Texas Representative Barton Against BP Corporate Responsibility to Victims

Tiny hands of God that you don't see. A lot of Republicans have been under fire for not adequately expressing outrage for British Petroleum's massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, despite the fact that this disaster in the oil industry will have the effect of destroying several other local industries, including fishing and tourism.

We think specifically of Representative Joe Barton of Texas, who referred to President Obama's desire to have BP pay for its mistake with a $20 billion victim fund as a "shakedown". The reasoning behind his defense of corporate messiness has to do with the ideology of unrestrained capitalism. The idea of personalized freedom (a good thing), transposed upon everything else in the world--like doing business--makes for a lot of faulty assumptions that result in ridiculous policies. For while freedom is good for everyone personally, any number of people will take that freedom and use it for really stupid things that impact others: theft, murder, property damage. We pass laws and regulate individuals, reducing freedom in order to allow maximum freedom.

The ability to adversely impact a massive number of innocents is exacerbated when we are looking at the behavior of corporations as they engage in free enterprise. In most instances they are capable of inflicting outcomes on large swathes of the population and no individual person can stand up to that on their own. Hence laws and regulations.

And for every backwater delusional congressman who is proclaiming an ode to free markets and lamenting the harsh treatment of a corporation like BP, there are any number of laws and regulations that are preventing some large or small injustice to the population at large.

Today's example, from an article in The Atlantic:

In January, the NYSE fined Credit Suisse $150,000 for “failing to adequately supervise the development, deployment, and operation of a proprietary algorithm.” The fine was a pittance, but more troubling was that the bank didn’t even know that its malfunctioning algo (which sent hundreds of thousands of cancel-and-replace requests for orders that hadn’t been made) had crippled some of the NYSE’s trading stations until regulators called them the next day. This spring, a newsletter from the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago warned: “Although algorithmic trading errors have occurred, we likely have not yet seen the full breadth, magnitude, and speed with which they can be generated. Furthermore, many such errors may be hidden from public view.”

(The Atlantic)

Little Joe from Texas, the highest ranking Republican on the Energy and Commerce Committee, is not going to be paying attention to high speed automated trading on Wall Street and how it impacts the noble goal of raising capital for American businesses. Nor is Joe going to be focused on any number of other regulations that actually serve to prevent minor or total chaos. Joe has an ideology that simplifies everything for him into one cookie cutter reactionary stance, that private enterprise can do no wrong and regulatory actions by the government are always suspect. It's this same sort of philosophy that is in part hanging up financial reform legislation, with industry supported congressmen not wanting to make the banks pay in advance for their own salvage fund. (Republicans went so far as to call an industry financed bailout fund a taxpayer fund, turning reality on its head).

And yet, we vote for deep thinkers like Joe time and again. He  needs to stick to introducing college football playoff legislation in Congress and keep his mouth from uttering words his brain can't cash.

Whose the King of Kings Now!

Lightening struck Jesus and killed him. Not the Biblical one that some of us know and love, chat with and pray to (annoying atheists and hedonists alike). It's Touchdown Jesus, the one in Ohio who sat on the grounds of Solid Rock Church, the superchurch along Interstate 75. After the hit job from the heavens, he burned to the ground.

Officially known as King of Kings, he also went by such other names, (Wikipedia tells us) like Touchdown Jesus, Swamp Jesus, Super Jesus, and Drowning Jesus, because the waist up manifestation of holiness appeared to be chest deep in a pond.

While the church is planning to resurrect Jesus, probably not in three days, others have had harsher words.

"He was not the real Touchdown Jesus," said Notre Dame's Jesus from the grassy campus of Notre Dame in Indiana where he lives in eternal splendor. Authorities have questioned Jesus about the incident, with Jesus declining comment. "I never left the mosaic, or the campus. I did not kill that Jesus. It was an act of God" was all he would add.

Swarm

Alvin R.U.N. There?

In all the rumbling about Alvin Greene's super stealthy path to becoming the Democratic nominee for a South Carolina Senate seat, we cannot entirely dismiss his claim that he has a network of supporters. Nor is it entirely impossible for him to come up with a $10,000 plus filing fee while being unemployed.  Seriously, it's not that much money, especially if you have been in the military for a while and socking away cash while saving on expenses. People have pointed out that he should not have requested a public defender for his alleged showing of porn to a college student if he actually had the money, making it all very mysterious.

(We lack the details, but somehow showing porn to college students seems a bit like showing Sesame Street to toddlers). We assume that when you are down to your last ten thousand, but have also gotten busted for something incredibly stupid, you want to save your stash for your dream of being a senator and passing life changing legislation. Do you really want to blow it on a public defender who will probably lose your case anyway?

What kills us though, is the reflexive tendency to paint Greene (sans further facts) as both criminal and mentally deficient. It's particularly amusing to watch various media and loud voices go through Socratic variations of inquiry by way of asking him, "Are you retarded?" How quickly we can lose our manners with certain types of people. You know what I mean. Those people.

It's possible to imagine him running his stealth campaign via social networking from the comfort of his home. He could have been sitting there in the den with dad, firing up his netbook, and telling his friends, and friends of friends, to help raise the cash or get out the vote. "Dad, I'm firing up the BlueSwarm on my Asus to see how our supporters are doing. Gonna send out a few Facebook hugs to those on the fence."

In contrast, BlueSwarm and similar software lets users work their friends and families and, in turn, have them solicit their own network to build a donor tree with deep roots. The same technique applies to institutional fundraising used by colleges or social causes such as charity campaigns.

Success and failure are tracked over the Internet on a screen illustrating the roots of donor's organization, as well precisely who has given and who still needs to cut a check or type in their credit card number.

(AP via Yahoo)

It's good to know that the future may now be here, and that we can all run the most complex of campaigns from the comfort of home, not too far from the fridge. We only need exit our house on election day to make a speech and do some inarticulate interviews with the swarm of media voices who will simultaneously fellate and mock us out of the same mouth.  

Qualified to One Day Be President

Given the recent elections, we are faced with some exciting new voter elected voices to go along with the existing voices floating out there. California gave us two business women as potential winners for the governorship and California Senate seat. Don't worry that Carly never achieved very much when running HP, or that Meg became a billionaire atop someone else's entrepreneurial genius. We should know by now that Americans are not ones to let true accomplishment or real intellect meddle with their enthusiasms. We are delightfully delusional in our taste, willing to extend our attention spans (and votes) to any and all.

Alvin: ?

Sarah: ?

Alan: ?

Sail On

I'm into my second week of notional unemployment as a classroom assistant. My former (but still current, sort of) employer had the kindness to allow me to work a summer contract for their extended school year program, so while unemployed, I am not yet bereft. I return to work in a week, for four weeks.

For the fall school season I am on my own, and while someone assured me that I will land on my feet (during the worst recession in modern history, and in the education field where fully certified teachers are hurting for work), every now and again I imagine that homelessness might be right around the corner. I put the thought out of my mind, and try to think pleasant thoughts, while filling out yet another application.

I know more than a few people that are hurting--either out of jobs, or short on funds--and I don't imagine that's going to change any time soon. Of course the word "soon" is relative. I think our economy will be on an upswing about a year to 15 months from now. But "soon" is like today, tomorrow, July or August for those of us on the edge and wondering what will we do.

There are a lot of people in this nation facing the question, "What do I do?," and frequently the answer involves a lot of uproot, pain and difficulty. Sometimes those doing the firing have no idea what you will go through as your ship leaves their shore and heads out into the beautiful sea. You were only docking, offloading goods, lending a hand until utility is gone. "But the storm is rolling in," you say, hoping for reprieve, but you are told to sail on. It will be good for you.

Economic Mire Spreads Like Oil, Europeans Getting Tarred.

Virgin Oil

The economic news is all over the place, with the latest batch of factoids being a general sluggishness in private sector hiring. We realized that fact with unintended irony, since our private school ended the school year last Thursday with several employee contracts going unrenewed. The stock market took the news--the broader unemployment news--with some alarm, sending the Dow down below 10,000.

We are inclined to believe that this week will take the Dow down further, since there is nothing explicitly positive on the horizon to liven the spirits of people who pay attention to things like this. Other than, maybe summer and vacations.

As we speak at this later hour, the day officially Monday at 12:01 a.m. here in a blazing hot Phoenix, markets in Asia are getting fusty and reacting to our previous week's sell off and concerns about Hungary.

"The problem seems like a cancerous thing -- it's spreading from smaller country to smaller country, and many people are afraid that it will spread to a big country like France or Germany, although that's unlikely," said Jackson Wong, vice president at Tanrich Securities, in Hong Kong.

(AP via Yahoo)

None of this is entirely shocking, but it contrasts interestingly with various article titles I have seen with people admonishing the President, "It's your economy now!" This is tossed out as a way of saying that the president cannot blame the previous administration for any problems now that we are a year or more into his presidency. His critics are becoming bolder in their attempts to manufacture an image of a man who has done nothing during this time. Republicans in particular are not inclined to give him any specific credit, dismissing every piece of legislation and every act passed as some sort of monstrosity. He has done nothing, and...AND, he is not improving the job market. Unreconstructed laissez faire types are spitting this nonsense into the ocean-like expanse of the American mind.

Bad Oil

But let's be real here. You really cannot divorce the ongoing economic turmoil from the policies of the past, nor can you fix such turmoil easily or quickly. Compare it to the BP rig collapse and oil leakage. A year from now when the well is capped or cemented or blown up and coastal shores are still cleaning up the mess, imagine any sane person coming along and saying, "Well you can't blame BP, it's the Louisiana government's issue now." Nonsense. You cannot leapfrog culpability or causality.

Every single moment of our unemployed, credit rocked, under capitalized world is a function of previous policies from many presidents. And it's not nearly an American problem. It's a world problem, with many nations having followed our lead into murky financial waters.

Early last month, in an indication of just how dangerous the situation had become, European banks — which appear to hold more than half of that $2.6 trillion in debt — nearly stopped lending money to one another.

(N.Y. Times)

We have a habit of viewing everything in isolation, causality removed, perspective truncated. With Europe on the fritz and not exactly taking the bold action the U.S. took in the last two years, we are now faced with the risk of getting the blowback of our sins blown back at us. We led in the manufacturing of false prosperity and easy money, and European financial institutions followed our lead. Now they suffer, and if that pain is deep and hard enough, we will also hurt and remain mired in sluggish to non-existent job growth.

What Obama can realistically do about it remains to be seen. Righting the economy quickly is like cleaning up an oil spill quickly. Can't quite be done. The cleanup is long term, and there is a fight every step of the way as those responsible for lax oversight seek to shirk responsibility and deflect an accounting.

Pure Oil

What you cannot do is have it all ways in a consolidated "theory of everything" that begins with an Obama big bang explosion as the root cause of every single piece of man-made disaster extant in the U.S., and for a recession that began in December of 2007, and whose roots go deep into the depths of American spending, monetary, regulatory and credit habits.  Or rather, you can have it all ways, but you will sound like an idiot to anyone with half a brain to read between the lies.

Friday Night at the Arthouse: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (or Men Who Hate Women)

Was in my favorite big city small town theatre (in a corner of Scottsdale) watching a lot of Men Who Hate Women, the Swedish movie based on the first of a trilogy of crime novels. The remaining two films should arrive later in the year.

Oh and what hate there was in the The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, the release title for the above movie. Without revealing too much of the story, I will begin by saying that you should see it very early in the day, so the rest of the day can be spent reprogramming your brain with happier, brighter thoughts. The unrelenting evil, involving multiple rapes and torture, brings you down low, and while you are comforted by the fact that it is all a mere movie based on a novel by now dead Swedish author Stieg Larrson, in the back of your mind you recall that there are actual fellow humans out in the real world capable of, and filled with, an unrelenting lust for evil. As surely as you crave some desired treat, someone, somewhere, has a twisted appetite and seeks satiation. And the thought just breaks you down in sadness. Where is the love?

In the lobby of the theatre a screen was showing a film in current release called "Babies" which documents the early lives of four babies around the world. I looked at the smiling faces, and wondered what combination of what can turn such cuteness, purity, baby happiness and funny willfulness, into the type of horror of a human that we see as adults. We grow hungry as we grow, and greedy, and sometimes warped. How do we travel from light to darkness, and so willingly?

Some lay this all--the evil--at the door of craziness as a means to set distance. "Those people are just crazy" we say, knowing we could never go so far, or perpetrate such acts. We say this under the light of history and the evidence of the nature of Germany during World War Two, when quite obviously the population was not massively crazy. Humans are capable of such variation in good and evil, ignorance and bliss.

In Dragon, both Nazis and the warping of religion play a role, though the film seems to indicate that evil is not in the end the application of some system, but rather, purely the choice of people to do wrong; it suggests you were evil before you became a Nazi, or evil before you sought Old Testament verse to justify visiting evil upon others. We see this in the movie because most of the men are simply evil, regardless of reasoning... there are appetites, and the men act on their appetites and inclinations in planned and random action.

Most people won't go and see a small film like this, and half of those who do might be horrified at the brutality. There was a group of women in the lobby castigating one of their group for choosing it. "Here we are thinking it's a family film," she joked, "and it's this crazy movie." I paraphrase here, but what most perplexed me was that they didn't seem to see past the violence, or connect it to some larger theme or real world reflection, and despite the heavy handed message that men are quite trashy to women. There conversation began and ended with movie choice, not movie meaning.

Seeing films this brutal is rewarding though not always a joy. You are released from Hollywood's recycled stars and locations and plot points, and taken inside new places. I was unfamiliar with all the actors in the movie and thus, and in addition to their actual acting ability, was transported into something real. The locales in Europe and the lack of typical Hollywood visual dynamics made for true storytelling, which is why I go to see a movie in the first place. I want to be taken away from my real world, or the fake real world I see on television each day, and into another real world with its own authenticity. But I also like my movies to warm my heart, and lead me forward with hope and faith, and to fight the darkness and decay.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo certainly transports you over its two hour plus running time. You may not be too thrilled with where it takes you along the way, but it's hard to leave the movie as a man without a renewed desire to treat humanity with a little more love.

(Here is a female perspective on the book the film was based on. It's quite accurate in its judgments).

Obama Gains Financial Reform Win

It's getting harder for Obama's critics to make a coherent analysis of his achievements. Early on he was labeled the empty suit, but his ability to get things done makes such a claim ridiculous, especially when you are simultaneously saying that he will bring diabolical change to the United States.

After a certain amount of do-nothingism and debate, and under the President's urging, the Senate finally followed up with its own version of financial reform. The complaint is that it is insufficient in all the wrong areas, but what cannot be ignored is that this is the second major legislative win for the president. He is doing something, if not exactly what his supporters and detractors want. This follows his health care reform, and if we add various peripheral actions--the nuke deal with Russia, getting his Supreme Court picks onto the bench--we cannot ignore his efforts to make a positive mark.

It's clear in both pieces of legislative victories (health, financial) that the average American remains a central part of whom he hopes to help. Republicans challenged the idea of a consumer protection agency, and also succeeded in getting a financial destabilization fund (financed by the industry) off the table in the Senate version of the bill. Amazingly, they pushed the lie that the fund was a taxpayer bailout fund, when in fact, the new version in the Senate bill, which requires the government to pay for liquidations of troubled firms after the fact is the purer stiff arm to the taxpayer. Hopefully in reconciliation, the House version takes the lead. President Obama's desire to have financial firms pre-pay for their own liquidation was laudable.

The trading of derivatives on unowned assets remained largely unchanged, and yet, one could argue that such bets on the housing market were a large cause of the financial meltdown. When the value of the bets surpasses the actual market in question, one wonders if such should be permitted wholesale.

But the fact that we do have a focus on consumer protection is testament to Obama's considerable efforts to actually touch people in their daily lives.

(The New York Times breaks down the details nicely here.)

We also wonder how long it will take Goldman to make its way toward the door and abandon its bank holding company status, since proprietary trading becomes more restricted under the new legislation under consideration. We've said this was long the likely path that firm would take, should the new laws allow it.

*

In other news, we are pretty sure North Korea sunk a South Korean warship via missile, and exactly how you manage to handle this and paper it over should be interesting. Since we can't imagine them going to war, and yet can't imagine ignoring such an incident, we assume some verbal and diplomatic alchemy is on tap. One of those frying pan/fire, damned do/damned do not situations. South Korea promises prudence.

Late Sunday, When It's Really Monday

I am up late, and alone, and it's dark out on the patio. I am listening to Lisa Gerrard, who people often mistake for Enya, though her voice sounds nothing like Enya's. Every time people hear something ethereal they label it "Enya", because often people don't know what they hear, and are willing to believe anything that seems familiar to their sensibilities. They don't question, and then seek answers to the questions, because they are content to bathe in ignorance. It's what they want to believe, and they accept it.

I am [          ]. Usually I am always somewhere in the middle, not sad or happy. My mind is calibrated to be calm when things are not quite what I have wished, modulating the hope of  the future and my dreams against any unpleasant current reality. Bad things pass. Good things surprise. Equilibrium.

But I am [       ], and can't put a finger on it... just sort of floating in this music. There is work in the morning. There is always work to do, inside and out of my house. My heart, my body, my apartment, my job, my state, my country, my world all need work done, and I can barely lift my head off of the floor. 



 

Comedy Central Bans Sarah Palin's Image on South Park

It's so hard to take Sarah Palin seriously, even when we find agreement on some of the social issues. Further, some people can be accidentally dangerous, and Sarah is one of those people. Her words are so disconnected from objective truth, and so distant from an authentic Christianity, and so non-reflective of a true patriot, that her ability to lead people's minds off an intellectual cliff should be cause for some concern.

Here then is one of Palin's better photographs, sans her delicate coat of makeup: