Dana Blankenhorn

A Bigger Crime Than Iraq

With very little fanfare, a bearded bureaucrat about my age recently committed a bigger crime than our entry into the Iraq War.

Ben Bernanke, whose title is Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, is committing half your country's capital -- $400 billion -- against securities  he knows are bogus, home mortgages that should never have been made, collateral instruments that should never have been created.  He compounded this crime yesterday by explicitly bailing out Bear Stearns, the investment bank which more than any other created this Big Shitpile.

The excuse, given even by liberals like Paul Krugman, was that Bear is "too big to fail."

Bullshit.

The Magic Word for 2008

Think of this as Volume 11, Number 10 of A-Clue.com, the online newsletter I've written since 1997. Enjoy.

---

Production.

Say the magic word and the debate, as well as the choices, of 2008 come into sharp focus.

The only way to get out of our current economic problems is through production of new goods. The only way to launch the War Against Oil is through production of new types of energy.

The two points are directly related. The key to production at a profit lies in reducing the energy costs of production. And the energy costs of distribution.

Speaking of which, a focus on production is how you address questions regarding the Internet. Our Internet infrastructure is in sorry shape. It needs a serious upgrade. These are the canals or roads of our time, and we need to treat Internet access just as seriously as our forefathers did those routes to market.

Production also puts many issues into sharp focus because of how the two parties have proposed to boost it.

Republicans want tax cuts. They want "incentives" for companies to boost production of oil and gas, of coal, and of Internet capacity. These have been at the heart of their economic program for years.

Democrats want competition. A Democratic program for production would focus on increasing the amount of competition in all markets.

A floor price for energy would be a good start. Lock in the current gains, tax away oil and gas whose price comes in under the floor (it won't once the floor is in place) and you provide plenty of incentives for both the production of new energy and increasing the efficiency of industrial production.

Competition is also the answer to our Internet problems. Demand that current networks, both wired and wireless, open up to new competition, as was done in the 1990s. Problem solved, thanks to Moore's Law, because it is only by violating Moore's Law and squeezing more money out of the same services that the current duopolists have stayed afloat.

Production is the answer to not only our labor problems, but (in part) to our crime problems. Production creates lots of relatively low-skill jobs. High demand for low-skill jobs will increase wages for those jobs, and create incentives for producers to take a chance on the 1% of us now behind bars. If you enable people with minimum education the chance to earn a fair living your crime problem goes down.  Create enough jobs and we can even hire Mexicans, in Mexico.  So much for immigration problems.

Production is an economic policy, it's environmental policy, it's energy policy, it's trade policy. By creating new ways to make things, which are more energy efficient, we create exports, both in the goods themselves and the machines used to create the efficiency.

Race

Northern racism is different from southern racism.

Northern racism is economic in origin. Southern racism is cultural in origin.

Not that this matters to the victim. Racism is racism.

I grew up in Massapequa, on Long Island. Many of my neighbors were refugees from what would become  Geraldine Ferraro's Congressional district.

In my day Massapequa was all-white. I never thought about this until I met a new friend in junior high school.

Too Casual About It

Tinfoil hat time!

I first got this feeling last week, with Bush's dance before his endorsement of John McCain. It was like he didn't care what anyone thought, like democracy (small d) was meaningless. (Picture from Sushimoo.)

Is anyone else out there worried that the Bush Administration is acting a little too casual and flip about its continuing efforts to undermine the Constitution?

To the complete disregarding of Congress' oversight and its treaty-making role, we now have the sudden resignation of Adm. William Fallon, who was thought to be among the few voices in the military trying to tamp-down talk of an attack on Iran.

Every week or so, it seems, I read new blog posts about buying "taser cannon" to control demonstrators, about the growing politicization of our military, even a deliberate refusal to abide by Supreme Court rulings which go against them.

It sometimes seems as if the Bush people aren't even trying anymore to hide their disgust with the popular will.

It's true that this may just be total incompetence, and it's also true that such dark thoughts as these are one mark of a generational crisis. Anyone who remembers the late 1960s remembers fearing for democracy, as their fathers feared for it in the early 1930s, and their fathers feared for it in the 1890s, and their fathers feared for it in the 1850s.

Fear for democracy's fate is a necessary precondition for major democratic change.

But still...

The Manchurian Presidency

The Manchurian Candidate is about a Communist plot to install a dupe, played by James Gregory (left in the photo at right), as President. He claims to be fiercely anti-communist, but he's really controlled by the communists through his wife, played by Angela Lansbury. (Sorry if I spoiled it. Watch it for Frank Sinatra next time -- one of his best roles.)

Ever since the movie returned to vogue politicians have been warning that their opponents are secretly working for the other side. The claim is made this cycle about Barack Obama. That is, Barack Hussein Obama.

Of course, this deliberately misses the plot. The James Gregory candidate is a perfect conservative, a neo-McCarthyite. In 2008 parlance, he's McCain.

But what if the Manchurian Candidate has already been elected? What if, in fact, he's been in office for over 7 years?