Back in the good ol’ days, you’d merely text your old pal I.B. Loaded, CEO of Amalgamated Rules Bender Inc. Loaded’s given you tons of cash over the years for your campaigns. He, his wife and children, his employees, his vendors — all have seen the wisdom of slipping dough to you, your official campaign committee, and, of course, your “Leadership PAC.”

And, of course, Loaded would have his Gulfstream V (I mean, rather, his corporate-owned private jet) fly into Reagan National to pick you up (after, of course, a taxpayer-paid car and driver deposited you, your luggage, and golf clubs there). Loaded himself would be on the plane to entertain you and see to your every need. After you’d both consumed a few hits from Loaded’s stash of 40-year-old Glen Garioch, he’d probably steer the conversation into an arcane tax-policy issue that would likely benefit Amalgamated Rules Bender Inc. to the tune of millions of dollars.

You’d be the only passenger on a sophisticated jet costing $59 million with an hourly operating cost of about $7,000. Yet, before 2007, you’d only pay the cost of first-class airfare to LA — maybe a grand or less, depending on discounts. Then Congress shut the door to corporate-provided air travel by passing the Honest Leadership and Open Government Act.

And this week, those idiots at the Federal Election Commission reopened the door.

The act plainly states “a candidate for election for Federal office … may not make any expenditure for a flight on [a noncommercial] aircraft unless … the candidate, the authorized committee, or other political committee pays … the pro rata share of the fair market value of the flight.”

But the FEC changed that by redefining when a member of Congress is or is not a “candidate.” Here’s the explanation from The Campaign Legal Center:

Yet the FEC today adopted a final rule nonsensically declaring that a candidate is not a “candidate,” for the purpose of this statute, when that candidate “is traveling on behalf of another political committee (such as a political party committee or Senate leadership PAC).” Instead, where a candidate claims to be traveling “on behalf of” their own leadership PAC, or one of the many committees controlled by their political party, or any other political committee—the old rules apply, allowing that candidate to pay the price of a commercial air ticket instead of the price of the private plane the candidate is actually flying on.

To make matters worse, FEC Chairman Walther published a statement explaining his decision to provide the necessary fourth vote for the final rule put forth by his three Republican colleagues on the FEC. Preposterously, Chairman Walther cited comments filed in the rulemaking proceeding by the Campaign Legal Center, together with Democracy 21, suggesting that we support this new rule gutting HLOGA. Chairman Walther wrote: “The Campaign Legal Center and Democracy 21 agreed and indicated their support for ‘retain[ing] the existing reimbursement rate structure for non-candidate travel.’” (emphasis added). While we did support retaining the old rate for non-candidate travel, nowhere in our comments did we suggest that candidates should be considered to be engaging in non-candidate travel through the simple expedient of claiming that they are flying “on behalf of” their leadership PAC or other federal political committee. Chairman Walther should know better.

Candidate travel is candidate travel—period.

The FEC’s new rule illegally contradicts the plain meaning of the statute. Unfortunately, gutting or ignoring federal law—that Commissioners would have written differently themselves—has become a recurring habit for the FEC. In an earlier rulemaking, the FEC gutted the intent of another key aspect of HLOGA, allowing lobbyists to easily evade required reporting of bundled campaign contributions.

Provision of non-commercial travel by corporations (and unions) to members of Congress or federal candidates is simply more legalized corruption.

So I wonder how long it will be before enough members of Congress step up to close this loophole by updating the Honest Leadership and Open Government Act. Days? Weeks? Next century?

As a felon, Jefferson has had equally despicable company: Rep. Andrew J. Hinshaw, R-Calif. (accepting a bribe); Rep. Charles Diggs Jr., D-Mich. (payroll kickback scheme); Rep. Michael Myers, D-Pa. (accepting bribes from FBI agents impersonating Arab businessmen); Reps. John Murphy, D-N.Y., Frank Thompson, D-N.J., John Jenrette, D-S.C., and Raymond Lederer, D-Pa. (Arab businessmen bribery scandal, a.k.a. Abscam).

And Rep. Mario Biaggi, D-N.Y. (extorting money from a defense contractor); Rep. Mel Reynolds, D-Ill. (sex with underage campaign worker, bank fraud); Rep. Walter Tucker III, D-Calif. (accepting and demanding bribes); Rep. Dan Rostenkowski, D-Ill. (felony mail fraud); Rep. James A. Trafficant, D-Ohio (bribery, conspiracy and racketeering); Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham (accepting bribes from defense contractors) and Robert W. Ney, R-Ohio (Abramoff scandal). I’m sure readers can name more.

The collective misfortune of these men is that they got caught. Each undoubtedly said to himself, “I am invincible. I am a member of Congress.” They all assumed membership in the biggest-of-all-members-only clubs provided a get-out-of-jail-free card. But the real reason they believed they could get away with accepting bribes and committing extortion is that members of Congress have been doing it legally for years.

Jefferson may serve 13 years. Prosecutors say he probably earned less than $400,000 despite seeking millions in illegal bribes from “oil, sugar, communications and other businesses, often for projects in Africa,” said The New York Times. But he’s raked in about $6.45 million in campaign contributions since 1990, half from political action committees, according to the Center for Responsive Politics database. More than $600,000 came from lawyers and law firms. (Wonder if the sharks will return his calls now.)

Prosecutors focused on the $90,000 federal agents found in Jefferson’s freezer. The public should have been more focused on Jefferson’s legal sources of campaign bucks, in the same way it should have paid less attention to the penis of that other two-faced Louisiana legislative poseur, Sen. David Vitter, and more attention to the sources of his campaign funding.

We the voters, the people who have watched health-care costs starkly climb ever higher, who see taxes rising exhorbitantly at all levels, who witness the quality of education for our children wither, who watch jobs vanish overseas and unemployment rise, and who are frightened that decades-old safety nets are tattered beyond repair, have become so inured to the corrosive role of money in politics that we forget that politicians are continously but legally bribed by monied interests. And it should stop.

Ask Glenn Greenwald of salon.com. In a video for Larry Lessig’s change-congress.com, he explains how Sens. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., and Evan Bayh, D-Ind., are threatening to filibuster any health-reform plan with a public option. Lieberman, says Greenswald, is “drowning in campaign contributions” from the health-care industry — more than $2.5 million — and his wife landed a cushy job in 2005 with PR flacksters Hill & Knowlton, representing pharma giant Glaxo. Several months later, Lieberman sought to steer incentives to Glaxo to develop vaccines.

“This is the kind of legalized corruption, legalized bribery, that runs the United States Senate,” says Greenwald. “Only in this case it is particularly sleazy and transparent because Lieberman is ready to gut the major initiative of the Democratic Party.”

Bayh’s wife, says Greenwald, “sits on the board of directors of WellPoint, one of the largest health-insurance companies in the nation. [The Bayhs] own, by their own disclosures, between $500,000 and a million dollars in WellPoint stock. … When Sen. Lieberman threatened to filibuster the public option … the value of the stock of the health-care industry skyrocketed … and personally benefited the finances of the Bayh family.”

Bayh’s wife was paid more than $2 million between 2005 and 2008. Bayh, in 2008, received $500,000 in campaign contributions from the health-care industry, says Greenwald.

“It’s really clear corruption,” says Greenwald.

Politicians defend their financial associations with large corporations (and unions) and wealthy individuals. They call it “campaign financing.” Sadly, we’re too accustomed to this shameless dance now, aren’t we?

A member of Congress, or someone who aspires to be one, gets on the phone and calls people who have lots of money. Often those people run very large enterprises, such as corporations (or unions). Those corporations, driven by the dictum “maximize shareholder income” (or, increasingly, “maximize CEO compensation”), would like members of Congress to make those tasks easier. Politicians say such donations only provide access to their ears, not their actions. The big corporate and PAC donors — or their hired lobbyists — say they’re only legitimately promoting the causes of their companies and clients.

Bullshit. It has been known for decades that lobbyists are often in the room, helping congressional staff write — or writing themselves — legislation. Earlier in this decade, tax-law experts from General Electric shaped an export tax reform bill that saved GE hundreds of millions of dollars.

Lobbyists’ dictation of politicians’ words and deeds has become even more blatant. New York Times reporter Robert Pear wrote Nov. 14 that lobbyists wrote and sought to have supportive statements about health-care reform placed by members into the Congressional Record prior to the Nov. 5 vote:

In the official record of the historic House debate on overhauling health care, the speeches of many lawmakers echo with similarities. Often, that was no accident. Statements by more than a dozen lawmakers were ghostwritten, in whole or in part, by Washington lobbyists working for Genentech, one of the world’s largest biotechnology companies. … Genentech, a subsidiary of the Swiss drug giant Roche, estimates that 42 House members picked up some of its talking points — 22 Republicans and 20 Democrats, an unusual bipartisan coup for lobbyists. [emphasis added]

A lobbyist created the messages and supporting documents and e-mailed them to members. Lobbyists denied any malevolent intent. Said one, quoted anonymously by Pear: “This happens all the time. There was nothing nefarious about it.”

In the past five years, Genentech has spent nearly $10 million on lobbying expenses. In the past decade, Genentech has contributed more than $1 million to federal candidates. Pear reports Genentech’s PAC has made contributions to some of the members who used its talking points and that company officials had hosted fundraisers for some.

And, of course, there’s no quid pro quo, right? Wrote Pear: “Evan L. Morris, head of Genentech’s Washington office, said, ‘There was no connection between the contributions and the statements.’” [emphasis added]

Bullshit again. It is, as Greenwald says, legalized corruption. Imagine if I, as an individual voter living in a rural district, had asked my congressman to insert under his name words I wrote about health-care reform into the Congressional Record. He would say no. (Or rather, the staff member I’d get shunted off to would say no.) But when Genentech said jump, 42 members of Congress asked, “How high?”

Don’t kid us. It’s legalized corruption. Remarks members of Congress revise and extend into the Congressional Record, we now see, have been actually written by lobbyists. So what do the clowns we elect to office do for the $174,000 we pay them (and with very nice health-care bennies, too)?

A handful of Republican senators, led by Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C, think they have an answer — a constitutional amendment to limit how long a person may serve in Congress. Apparently, senators would get 12 years, while representatives would get only six years. (Imagine that bill’s conference committee, eh?) On his Senate website, DeMint writes:

As long as members have the chance to spend their lives in Washington, their interests will always skew toward spending taxpayer dollars to buy off special interests, covering over corruption in the bureaucracy, fundraising, relationship building among lobbyists, and trading favors for pork, in short, amassing their own power.

Don’t be misled. After all, what’s to prevent the current system of lobbyists, legalized corruption, and greed from buying new sets of politicians every six or 12 years? Being new, they’ll come cheap, too.

Members of Congress need mountains of money to obtain and retain political power. They spend hours each day dialing donors and asking for, or demanding, campaign contributions. That’s the extortion part of the equation. Donors demand at least an ear and now, we see, actual words printed in the Congressional Record. That’s the corruption part. All that separates many uncharged and unjailed members of Congress from Jefferson and his imprisoned pals is an FBI wiretap.

Changing the politicians through term limits has little merit. Instead, get rid of the current system of campaign finance. If members of Congress were willing to bail out banks with hundreds of billions of dollars, demand that they allow the public to outbid special interests. Lobby members of Congress (yep, I said lobby) to drastically and dramatically overhaul public election financing. Demand that members of Congress place in the federal budget each year sufficient billions of dollars to pay for every federal and statewide election in the country. Give incumbents and challengers alike plenty of public money. But cut them off at the financial knees if they accept a single dime of corporate, union, or PAC money.

If our politicians continue to insist on being bought, let the public do the buying.

What’s worse is you’ve got a pediatrician appointment today for both of your kids – their asthma is acting up and the drugs aren’t working as well as they should be. Furthermore, your son is still recovering from a case of malaria he picked up, probably from a mosquito bite he got during the pee wee football game by the reservoir a couple of months ago. At least the rains will damp down on your environmental allergies some today. Better rain, even flooding, than the dust storm that blew through the area a couple of weeks ago. That caused several major pileups and fouled up ventilation so bad that some of the buildings downtown are still closed..

As you pull together breakfast for the family, there’s no milk because it’s too expensive. Most of the local dairies were forced to close down over the last few years as the drought reduced the cows’ milk production. The few diaries that survived can charge almost as much as they want to since the supply is far lower than the demand. The same is true of eggs and cheese, although beef has been cheaper recently as dairy cows are slaughtered for their meat in a last-ditch effort to pay off drought-driven debts.

You take the kids to their appointments and find out that your son’s malaria isn’t quite gone yet – it’s apparently a strain that’s become resistant to the more common, and cheaper, anti-malarial drugs. The next course of drugs is not only more expensive, but also has more side effects that will make it harder for your son to be effective in school. Both kids’ asthma is doing OK, but the pediatrician points out for the third time that you might want to consider moving out of the suburbs and into a rural area with cleaner air. Unfortunately, because of your spouse’s job, that’s just not possible. And with the chronic conditions you and the kids have, you need the company’s good health insurance.

After dropping off the kids at school, you head to the grocery store. The produce section is half the size that it was just a few years ago, and all the produce you do see is expensive – almost all of it was shipped in from out of state. Over the last three months there have been two e. coli recalls of produce from out-of-state farms where the water got polluted, and there have been dozens of others over the last few years. You’ve tried to grow a garden yourself to supplement the meager grocery store selection, but growth issues and the drought has forced your town to go on strict water restrictions. It doesn’t help that the garden plants always seem to be out-competed by the invasive weeds in your yard. The bindweed and thistle have grown largely immune to the commercially avaialble herbicides.

There have been several large dry lightning-sparked wildfires recently that tore through mountain communities. As a result, the insurance companies gave up on insuring homes in the mountains. The regional wildfire fighting coordination office had to give up on fighting fires – there is just too much fuel and temperatures have been too high for safe fire suppression, and when the city’s conserving every drop of water for human consumption, using city water to fight wildfires just was not possible. As a result, your neighbors were driven out of their beloved mountains down to the suburbs where they could be safe and get homeowners insurance.

Your neighbors’ daughter is in the U.S. Air Force, piloting an armed drone patrolling the Mexican border as air cover for the Border Patrol. There’s been a massive influx of immigrants and refugees from Central and South America recently, and even though the Border Patrol is now three times the size it was in the early 2000’s, there’s still not enough agents to police the border without military help. She’s worried that she’ll be deployed soon to southern Europe as back-up for our allies’ efforts at keeping the EU from being overwhelmed by Turks, Arabs, and Africans pouring northward. There have been a few brushfire wars recently, but most of Africa and parts of the Middle East are looking more and more like a powder keg just waiting for the right spark. As a result of the worsening national security situation, taxes have skyrocketed to pay for the large military required to maintain all the active deployments. Worse yet, there’s a chance that your neighbors’ daughter might be deployed to guard the Venezuelan oil fields that the previous President “annexed” in support of U.S national security interests and that the Venezuelans are resisting as an invasion and occupation.

After dinner, you let the kids stay up late for the first time in months – the flooding dumped enough water into the reservoirs and local streams that the power plants have enough water to operate all day instead of shutting down or operating on a rolling blackout schedule. You wish now you hadn’t voted to approve the nuclear plant (or elected the public utilities commissioners who approved the increase in your electricity rates to pay for it), since it’s no better than the coal plants – they all need so much water for cooling that just hasn’t been there the last few years. Well, until today’s flooding, anyway. So you let the kids enjoy the special treat.

———-

According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Fourth Assessment Report, one of the largest peer-reviewed studies of climate science performed to date, a scenario similar to that described above is 90% likely. More recent scientific data suggests that the IPCC’s conclusions about the severity of climate disruption were overly conservative. As a result, both the IPCC’s projections for climatic upheavals later this century and their 90% confidence in those projections are very likely under-estimates of the severity of the problem.

Knowing all of this, how much would you spend on an insurance policy that lowers the chances that the overly conservative scenario described above happens? How much is your quality of life, your family’s health, your friend’s well being, your lower tax rate, worth to you? 1% of your annual income? 5%? 10%? More? Or nothing at all?

In 2008, the average American spent approximately 16% of their salary on health, home, car, and life insurance premiums¹. That’s a huge amount of money. The reason people pay that much is because they want to be insured against the likelihood of something horrible and expensive occurring. And the more likely something is, combined with how expensive it it is, the more we pay in insurance.

The table below illustrates the difference^{2, 3}:

The table clearly shows that Americans pay the most overall money for our health insurance, but given how high the risk of needing the insurance is (estimated at 100% in a given year), the risk value metric is actually pretty good.

What the table doesn’t show, however, is that we have homeowners or renters insurance not because of the average claim, but because the small chance of a severe financial loss is still risky. The table below illustrates this point:

Remember, insurance premiums cost the average American 16% of their annual salary in order to insure against future financial losses that could be, but usually aren’t, extraordinarily high. So the question is how much should the world be willing to pay in order to insure against future financial losses?

As was mentioned above, the likelihood of substantial risk is at least 90%, with more recent studies than the 2007 IPCC report saying that the risk is actually higher. The next question has to be “how much is the future financial risk” of doing nothing?

A University of Oregon analysis estimated 4% as the bare minimum cost of doing nothing. An International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) study estimated that the benefit:cost ratio of addressing climate change was at least 8:1. Recent worst-case estimates (discussed below) say that the annual GWP cost of addressing climate disruption is approximately 3%, so the IIED study says that the cost of doing nothing could be as much as 24% of GWP. This number is similar to that calculated by the Stern Review (which, not coincidentally, is what the IIED used as their baseline) back in 2006. The lowest estimates of the cost of doing nothing are in the range of 1-2% of GWP, and a few scientists have suggested that the upper range of the cost could literally be the end of human civilization.

As for the cost of mitigation, aka climate insurance, a recently released study by the E3 Network calculated how much money the world would have to spend in order to return the carbon dioxide (CO₂) in the Earth’s air to a recent estimate of a “safe” level – 350 parts per million (ppm). The study reviewed the available literature and found that the worst case estimate was 3.0% of global gross domestic product (aka gross world product, GWP), and the E3N models estimated the estimate put the cost at approximately 2.5% of GWP.

The table below compares the insurance paid by Americans to three projected climate costs vs. risks.

Notice that Americans pay more in premiums than they get in benefits (ie claims), so the risk divided by the expense is less than 1. The difference represents insurance company profits, and clearly Americans are willing to pay for the comfort that insurance gives them. The table also shows that the risk of significant damage due to climate disruption divided by the global expense of addressing climate disruption varies from 0.33 to 100, and in five out of the six cases shown above, the future financial risk that is effectively insured equals or significantly exceeds the cost of insurance.

To put this all into perspective, the GDP of the U.S economy in 2008 was about $14.4 trillion. 16% of that (the money spent on average for insurance) is a little less than $2.6 trillion. According to the World Bank, the GWP was just over $60 trillion in 2008. The percentage of the global economy that is likely at risk is 24%, or $14.4 trillion. And the economists are estimating that the cost of insuring against losses that could equal the size of the entire U.S. economy will be no more than 3% of GWP, or $1.8 trillion.

In other words, for less money that the U.S. spends on insuring itself, the entire globe could be insured against climate disruption. Then imagine taking your four favorite cities in the world – and then erasing one.

And for another dose of reality, the United States is presently arguing over spending money to insure the U.S. against climate disruption to the tune of 0.25% to 3.5% of GDP (ACES analysis by the CBO). 0.25% to 3.5% of U.S. GDP in 2008 would be between $36 and $500 billion ($0.5 trillion)⁴. That’s well below what the U.S. already pays for insurance and is several hundred billion dollars less than the financial bailouts.

Ultimately, the analysis of what the U.S. already pays to voluntarily insure itself against future losses illustrates that insuring the global economy against future financial losses makes economic sense. After all, Americans already pay more to insure against smaller future losses that have a smaller chance of occurring than does climate disruption.

If the U.S. is willing to insure itself against future financial losses due to damage to home, vehicle, and health, then there’s no good reason why the U.S. and the world should be unwilling to insure themselves against future financial losses due to climate disruption.

———-

¹ According to the national car insurance comparison site CarInsurance.com, the national average annual premium for car insurance was $1,600 in 2008. According to the National Association of Insurance Commissioners, the national average premium for homeowners insurance was around $800, although it varies widely from state to state. The Kaiser Family Foundation estimates that the annual cost of health care per person in the U.S. is nearly $5,300. Life insurance premiums vary so widely that it’s difficult to come up with a solid number, but $300 per year is a reasonable estimate. The total from this estimate is $8,000.

Average salary was derived from 2008 Census Bureau data.

² Derived from the Federal Highway Administration and the National Highway Transportation Safety Board, and the Insurance Industry Institute. Percentage is defined by the number of collisions divided by the total number of private, commercial, and publicly-owned vehicles on the road. Average Insurance claim is the total for all claim types (injury, collision, comprehensive, and property damage) divided by the number of accidents.

³ “Risk value” is a term defined for this analysis only. While the insurance industry undoubtedly has its own metrics, this metric is my own and may or may not be equivalent to an official industry metric.

⁴ This “cost” is not an accurate accounting of the actual costs to the economy. This money would be circulating in the economy still, but would not be going to the interests that it goes to presently, especially oil and coal companies and coal-burning utilities. Instead, the money would be directed toward energy and carbon-efficient companies. As a result, the argument in Congress is clearly not one of economics, but rather a battle between entrenched, old-energy interests protecting their profits and influence and up-and-coming, new energy interests hoping to gain profits and influence.

In fact, this entire analysis illustrates that the reasons behind opposing insuring the world against losses due to climate disruption are neither scientific nor economic. Instead, the reasons are ideology, profit, and political power.

• Tipping points will be difficult to identify
• U.S. Chamber of Commerce President complains about environmentalists
• Barrels instead of bottles
• Ocean acidification to turn parts of the Arctic Ocean corrosive by 2018
• El Niño and its relationship to ocean heat content

Is the Earth’s climate approaching a critical transition, aka a “tipping point,” beyond which major and largely unpredictable climate changes are guaranteed to occur? At this point, scientists do not know the answer to that question. A study published in the journal Nature aims to explain the mathematics of critical transitions beyond just the Earth’s climate and in the process, determine if there are early-warning signals that indicate when a complex system is about to undergo a critical transition.

According to the paper, every complex system, whether it be climate, asthma attacks and epileptic seizures, or systemic crashes in financial markets, exhibits the same basic precursor signs of a tipping point, at least mathematically speaking. All complex systems exhibit one or more of the following early-warning signs: they can take longer to recover from small perturbations and become less random over time (”critical slowing” in the paper), they can bounce dramatically between the old and new states (”flickering”) before finally settling in the new state, or they can develop patterns that gradually change before suddenly disappearing into a new state (”spatial patterns”).

With regard to climate, reconstructions have identified the hallmarks of “critical slowing” in multiple climate transitions:

In a recent analysis, a significant increase in autocorrelation was found in each of eight examples of abrupt climate change analyzed.

And the authors reference one other paper which suggests that recent climate variability is an example of “flickering” that signals a transition to a significantly colder global climate.

The problem, however, is that not all critical transitions show each early-warning sign – some transitions might show more than one while others show one this time and another next time. The result is clearly state in the paper:

[D]etection of the patterns in real data is challenging and may lead to false positive results as well as false negatives.

In other words, not all fast transitions are “critical transitions,” not all critical transitions will be detected, and sometimes a critical transition will not occur even though there were signs of one approaching.

In essence, the science of critical transitions is still very young, and as such, projections of tipping points should be very carefully analyzed, whether they be toward a new glacial period or a sudden melt of all the Arctic sea ice.

For news of a few politicians expecting a “social tipping point” on climate disruption soon, please read this piece by my colleague Wendy Redal.

Thanks to Ubertramp for pointing this paper out to me and to Dr. Scheffer for providing a review copy of the paper.

———-

U.S. Chamber of Commerce President complains about environmentalists

Over the last several weeks, three utilities, Nike, and now Apple have resigned from or otherwise reduced their participation in the United States Chamber of Commerce (USCOC), a business lobbying group that represents millions of U.S. businesses. As a result, the USCOC President and CEO, Tom Donohue, held an hour-long press conference to defend the USCOC’s decision to oppose EPA regulation of greenhouse gases (GHGs).

According to the Greenwire report on the event (linked above), Donahue claimed that an “orchestrated pressure campaign” by environmentalists was responsible for the recent defections. However, National Resources Defense Council climate campaign director Peter Altman disagrees. From the article:

“It’s nice of Donohue to give the environmental movement credit for being able to convince Fortune 500 companies what group they should be a part of,” Altman said. “But it’s a red herring. These companies are making the decision on their own.”

Furthermore, San Francisco venture capitalist Nancy Floyd was quoted as saying “This issue (climate change regulation and/or legislation) has really divided the business community. The divide is not really along traditional players versus technology players; it is across the board.”

To date, the USCOC has not changed its position with respect to EPA regulation of GHGs or chosen to get behind either the Waxman-Markey ACES act or the new Kerry-Boxer draft legislation in the Senate. However, two Silicon Valley business organizations ran an advertisement in the San Jose Mercury News and the Congress Daily saying, in part:

As our European and Asian competitors move forward to build the next generation of clean energy technology, the U.S. Chamber seems mired in false debates over settled science and a 20th Century approach to energy. It’s time for the “voice of business” to move forward, embrace a market-based cap on carbon pollution, and help lead a new century of American prosperity. (emphasis original)

The two Silicon Valley organizations are the Silicon Valley Leadership Group (SVLG) and Joint Venture Silicon Valley Network (JVSV). A brief scan of the membership of SVLG turns up a veritable who’s who of tech companies, as well as some banking, health, and energy companies: Adobe Systems, Apple Computer, AT&T, Bank of America, Chevron Energy Solutions, Citibank, Dell, eBay, Google, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Intel, Kaiser Permanente, Lockheed Martin, McAfee, Microsoft, NASDAQ, Netflix, Oracle, Palm, Roche, Seagate, Sun Industries, Symantec, and Yahoo!. And those are just the ones that most people would recognize – the list is even more impressive for someone who works in technology like I do – nearly all of the major U.S. electronics manufacturing companies have a presence in the SVLG.

Perhaps even more impressive, however, is that the JVSV signed on. The Directors include the mayor of San Jose, a product manager for Google, the Chancellor of the University of California – Santa Cruz, a senior VP at Bank of America, the CEO of Cypress Envirosystems, a California State Senator, to name just a few. The private companies who invest in JVSV are just as impressive as those involved in the SVLG: Cisco, National Semiconductor, Mitsubishi, PG&E, the San Jose Chamber of Commerce, and McKinsey & Company.

The JVSV represents business, labor, universities, city and state government, and non-profits, all of whom are involved in charting the future of the most visionary, profitable, and productive companies and region in the entire country. And they just told the U.S. Chamber of Commerce that they were “dinosaurs.”

Perhaps this advertisement points will convince the USCOC to change its approach to climate legislation and regulation – or perhaps the USCOC will become irrelevant as the companies with vision abandon it and the USCOC’s positions become equivalent to those of the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity.

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Barrels instead of bottles

According to the NYTimes Green Inc. blog, a number of wineries are foregoing bottles and are instead shipping their wine in barrels. As a result, the wineries are saving money on reduced packaging and are dramatically lowering their carbon footprint due to shipping and bottle manufacturing.

As a beneficial side effect, the wine lasts longer in barrels than it does in bottles.

This is hardly the first time that companies have pushed for reduced packaging – Wal*Mart was one of the first, but it’s hardly the only company working this angle. Still, anything that makes wine cheaper to drink for myself and my family is all good for me – even if that means I have to buy nearly a case at a time.

———-

Ocean acidification to turn parts of the Arctic Ocean corrosive by 2018

Scientists researching ocean acidification in the Svalbard Archipelago north of Norway have made a surprising and awful discovery – the Arctic ocean is acidifying so fast that 10% it will become corrosive within the next 10 years and the entire Arctic will become corrosive by 2100. The Guardian newspaper reported last week on a presentation by French oceanographer Jean-Pierre Gattuso that revealed the terrible news. From the article:

“This is extremely worrying. We knew that the seas were getting more acidic and this would disrupt the ability of shellfish – like mussels – to grow their shells. But now we realise the situation is much worse. The water will become so acidic it will actually dissolve the shells of living shellfish.”

According to the article, the problem is that shellfish form the base of a massive food chain for herring, salmon, and several species of whales. In addition, walruses and seals subsist on shellfish and fish, and polar bears and other top predators feed on the seals and walruses, as well as on fish. So if the bottom of the food chain is disrupted by corrosive seawater, then the entire ecology of the Arctic could be disrupted. And the only way to prevent this is to dramatically and immediately cut carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions.

If you enjoy salmon or king crab legs, or even if you just enjoy the show Deadliest Catch, you might want to consider enjoying them sooner – there may not be a “later.”

———-

El Niño and its relationship to ocean heat content

Back in October, 2008, I pointed out in comments to another Carboholic that La Niña years were cold because the ocean absorbed heat from the atmosphere and that El Niño years were hot because the ocean emitted stored heat back into the atmosphere. This comes from the physics of thermodynamics, specifically the fact that energy moves from hot areas to cold areas, and not the other way around.

I recently came across this same basic information presented in a different form by the Climate Prediction Center’s El Niño/Southern Oscillation (ENSO) Diagnostic Discussion page and the weekly ENSO updates contained therein:

The basin-wide equatorial upper ocean (0-300 m) heat content is greatest prior to and during the early stages of a Pacific warm (El Niño) episode (compare top 2 panels) and least prior to and during the early stages of a cold (La Niña) episode. (emphasis original), from page 9

In other words, the ocean heat content is lowest at the start of La Niña because after that, the La Niña is absorbing heat from the atmosphere and cooling it. Similarly, the ocean heat content is highest at the start of El Niño because after it starts, El Niño is emitting heat from the ocean back into the atmosphere and heating it.

Image credits:
AFP: Antara News Agency
U.S. Chamber of Commerce
DeLoach Vineyards
Russ Hopcroft, via Australian Antarctic Division
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, National Weather Service, Climate Prediction Center

Managers of content-provision corporations — there’s no point any more in calling them “newspaper companies” — are desperate for revenue after enduring print ad losses. So, after 15 years of giving away the milk for free online, they’ve finally mustered up the cojones to at least talk about charging for content on their websites. They speak of this in a language the reporters they’ve fired would never use — the content provision managers talk of monetizing their sites, of incorporating paid-content strategies, of generating additional digital revenue.

And if you believe pay-content impresario Steven Brill of Journalism Online, about 1,000 publishers — er, content-provision specialists — expect to make $900 million at $8.33 a month from the 10 percent of online website visitors Mr. Brill thinks would be willing to cough of up the cash. But an American Press Institute study says only 51 percent of publishers (who voluntarily completed a survey) think they can charge successfully for online content.

But what does “successfully” mean? And who gets to define it? Easy: Cui bono?

Those at the top of many content-provision corporations believe they would benefit. Mr. Brill says he has 1,000 publications signed to non-binding agreements. Others aren’t so optimistic. Consultants for the American Press Institute, in an early study with admitted weaknesses, suggest only readers would only pay $4.64 — nearly halving Mr. Brill’s nearly $1 billion estimate.

Content-provision corporations are eager, nay, slaked with thirst for advertising revenue to replace the dollars that have fled print newspapers. Although a few large content-provision corporations have managed to hold share prices lately despite tumbling profits, managers need that pay-wall revenue to reinvigorate investors who lost a bundle on newspaper stocks over that past five years. (And let’s not forget some argue consortium-set, pay-wall prices are tantamount to collusion in pricing.)

Because sound data to predict pay-wall success, erecting that wall risks revenue flight as much as revenue restored. Respected analyst Alan Mutter (”Reflections of Newsosaur“) has written extensively in the past few months about pay walls. Mr. Mutter says:

But what, publishers rightfully wonder, will become of the other 90% of website visitors – and the $3.1 billion in advertising revenues the U.S. newspaper industry generated on the web in 2008?. … Here’s why publishers are sweating: While Brill argues that newspapers can preserve some 90% of their page views and online advertising after erecting a pay wall, publishers consistently have told me that they fear they could lose 75% or more of their traffic and banner revenue if they started to charge for content.

Readers — at least those who pay the toll to cross the pay-wall moat — get to define success. (Here’s a look at what some smaller, rural newspapers in non-competitive situations have done in terms of content behind the pay wall.) Remember that “Members Only” clothing line of the ’80s? That’s what a pay wall promises: Uniqueness. Frankly, that’s always been a good local newspaper’s strength — unique content. Local news about local people and local issues.

Erect a pay wall. Promise quality, unique, premium content. That’s the formula the content-provision corporations promise. Will they deliver in terms of what the readers accept as a fair exchange for fee paid? It’d be easy to snark here. For example, in May more than half of the 45 million visits to the online Palm Beach Post linked to the police mug shots the Post runs online. (It’s not the only online paper that does this, too. And a host of ethical issues are involved.)

Is this the quality, unique, premium content that lies behind the pay wall? No, not really. Most of that unique content will be locally generated news, features and “service” information — school lunches, entertainment listings. But will that local behind-the-wall content have quality in quantity?

If the pay walls had been erected 15 years ago — even five years ago — then the answer would be more yes than no.

In this still-dawning century, thousands of the skilled, experienced professional practitioners who produced the quality, unique, premium content no longer work for the content-provision corporations. That’s because the corporations fired the producers. To maintain profit levels to satisfy the investors to whom content-provision management sold its collective soul, it cut expenses — firing the professionals it desparately needs now to make good on the pay-wall promise.

A successful business model? Or crap shoot?

Even if content-provision companies have that $900 million fall into their laps as Mr. Brill suggests, which is more likely to happen? Stock buybacks and dividend increases? Or investment of at least tens of millions of dollars into hiring professional newsmen and newswomen to make good on the promise of quality, unique, premium content?

Yeah, right. It won’t be the latter.

Recommended reading:

Alan Mutter’s excellent series on arguments for and against pay walls:

Why aren’t we paying for news?
What stops publishers from charging for news?
How publishers can make Web content pay

Paul Farhi of the American Journalism Review, arguing for reinvigoration of the print newspaper:

Build that pay wall high

As we all know, the nation has been alive with discourse of all flavors over the current state of the health care system and the insurance industry. Recently, Senator Baucus has brought forth his proposal, dubbed by some critics (rightly so, in my opinion) the “Insurance Industry Profit Protection and Enhancement Act.”

Please listen: The very reason we need the government to intervene is because millions of us have a Sword of Damocles hanging over our heads. Private industry has already proven that it cannot be trusted to look out for its bottom line and simultaneously safeguard and maintain the health of the American people, even if some of us are misguidedly rallying in the streets against our interests at the urgings of their preferred Chicken Littles of media and industry.

It is my belief that what needs to be accomplished is the affirmation of every American citizen’s right to a basic level of health, security and well-being above a private company’s right to make a profit, which it currently does in part by conveniently discounting and disregarding its customers’ human rights at its whims. Private insurers need to know, as my mother would say, that “your rights stop where another one’s starts.”

Legislation that hands millions of new customers directly over to health insurers, who have made clear that they give their profit motives precedence over honoring their commitments to their policyholders, sometimes with deadly consequences, is simply a conversion of taxpayer money into more income for the industry and a tacit acceptance of its horrific business practices.

As a taxpayer, I have no qualms about the cost of health care reform–I consider it our duty to one another as citizens, as a community, and as a nation. How do you think it looks when Washington puts us all further in hock frivolously throwing money down the toilets of the banking industry, tax cuts for the rich, and Iraq, to cite a few recent examples (our last president tried to flush Social Security as well), and then tries to tell us that we’re not entitled to a health care system that won’t be tainted by continued rewards to an industry with no reservations about flipping us the middle finger and leaving us for dead when we dare get sick? Why are regular people being taught to accept the ever-growing obligations to war, to creditors, and to failed industry, and at the same time not to make an across-the-board investment in one another as this nation’s human capital: workers; thinkers; doers; entrepreneurs; taxpayers; human beings?

I am free to help pay your medical bills, and those of my grandparents, and for those of us in states of extraordinary need, but not for a system that’s going to be there for me, free from the tentacles and inflated costs of private interests, even if I don’t have the right job, the right friends, a trust fund, a winning Powerball ticket, or the good fortune to remain healthy and free of accidents between now, at the age of 29, and my 65th birthday, should I find myself again without income or coverage?

Is continued corporate captivity the thanks we are going to get from our representatives for supporting them with our votes and paying for their salaries, benefits and pension plans? We not only sacrifice our own salaries, benefits and pension plans (and for many of us, our homes) for others’ bad decisions and greed, but now we can expect to be groomed to accept some compromise from Capitol Hill that may or may not improve our lives while the jackpots continue to flow upward?

A hostile climate has been created for every working person in this country. We have been told for years by the powerful, privileged and obscenely well-compensated that we are going to have to do things like “tighten our belts” and “weather the storm” (or, as some have called it, the “rough patch”). We’ve individually and collectively been subjected to repeated assaults on our financial well-being, our employment opportunities, our civil rights, our health and our futures by an ever more demanding section of the population so far insulated from what we are truly facing. One can turn on the television and at any given time watch a politician, executive, “industry expert” or news reporter talk about our right to access affordable health care, even though they themselves would never fathom or accept such treatment, as though United States citizens were no better than numbers on a balance sheet or some rogue band of freeloaders trying to burgle the upper class.

We all know who is really being burgled.

Let me tell you something: I don’t care to hear what anybody in a position of privilege has to say unless they have truly done their homework or they have first-hand life experience to back it up. I don’t care if some insurance executive is going to have to postpone the construction of his exact replica of the M.C. Hammer mansion in Dubai if he doesn’t get some additional payoff from the American public. I’ve got skin in the game here, too, and you and the rest of our representatives have the opportunity to come through with flying colors for me and for my fellow citizens. We’re all counting on you, even those of us who don’t know it or won’t admit it because it wouldn’t fit their politics or their way of thinking to do so.

We as Americans need to join the rest of the West in providing each other, across income, party and racial lines, with a guarantee of basic care not as some so-called “middle-class entitlement,” as I have heard wafting condescendingly out of the windpipes of more than one multimillionaire, but as a long-overdue recognition of our needs and our rights, and perhaps the making of amends over the treatment so many of us have endured from entities that have been allowed growing and crippling control over the quality, course, and length, of our lives.

If a strong stand is not ultimately taken on our behalf, it will be a damning and ominous indicator of what this country truly thinks of me, my neighbors, my family, my friends, and the rest of my fellow citizens. I implore you: Keep an irrevocable public option on the table and stick to your guns on it. To be blunt, some of your colleagues absolutely will do their best to beat you over the head with whatever you do, so you might as well make it worth doing in the first place and roll with the punches so that we, as a nation, will come out better for it. I don’t want something for nothing, as the elites would put it–I want something better for what I have put in and will continue to put in, and the people of this nation have more than paid for it in service to their employers, their families, their communities, their country–and some with their lives.

Thank you,
A. N. Cargo
Denver, Colorado (CO-01)

You’re honey child to a swarm of bees
Gonna blow right through you like a breeze
Give me one last dance
Well slide down the surface of things

You’re the real thing
Yeah the real thing
You’re the real thing
Even better than the real thing

- U2

Fantasy stories, myths, legends, tall tales, fairy tales, horror, all these have been with us for a very long time. Science fiction, as well, has been with us since Mary Shelley found herself in a bet with Lord Byron about the possibility of writing a new kind of horror, one not grounded in the gothic.* So the presence in our popular culture of stories based in unreality of one form or another is certainly nothing new.

It seems to me that there’s been a lot more of it lately, though. I don’t have the means to conduct the kind of thorough study we’d need to prove the point, but a cursory examination of what’s on television demonstrates that a good bit of our attention is being occupied by various hyper-realities.

• In this TV.com list of most popular shows, at least 20 deal with the supernatural in some form.
• A quick look at the networks’ fall line-up reveals 11 non-reality-based shows. Add to this Chuck, which will be back mid-season sometime.
• That list doesn’t include cable, of course. In addition to SyFy (or whatever the heck it’s being called these days), HBO is currently burning it up with True Blood, an exceptional vampire/mystery series.

When you factor out reality and game shows, soap operas and children’s programming, the ratio of supernatural-to-natural (such as it is) is quite high. And we’re not even including ludicrously fanciful programming that’s ostensibly based in the plausible (think Desperate Housewives here).

Now let’s have a look at the top-grossing films of 2008:

• The Dark Knight
• Iron Man
• Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
• Hancock
• WALL·E
• Kung Fu Panda
• Twilight (2008/I)
• Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa
• Quantum of Solace
• Horton Hears a Who!

And 2009:

• Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen
• Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
• Up
• The Hangover
• Star Trek
• Monsters vs Aliens
• Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs
• X-Men Origins: Wolverine
• Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian
• The Proposal

Beginning to notice a pattern?

I can’t help wondering why. Cultures behave the way they do for reasons, and studied examinations of those behaviors (and most especially, of the culture’s popular artifacts) tell us a great deal about the society. What does it love, what does it hate? What does it dream of, what does it fear? What are its dysfunctions…

In this particular case, what are we running from?

We Are the Hollow Men

I have a theory. Well, actually, it’s not well developed enough to be a theory. Or even a hypothesis, for that matter. So let’s just call it a question. I recently read Affluenza, a book that sets out to examine our culture’s pathological need for stuff. The editor’s review at Amazon sums it up this way:

The definition of affluenza, according to de Graaf, Wann, and Naylor, is something akin to “a painful, contagious, socially-transmitted condition of overload, debt, anxiety and waste resulting from the dogged pursuit of more.” It’s a powerful virus running rampant in our society, infecting our souls, affecting our wallets and financial well-being, and threatening to destroy not only the environment but also our families and communities. Having begun life as two PBS programs coproduced by de Graaf, this book takes a hard look at the symptoms of affluenza, the history of its development into an epidemic, and the options for treatment. In examining this pervasive disease in an age when “the urge to splurge continues to surge,” the first section is the book’s most provocative. According to figures the authors quote and expound upon, Americans each spend more than $21,000 per year on consumer goods, our average rate of saving has fallen from about 10 percent of our income in 1980 to zero in 2000, our credit card indebtedness tripled in the 1990s, more people are filing for bankruptcy each year than graduate from college, and we spend more for trash bags than 90 of the world’s 210 countries spend for everything. “To live, we buy,” explain the authors–everything from food and good sex to religion and recreation–all the while squelching our intrinsic curiosity, self-motivation, and creativity. They offer historical, political, and socioeconomic reasons that affluenza has taken such strong root in our society, and in the final section, offer practical ideas for change. These use the intriguing stories of those who have already opted for simpler living and who are creatively combating the disease, from making simple habit alterations to taking more in-depth environmental considerations, and from living lightly to managing wealth responsibly.

Grist notes that in the wake of 9/11, affluenza seems to have evolved from social disease into official policy:

In each of the past four years, more people declared bankruptcy than graduated from college. On average, the nation’s CEOs now earn 400 times the wages of the typical worker, “a tenfold increase since 1980.” Although the United States makes up less than five percent of the world’s population, we produce 25 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions; since 1950, we “have used up more resources than everyone who ever lived on earth before then.”

Many of us also know that bigger houses, bigger cars, more gadgets, and more expensive clothes do not make us more content, despite the glossy promises of advertisers. Yet consumer spending has long been used as an indicator of both the national economy and the national mood. The more we spend, the better off we are — or so we’ve been told. This mantra has been particularly insistent in the past year, as the great blooming bubble of stock market riches began to deflate and the Bush administration chose instant gratification as an economic strategy. Since Sept. 11, national leaders have been telling us with ever-increasing urgency that consumer confidence must and will rebound. While confidence — as an indicator of our faith in the future — should return, it’s equally clear that the past few decades’ rate of consumption is neither sustainable nor desirable. Moreover, we must assume — and hope — that tragedy has made us wiser, and tempered the impulse of so many Americans to affirm their existence with a pleasing new purchase.

To be honest, reading Affluenza is one of the hardest things I’ve done in some time. I not only saw the moral emptiness of my society laid bare, there were entirely too many pages that described my own life. Even in instances where I feel like I’ve won the battle against consumerist addiction, I still had to acknowledge that once upon a time I was eaten up by a craving for material things that not only couldn’t have made me whole, it would have made the hollow space even larger. I had to slog through passages that seemed specifically written about people I know, people close to me. Worst of all, the book flogged me relentlessly with details about how our obsessions with status and toys are annihilating the physical world that sustains us … for the moment.

Affluenza ripped at my guts in ways that brought me literally to the brink of illness. Or maybe past the brink – I haven’t written about it before, but I’m currently battling at least a couple of medical conditions that may ultimately be the result of affluenza. One of them – a blood sugar issue that I’m now taking medication for daily – is certainly a product of the American food complex. If you drink, on average, two liters of soda a day for the better part of 25 years, how many milligrams of high-fructose corn syrup have you strained through your body? I’m not blaming anybody for my stupidity, which was considerable, but let’s not pretend that our consumption patterns exist in a vacuum, either.

The physical impact pales next to the psychological, though. I grew up desperately seeking the sort of validation that comes with success in America, and if you aren’t careful you can fixate on all the wrong goals. Is success a certain income level? Is it a house in a certain neighborhood? Is it the security that comes from knowing that your children have newer, cooler and more expensive basketball shoes than their friends? Is it a Lexus or Beemer or Mercedes? Is it having a certain number of people reporting to you?

Is it the satisfaction that comes from working so many hours your wife doesn’t recognize you when you come home? Is it the number of ulcers you have? Is it having a physical stress level so consistently high that your body is more or less always sick in some way?

Affluenza made me think about the lies we tell ourselves about success. About the “American Dream.” We grow up enculterated into a consumerist assumption (unless our parents raise us in the woods, miles from the nearest television – and then we have a whole ‘nother set of problems). At some point we realize that we’re not happy (although “realize” may be the wrong word – one thing affluenza seems to do is systematically kill off our self-awareness – in any case, we aren’t happy). Everywhere we look, though, we see happy people (these are called advertisements), and the happiness we see emanates from a thing. A car, a haircut, a shirt, a house, an iPhone, a particular brand of computer…whatever it is, it’s something that can be purchased. So we purchase it. And after a few minutes, we’re not happy again.

I once watched a young boy on his first real Christmas morning. The monetary value of the presents he had under the tree was probably triple the value of all the presents I’d ever had under all the trees during my entire life. He ripped into the first present – it was spectacular. He looked at it, then put it aside and ripped into the second one. And the third. And the fourth, and fifth, and so on. He never paused to play with any of them. It was only about more, more, more. And when there were no more, he still didn’t play with them. The look on his face at that moment was one of profound and unmistakable disappointment. There were no more.

I had never seen anything like it, and I was as horrified as he was unfulfilled. That young boy has had several more Christmas mornings since then, and as best I can tell each one has been little more than a re-enactment of that first one, only with escalating price tags. He’s a smart kid and a very good kid in many ways, but I shudder at the hollowness that now threatens to consume his entire life.

Can I complain about the parenting decisions that have been made in this boy’s life? Well, I could, but in truth the significance of the story isn’t what happened to him, it’s that what happened to him happens millions of times a day all across our consumerist nation. The more we have, the emptier we are. We’re a nation of addicts, and all the stuff that we’re Jonesing for is a million times more addictive and destructive than crystal meth.

What Happens When We Run Out of Fantasies?

We are the age of insubstantiation,
a generation of digital bells,
loose change on the sidewalk.

Our days are loops,
our nights tight spirals,

and if the virtual is
          even better than the real thing

it’s only because the real thing is so goddamned empty.

So here’s my theory/hypothesis/question. We’re a hollow nation, a society that provides nearly all of us with rampant access to more material goods than we know what to do with. But we cannot find happiness in the material because there is not happiness in it. On the contrary – it’s a system that’s rigged to feed us a shiny, pretty lie that hollows us out some more, all the while whispering that only more of the lie will make us happy.

This is our reality. So should we be surprised that our favorite television shows and movies aren’t about “reality”? That instead, we turn toward the magical, the mystical, the alien, the supernatural and hyper-real realms that can promise us even more? Even when these narratives are dystopian, they can’t help but be more interesting than stories about this world. After all, we have everything that this world can offer and we’re still bored to tears.

These are heady days for fantasy merchants. But where will we go next, when even better than the real thing grows dull?

_________________

* Alkon, P. Science Fiction Before 1900: Imagination Discovers Technology. New York: Twayne Publishers, 1994.

Rule-makers claimed that this protected European consumers from poor quality, but it is hard to argue that a lump on the side of a potato alters its flavour or nutritional value in any way.  A welcome respite came on 1 July 2009, when 36 classes of produce were deregulated.

European risk-aversion is built on the complacency that comes with good fortune. Companies have accepted high taxation, used for social entitlements, in exchange for protectionist agreements.

The credit crisis has exposed an interdependency that confounds unemployment targets, raises prices, and leaves state finances mightily exposed to the experiences of a small number of national champions.

With their political and economic support in disarray, lobbyists have had a ready ear amongst politicians.  The most successful are from the motor industry.  France, Italy, and Germany, amongst others, have all launched scrappage schemes to support the sale of new cars.

The argument for this favouritism is straightforward.  Motor manufacturers are large employers and they are in danger of collapsing under the weight of their inventories and falling consumer demand.

 With state support, car makers get to sell new cars and governments get to promote employment and investment, while also reducing carbon emissions from old cars.

There are many arguments against the subsidies.  Many people would have bought cars anyway.  The sales period has simply been compressed, leaving a precipitous drop later.  All tax payers are subsidising new cars for a few.

These are fair comments.  But they are misleading, giving the impression that supporting an economy involves supporting specific industries within that economy.

Governments are meant to be custodians of a nation’s wealth, both present and future.  An investor who only ventures his own money can take as many risks as he likes.  One who represents the multitude needs to take greater care, ensuring that their risk is evenly spread.

Unfortunately, like compulsive gamblers, governments have chosen to bet once more on a small number of industries in the hopes that they’ll recover their losses with a new throw.   By biasing their support, governments are stating, unequivocally, that they believe consumers are wrong and should be paid to keep buying things they may not want.  That Germany and France are now, tepidly, emerging from recession will only reinforce the view that such guess-work is brave leadership.

Yet the crisis is a tremendous opportunity to confront voters with the need for substantial economic restructuring.  While the crisis has focused people’s attention, politicians have the space to introduce a plethora of reforms that have been held in abeyance; from raising the retirement age, to healthcare reform, to ending innovation-sapping and trade-distorting subsidies.

Markets may fail, but their capacity for constant reinvention and experimentation ensures that new ideas can become successful as old ideas are found wanting.  The bounty coming out of the stimulus bills could have been used to gracefully collapse obsolete industries and pay for the retraining and further education of those with a chance of finding new jobs, or covering those who cannot.

By choosing a single winner, governments have yet again put off the difficult decisions for later.

Further, during that decade, the newspaper industry has purposely deteriorated its product in a vain attempt to chase the last dram of declining advertising revenue. To do this, it has cut costs in the two principal areas it can — paper and people. Physically, newspapers have shrunk in height, width and number of pages, reducing the amount of newsprint required. In 1990 America’s daily newspapers had 56,900 staffers; 5,900 journalists lost their jobs in 2008; and thousands more have been whacked this year. And it’s the expensive high end of the experience spectrum that the industry has callously discarded. So profit levels remained tolerable to shareholders, but only because of decreased costs — not increased revenue.

And the titans of the industry now say they’re going to charge for a product produced by fewer people with less experience that’s led to far more editing errors and one-source stories that reveal much in their shallowness about the quality of the product being sold? Good luck with leading the paid content charge, Rupert.

Now, the claim that the news product has been disfigured by fiscal folly is admittedly a swipe with a broad brush. But there was a time when readers of many, if not most, newspapers in the United States could point to more than one story in their local paper that exhibited the characteristics of first-rate reporting and writing. These would be stories that provided context, background and meaning beyond the mere reporting of “what happened.” These would be stories fleshed out with color, tone and detail. These would be stories grounded in substance wrought by vigorous reporting, rather than inexpertly daubed with cloying style. These would be stories that a reader would remember — stories by an experienced, competent journalist whose byline a reader would remember and look for in the future.

That’s not true any more. And readers know it. They know when they’re being poorly served. They know when the product loses value yet the newsstand and subscription prices rise. And the prime demographic the industry wishes to reach (because they’ve got discretionary income to spend) has come to know another truth promulgated foolishly by the industry: News is free. Newspapers may place their product behind a pay wall — but that’s no guarantee that readers who have come of advertiser-sought age during the Era of All Media Are Free will actually buy the product.

I don’t know how this seller-vs.-buyer drama is going to play out, but the first act will come soon. I expect larger metro papers, now free online, to institute partial pay walls within a year. Perhaps a consortium of papers, as envisioned by Steven Brill’s Journalism Online, will institute some sort of online subscription or pay-per-story scheme (which might qualify as price-fixing?). I’d bet newspapers have already done readership surveys asking would you pay and how much would you pay. (Wouldn’t you love to see those survey results?) Heck, is this even a well-thought-out business model? Or is it a new biz model, same as the old biz model?

The industry will spend huge sums on Web platforms and promotion. It will spend oodles of dough on technologically particularizing its pay walls. It will spend rafts of money on promoting the advantages of its new superb online news subscription systems.

But how much will it spend on improving its product?

The last decade suggests an answer: Nada.

Good luck with this Brave New Pay Wall World, Rupert.

NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell has conditionally reinstated

Last Thursday the Philadelphia Eagles answered the question as to which team would sign a convicted dog-killer (there were 32 possible answers to the question, and “none of the above” wasn’t one of them), and in doing so touched off a long-awaited PR war for the souls of their stunned fans. That the move is this controversial in Philly is instructive, because this is a city that has some of the meanest, most hardcore fans in the sporting world. Imagine if the team had instead been somebody like Seattle or the 49ers.

In any case, this is America, and as such there was never any doubt that Vick would be reinstated and that some team would pay millions to sign him. If Saddam Hussein had been able to break down a defense and get to the rim he wouldn’t be in Hell right now, he’d be in the NBA. So the controversy, such as it is, has nothing to do with anybody being surprised that Vick would find his way back onto the field.

Nonetheless, the argument is raging, and not just in Philadelphia. As I’ve read what people on “both” sides of the question have to say, as I’ve listened to the takes from local and national various sports commentators, as I’ve heard callers to sports talk stations offering their humble (and utterly meaningless) opinions, I have to admit that I’ve gotten a little tired of some of the memes being trotted out to defend Vick, the Eagles and the league. No matter how self-evidently inaccurate or utterly silly a particular idea may be, once it reaches the point of cliché the chances of somebody not repeating it are about the same as a crack addict not honking on the pipe every chance he gets. It’s true that much of what I’m complaining about comes from a noble place and it’s also true that many of those who are getting on my nerves are in fact good people espousing worthy ideals. Still, we have to understand that good intentions don’t guarantee positive results, and sometimes the pursuit of even the best ideals can effect unanticipated and undesired outcomes.

Here are some examples.

Everybody deserves a second chance…

Really? Everybody? Let’s test this. How about Charles Manson? Does he deserve a second chance? If so, can he stay at your hosue when we release him? Did Ted Bundy deserve a second chance, and if so, would you have let him escort your daughter to the prom? How about TIm McVeigh, or Eric Harris or Dylan Klebold or Pol Pot or Stalin or Hitler or Jeffrey Dahmer?

Okay, okay. What Vick did wasn’t as bad as those guys. I get that. But two things to remember. First, the meme says everybody, not almost everybody, and this ain’t no straw man – I’m quoting lots and lots and lots of people that I’ve heard with my own in ears in just the past month. If we agree, as I suspect we do, that it’s not really everybody, then what we’re literally saying is that not everybody deserves a second chance.

Second, let’s try a scenario involving nobody famous. Say you’re a parent and you have a brother named Fred. And one day you catch Fred molesting your five year-old daughter. Assuming you’re even vaguely human, Fred’s ass is off to jail (assuming you can keep yourself from killing him on the spot).

So one day Fred gets out of jail. Do you let him babysit your daughter? If not, why not? After all, everybody deserves a second chance.

Give me a few minutes and I think I can convince just about anybody out there, even the most charitably minded person alive, that some people don’t deserve a second chance. Once we get to that point, the only thing left is to decide where to draw the line. At a minimum, though, we’ve demonstrated the ridiculousness of ever saying those words again.

He’s paid his debt to society…

We’re a nation of laws and we must, at some level, invest a measure of faith in the collective justice of our system if we’re to live civilly. Otherwise there’s a lynch mob on every corner, a vigilante lurking in every dark alley, and that’s a prescription for chaos. Who will watch the watchers, right?

That said, it’s hard for an intelligent and moral citizen to take the system at its word, to assume that justice is done in each individual case. If a man breaks into a home, rapes and murders a woman, and winds up pleading to a misdemeanor because the prosecutors can’t cobble together enough evidence to get a felony conviction, has the perpetrator paid his debt to society? Has OJ Simpson paid his debt to society? (Remember, he was found liable for the deaths of his ex-wife and Ron Goldman in a civil case.) Or has he merely paid a fraction of the debt he should have incurred?

The “paid his debt” meme forces us to assume and to assert that the system is always right, and I’ve never yet met anyone who believes that, I don’t think. Yes, the system has run its course, but it’s not hard to find cases where offenses are punished too heavily or too lightly and every day the guilty walk free (and the innocent are sometimes convicted, as well). We do have an obligation to accept the results of the justice system, writ large, though, so while I’m mad as hell that Michael Vick only served a fraction of what I think his crimes merited, I’m not campaigning to throw him back into prison. Given a chance I’ll certainly support much stiffer penalties for dogfighting, but that’s about the future, not the past.

That said, what should I think of people who spout these kinds of clichés when they clearly have no idea of the implications of them? Further, what do we do with those who seem to think that the framers of the Constitution meant that multi-million dollar sports contracts were an inalienable right?

The system has rendered a verdict and exacted a punishment. In one context this means Vick has a right to pursue a life for himself. But in no sense does this entitle him to resume the life of royalty he lived before he was caught.

Forgiveness

Don’t get me wrong – forgiveness is a wonderful thing, taken in moderation. People make mistakes and it wouldn’t be much of a world if we couldn’t forgive the simple fact of human failing. For my part, I’ve made massive mistakes in my life and am the (hopefully worthwhile) person I am today because I’ve been afforded the chance to learn from those errors. By the same token, I have been the victim of the mistakes of others, and have tried to be as generous with my own spirit of forgiveness as possible.

That said, we Americans have some problems where forgiveness is concerned. For starters, not all mistakes are created equal. I do not believe that all things deserve forgiveness (refer to my comments above on Tim McVeigh and your Uncle Fred) and even if I did, I think it would need to be earned by a regimen of penance that was proportional to the offense. Despite what 90% of Americans are required by their religions to say they believe, I don’t think that if we all felt free to voice what we really believe that I’d be in the minority at all.

For example, if you’ve been around long enough you’ve probably had the misfortune to be involved with some form of marital or relationship infidelity. Maybe he/she cheated on you, or maybe you were the cheater. Or both. Or maybe you’ve been lucky enough not to be involved, but you know people who have. In any case, tell me if you have heard some variation of this: “I forgave him/her, but I can’t ever forget.” My guess is that most of us know of a case where person A forgave person B, but nonetheless exiled person B from his/her life forever. Well, is that really forgiveness? If so, then what is the functional difference between forgiveness and can’t-forgiveness? The practical results are the same in both cases – the only distinction is that in one case you repeat the words that you’ve been taught you have to repeat when issuing mandatory forgiveness.

An ever bigger issue has to do with the hypocrisy of forgiveness – in short, the ways we use the certainty of forgiveness to enable all manner of bad behavior. We get a lot of this from those in the ministry, it seems. Jim Bakker. Jimmy Swaggart. Ted Haggard. Henry Lyons. If it isn’t a preacher it’s somebody famous in the news all the time. Right now the happy guys in the spotlight are Louisville hoops coach Rick Pitino and former Senator and presidential hopeful John Edwards. (One wonders if “Catholics in Louisville” would be less forgiving of a coach who knocked up a stranger in public restroom and then paid for her abortion if said coach’s record was in the .500 range.)

The problem here has to do with the concept of intent. It’s one thing to forgive someone who acted improperly in a time of crisis, or who made the wrong choice when the choices were ambiguous, or someone who hurt us accidentally through some form of negligence.

But what about those people who intentionally did that which they knew or believed to be wrong with clear planning and/or forethought? Jim Bakker didn’t realize that he shouldn’t cheat on his wife? Really? All those Catholic priests didn’t know that molesting little boys was bad? Really? Ted Haggard can’t say hello without railing against the abomination of sodomy but he thought it was okay to buy a male hooker for himself? Really? In these kinds of cases there’s a good degree of arrogance associated with even asking for forgiveness, because the regret very clearly isn’t about the action, it’s about getting caught.

To this point, can you actually argue that Michael Vick didn’t realize dogfighting was wrong? If so, then why did he take such effort to conceal it?

We’re not just talking about famous people and preachers here, of course. The certainty of forgiveness plays a big part in the way some of us plan our lives. For instance:

• Monday-Friday: go to work
• Friday night: get loaded, get into a fight
• Saturday night: pick up a hooker
• Sunday: go to confession

Lather. Rinse. Repeat. How many times do you suppose that the aforementioned legion of priests confessed for buggering altar boys? What do you think is the world record for number of consecutive weeks confessing to buggering altar boys?

At some point, we’re not talking about genuine forgiveness, we’re talking about enabling.

Rehabilitation

The purpose of prison – or at least one of the purposes – is rehabilitation. We send people who do bad things to prison so they won’t do them anymore. Studies indicating national recidivism rates of better than two-thirds tell us what we need to know about the rehabilitating effects of incarceration. Still, it’s a nice idea.

But even in the absence of this data, we’re assuming that all things can be fixed. In truth, an extremely detailed study would probably conclude that some kinds of anti-social behaviors are more easily addressed than others. For instance, a small-time mugger who encounters a strong vocational training program in jail is a very different case from a pedophile. A few experts seem to think that pedophilia can be treated, but I don’t believe this is anywhere near a majority opinion.

So if we’re going to talk about rehabilitating Mike Vick, it’s fair to ask about the nature of the crime and its amenability to treatment.

And here’s my biggest problem: what Michael Vick did was simply sub-human. I don’t mean that word in a pejorative, insulting way. Instead, I’m referring to a clear deficit in human empathy. One of our greatest writers, Philip K Dick, in one of his greatest books, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, confronted a world of increasingly human-seeming androids and posed the question: what quality makes us essentially human?

The answer: empathy. In the narrative (upon which the film Blade Runner was based), humans worked hard to cultivate their empathy (which was central to the society’s dominant religious ideology) through the stewardship of animals. A citizen who didn’t have an animal to care for lived a deficient, hollow life, and few sins were more damning than the failure to properly care for one’s animal. In one of the central moments of the novel, one of the replicants kills an animal – something no human could have even contemplated. The lesson is undeniable: only something inhuman could harm an animal.

Dick’s depiction of a strange science fiction near-future was brilliant in its grasp of the fundamental character of our actual humanity, here in the real and now. Empathy makes us human, and there are few measures of empathy that are more revealing than our treatment of animals. Why animals? Because they are helpless. They rely on us.

There’s no absolution here for Michael Vick

We all have our own means of evaluating other people and the moral codes that govern our lives, but for me no bell has ever rung more clearly than the one PK Dick sounds in Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? From where I stand, there is no more meaningful and reliable measure of human character than how one treats the innocent and those who cannot take care of themselves. Animals are one case, and a good one. So are children. And if you’re a man, especially a strong one, I know all I need to know about you if you abuse women. You are sub-human.

I have no forgiveness for that, and I’ve never really understand people who do.

So here’s how I see it from the context that I’ve described here. The NFL has said that sub-human behavior doesn’t disqualify you from membership in their highly paid club, and the Philadelphia Eagles have gone a step further and said they’re willing to subsidize those who exhibit sub-human behavior.

You do what your conscience tells you is right. For my part, though, I won’t be spending a penny on the NFL this year. Further, I’ll be paying attention to who advertises with them and making sure I don’t patronize their businesses, either. It’s not much, I know. I don’t have a lot of money and the NFL doesn’t care what people like me think. But my principles must matter to me and I won’t apologize for having a code that isn’t subject to compromise on something as essential as the default qualities of humanity.

Meanwhile, it’s a shame that Rae Carruth isn’t up for parole anytime soon. I’d like to see if the league would at least put its foot down when the victims are human.

Flip, from 2007:

I promise that when I am elected to Congress, I will always put the American public above everything else. Unlike 99.9% of Congressional Candidates, I have never accepted a single cent of Corporate PAC money … [emphasis added]

Flip, from 2007:

I believe if you’re going to talk about campaign finance reform, you have to be willing to do it to prove your point. And I did and I would not be able to look myself in the mirror if I took money from ExxonMobil. My opponent gets over 70% of his money from PACs… Of all the issues we face, the core issue has to be campaign finance reform because nothing will change til we get the Board Room out of the voting booth. [emphasis added]

Flop, from 2009:

I’m not going to go to the working families of the 29th Congressional District and ask them to fund a congressional campaign when my opponents aren’t willing to do the same thing. I believe in playing on a level playing field [emphasis added].

Rep. Massa argues that he must accept corporate PAC money because the GOP does. He hides behind the “level playing field” argument. Why now? He beat the GOP incumbent without it. His only announced Republican opponent, Corning Mayor Tom Reed, has yet to be offered serious money from the National Republican Congressional Committee — which heavily funded the incumbent he defeated.

Rep. Massa knows the GOP wants this seat back. He wants a fat war chest and he wants it fast to deter any serious GOP challengers (and, perhaps, a Democratic primary one). That’s what incumbents do. That reflects his swift, dramatic shift from principled challenger to Beltway insider.

To disguise this, he suggests he does not want to return to hitting up district voters who are hard-pressed economically, “the working families,” as he labels them.

But that argument is disingenuous. He didn’t depend heavily on the “suffering middle class,” those he now says he wishes to protect from being dunned for contributions.

Federal Election Commission records, aggregated by the non-partisan Center for Responsive Politics, show that Rep. Massa raised $2,151,657 for the 2008 election cycle, $600,000 more than the GOP incumbent. He did not rely as heavily as he claims on the “suffering middle-class” district residents: His top 29 contributors gave him nearly $680,000. And ActBlue contributed nearly half of that. The list of these 29 contributors is dominated by labor unions ponying up $10,000 each.

Sliced another way — by industry totals— $1,292,621 of his total $2.1 million came from the usual suspects of campaign finance: Democratic and liberal organizations; leadership PACs; retired individuals; other candidate committees, lawyers and law firms; industrial, building trade, public sector and transportation unions; the securities and investments community; real estate and health professionals; and others.

As of the June 30 FEC quarterly filing deadline, Rep. Massa has raised $515,119 for the 2010 election cycle. More than half — $284,975 — has come from PAC contributions. His leading contributor is, again, ActBlue, with $73,000. The list of top industries for 2010 is similar to that for 2008. Those industries have given $310,772 so far.

Rep. Massa will need much more than the $2.1 million he raised for 2008. The national GOP wants that seat. And 2010 will be the year that New York state loses one seat in the House due to redistricting. Rural districts like the 29th are always convenient targets to be cut. If the 29th gets whacked, he’d have to run against, perhaps, longer-term New York congressional incumbents. Perhaps that influenced his change of financial heart.

Rep. Massa has said that he would not take corporate PAC money from harmful interests, such as cigarettes and Big Oil. Perhaps he’ll post a clear definition of “harmful” on his re-election website — if and when he announces for 2010.

Congress is taking a vacation from its hard work of fixing health care (yes, sarcasm intended). All the members are town-halling like mad, trying to divine the will of the electorate. Which Rep. Massa will tour District 29 this month?

This one, from June 2007:

I believe that we also need to address the problem of lobbyists in Washington, and as such, I do not accept Corporate PAC money. Thus I am reaching out to all of you to support my grassroots campaign. I am asking for 1000 people to step up and donate $100 to my campaign so we can tackle the issue of global warming in Washington. I need you to join me. Together, we can change the world.

Or this one, from February 2009:

[GOP critics] want to attack me for taking legitimate political action money that they are taking 10 times more of. I don’t quite get why the pot is calling the kettle black.

photo credit: Esquire

After miraculously freeing itself from the debts incurred by horrible decision making, short-sighted strategy, and woeful products the new GM is ready to get busy. Too bad for you if you happened to be a stock-holder, an employee (many of whom were stockholders but at least a few will get to keep their jobs), a retiree or the owner of a dealership that got shuttered. The old GM bemoaned its labor costs that arose from having not prefunded the pension/retiree health care plan that it had agreed to in contracts written long ago. So the UAW cut a deal with the manufacturers to operate the plan after the companies contributed seed money. The new GM is not liable for the contribution; because that was the old GM…it’s a different company now. Instead the UAW gets stock in the new GM and can only hope for the rosy predictions of near-term profitability.

The corporate motto appears to be: that was the old GM, so it ain’t our problem.

Cleaning up the sites owned by the old GM and now worth nothing because they are environmental nightmares isn’t the new GM’s problem. Thanks to the particulars of this government intervention, those problems belong to the old GM which doesn’t really exist and has no money to pay up in any case. The taxpayer can fund those cleanups, because the new GM is staunchly against socialism and needs to focus on the rumored IPO. You don’t want to ruin your “investment” in the new GM by saddling that IPO with obligations of the old GM, do you? Of course not, because you’re not a socialist.

The new GM will not participate in the program to remove mercury switches from out-of-service vehicles, because the new GM doesn’t make any vehicles with mercury switches. See, that was the old GM and it doesn’t exist anymore. Mercury poisoning is no concern of the new GM. That’s your problem (and Ford’s problem because they weren’t smart enough to declare bankruptcy). If you’ve got a problem with that, then take it up with the government.

Please focus your attention on the Volt, because if/when it actually enters production the new GM is claiming that it will get 230+ mpg. Of course it will cost you $40,000, but through the wonders of capitalism you’ll be eligible for a $7,500 tax credit.

Do not, under any circumstances, attempt to apply the maxim “what’s good for GM is good for America.” You shouldn’t wipe out your debt incurred from buying things you cannot afford on credit by declaring bankruptcy. This is America, not a stinking socialist wasteland like Europe. We’re about individual responsibility, hard work and hard knocks. Do not attempt to have the government rescue you from cancer or unemployment. That stuff’s for commies. The maxim applied to the old GM, so it doesn’t count. This is the new GM. Isn’t it shiny?

These 27 nominees contributed $144,431 to President Obama and $57,900 to once-rival and now Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, reports the center. They have bundled (collected, as middleman, donations from others) at least $5 million for the president’s campaign and at least $1,782,500 for the president’s inauguration.

The president’s most recent nominee as ambassador to Germany, former Democratic National Committee finance chair and former Goldman Sachs executive Philip D. Murphy, and his wife “have contributed nearly $1.5 million to federal candidates, committees and parties since 1989, with 94 percent of that sum going to Democrats, according to a Center for Responsive Politics analysis. They also contributed an additional $100,000 to Obama’s inauguration committee.”

But this isn’t the real news. According to figures kept by the American Foreign Service Association, President Obama is making political patronage nominations to ambassadorships at twice the rate of the previous nine presidents.

The president has made 59 ambassadorial nominations as of July 1, according to American Foreign Service Association records — 35 are political nominees (1 confirmed, 19 nominated, 2 announced, 2 rumored); 24 are career Foreign Service nominees (4 confirmed, 21 nominated, 4 announced, 6 rumored).

According to the association, 110 of the current 175 ambassadorships are filled by career Foreign Service professionals (63 percent) and 45 by political nominees (nearly 26 percent). So far, the president’s record on nominations is reversing that ratio.

About 60 percent of President Obama’s ambassadorial choices so far, according to the association’s data, have been non-career, or political patronage, nominations. That’s nearly twice the average percentage of political nominees in previous administrations. The 40-year average, from presidents Kennedy to Clinton, for nominees is 30 percent political patronage and 70 percent career Foreign Service, according to the association.

Even President George W. Bush, who led the previous nine presidents in political patronage through ambassadorships, made only 36 percent of his 370 ambassadorial nominations political.

In its “Statement on Ambassadors,” the association argues:

The primary authority for choosing Ambassadors rests with the President, and the United States has a long tradition of public service by private citizens. This is appropriate and valuable, and private citizens should continue to serve in the diplomatic field. However, the value of this tradition of public service is undermined when individuals are chosen as ambassadors primarily for the size of their contributions to political campaigns, or for their personal friendship with the President. [emphasis added]

Twelve days before he took office, President Obama said:

I want to recruit young people into the State Department to feel that this is a career track that they can be on for the long term. And so, you know, my expectation is that high quality civil servants are going to be rewarded. You know, are there going to be political appointees to ambassadorships? There probably will be some. [emphasis added]

So far, some is an understatement. If the president continues to nominate political loyalists and fundraisers at this early rate, he’ll easily surpass President Bush’s 36 percent rate of political nominees. Perhaps the Senate, which must confirm nominees, should take note of this trend.

It’s been entertaining watching American public “discourse” since the election. (I use that word in its broadest, most ridiculous sense, since nothing that hinges so completely on self-absorption, rank ignorance and pathological dishonesty can be accurately characterized by such a noble word. But indulge me. I’ve been working on my irony lately.)

On the one hand you have conservatives fainting dead away that we’re now in the clutches of a “socialist” president. Never mind that these folks wouldn’t know a real socialist if he was gnawing their balls off. Never mind that most of these folks think “socialist” is the French word for Negro. Never mind that Obama demonstrably is to socialism what Joe the Plumber is to brie-sucking Northeastern intellectualism. As arch-conservative TV pundit Stephen Colbert says, “this is a fact-free zone.”

On the other you have the righteous outrage of the progressosphere, which feels six different kinds of betrayed by a president who promised them the moon and stars and has now left them to what looks like at least a four-year walk of shame. If I might borrow from an old fraternity joke, imagine the following scene from the Oval Office:

Barack: Hey everybody, what’s the difference between a progressive and a toilet?
Rahm: I give up, Mr. President.
Barack: The toilet doesn’t follow you around after you use it.
[Entire Cabinet]: HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!

A few days ago Chris Bowers, one of the progressive blogosphere’s smarter and more influential voices, announced that he was becoming a conservative Democrat. His reasoning was compelling. Let me sample a bit for you (and encourage you to go read the rest as soon as you’re done here).

You can “endorse someone other than a Democrat for President, and then have the Democratic leadership do whatever it takes” to keep you in the Party. “You get ten times the media mentions that one gets being a progressive.” You get “more money, too. You can proclaim that you are a conservative Democrat, and still have small, progressive, grassroots donors be by far your top contributors.” You can “hold up, water down, and threaten whatever Democratic legislation you want” with no consequences at all. “You get frequent meetings with the President and proclamations that he is one of your own.” If you bitch about it you get “threats about never hearing from the White House again.” You’re “far more likely to receive a major cabinet appointment. Not even counting the Republicans, New Democrats outnumber Progressives in President Obama’s cabinet by 7-1.” And that’s not nearly all.

Okay, so maybe Bowers isn’t really abandoning his fellow progressives. Maybe he was just being a smart-ass to make a point. I can’t say I approve of such tactics, but hey, my old pal Jonathan Swift was known for the occasional snark, so who am I to judge?

The point is that progressives have a beef with the new fauxcialist administration, and regardless of what you think about their issues, their analysis or their personal hygiene, a review of the facts certainly justifies their pique. Think about it.

• Obama the Campaigning Man was pretty clear in his disdain for the Defense of Marriage Act. Obama the President has apparently decided that gay rights can wait. (Don’t Ask Don’t Tell? Don’t bother.)
• Candidate Obama was balls-to-the-wall about greening the economy, and I mean yesterday. President Obama, whose favorability rating is running better than 2-1 for, seemed unable or unwilling to expend some of that political capital on the just passed ACES bill, which many experts think will accomplish diddley (or worse). (Again, whatever the eventual reality about this bill turns out to be is irrelevant – the point is that Obama did not act in accordance with the more progressive stance he had taken earlier.)
• And what about health care? A recent New York Times/CBS News poll showed overwhelming support for “a government administered health insurance plan like Medicare that would compete with private health insurance plans.” How overwhelming, you ask? Overall 72% were in favor of the “public option,” and 57% said they’d be willing to pay higher taxes to get it. Hell, 50% of Republican respondents want it. So, you have very high approval ratings. And you certainly have a significantly greater mandate than George the Conqueror did after nipping John Kerry in 2004. You have significant majorities in both houses of Congress. You have overwhelming popular support for a public option. And you can’t get it done? Seriously?

I’m sitting here trying to figure out why corporate America, which would stand to benefit tremendously from having the burden of insuring the citizenry lifted from its shoulders, isn’t in open revolt. (That part of corporate America that doesn’t include the insurance industry, I mean.)

It has been observed that the Republicans seem to be more effective with a minority than the Dems are when they have the entire country by the balls. GOPpers derail the train by threatening a filibuster, but the Democrats can’t seem to head off a bad idea with a damned-near buster-proof majority. How the hell is this possible?

This, of course, is what’s known as a “rhetorical question.” The butt-obvious answer is that the contemporary Democratic Party is not really a party, at least not in the same way that the GOP is. Instead, it’s a bizarre amalgam of progressives, “moderates,” bipartisan fetishists, “New Democrats,” DINOs and opportunistic Republicans (see Specter, Arlen). The median at present lies significantly to the right of Richard Nixon, who despite the recent revelation that he was in favor of abortion in the case of half-breed fetuses, posted a record that would make him pretty darned progressive by 2009 standards. (Good thing you dodged that bullet, huh Mr. President?)

Ultimately, Bowers and other frustrated progressives are right. The Democratic party just isn’t that into them. They’re useful when votes are needed, but are utterly incapable of leveraging that into actual influence. As far as the “responsible” centrists are concerned, progressives are the late-date with no self-esteem, the unwitting fat chick at the pig party.

So, what to do?

Playing along isn’t working. So how about rounding up all the members of the Progressive Caucus (and their many allies around the country) and opting out? Leave the Democractic Party. Form a third party of their own (or just join the Greens). All of a sudden the Democratic Party has a numbers problem. All of a sudden they lose majority status, chairmanships, agenda-setting stroke, etc.

I’m no expert on the rules of the American legislature, so I’m sure there are nuances I’m missing. Nonetheless, I imagine the Republican wing of the Democratic Party would wet itself. And in the short term this could be very good for the GOP, which would find itself in the plurality.

Longer-term, though, it seems like the progressives can make an argument – and one that is supported by some actual evidence – that they represent the will of a goodly slice of the American public. Even better, given how the youth vote seems to be trending, they can also argue that their hand is going to strengthen over time. Are these premises accurate? Hard to say. But they are testable hypotheses, and the posit is certainly plausible enough to be worth examining.

Maybe the remaining Dems respond by making the reality of the situation official and decamping for the GOP. Maybe the Blue Dogs and the “moderate” wing of the GOP abandon those pesky snake-handlers on the right and form a new “centrist” coalition. Who knows. If that did happen, however, America would at least have the refreshing luxury of an opposition party that, you know, opposed. We could get all that corporatist DC clutter, which thrives because it dominates both parties, up for a real referendum. What a campaign hook – America vs. the Beltway.

Part of me says “what if it backfires?” But the other part of me looks at the state of the current union, at the looting of the last eight (or, depending on your taste for the long view, 29) years, at the energy way too many Americans have to devote to worrying about what happens if they get sick or injured, at the staggering cost associated with continuing to fuck around with the environment, at the fact that millions and millions and millions of citizens have no hope at all of financial solvency, at the knee-buckling stupidity of a populace that’s been victimized by a brilliantly conceived War on Education, at…. Fuck it. You get the picture.

Off your knees, progressives. The worst that happens is more of the same. At the least do us the favor of dying on your feet.

President-elect Barack Obama has pledged to change the way Washington works and curb the influence of lobbyists. … During the campaign, federal lobbyists could not contribute to or raise money for the campaign. … [T]he president-elect is taking those commitments even further by announcing the strictest, and most far reaching ethics rules of any transition team in history.”

Presumably, that means President Obama wishes to end the pay-to-play philosophy that pervades the practice of politics. Well, he’s got some explaining to do, because what he promises is not always what he does.

Case No. 1: Yes, the president said he’d nominate some of his financial backers as ambassadors. But the number’s growing. According to the Center for Responsive Politics:

President Obama announced another 10 names for ambassadorships last week, and in doing so, he awarded another set of big donors and bundlers with plum positions representing U.S. interests abroad. The new nominees for ambassadors to Belize, Belgium, Liechtenstein, Romania and Switzerland — along with their spouses and dependent children — have contributed at least $637,800 to federal candidates, parties and committees since 1989, CRP has found. Nearly that entire sum has gone to Democrats, including $32,775 to Obama himself and $8,300 to former primary opponent and now-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. These individuals also brought in at least $1.1 million for Obama’s presidential bid as bundlers, and at least another half-a-million as bundlers for his inauguration.

To date, this brings the contribution histories of Obama’s ambassador nominees to roughly $1.8 million in donations since 1989. The 19 ambassadors that CRP has found in our campaign contribution database, along with their spouses and children, have given more than $98,200 to Obama personally, bundled at least $3.4 million for his 2008 presidential run and bundled another $1.4 million for his inauguration.

Do these nominations transgress on his promise of change? Well, these people paid — and now they get to play. To be fair, however, presidents have rewarded financial backers with ambassadorships since the birth of the Republic. Let’s wait a bit and see how his record stacks up against the nomination histories of Presidents Bush I and II and Clinton. But President Obama’s nominations of financial backers are troubling in light of his promise of change.

Case No. 2: Jeff Zeleny, a White House correspondent for The New York Times, reported this earlier this week:

When President Obama arrived at the Mandarin Oriental hotel for a fund-raising reception on Thursday night, the new White House rules of political purity were in order: no lobbyists allowed.

But at the same downtown hotel on Friday morning, registered lobbyists have not only been invited to attend an issues conference with Democratic leaders, but they have also been asked to come with a $5,000 check in hand if they want to stay in good favor with the party’s House and Senate re-election committees.

The practicality of Mr. Obama’s pledge to change the ways of Washington is colliding once more with the reality of how money, influence and governance interact here. He repeatedly declared while campaigning last year that he would “not take a dime” from lobbyists or political action committees.

So to follow through with that promise, Mr. Obama is simply leaving the room. [emphasis added]

I have written about campaign finance for years. I never expected any politician, including President Obama, to live up to any promise to curb the influence of money in politics. Is he following the letter or spirit of his promise of change with regard to political money? Or has he merely developed a system of sidesteps to maintain the appearance of sticking to a promise?

Does this matter? Should we care that the president of the United States promises reform over the influence of money in politics but balks at bold, transparent steps to achieve it? Yes, on both counts.

Surely he will seek re-election. Recall, please, that presidential candidates in the 2008 cycle spent $1.8 billion. That’s more than double the $883 million presidential candidates spent in the 2004 cycle.

Is there any reason to believe — with out-of-power Republicans wanting back in and a Democratic president seeking re-election — that the cost of the 2012 election won’t be twice as high as 2008?

President Obama will need a boatload of bucks. He may philosophically wish to curb the influence of money in politics, but he will continue to be ruled by the need for the money to maintain power … as his opponents will be in their attempts to regain power.

On the president’s “Ethics” page at the White House website, this phrase is repeatedly used: “in the spirit of transparency …” So far, it’s mere fiction.

He will continue the charade of “stepping out of the room” because he needs the money. Can’t say I blame him … but I expected better.

But that tax cut, thanks to 41 consecutive days of gasoline price increases, now amounts to only $150. Figuring my local commuting habits and trips to visit family and friends, I’ll pay about $700 to fill up my little Scion for the rest of the year at the current national average of $2.62 a gallon. I’ll be spending about $250 more at this price than I would if gasoline had remained near the December average of $1.62.

If the price of gasoline rises more (wanna bet?) over summer, I’ll be handing even more of my payroll tax cut to Big Oil.

So why the sharp, 62 percent increase? Why did the “experts” who are supposed to understand gasoline and oil markets get it wrong? Journalists have indeed been telling us the “experts” were wrong and what factors have been driving gasoline prices higher — but not why the “experts” erred in missing those factors.

According to New York Times reporter Clifford Krauss:

Analysts say the increase is being driven by investor expectations of an economic recovery, the recent fall of the dollar against other currencies and, to a lesser extent, the success of oil-exporting countries in curtailing supplies.

In other words, these are the issues that helped drive gasoline costs well beyond $4 last year. Motorists are accustomed to gasoline prices spiking as the summer driving season arrives. But 62% higher this year when “experts” predicted far less?

Journalists depend on “experts” and base conclusions on their analyses. Here’s CNN business correspondent Christine Romans on March 17:

Gas prices are rising. Experts say they won’t rise much more and the Energy Department sees a summer high of $2.30. Don’t worry: this recent run up is no stepping stone to $3.00 and $4.00 a gallon gasoline. [emphasis added]

From the Energy Information Administration’s “Short-Term Energy and Summer Fuels Outlook” published April 14:

Regular‐grade gasoline prices have increased to more than $2 per gallon, rising slowly but steadily since the beginning of the year in conjunction with rising crude oil prices and refiner margins recovering from recent near‐historic lows. During this summer driving season (April through September) regular gasoline retail prices are projected to average $2.23 per gallon, down almost $1.60 from last summer. The average regular gasoline price for all of 2009 is expected to be $2.17 per gallon, increasing to an average of $2.42 in 2010. Diesel prices are projected to average about $2.27 per gallon during this driving season and to average $2.30 and $2.69 per gallon annually in 2009 and 2010, respectively. [emphasis added]

(Not surprisingly, EIA in its June 3 “This Week in Petroleum” reported the price of gasoline as passing $2.50 nationally. Some wag put this hed on its release: “EIA ‘Stimulated’ to Revise the Annual Energy Outlook 2009.”)

Tom Kloza, chief oil analyst at the Oil Price Information Service, at least ‘fessed up on May 22 that he was wrong that gasoline prices would not pass $2.50:

Prices have moved further and faster than I thought possible five months ago, or five days ago.

What did he miss? What did other “experts” miss? Why?

Mr. Kloza did add perspective about the impact of much-higher-than-predicted gasoline prices on economic recovery:

The increases probably mean that American’s will spend about $925-million or more each day on gasoline through the rest of May. That still compares favorably with last year, when the figure was closer to $1.5-billion per day.

I’m not the only person handing back my payroll tax cut, it seems. Here’s Ms. Romans again on June 8:

[The experts] were saying, “Don’t worry.” They were saying again and again, “Don’t worry because demand is not increasing.” …

Because of the bailout and now concern in global markets about how much money the United States is borrowing and spending, it’s weakening the dollar. And as the dollar weakens, people are concerned about inflation. And the hedge against inflation is commodities.

And so you’re seeing money flowing into crude oil because of concerns about the dollar and the future of this country. So even though you have demand down, we have a recession, we’re using less oil, oil prices are rising.

… And [$18] is how much more you’re paying to fill up your gas tank this year from the beginning of the year to now. … Now, it’s still much less than it was last year. … But keep in mind that takes away pretty much the president’s Making Work Pay tax cut. [emphasis added]

Is Ms. Romans’ report that experts say demand is heading down accurate? She did not say, perhaps because cable news gives her mere seconds to report on a complicated issue, demand is down from what? Or from when? According to Reuters, a May EIA analysis said differently:

The EIA forecast last month U.S. gasoline demand would rise to average of 9.15 million barrels per day (bpd) in June, up from the 9.07 million bpd consumed in June 2008.

It’s difficult for the audiences of journalists (or pundits or “experts”) to know whom to find credible. Yes, predicting the costs of oil at the wellhead and gasoline at the pump is tricky business. And journalists such as Ms. Romans rely heavily on government “experts” or Wall Street “analysts” to forecast such costs accurately. Why haven’t they? The government collects enormous amounts of data on energy. So do investment bankers and other economists. Why the misfired analyses in the past six months?

Analyzing the reasons for a misdiagnosis of an oil-driven economy is a news story. Where is it? There’s some, but it’s soundbite-driven and occasional.

Good journalists should be teaching their audiences much more about the economics of oil and gasoline and the impacts on the broader economy (journalism that is difficult) instead of merely telling audiences that they’re miserable (journalism that is easy and obvious). The oil and gasoline beats ought to consist of much more “eat-your-spinach” journalism rather than video of Joe or Jane Consumer at the gasoline pump, filling the family sedan and complaining about the rising cost.

Oh, I forgot. The newspaper industry has been shedding experienced journalists for nearly a decade. Perhaps there’s no one left to consistently and expertly report on economic issues that are difficult.

“China is more capitalistic than any capitalist country.”

Amy, an employee at a jewelry booth
in Beijing’s pearl market, strings
together a strand of pearls after
striking a bargain with a shopper.

Roger Perkins of Cooper Industries told us that early on our trip. You’d have to see it to believe it, perhaps—but I’ve seen that firsthand several times on the trip, most dramatically at the silk and pearl markets. It happens on the scale of global companies, too.

“China is pragmatic,” says John Chen of Prometric, a company that specializes in testing and surveying. “When it wants to be capitalistic, it’s capitalistic. When it wants to be communist, it’ll be communist.

Chen likens China’s approach to situational management: different situations require different management approaches.

China needs the influx of cash that capitalism provides in order to continue to fuel its burgeoning economy. But at times, the country’s top-down dictatorial style allows things to get done that otherwise couldn’t happen in a democracy.

“India, for instance, is the most democratic country in the world,” Chen points out by way of example. “Everything gets debated to death and nothing ever gets done.”

In China, the government might say, “This row of apartment buildings needs to get demolished so we can put in this new highway,” and then it gets done, no argument. “For the good of the many, the individual makes sacrifices,” Chen says.

That seems pretty heavy-handed to most Americans, but to the Chinese, it’s been that way for five thousand years. “Chinese history has always been ruled by people, not by laws,” Chen says. “When the emperor is wise, everyone benefits. When you have a bad emperor, everyone suffers.”

Chen is one of several business executives who’ve spoken to us since we’ve arrived in Beijing. Most of what we hear expands on the things we heard in Shanghai, but the extra depth sheds a lot of new light.

“Everything in China is difficult, but everything is possible,” Chen tells us. “While regulation exists, there’s also flexibility because so much is left to interpretation.” That’s the upside to the central role individuals play in running the country.

The Chinese even have a word for it: Guanxi. It means “connections.” In America, relationships come about as the result of business deals, but in China, businesses deals come about as a result of relationships.

The system, as one might expect, is ripe for abuse, which creates headaches for companies used to Western business practices. So says Derrick Reilly, a partner with financial services company PriceWaterhouseCooper.

“If you don’t find fraud, then you’ve gotten it wrong,” Reilly says. “Businesses have to plan for it.” PWC recommends to its clients that they address it in their risk management plans. Chen echoes a similar sentiment.

Jaime FlorCruz, CNN’s China correspondent and one of the most senior journalists in the country, says corruption has always been part of the government culture.

“It’s a matter of life and death for the Communist Party to curb corruption,” FlorCruz says. According to a survey done in December and February by the American Chamber of Commerce in China (ACCC), corruption remains one of the most significant problems facing foreign companies doing business in China.

Businesses also face the challenge of protecting their intellectual property (I.P.). The same ACCC study cited it as another top business challenge.

The widely held belief is that China is a nation of copiers, and it only takes a trip through the Silk Market and its booths of knock-off products to reinforce that stereotype. But FlorCruz says, “China aspires to be more than a nation of copiers.”

Seventy-two percent of the business surveyed in the ACCC study said China’s enforcement of I.P. laws is ineffective. And enforcement is the key, says Matt McKee of the law firm Lehman, Lee, and Xu. He contends that China actually has good I.P. laws that are, in many cases, better than international standards.

For many years, though, China was so desperate for economic activity that it looked the other way on I.P. issues. “A black market was better than no market,” McKee says.

“If you’re the mayor of a city, and there’s a factory pumping out copies of a pirated movie, what’s more important,” McKee asks: “the thousand jobs that the factory has created or protecting the intellectual property rights of a big Hollywood studio that’s not putting any money into the local economy?”

But recently, Chinese companies have been stung by I.P. infringements. As more Chinese companies have trouble, McKee predicts the Chinese government will take a more active role in enforcing its intellectual property laws. “Now that it’s in the Chinese interest to enforce the laws, we’ll see stricter enforcement,” he says.

My overall impression is that the Chinese business climate makes things chaotic for Westerners. “It’s difficult but not impossible,” McKee says.

The key, according to McKee, is for companies to “gain China-knowledge,” to learn about Chinese culture and how business gets done in the country. It seems like common-sense advice, but Western companies frequently underestimate its value—much to their regret.

“In the U.S., there are generally understood practices to protect profit margins,” Chen adds. “In international markets, the ground rules are different…. Because the market is so competitive and so open, it forces innovation.”

Most of that innovation comes from the foreign companies because that’s one thing the Chinese educational system doesn’t emphasize. However, Reilly says he’s begun to see a shift lately as more Chinese get educated abroad and then return home to China for work.

For now, U.S. companies that operate with flexibility are generally benefitting quite well from China’s competitive environment. “U.S. companies are winning in China,” Chen says.

China, too, is benefitting from the innovation boom.

China isn’t bound by legacy infrastructure, such as
highways, bridges, and power grids, as it expands.

In America, for instance, we’re bound by “legacy infrastructure.” We have to build on what already exists, whether it be the highway system or a type of technology.

Developing countries like China can leapfrog legacy infrastructure because the infrastructure didn’t exist in the first place. They can learn from the trials and errors of developed countries and put the best, newest ideas into place right from the start.

“Companies bring the newest technology when they come into China,” says Chen.

State-of-the-art infrastructure improves China’s ability to move goods and services throughout the country. Foreign and domestic manufacturers have an easier time moving products to and from new manufacturing bases and consumer markets.

“A lot of China’s achievements stand side by side with a lot of challenges,” says FlorCruz. “Many of those challenges are unintended consequences of their economic reforms.”

The reforms—a bottom-up approach—were launched by Communist Party Chairman Deng Xioping beginning in 1979. “In China, we will let a small group of people get rich first,” he said. Those people would then fuel economic growth through investments, job creation, and contact with the West.

China still struggles, generally with great success, to continue to master the learning curve.

From multinational corporations to small shops like
this one in Beijing near the Lama Temple to
individual street vendors, capitalism is alive and
well in China.

But as capitalistic as China is, it’s important not to forget China is also still a developing country, and it has lots of room—and energy and desire—for continued improvement. By 2025, some economists predict China will have the biggest economy in the world.

It seems that a good infusion of capitalism was just what communist China needed.

No.

As the American Dream™ continues to gnaw on every last bit of exposed flesh it can pick from our flailing limbs, it will no doubt, for many of us, also eat those debt-strangled, rapidly depreciating havens of dirty secrets, personal failure and indoor allergens known as parcels of real estate.

It will eventually, after a judicial process, a waiting period and probably more judicial processes, send a henchman or three to, at long last, relieve you of the burdens of homeownership and shelter.

But, come on. People in any line of work are nonetheless good, hard-working people too! They know just as well as anybody that remembers what it’s like to be employed in recent memory that work sucks and is hard, and comic relief can get us through even the toughest of times.

Accordingly, when the Evicto Man comes to summon you to your shiny new life as a spent munition in America’s War on Prosperity, here are the:

TOP TEN ADVISORIES FOR YOUR FRIENDLY FORECLOSURE EVICTION REPRESENTATIVE!

10.
“See, I spell it ‘Waynescoting,’ because this stuff is made from actual Waynes and Scots.”

9.
“Well, Gummi worms are so much easier on the back than Pergo™.”

8.
“Won’t be the first time this place has been ‘possessed’!”

7.
“This house is not only the historic site of remakes of ‘Silence of the Lambs’ and ‘Grease II,’ using actual lambs and grease — most recently I’ve been using the space to film gay chocolate mousse porn for the past six months.

…Hope you’ve got a chisel.”

6.
“You will marvel at the sound-dampening capabilities of refried beans and R-35 grade tortillas.”

5.
“I’ve been breeding fighting wasps who don’t respond well to being taken from the only home they’ve ever known.”

4.
“The next owner will be lucky to have such a radiant living space.”

3.
“The spare key’s in the toaster oven, underneath the rock”

2.
“Right this way! Don’t mind the typewriter and cigarette.”

And, the number 1 advisory to give your friendly foreclosure eviction man:
“THAT’S NOT STUCCO!”

*flying index card* *glass breaks* *uncomfortable silence I’ve grown accustomed to*

Not enough Top-Ten for you? Well, as the golden shower enthusiast said to the Yellow Leprechaun™, urine luck! JAZZ from HELL has a list as well. Pot of gold, indeed.

He was big. He was temperamental. He was covered in green fur and didn’t wear pants. He was ever demanding. His face changed color, shape and expression depending on who was looking at him. Everybody loved Gerg, and Gerg loved everybody, but not in that genuine, heartfelt way — more like a golddigger cherishes her trophy husband, or a cheerleader loves the ugly friend she keeps around to look better in front of guys. But the support was strong, the words as heartfelt as they could sound, and the dubious sincerity of it all was easily drowned out with more wide smiles and more pairs of outstretched arms.

Gerg was, indeed, the town’s beloved mascot. On top of it all, he was always hungry.

The entire town functioned solely for the purpose of feeding Gerg. Nobody ever admitted it outright, but all anybody did was for the benefit of Gerg. “Do for Gerg, do for you,” I heard at least thrice a day in the town square.

I couldn’t really tell what Gerg did besides his almost constant eating and the daily speeches, stage plays, and karaoke performances in the town square, which all revolved around reasons why we needed to keep his brain entertained and his belly full. “Nourish Gerg,” he would proclaim, “so that Gerg may nourish you. Gerg will protect us all from those who would take our delicious foodstuffs. Rodents! Greedy bandits! Giant, gluttonous, brightly colored monsters! Even your own friends, family and neighbors, should you let them, especially if they look or speak in a different manner from yourself! Gerg looks out for your best interests — nay, Gerg is your best interests!”

“Marvel at the bounty Gerg has bestowed upon you,” his windpipe would wail at the exact same time that bounty seemed to be going, one bushel at a time, directly down his foodpipe. “Be grateful for Gerg’s nutritious products, which keep you and your precious children happy, healthy and productive, so that you may continue to hope that one day you, too, will also be the one and only Gerg! After all, you can’t put a price on hope!”

“And just imagine,” he would say, licking his fingers clean. “Imagine how those fresh foodstuffs will taste once we can eat them together!”

Every second of every day in the life of every citizen was devoted either to acquiring foodstuffs for Gerg, seldom sampling them for themselves, in exchange for foodstuffs-shaped, bright green feces; or making new citizens with fresh, capable bodies to help gather more ingredients from the fields, shipping depots, dumpsters, and their own stockpiles alike, should they be fortunate enough to have extras. Most, by the time I’d passed through, didn’t believe in stockpiling. “That’s selfish,” one citizen explained. “We don’t provide for Gerg, Gerg won’t provide for us. We need to keep giving Gerg the foodstuffs we have on hand to produce the Green Substance for us so that we may finally, one day, have access to foodstuffs.”

Gerg was friendly (at least to your face), and his long, giant arms were gentle in accepting the offerings of the townspeople. One hears how great it feels to get a hug from Gerg, but nobody I’ve ever talked to has ever witnessed, or felt, an embrace in the first person. The speeches elicited warm and fuzzy feelings from time to time, but that was about it.

I decided to test Gerg.

“I’ve no foodstuffs left to give,” I hollered towards his head, some 50 feet up in the air. “By the time I get to the fields, the depots, the stockpiles and even the gutters, they’ve all been picked clean! I don’t know where I can go, or what I can do, to have an offering for you when I can neither obtain the Green Substance, nor the foodstuffs required to produce it! I do not starve you deliberately, Gerg! This you must believe!”

He said nothing as his arm slowly approached my face. He caressed it, ran a couple fingers gently through my hair, lovingly scratched behind my ear as though I were the family dog–and with a quick smack, knocked me unconscious.

I awoke inside what looked to be a dark cave. “This is your reward,” read a yellowed poster pinned on the wall above an entertainment center. “Gerg will shelter and protect you in your final hour of need.”

“Look,” a man in a suit, sitting across from me, snapped. “I’ll give it to you straight. Nobody gives a fuck what happens to you because the only thing you have left that can be converted into the Green Substance is your own flesh and bone. The only way you become Gerg is when he absorbs you completely and the rest of the town go on with their lives. You might make it out alive and whatever’s left of you can go back to a semi-happy, semi-productive life in the fields, if Gerg, or your fellow Gergamites, will take you back. They’ll likely be too busy keeping it up out there to care either way.

“Gerg never goes hungry.”

“Well,” I responded, “at least there’s cable, I guess.”

That’s the conclusion of three University of Kansas professors who undertook an empirical analysis of the American Jobs Creation Act of 2004 to study rates of return for money spent on lobbying, reported The Washington Post in an April 12 story by Dan Eggen.

This law — this shady excuse for a law with a name only charlatans could love — allowed companies that had earned profits overseas to inexpensively bring that money back into the States. The customary tax rate on such profits was 35 percent. But this elegantly named process — repatriation of profits — gave companies a one-time chance four years ago to haul the money home, paying only 5.25 percent.

The act was a tax holiday sought by a coalition of companies, primarily big pharmaceutical and high-technology corporations, all because they sought to pay little or no taxes on profits generated overseas — and they concocted a successful scheme to pull it off.

Mr. Eggen summarized the Kansas professors’ study:

The largest recipients of tax breaks were concentrated in the pharmaceutical and technology fields, including Pfizer, Merck, Hewlett Packard, Johnson & Johnson and IBM. Pfizer alone repatriated $37 billion, representing 70 percent of its revenue in 2004, the study found. The now-beleaguered financial industry also benefited from the provision, including Citigroup, J.P. Morgan Chase, Morgan Stanley and Merrill Lynch, all of which have since received tens of billions of dollars in federal bailout money. [emphasis added]

Critics argued that the act would benefit multinational corporations to the detriment of domestic firms, reported Jonathan Weisman of the Post in August 2005. Even the Bush White House was dubious over the alleged economic benefits of the bill:

“There will be some stimulative effect because it pumps money into the economy,” said Phillip L. Swagel, a former chief of staff on President Bush’s Council of Economic Advisers, which had opposed the tax holiday. “But you might as well have taken a helicopter over 90210 [Beverly Hills] and pushed the money out the door. That would have stimulated the economy as well.”

In 2006, Washington Post business columnist Allan Sloan wrote of Ford Motor Co.’s abuse of the misnamed act:

It’s almost enough to make you laugh — bitterly, of course. Here was Ford Motor Co. announcing yesterday that it had cut 10,000 jobs last year and that it will cut up to 30,000 more. But shedding jobs at muscle-car acceleration rates didn’t stop Ford from pocketing hundreds of millions of dollars courtesy of the American Jobs Creation Act. … Hello? How can you simultaneously cut jobs and benefit from the American Jobs Creation Act? Welcome to the wonderful world of Washington nomenclature. [emphasis added]

Mr. Sloan estimated that Ford saved $850 million in taxes, not the $250 million the company suggested in its press release.

So how did corporations that don’t believe in paying their appropriate share of taxes finagle this?

Here’s one story, as reported by Mr. Eggen:

The provision was championed in part by the Homeland Investment Coalition, a group of companies and trade associations that was formed to push for the repatriation holiday. The Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA), one of the disbanded coalition’s members, said in a statement Friday that “repatriation of profits provided a new source of investment for American companies.”

“PhRMA supported the legislation four years ago as part of a broad business coalition because of the additional economic benefits the bill would provide,” senior vice president Ken Johnson said. “It meant jobs and skilled training for American workers, as well as a shot in the arm for local economies.” [emphasis added]

This coalition of multinationals had worked on getting its profits home earlier— and falsely articulated its intent regarding jobs. In 2003, seeking support for the then-named Invest in the U.S.A. Act of 2003, the coalition sent a letter to Sen. Chuck Grassley, chair of the Senate Finance Committee, and Sen. Max Baucus, ranking member. The letter said that “The $135 billion currently offshore that would be invested in America would benefit the U.S. economy by increasing domestic investment in plant, equipment, R&D and job creation” among other benefits, including investments in emerging technologies, funding for pension plans hurt by stock market declines, and, especially:

“[i]mproving the long term financial strength of U.S.-based companies by reducing domestic debt loads, strengthening corporate balance sheets, and lowering corporate bond rates; increasing dividends to shareholders (which can be productively redeployed); and raising equity market valuations by increasing funds available for share repurchases.”

Parse it any way you wish — creating jobs was the intended political cover for any member of Congress to sign on as a co-sponsor of the legislation.

But did the American Jobs Creation Act of 2004 actually lead to a net gain in jobs? Nope. Did it provide “a new source of investment for American companies”? Not even close. And supporters of this tax holiday tried to get another such tax break. Reported Mr. Eggen:

… the Congressional Research Service and others have since found that many companies cut jobs in the wake of the tax break and that nearly all the money was used for stock buybacks or dividends. Supporters failed in a bid to include a similar tax break in this year’s stimulus legislation, and a Senate subcommittee has launched an investigation into how companies used their tax savings under the 2004 program. [emphasis added]

Any congressional investigation lags reporting by The New York Times by four years. An August 2005 Times editorial said:

A month ago, Hewlett-Packard announced it would lay off 14,500 workers by November 2006. Meanwhile, the company is about to repatriate $14.5 billion in profits it has in overseas accounts at a measly tax of 5.25 percent — an 85 percent discount off the normal corporate rate. The cut-rate repatriation, offered by Congress to American companies that bring profits held in foreign lands home in 2005, was sold to the public as a one-shot deal to generate cash for new hiring. But as its critics warned, the tax cut is functioning instead as a handout for America’s most profitable companies.

Hewlett is just one example. Normally, the tax on a $14.5 billion repatriation would be about $5 billion. Because of the bargain rate in 2005, Hewlett expects to pay roughly $800 million. Hewlett also expects its layoffs to cost the company about $1 billion. Thus, in Hewlett’s case, the tax holiday has not only failed to create jobs, but has also more than covered the cost of cutting workers from the payroll.

Dozens of other companies are also bringing billions home with no mention of new hiring. [emphasis added]

Drug companies especially needed to bring the overseas profits home — but not, as the act’s name suggests, to create jobs. They had big financial problems looming. Patents on brand-name drugs worth billions in sales were about to expire, leading to competition by companies producing generic versions.

Upcoming patent expirations for [Pfizer] include Lipitor in 2011, ‘the little blue pill’ Viagra in 2012, and the allergy medicine Zyrtec in 2012 as well. The loss of these patents would see Pfizer losing more than $14 billion in revenue. [emphasis added]

During the last six months of 2004, as the bill was manuevered successfully through Congress, the stock prices of drug companies were falling, in part because of scandals over the safety of drugs that had long been approved by the FDA. For example, government regulators said Merck & Co.’s arthritis drug Vioxx may have led to more than 27,000 heart attacks and sudden cardiac deaths before it was pulled from the market in October 2004.That happened just two weeks before the American Jobs Creation Act was signed into law by President Bush. Merck badly needed its overseas profits, if only to deal with what might be a litigation bill of $10 billion to $15 billion.

Merck, like other companies, also had developed what Motley Fool columnist Robert Steyer in February called

a version of Pfizer’s “Lipitor disease” — a best-selling drug with limited remaining patent life accounting for a huge percentage of revenue:
• Merck lost protection on Fosamax early last year.
• Merck is seeing protection disappear by 2012 on the two drugs that made up 40 percent of revenue through the first nine months of 2008 — Cozaar/Hyzaar and Singulair.
• Bristol-Myers’ Plavix, creating 27 percent of 2008 revenue, gets chopped in 2011.
• Lilly’s Zyprexa, bringing in 23 percent of last year’s revenue, is also done for in 2011.

Big Pharma knew long before 2004 it needed to get every last dollar of overseas profits back into the States — at the lowest tax rate possible. It had to shore up declining revenues and dividends to stockholders — and to fuel big mergers, which it saw as the best cure for Lipitor disease.

But job creation? Merely a fig leaf for public consumption to make this tax holiday palatable to politicians. Jobs were lost, not created.

By August 2007, as the AP graphic shows, pharmaceutical companies had announced thousands of jobs cuts just two years after the repatriation of overseas profits.

Four years ago, Mr. Weisman of the Post reported others were lining up at the tax-break trough:

Procter & Gamble Co. intends to bring home $10.7 billion, and Johnson & Johnson Inc. has an $11 billion plan. Schering-Plough Corp. could bring back $9 billion. This week, Hewlett-Packard Co. announced it will repatriate $14.5 billion in the second half of the year, mainly for “strategic acquisitions,” said Ryan Donovan, an HP spokesman.

Strategic acquisitions made possible by a jobs creation act? More than 800 companies took advantage of the tax break.

Here’s another way to examine passage of the 2004 act. Cui bono politically?

Apparently, the congressional sponsor and 40 co-sponsors did. Let’s look at how just one member of the coalition — the pharmaceutical industry — sought to influence members of Congress through donations to their campaigns.

The Ways and Means Committee, by constitutional fiat, is the chief tax-writing committee of the House of Representatives. The 2004 bill was primarily a creation of the House.

Former congressman Bill Thomas (R-Calif) served as chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee during the run-up to the bill’s passage. He’s listed as the prime House sponsor of the American Jobs Creation Act. During his congressional career, the pharmaceutical industry gave his campaign more than $407,000.

The bill had 40 sponsors. All but one were Republicans. A review of the campaign contributions records of these 40 men and women aggregated by the Center for Responsive Politics showed that since 1998, the pharmaceutical industry has given their campaign committees $4.49 million. Of those 40 co-sponsors, 14 served on the Ways and Means Committee: They have received, since 1998, $2.5 million from Big Pharma.

Recall that, thanks to the act’s tax break, Pfizer repatriated $37 billion.

Former Rep. Nancy L. Johnson, Democrat of Connecticut (where drug-maker Pfizer has a significant research and development presence), received more than $692,000 from Big Pharma between 1998 and her departure from office. She is now a senior public policy adviser (er, lobbyist) for Baker, Donelson, Bearman, Caldwell & Berkowitz and serves on the Pfizer U.S. Health Advisory Board.

The bill had no serious opposition in Congress. The Senate voted 69-17 on the bill; The House, 207-16. Their acquiesance allowed an average rate of return of 22,000 percent for the corporations who lobbied for this bill, say the Kansas professors.

If $1 invested in lobbying earns a $220 return, as the Kansas study suggests, then the pharmaceutical industry has invested, for the 41 sponsors and co-sponsors of the American Jobs Creation Act of 2004, about $4.5 million. That’s a return of $990 million. That’s pretty good ROI for buying only 7 percent of the members of Congress.