Category: Politics

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It’s the real economy stupid

The recent trouble with the subprime mortage lending business showed a problem with the foundations of the US economy. I like it when I find blogs or articles by people able to explain the issues without a lot of jargon.

acerimusdux in a post on Daily Kos explains why 30 years of libertarian influenced laissez-faire fiscal policy has led to a failure to invest in America, and THAT is the most dangerous threat to our way of life.

What [Alan] Greenspan glosses over here, is that for nearly 30 years now, our economic policymakers, of both parties, have operated under the misguided theory that savings would somehow automagically equal investment, by some mysterious operation of the “invisible hand” of the free market. As a result, we now have nearly 30 years of economic data which proves that this just ain’t so. Perhaps Greenspan, having held his influential position throughout parts of all 4 administrations which pursued these policies, and having used his position to aggressively promote these same policies, is incapable of giving a more honest assessment of their failure.

So when you hear or read economists and financial writers today talking about a global “savings glut”, consider that the only difference between a “savings glut” and an “investment deficit” seems to be one of interpretation. And ask, what evidence is there that the private markets have invested at an optimal level?

And likewise for those who say the government only needs to get out of the way for the private sector to invest. I would ask, as we have tried this now for nearly 30 years, where are our modern factories? Where is our modern production equipment? Where is our domestic industry? Why are we falling behind the rest of the developed world even in our transportation, communication, and health care systems?

It Ain’t All “Bubbles” Greenspan’s Fault

Failure to invest in America is about as bad as ignoring external threats. Reaganomics was a failure.

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Primary start to long election cycle

This week is when the rubber hits the road and all the glad handing and baby kissing done this past year takes a breather as the 2008 US Presidential election begins its primary phase. Politically I am an independent so I don’t get to vote for a candidate during the primaries nor do I want to.

Although I don’t vote in the primaries, I want to write about some of the choices available and why it doesn’t matter anyway and that primaries are only a dog and pony show at tax payer expense.

First up is Iowa and New Hampshire. Basically these 2 states are the 4th quarter of a close football game as one team tries all out to win it in the last 2 minutes of the game. If it works the winning team moves on to the playoffs and if not then they pretty much go home.

These first 2 contests starts the process of shaking the chafe from the stalks, as lessor candidates start to drop out as momentum and money flows elsewhere if they lose or lose badly.

The end of primary phase is the respective party conventions before Labor Day.

GOP

Sorry, I just can’t force myself to write anything about the GOP candidates. The part they are all playing this year is the anti-immigrant, anti religious freedom bigots and they all simply disgust me. If you really want to read something about them then check out this website that seems to gloss over their anti-American stances – Election Center 2008. I just can’t bring myself to give them any space for their so-called views in my blog.

Democrats

This is going to be the election that the Democrats have the inside track of winning since the GOP is in a tailspin and old 24% Dubya is in his last organismic throes as the guy that stands in front of microphones and tells us what Lord Cheney tells him to say.

Congress changed hands in 2006 even though the Dems have really not done anything yet less they upset Lord Cheney so while they have a good chance of winning the White House in 2008, they also have a great opportunity to fuck it up like they did in 2004.

While my fingers are crossed I will leave the party poppers in the closet until January 20th 2009 when a Democrat is actually taking the oath of office.

But who?

I would like to see Dennis Kucinich get the nomination but unless a majority of Democrats “grow a pair” I doubt he will get it. Kucinich is my kind of Democrat – against the war from day one, calling for impeachment of Lord Cheney, and I agree with most of his positions as to the economy and civil rights. Dennis is portrayed in the “media” as a kook but he is the only one I see who isn’t playing the “Republican Lite” game.

The “media” and most political insiders have Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama as the ones duking it out for the nomination.

I really don’t have a problem with either one, but seeing as candidates are suppose to play to the extreme side of the party – since they are ones most likely to vote in the primary – Clinton and Obama have the “Republican Lite” down pat. We know how that worked for President Kerry…. oh wait….. Maybe this time the Dems could show an actual contrast with the GOP rather than a less extreme form of them.

Clinton is making an issue of experience claiming that since she was First Lady for 8 years that she is more experienced than Obama at being President. I don’t know how that claim is valid. That is like saying the wife of the fire chief is more experienced at being fire chief than an actual fireman.

I have just never bought into the idea that someone who has NEVER been the President of the United States can claim they have more experience just because they lived in the same house as a President. Someone can learn what the job is like but until you have to make the same decisions and take the responsibility for the decisions then you can’t claim you have experience in it.

Who would I choose?

One thing I tried to do was find out – If I could vote in the primaries – who I should vote for. By that I mean which person shares most of my views.

There are several unscientific “candidate match” websites out there. Basically they all present quotes or issues and you choose which ones that you agree with. At the end the websites show you which candidates matched your responses.

The first one I used is called Select Smart. The results I got is as follows:

1. Dennis Kucinich (86%)
2. Barack Obama (84%)
3. Joseph Biden (77%)
4. Christopher Dodd (77%)
5. Hillary Clinton (76%)
6. John Edwards (72%)

Another one I used was simply called VoteMatch Quiz

Chris Dodd (75%)
Cynthia McKinney (75%)
Dennis Kucinich (70%)
Hillary Clinton (68%)
John Edwards (63%)

The My Election Choices.com website uses actual quotes on different topics and you decide which one you agree with most. I decided to reduce the amount of time I would spend on the quiz and picked only a few of the topics available. The ones I picked were Education, Environment and Energy, Foreign Policy (General), Iraq War, and Separation of Church and State/Religion. The candidates I matched up with most were (number of quotes I agreed with follow the names):

Christopher Dodd (18)
Bill Richardson (14)
Hillary Clinton (11)
Dennis Kucinich (10)
Barack Obama (10)
John Edwards (9)

Cult of Personality

Of course, to the “media” and so-called talking heads, issues really don’t matter in a primary. I tend to agree that it is all a dog and pony show because the nominees will then morph into something bland and tasteless for general consumption during the run up to the general election.

If I were a registered Democrat or Republican, it really wouldn’t matter whom I voted for in the primary. No one will find a candidate that agrees with you 100% on every issue. If they did then it might just be your clone. Yet, progressive friends of mine use that as an excuse not vote period. They want perfection.

The candidates sometimes go negative and trash their competitors during the primaries then the party expects everyone to fall into line behind the winning nomination. Of course they forget the other party then uses the trash from the primary against them.

The reason I stay an independent and refuse to vote in a primary is because I think the whole primary system is a sham and at tax payer expense. It is a prime example why our elections are broken and suspect now. Both parties have used their power to pass laws to protect their “machines”. Where else, like the Ohio Revised Code, can one find detailed laws on how a state central committee is formed and operated. If that doesn’t smack of communism I don’t know what does. Is it really the business of state law to decide how a party is to govern itself?

Why is that when an office becomes vacant before an election that party of the past holder can appoint a replacement? It is just one way the system is manipulated by the two parties. They appoint a replacement who then is considered an incumbent in the next election.

Ballot access laws favor the two major parties because they wrote the law. They have different requirements for current parties and make it difficult for new parties to get on the ballot. Next to being an incumbent, the party label next to one’s name is a huge advantage (also having the same last name as a past or present office holder doesn’t hurt either).

I feel that if parties want to have primaries and conventions then they should do it on their own dime – not mine. Elections should be open to anyone who wants to run and we should have preferential voting.

Then maybe we’ll see the end of the dog and pony show and get back to elections about issues.

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Tom Brokaw on the Charlie Rose Show

I watched a bit of Tom Brokaw on the Charlie Rose show tonight talking about his book “The Sixites” and the History Channel documentry on 1968 specifically (which was a good show – nothing about UFOs thank goodness)

The following is a quote from that interview. I liked it because it sums up my philosophy and infuses my Humanism:

The big political lesson [of the sixties] was that you got to have a clearly established goals, that you can’t be hostage to political correctness, that you have to examine situations on their merit, and that the solution may come from the right – and that’s okay, or it may come from the left – and that’s okay, as long as we continue to move in that direction. And that does not mean you have to sacrifice your personal ideology.

Tom Brokaw on the Charlie Rose show 12/10/2007

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Revenge driving justice system

I would be the first one to say the justice system is imperfect. After all it is a human construction and I don’t know of any humans who are perfect.

The problems stem from the need to be compassionate about the people who are criminals, the victims, and the public’s need for a perfect utopia where you can walk around naked and leave your house and car unlocked.

There seems to be a perception that we coddle criminals, that they sit on their asses in jail and watch TV all the time, while the victims of crime have their life ruined by whatever degree of the crime that happened to them. People who have that perception are the one’s who want the utopia and want revenge on the criminal.

There is a disturbing trend to make people pay for their crimes for the rest of their lives even after serving a jail sentence.

You have the “3 strikes” rule (aka habitual offender laws) where a person who is convicted of a serious criminal offense 3 or more times get mandatory long term sentences which could include life without parole.

Then you have Megan Laws that require public notifications when a sex offender is released and ends up in someone’s neighborhood. There are also local laws that now prohibit sex offenders from living a certain distance from a school or other places where children are located, and some cities are starting to enact laws preventing sex offenders from even working near them.

You also have some laws that require mentally disabled criminals to be institutionalized after serving their sentences and in some states children as young as 14 can be sentenced to life in prison without parole for violent crimes.

A recent move in the Ohio state legislature would increase the time on parole after a sentence for a violent crime from 3 years to 5.

Senate Bill 228 was written because of people such as [Bruce] Lower, said Bret Vinocur, the president of findmissingkids.com. He worked with Sen. Steve Stivers, a Columbus Republican, to draft the legislation.

Vinocur testified this week before the Senate’s Criminal Justice Committee.

“I’ve had much-less-violent offenders stay on parole five years,” he said in an interview the day before his testimony. “There is no uniformity. … If this law was in effect, he would still be on parole.”

It’s easier to return people to prison on a parole violation than to convict them of a new crime because parole offenses can include acts that are otherwise legal, such as drinking alcohol.

Lower was accused of raping, sodomizing and killing the child in a Columbus court. He pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter and served 16 years in prison. Although he was accused of two parole violations, drinking alcohol and possessing pornography, parole authorities released him from supervision in August 2005 after 2 1/2 years.

Vinocur said he has found five MySpace pages and a handful of dating Web sites bearing Lower’s photo and profile.

“Why is this man out?” he asked. “Why is he out on the Internet dating?”

Fixed parole sought for felons

The article says that since Lower was released from parole he has had 2 restraining orders placed on him from two different women. That is the only bad marks he has had since 2005.

What supporters of laws such as Senate Bill 228 fail to take into consideration is that the victims aren’t the only people who suffer from the crime. The criminal and their friends and family suffer as well.

This side effect is called “collateral consequences of criminal charges”. Not only does a convicted criminal serve a court imposed sentence but they can also lose their job, experience disenfranchisement, loss of federal loans for education (for drug charges) or eviction from public housing, not to mention the effects of the “3 Strikes” and Megan’s Law. The criminal’s family also experiences social and economic punishment.

When I was young, the brother of a friend of mine was accused of rape. Even before a trial, my friend’s mother was fired from the scout troop she supervised and many family friends shunned them.

Tougher sentences coupled with these collateral consequences of criminal charges have filled the prisons and ruined many lives and for what? Why not just get to the extreme some people want? Let’s just require automatic life sentences without parole for any violent criminals – even first time offenders. Or better yet let’s just execute them and save on the money and resources needed to warehouse them. Laws like Senate Bill 228 just setup felons to fail after their sentence and comes pretty close to violating the 8th amendment that prohibits cruel and unusual punishments.

Listening to the arguments of the supporters of revenge, one would think a pedophile was lurking behind every bush. But some statistics show that most child abuse happens in the home from parents:

In 2003, 83.9% of victims were abused by a parent. 40.8% of child victims were maltreated by their mothers acting alone and 18.8% by fathers acting alone.

Neglect made up 61% of abuse cases, physical abuse 19%, and sexual abuse 10%

2006 Statistics

People make mistakes. They should be held responsible for those mistakes, but how long should they be held responsible. It seems like many people like Ohio State Sen. Steve Stivers and Bret Vinocur want you to pay forever for your mistakes. Even though such laws won’t create the abuse free utopia they want.

Childhelp says:

Children who experience child abuse & neglect are 59% more likely to be arrested as a juvenile, 28% more likely to be arrested as an adult, and 30% more likely to commit violent crime.

National Child Abuse Statistics

Wouldn’t it make more sense to treat those who abuse children and their child victims. Treat the cause of the violence and just maybe the cycle of violence would be broken and the desire for collateral consequences of criminal charges would disappear.

Our legal system is suppose to be called a system of justice – not revenge. The Rack, public stockades, and public hangings have moved into the dustbin of history, why does it seem to me we are going back to those times. What’s next – the return of the scarlet letter?

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Thoughts on the Findlay Mayoral Forum

I posted on 10/24 about the recent Findlay Mayoral Forum that was held at University of Findlay on 10/22. It was broadcast on WFIN, WLFC, and UF-TV 20. At the time of my post I had not had a chance to see or hear the event and said I would get back to you. Well, I’m back.

General thoughts: I did find more to the event than what was printed about it the Courier. Both candidates, Democrat Tom Knopf and Republican Pete Sehnert did a good job of presenting their ideas in front of the glare of television lights and cameras. Although it wasn’t a debate, I thought Knopf did a better job. When he answered the questions he gave specific examples to back up is overall idea.

I also need to correct my initial thought that I posted earlier:

I was a bit disappointed – based on the The Courier write up of the event – to read that Knopf wasn’t sure if more low cost housing was needed in the city.

Tom sent me a comment telling me to see the forum so I could see he hadn’t changed his position. He was right. He was the only one who had specific idea for the issue of low cost housing.

Knopf said he would like to see:

…more true actual low cost housing that will benefit those who aren’t able to pay 4, 5 , or $600 for a small 2 bedroom apartment.

Sehnert was the one who really didn’t seem to know if low cost housing was an issue or not. He explained that there was a lot of housing available and a lot of apartment stock. He didn’t address the issue of affordability directly.

I also liked Knopf directly saying that the Findlay Town Center project shouldn’t go forward unless and until the flooding issue is resolved first. He also wanted to see the empty store fronts downtown filled in and other non-flood plain areas considered for development before committing $90 million dollars on more retail space.

Flag City Politico has video segments posted of the entire forum. WFIN has audio of the forum available as well.

Pete Sehnert’s website

Tom Knopf’s website

Don’t forget to vote on November 6th

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