Category: Economia

Mitch Daniels vulnerable on corruption?

The Advance Indiana blog (see blogroll, right) has some obsessions, and those obsessions seem to involve the corner-cutting, corporatism and downright corruption of the Republicans in power in Indianapolis — both state and local government. That would be no surprise were not the blogger himself a Republican. (Doug Masson beat me to the punch on this, but I started before lunch and his appeared between now and then.)

The blog is relentless in criticizing the Indy Mayor Greg Ballard’s administration for its subservience to the interests of billionaire sports franchise owners (here, here, here, & here — and that’s just the recent ones; but don’t think he’s just an anti-sports sissy).

Today, he hits a higher target — the Daniels administration:

I’m telling you that Daniels has some big-time scandals brewing in his administration. The Obama Justice Department can bury any presidential ambitions he may have if they so desire to investigate these various scandals. I thought Mitch was smart enough to avoid this kind of corruption in his administration when he first got elected, but my once favorable impression of him is fading with the passage of every day. I’m not surprised by [State Rep. Eric] Turner’s obvious self-dealing, and I doubt many others who’ve watched him over at the State House over the years are either. The ACS [company hired to privatize Medicaid administration] connections run deeper than [Mitch] Roob. Barnes & Thornburg’s Bob Grand and Joe Loftus have lobbied the state and the City of Indianapolis for the firm. They firm as also lobbied the state for [Daniels insider John] Bales’ Venture Real Estate. CIB President Ann Lathrop, who replaced Grand in that role, used to work at ACS with Roob and former Mayor Steve Goldsmith, who employed both of them in his administration. Lathrop now works for Crowe Horwath, which has several contracts with the City of Indianapolis. Lathrop personally inked a contract with the Ballard administration’s budget office, which Lathrop ran during the Goldsmith administration. And I could go on but you get the point. It’s just one incestuous cesspool.

“Incenstuous cesspool” almost earned this re-blog a “damn rackets” categorization, but I’m holding off on that a bit longer.

Still, I had a lot of trouble with the Medicaid privatization debacle, which put Daniels’ willful streak on display and was so patently misguided — long before he nevertheless went ahead and did it — that only two theories came to mind for why he’d do it:

  1. He cynically wanted to screw up Medicaid — a massive and virtually uncontrollable entitlement — so badly that nobody would even want to bother applying (which in essence would move the cost of caregiving “off book” by forcing family members to skip economically productive jobs to care for aging parents even more than they already do); or
  2. He or someone he likes/owes stood to profit mightily from privatization. (This was barely on my radar, frankly.)

I want to like Mitch. I want to be proud of him. I’d like to want him to become President. But don’t bet on it — whether “it” is is me wanting him to become President or him actually becoming President. I knew nothing of his youthful pot use, divorce and, now, possible corruption (or closeness to corruption) until he became one of the frontrunners (or coy draft candidates) du jour.

Expect more dirt to be unearthed — not necessarily because Advance Indiana is right, but because that’s the way political sabotage works, and it’s hard to do all Mitch has done in his life without getting at least splashed with some ugly mud along the way.

Long wars and democracy

“Long wars are antithetical to democracy.” So opens a Washington Post op-ed column by Andrew J. Bacevich. “Events of the past week — notably the Rolling Stone profile that led to Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal’s dismissal — hint at the toll that nearly a decade of continuous conflict has exacted on the U.S. armed forces. The fate of any one general qualifies as small beer: Wearing four stars does not signify indispensability. But indications that the military’s professional ethic is eroding, evident in the disrespect for senior civilians expressed by McChrystal and his inner circle, should set off alarms.”

General McChrystal’s Rolling Stone interview ranks right down there with Jimmy Carter’s Playboy interview in the annals of stupid decisions by public people who should have known better. He couldn’t keep them from profiling him, but he didn’t have to sit down for an interview, accompanied by  Aides full of adolescent smartassness. For his lapse in judgment, we’d owe him a great debt of gratitude — if only it would cause us to abandon the aspiration to empire.

The problem, Bacevich suggests, goes back to the abandonment of a “citizen army” (i.e., the draft) in favor of a standing army of careerists, led by outstanding high officers but (and here Bacevich barely hints — I think he understands it, but it was beyond his scope) staffed by cannon fodder — young men and women appreciably poorer and darker-skinned than the sorts of people who by and large run the government and those institutions that might hold government accountable. Men and women who, we can tell ourselves, knew what they were getting into.

The big fib of the week?

“Americans don’t flinch in the face of difficult truths.” [Barak Obama] In fact, when it comes to war, the American people avert their eyes from difficult truths. Largely unaffected by events in Afghanistan and Iraq and preoccupied with problems much closer to home, they have demonstrated a fine ability to tune out war. Soldiers (and their families) are left holding the bag.

Throughout history, circumstances such as these have bred praetorianism, warriors becoming enamored with their moral superiority and impatient with the failings of those they are charged to defend. The smug disdain for high-ranking civilians casually expressed by McChrystal and his chief lieutenants — along with the conviction that “Team America,” as these officers style themselves, was bravely holding out against a sea of stupidity and corruption — suggests that the officer corps of the United States is not immune to this affliction.

In the all-volunteer Army, the military-industrial complex has found its perfect instrument. There’s no need for a frank military coup; we already have a covert military-industrial coup.

I’m no fan of conspiracy theories. No doubt there are connivers in the world, but I believe much less in the efficacy of conspiracy than of tragedy: the inexorable outworking of fatal flaws in a generally admirable protagonist; or metaphorically, the eventual expression of a fatal “genetic” flaw in every single regime in our world-gone-mutant.

Americans might do well to contemplate a famous warning issued by another frustrated commander from a much earlier age.

“We had been told, on leaving our native soil,” wrote the centurion Marcus Flavius to a cousin back in Rome, “that we were going to defend the sacred rights conferred on us by so many of our citizens [and to aid] populations in need of our assistance and our civilization.” For such a cause, he and his comrades had willingly offered to “shed our quota of blood, to sacrifice our youth and our hopes.” Yet the news from the homeland was disconcerting: The capital was seemingly rife with factions, treachery and petty politics. “Make haste,” Marcus Flavius continued, “and tell me that our fellow citizens understand us, support us and protect us as we ourselves are protecting the glory of the empire.”

“If it should be otherwise, if we should have to leave our bleached bones on these desert sands in vain, then beware of the anger of the legions!”

(Emphasis added) Thank you, Professor Bacevich. If we manage to disenthrall ourselves long enough to notice when our greatness is all gone, we won’t be able to say nobody told us.

And thank you, Washington Post. This is the kind of real conservativism that the idjits at TownHall.com will never publicize. (They’re saying things like we should “fire Obama” — as if that would solve the problem.)

I’m almost 62, and I’m going to say what I think …

I was at a small party tonite for a young friend who’s (1) turning a year older and (2) soon going away for more schooling. The host, a bright not-so-young man (though he’s younger than me) and I enjoy each other’s company quite a lot, and our lives are intertwined in multiple ways, including that he’s my grandson’s godfather.

On some political cultural issues, we found ourselves not only agreeing on the substance, but mutually marveling, after he brought it up, at how widespread is the virtual ban on uttering our opinions aloud. In some of the more or less conservative circles we travel in (we did not discuss all these; some were his list, some mine):

  • You can’t talk about caring for God’s good creation without being thought a left-wing environmentalist (especially if you call it “the environment,” which I try not to).
  • You can’t say that capitalism has its limits.
  • You can’t say that “creative destruction” is profoundly un-conservative in a very important sense.
  • You can’t question “American Exceptionalism” or you’ll be accused of something like “moral equivalence.”
  • You can’t suggest that America isn’t omnipotent and can’t do any stupid thing it chooses with impunity.
  • You can’t suggest that we’re not going to grow our way out of this malaise – or that if we do, there nevertheless will come some day, probably soon, a malaise we cannot outgrow, and that our mountains of debt have a lot to do with that.
  • You can’t say that our economic system is not fundamentally different than the state capitalism David Brooks was trying to distinguish from our system a few days ago.
  • You can’t suggest that we’re running out of oil and that the days of the automobile as so central a feature of life are numbered.
  • I’m not even sure you can safely say “the sexual revolution was at best a mixed blessing, and I think it was a net setback for humanity.” Not even in “conservative” circles as “conservative” mags like National Review now have writers who are shacking up without (or at least before) wedlock. (Wanna know why same-sex marriage has valence? Look at what heteros have done to marriage.)

To his observation, and after running down a quick mental list of my own, I found myself saying “I’m almost 62 years old and I’m going to say what I believe — if only so I can say ‘I told you so’ some day.”

I’m wondering if that should be the new subheading on the blog instead of my beloved Latin maxim. That’s kind of what I’ve been doing in this blog. But I am pretty eclectic, and it’s not all negative or adulatory. Some of it’s just my sense of intrigue on a topic that I want to share.

Anyway, all those things you can’t say? I just said ’em. And I’m stickin’ to it.

Quote of the day

No, don’t expect one every day, but for now, try this:

It’s funny that we require more proof of a person’s need to become eligible to receive welfare than we require of these billionaire sports team owners when they ask for tens of millions more annually in public assistance.

HT: Advance Indiana blog.

Note, by the way, how I’ve added a new category since “corporatism” and “state capitalism,” while apt, seemed too tame.

Clarence Thomas for President?

I don’t know these guys, but I suspect them of disingenuous mischief.

Still, the times are fearful and polarized. The “left” (scare quotes because who really knows what the labels mean these days?) fears theocracy, and I increasingly see why they would fear it. The “right,” or at least “the religious right,” fears (whether they can name it or not) French-style glorious revolution secularization, with concommitant marginalization, persecution or even martyrdom of Christian believers. I have never had trouble seeing why that fear should arise, even though those of the “left” find it risible, since they perceive Christianity as dominant to the point of oppressiveness. (The phenomenon of multiple flavors of Christianity, however, is one to which I have often alluded, and they differ at a deep spiritual level, not just in their political valence. The same, I believe, is true of Islam — and for analogous reasons.)

We have dug ourselves a very deep hole economically, and if that plays out as I suspect it will, I see no sign that people are ready to repent of economic nonsense and start building something sustainable, since what’s sustainable won’t be as giddily distracting as the faux prosperity we currently experience — and which, truth be told, we enjoy if only as guilty pleasure.

And I’ve not really touched on “the culture” in a sense broader than politics, religion, and their respective discontents.

In such a millieu, some rough beast may well be slouching toward Bethlehem. I doubt that it’s Clarence Thomas (who I don’t find a rough beast at all). A political Peter Singer, with the rhetorical gifts of a Barack Obama, seems likelier to me. He (she?) must be seductive enough with nostrums to seduce — what is it? — 218 Electoral College Votes (assuming, contrary to the “Bible prophecy” wankers, that he’ll be American).

On that bright note, I close the computer and prepare to go sing the praises of The One whose incarnation in the flesh, with its Bethlehem nexus, makes me hopeful even in the most troubled of times.

Welcome to the oligarchy

John Médaille in Doing God’s Work at Goldman’s notes that Greece’s banking problem — Crony Capitalism that privatized profits and socialized losses, leading to certain collapse — is, by the lights of an IMF economist, is the same as ours, and as we busted up the banking offenders in Greece, so should we here.

But of course we won’t. We have quasi-religious rationales for letting the bastards do as they wish, but in the end, we’re just making a virtue of necessity. We’re trapped.

[T]he country is formally an oligarchy, with a government of the rich, by the rich, for the rich. Partisan fights are beside the point. As Obama amply demonstrates, “change” means more of the same, for the same people fund both sides. As entertaining as our political process is, it is meaningless, full of the sound and the fury, no doubt, but signifying nothing. The real power lay elsewhere. The president and the congress seek office to run the country, only to find that the country runs them. Or rather that part of the country in and around Wall Street.

Not much I can add to that.

Eat Local

Ironic that this ad should come from Hellmans, a Unilever® brand.

I’ll go one step further: don’t just buy American. Buy local as much as possible. I’m not yet doing CSA (Community-Supported Agriculture) for urgent personal reasons, but I may next year. And I am heading to the Farmer’s Market soon.

[HT Front Porch Republic and The Distributist Review]

Oh: one more thing. Buy and read Michael Polan’s, Food Rules: An Eater’s Manual. Funny and practical commentary on The Seven Words (also coined by the author): Eat Food. Not too much. Mostly plants.

Had I taken such advice 40 years ago, I wouldn’t look like the Goodyear blimp, or consume $thousands in medicines each year, or need to pay someone to help me lose 72 pounds (26 down, 46 to go!).

Is Sarah Palin a fake feminist?

It should be no secret that I am not a fan of Sarah Palin, but among her defects is not patent falsity as a feminist, as Jessica Valenti’s column at the Sunday Washington Post alleges. Valenti careens around like a pinball deprecating all things Palin, but in my opinion falls short of making the case that Palin’s feminism is fake.

Pro-life feminism is something I happen to know a few things about. It captured my attention 25 years or so ago when I heard a recording of Sidney Callahan, a distinguished social psychologist, teacher, and syndicated columnist in moral psychology, state the case for it. It had a humane and compassionate angle that I found very attractive personally. (I regret that Callahan’s talk seemingly not available online; I believe I ripped it from tape to MP3 and could share it with anyone interested after checking copyright more closely.)

So I became a supporter of Feminists for Life before it had a political action committee — not a member, as I think there’s something creepy about a man saying he’s a feminist (it strikes me as being on roughly the same level as “Hey, baby! What’s your sign?” or “Want to come up and see my lithographs?”) — even though some of its positions were well to my left at the time. (I also supported the “Pro-Life Alliance of Gays and Lesbians” who intuited that they were particularly vulnerable to selective abortion should a “gay gene” ever be identified.) I have received the Journals of FFL for decades as a result. Valenti can sneer at the “debated notion that first-wave feminists were antiabortion,” but I’d rather have the affirmative than the negative of that in a debate.

I now consider the support of the Susan B. Anthony list, the FFL-affiliated PAC formed years later, a reliable indicator of a bona fide pro-life candidate who is not (necessarily) wedded to the religious right. I give essentially nothing to the National Right to Life Committee or its PAC these days, but in most election cycles, I’ll pore over SBA List endorsements for candidates, almost invariably women, whose positions (and odds) seem especially good, and then I’ll support them modestly. (Public records of such giving has gotten me labeled an anti-choice fanatic by the brain-dead denizens of Journal & Courier online comboxes.)

I probably could go on, but suffice that I know whereof I speak when I say that Valenti is either consciously lying or fabricating factoids when she alleges that pro-life feminism is a cynical ploy adopted only after “protesters realized that screaming ‘Murderer!’ at women wasn’t winning hearts and minds.”

But, of course, Palin isn’t a feminist — not in the slightest. What she calls “the emerging conservative feminist identity” isn’t the product of a political movement or a fight for social justice.

It isn’t a structural analysis of patriarchal norms, power dynamics or systemic inequities. It’s an empty rallying call to other women who are as disdainful of or apathetic to women’s rights as Palin herself: women who want to make abortion and emergency contraception illegal and who fight same-sex marriage rights. As Kate Harding wrote on Jezebel.com: “What comes next? ‘Phyllis Schlafly feminism?’ ‘Patriarchal feminism?’ ‘He-Man Woman Hater Feminism?'”

So let it be clear: Valenti considers abortion (and “emergency contraception,” but I repeat myself) and same-sex marriage among the sina qua non of feminism. That marks her as a “radical feminist” or something close.

In radical feminism, if you’re not tying “power dynamic or systemic inequities” to “patriarchal norms” — if, for instance, you tie them in the slightest to such phenomena as the Chamber-of-Commerce types pushing to get women into the marketplace in the early 20th century in order to suppress wages, or the prudent self-protection rendered more urgent by no-fault divorce and its effective abolition of marriage — you’re a fake feminist. I’m all in favor of words having somewhat precise meanings if possible, but as a few of my links to Wikepedia in this posting demonstrate, “feminism” as of today can follow a lot of different adjectives.

“So God made man; in the image of God He made him; male and female He made them.” Human equality does not require identity of aptitudes and roles (though it is dangerous, if not outright wrong, to apply generalizations to specific people). A gifted athlete is no more or less fully human that a gifted scholar. A layman is no more or less human than a pastor or priest. Men and women are of equal dignity even if they are measurably different — and not different merely in the matter of some plumbing that only matters on special occasions.

Feminists for Life essentially embraces a form of what apparently is known today as difference feminism, or cultural feminism or new feminism. I have a little trouble getting worked up over the label, or holding myself out as expert in the taxonomy of feminism. But having followed them all these years, I know that the proper valuing of women for the common good is a bona fide concern of Feminists for Life.

So is Sarah Palin a fake feminist? Well, she’s to the right of many SBA-endorsed politicians. And I’m ready to believe that just about anything about her is fake. But I draw the line at credulously falling for an empty screed like Jessica Valenti’s column.