Response to Penny Pritzker, Secretary of Commerce

Penny Pritzker, Secretary of Commerce, recently wrote a missive that I came across on Linked In's Pulse, entitled A Stronger Middle Class Begins with All of Us

In response to Pritzker's proposals:

1) Most of the jobs that have been created in the post 2008 period are either part time, or low wage - they don't really replace the jobs that have either been outsourced through "Free Trade" or lost in the banking meltdown following 2008

2) Business Tax rates are already low, even negative with the subsidies we tend to give out to even the most undeserving of industries, if anything they need to be tightened up to eliminate loop holes.

3) Trade - the Pacific Trade Agreement that is being shoved down our throats is anything but good for American industry or our workers - it

a) prevents any "buy-American" campaigns, eliminates our ability to regulate imports based on labor content (slave, child etc) or

b) environmental impact, taking the decisions for that outside the American judicial process and giving it to a non-governmental third party paid for and regulated by the very industries that we'd be taking action agains,

c) changes patent and trade mark law to extend proprietary patents beyond their American limitations (presumably our laws have some meaning on this)

d) makes "hire American" programs unenforceable - (See point a above)

In general, just as NAFTA and other "free trade" agreements had deleterious effects (in some cases unexpected - here, with the benefit of 25 years of "globalism" behind us the impacts are more readily predicted) the TPA will have tremendous and debilitating impacts on the US, and other economies through out the world, and further shift the balance of power from duly elected representatives to corporate interests

4) While training models and apprenticeships are certainly interesting, what is really needed is to reinvigorate the creation of full-time, high paid jobs in the US, rather than the part time, minimum wage model that we've adopted in this recovery.

The numbers may look good - but what sits behind them is a completely hollowed out labor market, a declining and disappearing middle class, and the shaping up of another market bubble of gigantic proportions. What sits behind Pritzker's facile and poorly thought through proposals is a blueprint to accelerate that decline and further instantiate the serf-class that has been created in this country.

Open Letter to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC)

An open letter to the DCCC in response to your ceaseless fundraising efforts targeting me for even a $5 contribution:

I support organizations that I believe make a meaningful contribution to American Society, however don't believe the DCCC is the appropriate channel or manner in which to support candidates or policies. 

I personally look at the overall Democratic Platform and approach to reaching a meaningful agreement to resolving / addressing the key issues our country faces as an abject failure.

The Democratic Party no longer meaningfully represents its constituencies, instead pursuing an approach of coddling big business to the detriment of the American People, and restricting our rights through efforts such as the NDAA and inadequate / incompetent oversight of the nation's intelligence agencies.

You've been unable to navigate the contentious waters of a Republican controlled Congress, and as a result the American People have suffered half a decade of lack of progress in any meaningful area.

And yet you continue to look to the People for money to pursue your failed agenda and evident incompetence.

It's frankly beyond me what you're thinking, and your excuses for non-performance are tiresome.

Please go somewhere else to find a bigger fool willing to part with their hard earned and heavily taxed earnings to fund your foolishness.

Akin, Religious Thuggery and Dr. Seuss

A few days in, Akin and the Republican Party in general are probably hoping this issue of "legitimate rape" and a woman's body's ability to fend off her rapist's sperm (where'd that come from?)  blows over - "oh it's all yesterday's news," I can hear them saying.  This will be what the talking heads on the news channels (at least the "Fair and Balanced" one) will be promoting as well.

But Akin's repugnant and unscientific views notwithstanding, the entire issue is a really a clear view into what a key component of the Republican Agenda is - a war on women.  Sharia-like laws enacted to take THEIR interpretation of what Christian beliefs are, and should be, and impose them on everyone else in our secular society.  The fact that Akin and Ryan co-sponsored legislation to accomplish this and that Romney supported it should give any freedom-loving individual pause when considering whether to support them or not.

To be sure, the next stage here will be that Akin's and the other religious radicals will scream that they're being persecuted because others object to THEIR attempted imposition on the rest of Americans.

I don't care if they're the majority or not (I certainly don't believe so) - that's immaterial.  This isn't a 50% + 1  rule of the mob country - this is a country ruled by principles and laws (hence we're a Constitutional Republic NOT a Democracy - something most people seem to have missed in Civics 101) - the first of which is a separation of church and state.  What you believe is your god's will really doesn't matter.  And to try and impose your religious beliefs on others is not just unconstitutional, it's reprehensible.

So take it away Dr Seuss ....  or a reasonable facsimile thereof

Time to overthrow the financial system

General question out there - when in the course of financial affairs the banks violate the basic principles of the agreement with their customers, should the customers refuse to pay the banks? Should the government uphold this action?

This is a real question as it becomes clear that the financial institutions banded together to systematically defraud Hundreds of Trillions of dollars in financial instruments through illegally manipulating the interest rates and terms upon which they are based.

Our cities are going bankrupt.
Our homes are being foreclosed.
We've paid higher than necessary interest rates on all our debt.

And yet, despite all this, banks continue to insist on enforcing the terms of our agreements- interest payments, fines and penalties and other exorbitant measures of financial penalties.

Should we continue to pay? When is enough enough?

I hold that, as of this day, our obligation to abide by the terms of agreements with banks, credit card companies and other usurious institutions is null and void - that through their systematic and PLANNED violation of the law, and common decency, they no longer can look to their debtors to follow the terms of any financial contract.

I further hold that, given the heinous nature of their offenses, that no longer shall fines alone be sufficient to ameliorate their crimes. No, from this day forward I say that We the People DEMAND that the traders, managers and executives that oversaw these and other illegal activities be tried and imprisoned. Since when is it acceptable in society that a man, found guilty of stealing a thousand dollars should be sentenced to 20 years imprisonment, yet one who has stolen Billions of dollars not be charged or tried at all.

This gets to the center of what type of society we want to live in.

I further hold that, if our government does NOT vigorously prosecute these financial criminals, that it is no longer a legitimate government and needs to be replaced IN TOTAL - the individuals, the institutions, the Laws and Regulations, indeed all facets of a government that would NOT hold criminals of this sort publicly accountable for their actions can no longer claim to legitimately govern its people.

A Working Model of American Social Innovation

There's a interesting meme making its way around the internet attributed to Aristotle that has sparked some interesting debate:

I think some ideas are, well, just bad ones.  And that you can see them at face value as such.  Others are more, well, complex or nuanced - often requiring a tweak here or there to get right, or needing to me maintained / updated to address changing times and circumstances.  And some ideas are just good ones to be picked up immediately.  Pure observation tells us that the vast majority of them are in the middle category, and that the advantage of having an open mind is that you can experience them, play with them, and then either drop them as bad ideas, change them to make them better, or adopt as good.


Which gets me to dogmatic orthodoxy - the tune of the day in this country with both the liberal and conservative camps having polarized themselves, and requiring strict adherence to a narrowly defined set of values or beliefs.  Through this there is no ability to try things on, no space for trial and error; imagine having to explain why what you thought might have been a workable idea turned out to be unworkable?  Shear heresy to have undertaken it.


So there must be more than one dimension at work here - for there are plenty of highly educated people on both sides of the aisle, and precious few of them seem to be willing to try something interesting to see what might happen.  Let's just call that something "Willingness to Try" or "Orthodoxy"  If we plot these two attributes on a simple two by two matrix let's see what we get:

Figure One

Here we can see the two by two with four resulting quadrants of social innovation.  Moving counter clockwise from the upper right we have:

• Quadrant I - Innovation - a place where new ideas are entertained and the social environment exists to try them out

• Quadrant II - Stagnation - a place where new ideas are entertained, but the polarized orthodoxies of the ruling class prevents society from testing or employing them

• Quadrant III - Stasis - a place where no new ideas are identified, and the polarized orthodoxies of the ruling class prevents society from testing even those mediocre ideas that surface

• Quadrant IV - Stagnation - no new ideas are entertained, but we'd be willing to try them out if they did (a null set of good ideas making it to the table)  - resulting in overall stagnation

A basic premise I'll employ is that of asymptotic distribution as we approach the extremes of either variable considered.  


With this defining principle in mind, to the basic framework outlined in Figure One above we can now add the identifiable frontiers of innovation

Figure Two

In Figure Two we can see the limits of innovation:

• In Quadrant I we can identify the efficient frontier  - beyond which we're trying out too many new ideas with no guiding principles yielding total Chaos
• In Quadrant II we can see that too high a degree of Political Orthodoxy coupled with a Highly Educated mind leads to Gridlock beyond the workable frontier, as no party can agree on what should be done or when
• In Quadrant III we see the reactionary frontier, to me the scariest of them all, which sees us slipping quickly into the Dark Ages
• And finally, Quadrant IV as we approach a total lack of orthodoxy coupled with an unwillingness to entertain new ideas leads to a Chaotic Dark Age.

Building upon Figure Two we can identify a point where we've attained minimum social efficiency in societal innovation.  In Figure Three I plot a hypothetical minimum social efficiency frontier - to the right of which we're entertaining sufficient new ideas to deliver the social innovation required to adapt to our changing environment, to the left of which we're not. 

Figure Three

Thus, any combination of ideas and political orthodoxy which yields a societal innovation profile between the minimum social efficiency line and the efficient frontier arc is at least a productive situation.  Anything beyond the efficient frontier, or to the left of the minimum social efficiency frontier is not.

All that is left is to plot where various parties on the political spectrum are to see what we have from a leadership standpoint.  This enables us to develop a prognosis for America's ability to adapt to our changing times and emerge from the financial and economic issues we face today successfully.

I've plotted a few of the major actors (and a couple of minor ones) Figure Four below - let's see what we get:

Figure Four

Crap.  We're hosed.  Not a single one of them looks like they're going to work for us.

I guess it's time to move to New Zealand.  Either that or find some middle ground in a new set of players that will actually help this country rather than hinder it.

Affordable Care Act and the Supreme Court - a response to George Will of the Washington Post

This is a verbatim copy of my response to a Washington Post editorial in today's online issue:

Liberals put the squeeze to Justice Roberts


Will's clearly partisan opinion piece misses two central points that somehow elude those enamored in the so-called "libertarian" or conservative sound-bites of this issue.

First - Congress has not "created commerce" - it already exists.  Under current law emergency rooms MUST take all those who present for care, and if they can't pay, the government does.  This makes good sense from a public health stand point (unless you want people dying because they can't pay, or not presenting when they have contagious diseases.), as well as from a civil and social standpoint.

Second - the market for healthcare is a natural one.  No matter how healthy you are, at some point you'll need a doctor.  So to not be financially covered for this impending need, and to ultimately depend on the government for your coverage means you, by refusing insurance, are getting a free ride on the rest of the taxpayers and those who pay for their insurance.

Thus, this isn't a matter of freedom of choice as so called Conservatives would have you think.  This is a matter of you as an individual taking accountability for your life, and your expenses, rather than living on the dole.

I find it fascinating that the Conservatives don't want to understand this - I mean isn't that what they supposedly stand for?  Personal accountability?  But I digress.

If the matter here is whether the Congress has the authority to regulate this industry and require individuals to participate financially, I think it's relatively clear that
1) it is an existing commercial marketplace, and
2) all residents and visitors in the United States participate in it

So therefore the Congress has the Constitutional authority to regulate it.  That much is crystal clear.  And thus the Supreme Court really has no choice to affirm the law on that basis - unless it's truly voting a political agenda rather than ruling on the matter of Law, or attempting to overturn all Commerce Legislation since the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890.

A more fundamental question should be asked - is requiring everyone to buy private health insurance an adequate or even desirable way to achieve the required market participation?

I would submit no.  A far better solution would be to eliminate private insurance and institute a Single Payor system.  To be sure we could encourage additional riders or coverage from the private marketplace, but base can be provided far more efficiently, with lower cost, and higher quality for more people with a government run Single Payor system.  Current estimates are that as much as 25% of healthcare expense (thats 25% of nearly 3 Trillion dollars a year) is due to multiple billing relationships from multiple payors.  Eliminating this would save up to $750 BN a year.  Which pays for a lot of coverage.  And reduces the debt to boot.

So George Will is either naively misunderstanding the case in front of us, or pursuing some other partisan agenda - which do you think is going on here?

CIA Unravelled Bomb Plot From Within

Who out there really believes this stuff? By my count the past, oh, dozen "foiled terrorist plots" have consisted of security alphabet soup apparatus brilliantly infiltrating, outwitting, and then neutralizing what in the US are arguably impressionable angry young men by 


first - suggesting they should attack the US, 
second -  showing and giving them the means to attack the US, and 
finally neatly rolling them up with what ever fake bomb, IED, WOMD they've engineered for the occasion. 


If true, then they're batting 1000, and are up against the dumbest and ineffectual enemy we've seen in ages.  Reminds me of Mad Magazine's Spy vs. Spy...

Now comes along the latest coup - "Saudi Intelligence" infiltrate a terrorist cell in Yemen, take control of their super-dooper underwear bomb program and then get outed by the media. All under another alphabet soup guided effort.

Really.

It stretches credulity just a bridge too far.

IMHO, domestic "wins" are increasingly looking like a combination of self serving entrapment schemes, targeted at convincing the American people to 


a) continue the exorbitant funding levels we've grown to for "Homeland Security", and 


b) further the path we're on on eroding our essential liberties in the false search for security from an enemy that increasingly we're having to fabricate ourselves to keep real.

The Saudi / Yemeni underwear bombing incident looks suspiciously to me of misinformation spread after the media knowingly sat on the story for days at intelligence's request, giving them time to create a narrative that not only will sell to the American people (look - once agin our infallible security forces have saved the day) as well as sew the seeds of internal doubt at what ever ineffectual terrorist cells still remain out there (oh my Allah! who amongst us are really double agents???!!!!) If successful the alphabet soup folks will both reinforce their core campaign against the American people, as well as spin the terrorist cells int internally destructive activities for months.

Brilliant.

All I can say is:

Got Rights?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/cia-unraveled-bomb-plot-from-within/2012/05/08/gIQA5tKOBU_story.html