to Sebelius' pro-choice positions. The result of this delay has been to significantly hamper the ability of HHS to implement numerous programs, including the existing Swine Flu outbreak.

From where I sit, which is pretty darn close, this Administration has been working along a fairly consistent line of trying to prioritize the economic recovery, staff up with competent individuals while satisfying various political constituencies, while dealing with a variety of divergent crisis. In the last several weeks, we have seen the appointment of a number of critical appointments below the Senate confirmation level that will have significant impact on policy and implementation (to name a few: the appointment of Alec Ross at State, the appointments of Gene Kimmelman and Phil Weiser to the DOJ antitrust division, the appopintment of Jonathan Adelstein to RUS, the appointment of Miriam Shapiro as Assistant USTR, the appointment of Larry Strickling to head NTIA). While I can think of appointments I'm less happy with (the appointment of a number of Jenner & Block lawyers to critical intellectual property enforcement posts), this is consistent with building a generally pro-consumer, pro-tech, pro-science Administration as promised.

Having now gone through three transitions (tail-end of Clinton when I was a wee pup, Bush, and now Obama), I think these guys have handled things pretty well. I also think the Administration has been pretty consistent in its strategy and priorities. I see no sign of the Administration strategy being "cracked." Wrong in spots, IMO, but not "cracked."

Well said indeed. Also, he's eliminated the global gag rule on abortion and told the DEA to not pursue action against the medical marijuana trade.

...and you don't seem to understand the budget very well either.

1,2 and 10 are cosmetic measures.

1: About as significant as Bush trumpeting how Christianity is important. It heartens people who agree with that ruling but has almost NO impact on anyone today and probably not anytime during his term. I officially bet you $50.00 that by the end of his term, no new life saving therapies from foetal stem cell research will have come into use.

On 2, Obama quietly has started adopting the Bush language again, stealthily. He started using "enemy combatant" again after dropping the term. He started using "enhanced interrogation" again instead of torture. More importantly, he has had his lawyers EXPLICITLY ENDORSE the Bush theory of the "invincible executive". His lawyers said the executive has no limits on its power save for what the executive determines. The House, Senate and Courts can go spin. This is not the declaration of a man who is serious about reversing the stain of Guatanamo. You notice he still hasn't resolved what to DO with them. If he sends them to Bagram that is not exactly an improvement. (Bagram's where most of the "unfortunate fatalities" during "enhanced interrogation" have happened lately)

On 10, have you heard him do anything to reverse the Bush deregulation by executive orders of environmental protection measures? To me that's the barometer of his true colors. He'll pass a carbon tax and push recycling...and those things don't matter. Recycling just extends the productive value of resources. If we don't use radically less, we're going to drown in our own waste. One of my friends noticed in his area, the motto is "Recycle, re-use, reduce" instead of the opposite, which stresses the primacy of "REDUCE". A carbon tax only matters if it makes people use green technology or take environmental measures. I've yet to hear a proposal that way which would accomplish that. Its just an excuse to push the middle and lower classes down.

8 and 9 are just autopilot.

On 8: Sounds like the "crisis" was overblown. I admit, I'm not that educated on it, but again: how does this matter? He delayed a policy by four months. He gave it more money. But the number of viewers affected is something like 2 in 1000. (since the "still unprepared" rate of 1.9 is in only .2% higher of "never plan to convert" rate) I'm sure those 2 elderly pensioners will have real distress over this. But I am skeptical given the aggressive advocacy of AARP that money to get converter boxes for this handful will not be a major horrible crisis. Bush was willing to accept the delay of his baby, the Western Hemisphere Security Initiative. I'm far from convinced he'd have insisted on immediate, as is implementation of the HDTV transition.

(Btw, -_that's_ going to cause real headaches in six weeks. Obama hasn't done a thing about that for fear of being found "soft on terrorism".)

On 9: Did he commit to disengaging from these pointless military actions? no. The amount of military activity is staying the same. The army and marines continue to get closer to breaking (this is the opinion of the PENTAGON and he's ignoring it just like Bush did). He isn't WITHDRAWING from Iraq either. He's reducing forces. http://www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/5910 Besides, the Iraqis demanded the troops be withdrawn. No one's said what happens when the US air force and the 10-20K troops needed to maintain the megabases the US spent billions on are still there in 2012.

4,5,6 "mandatory incrementalism"

but I still question if giving Obama marks for them is any more appropriate than the automatic 'action items' for "base support" that Bush did in his regime. He did after all spend a fair bit of effort doing things that his base would approve of.

re: 4 Ok, I can't say anything genuinely bad about this. However, given that all he did is say "spend more money on this" I don't count it a work of great genius. Especially since his LACK of genius will thrust enough Americans into poverty that the odds are the program will go bankrupt.

5: Pretty stingy. I'll grant, Bush probably wouldn't do that. But the way he did this implies when the PRIME mortgage holders enter hell later this year he'll be tardy in helping them...if at all.

6: Too little. He's also talking about bailing out the credit card companies. If it goes like the banks is going to be an absolute mess which empowers the CCC's at the expense of their clients. He didn't do anything about payday loans, which make loan sharking look friendly (literally! 60-200% interest rates for loan sharking versus 1300% for payday loans!)

http://www.reuters.com/article/rbssFinancialServicesAndRealEstateNews/idUSTRE53J6OR20090420 talks about how the CCC's feel they need to resist more regulation. So it doesn't seem their style has been cramped too much so far or it would be talking about repealing _existing_ regulations. Moreover the democrats before this point have not been exactly spirited in their defense of the consumer.

3 and 7 : total smoke and mirrors.

You seem to have fallen for a common fallacy: by looking at the NUMBER of things someone has done, you lose sight of the relative _weights_ of the _value_ of what they are reporting. There are only three items on that whole list that are of any significant value. But they pale in comparison to the two items you drew no special attention to. The budget and the stimulus package.

The budget is an exercise in misdirection and unreality. It assumes that next year, the GDP will grow by 3.2% and this growth plus higher taxes will pay for a significant chunk of the spending. That is grossly unrealistic. This is not chump change. 14.33 trillion GDP. if we contract again another 1/2 percent (that's being generous) that's 3.7 % error in change in GDP. That's about $530 billion in GDP, of which about half goes to taxes. The total tax rate on all activity is roughly 50%.

So that's about 265 billion in lost revenue owing to unwarranted optimism. That's about 1/8th of the budget's revenue gone. This is significant. If the budget held steady and your ran up 12% a year instead of say 2% a year (let's assume no president is going to avoid being a little over optimistic). That means with a realistic president you'd have added an entire year's GDP to the national debt in 36 years...or in SIX years.

The federal debt was about 1 trillion...the deficits from the next two fiscal years will triple that. (Never mind the 2 trillion from the bailout bill and stimulus package). So we will see the federal debt go to about 5 trillion. The 2007 budget had 22% of its funds go to paying the debt on 1 trillion. Do the math. The formal debt of the US gov't is about to swallow the country. He is gambling on HUGE increases in revenue to continue into 2012 and beyond. There is little sign to think this.

Obama cites the "banner" unemployment rate of 8% instead of the "real" unemployment rate of 18% when you include the "discouraged" job searchers. That's the ones who prefer being poor or dependents to trying to find work. This includes a huge number of disabled people who have been excluded from social security because y'all won't recognize your pressure cooker society is making people SICK in record numbers.

And people just let this pass because what can they say? "Ooops, we're doomed"? Everyone assumes things will just work out because they always have in the past. The budget assumptions don't even mention the fact that there is no longer any credit being extended to America by China and the other "net saver" countries in any significant quantity. (Saudi is about to go bankrupt and THAT will sack the only possible late arriving saviour for the American bond market).

You can say "its not fair, how could he avoid this?" Well, if he hadn't exhausted America's credit on worthless endeavors, and he hadn't acted in such a reckless fashion that no one will lend to you...maybe there would be options.

There is no possible outcome of his stimulus that can yield a high enough % growth in the economy to prevent a default. He has utterly failed in his most important task barely a season into his presidency. Was it a fair task? A reasonable task? No. But his deceptions and lack of due diligence have ensured that what damage could have been controlled mostly was not. This failure totally eclipses anything on your list. It's a failure that happened from his corruption. He thought he could shovel a few more truckloads of cash at his cronies among the super rich and then make all of society pay for the loss. He was wrong and everyone will pay for his error.

...does not equal a "program" compared to the unholy trinity of (in order of descending importance with relative weights):

--> His role as King Log as the upper class loots the country's financial system (60)
--> Embracing Bush's "invincible executive" governing theory (as manifested in his insistence not to prosecute war crimes done by Bush) (30)
--> Continuing Bush's "War on Terror" (10, because the world is used to the US acting badly at this point)

plus

don't feel like getting the footnotes exhaustively set up but:
-->miscellaneous authoritarian gestures including (??? since sources not cited in detail yet)
(1) ban on hand loading ammunition (pending legislation but its past the draft stage)
(2) declaration on record and in front of reputable witnesses (two newspaper reporters among them)that he wanted a 2 million man "civilian security force" for "America's security goals"
(3) failure to over-ride Bush's executive martial law order that put FEMA in charge of the country, SPD 51. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Security_and_Homeland_Security_Presidential_Directive)
(this one is scary. Its like a Sword of Damocles. There's no definition of how the "state of emergency starts; nor how it ends; nor why the previous legislation was inadequate; nor why no one in the House or Senate can look at the actual operations plan for the marital law measures; nor why it calls for the illegal suspension of all branches of the gov't save the executive.(previous acts did NOT do this))
(4) His push to eventually have all people ages 18-42 donate two years of their labor to the gov't and to accept the gov't decision as to what type of labor to carry out.

to me, that's his real program, and the scattering of significant things he did are not a "program" compared to it.

For the record, I hate Anakin McCain and the Republican party passionately. I am not taking sides in a partisan dispute. I'm calling it like I see it because he is just behaving that badly, especially after extravagant promises to the contrary.

For a closing statement, read:
http://koogrr.livejournal.com/433037.html?thread=2045325#t2045325

...because I get the uncomfortable feeling from two commentators that I am drawing ire for having committed some type of "lese- majeste" against Mister Obama. I have not. I have struggled for clarity and accuracy my whole life in all things...most of all in ruminations about what's going on in the world and what we as individuals have to do. This is not some sort of petty "their man won" garbage.

Regarding the unholy trinity:

(1) As I said below, Wall Street has corrupted both parties. One of the reason Clinton's budgets focused so much on deficit reduction is that on the advice of Bob Rubin (his Treasury Secretary, who worked at Goldman Sachs before entering government service and worked at Citigroup afterward), Clinton wanted to stay on the bond traders' good side.

(2) This sucks and I hope more pressure can be brought to bear on the issue, but at least he hasn't pardoned the crooks, so if he doesn't have the cojones to prosecute them, maybe one of his successors will.

(3) Both parties, sadly, have a tradition of throwing the weight of the US military around. I would love to see an Administration pull back to something closer to isolationism, but the military-industrial complex is too powerful to allow such a drastic change in policy happen in one election cycle.

I don't know enough about your smaller points to comment.

Relative to the American political spectrum I'm pretty far to the left (if I were Canadian I'd probably be voting NDP), but Obama never campaigned as someone so far to the left. He campaigned from the center of the Democratic party (not to be confused with a "centrist" who splits the difference between the Democrats and Republicans) and that's how he's governing.

Do I wish the center of gravity in US politics was farther to the left? Absofuckinglutely. Did I expect my vote in a presidential election (as contrasted with all the other ways I as a citizen can influence the political system) to shift this center of gravity more than one or two degrees? No way in hell.

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Outliving the US: the comments

Re: Ah, you're missing the point

Re: Ah, you're missing the point

You lack an appreciation of what is substance and what is not

Re: Ah, you're missing the point (goes on)

on these, I'll admit I may be unduly harsh

This is the Point

Three Tiny Bright Spots

Re: Three Tiny Bright Spots