My Patriot Act

We are in an economic recession. The economy is in bad shape. People are losing jobs all over the nation and world. Things are bad, and I don’t in any way mean to marginalize people’s lost jobs, but I wish people would just shut the hell up about how bad the economy is.

A recession or depression is not a tangible problem that one just sends an inspiring Harvard grad from Chicago off to fix. It’s a big problem that will take more than one man or one government to fix; it will take an attitude shift and action by all of us to get through this.

All over the news and everywhere else, everyone is crying about the bad economy and it is only making things worse. In a recession, people need to spend money to get things going again. Buy some stock, open a business, or expand and hire more people; this in turn gives other people more money and they spend more.

That is economics 101 stuff, but that’s not what you see on TV. If the news networks cut in half the time they spend crying about the sky falling, and used that time to urge people to invest in our national or international economy then we would be through these dark days in no time.

I’m not just saying people should blindly invest all of their savings, but there are still untapped markets to fill, recession-proof industries to invest in, and smart ways to expand businesses even in these hard times. If you pulled your money out of the market and buried it in your back yard, I beg you to reconsider that choice. I know it seems like a boneheaded move to invest and take risks when all you hear about is the recession, but if people quit crying and actually did something about it we would never even be in this situation today.

This is the first part of a three part interview. I’m a few days late posting this here but if you haven’t yet seen this, then do yourself a favor and watch it. I don’t really have anything to say about this that isn’t already in the video.

It’s been a long time, and not much has changed - except maybe for the worse. Our government has been bailing out large companies like it’s going out of style. Unfortunately, such practice was never in style.

I read an interesting op-ed in the New York Times last week that brought a new idea to the table. Some people might argue that since the financial market has turned sour (and bitterly so), we should be keeping our money here instead of sending it to aid developing countries abroad, especially when one tries to imagine the enormous public debt we’ve accrued over the last six years. But these countries are also hurting and are less able to deal with the strains of a global recession. For years, the United Nations has supported a figure of 0.7% of a developed country’s gross domestic product as a target for foreign aid. The United States currently sends about 0.4% of its GDP in aid - just over half of the target value. Not only is sending more aid the correct and moral decision, it just makes sense when other aspects of our goals are taken into account.

The first goal I’ll mention is perhaps America’s longest-standing foreign policy initiative - the fostering of freedom for all mankind. Certainly an end that is going to be hard to achieve, but that makes it no less noble. Research has long shown a link between the wealth of a country and the level of freedom its citizens enjoy - the wealthier the country, the more likely it is to be classified by Freedom House as “free” or even “partly free”. I must make a quick note here that supporters of nation building often say that if a country is converted to a democracy (even by force), it will begin fostering a better economy and maintain itself as a free country. This is simply not the case. Development must come from below. By creating economic growth in the world’s poorest nations, we can begin to shift the focus of their worries from day-to-day survival to more long term problems, such as whether they enjoy what our country’s founders declared to be self-evident human rights and liberties.

There is a second reason to aid poorer countries that is less obvious and even a little selfish. Let us hypothetically assume that the only rational reason a country would send money to another is if it gained something in return. If we use such foreign aid to foster construction and infrastructure projects in impoverished areas, we can create economic stimulus in America as well. For example, we could provide a subsidy on American-made products to foreign countries seeking to buy equipment necessary for such construction. This subsidy should be as large as necessary - perhaps 50% or 75%, maybe even 100%. In essence, we would be giving money to our manufacturing companies such as Caterpillar and Bobcat while sending material aid to foreign countries.

The third reason, assuming we use subsidies similar to what I’ve suggested, is all about appearances. When we merely send money to a foreign country’s government, we have little control over how it is spent and people at the local level may never see any benefit. Even if we sent them goods, there’s no way to ensure that the recipient country will use them, or use them for the public benefit. But if we restructure our foreign aid so that it sends goods and people (why not the Peace Corps?) to operate them, accomplishing specific tasks, we can improve not only our global image but provide economic assistance to American companies and jobs to American people. And on top of all that, we might actually accomplish some good - building instead of destroying.

I’m sure you’ve all seen or heard a handful of your friends lament the results of Tuesday’s election. Whether announcing the arrival of the United Socialist States of America, deciding that they could no longer afford to open a small business, or expressing sadness brought on by what they perceive as the loss of freedom, money, and the intelligence of Americans. These are examples from my friends, all people I thought to be highly intelligent and sensible folk. This corruption of their thoughts by ignorance is an American tragedy.

Why does this happen? My theory is upbringing - social development, as psychologists say. But what causes these people to go astray, especially when they mean well?

Idealism (something I’m definitely guilty of), in various forms, can cause this. But idealism needs to be supported by objective reasoning. One of my friends holds small (she visualizes ‘miniscule’) government to be the greatest virtue of all. This has led her to support the Republican Party. I would support her decision, if it were the correct one. Her feelings on that matter lie closer to libertarianism, but that’s beside the point. For one reason or another, many people are drawn to the political right. More often than not, it’s their positions on social rather than economic issues that begin this process because as we all know there is very little difference between Democrats and Republicans, fiscally speaking, which is why her decision is wrong. What difference that does exist is highly exaggerated - Obama wishes to raise taxes on the wealthy to support spending increases elsewhere (fiscal pragmatism is ironically something the Republican Party used to uphold, not avoid). His opponents misconstrue his plans and sway the opinions of those who identify with them.

Some conservatives recognize this lack of definitive differences. Some young folk with libertarian leanings recently contacted me on Facebook to join their party. They call it the Regressionalist Party. I suggest renaming it the Libertarian-Authoritarian Coalition (with all the ideological conflict that name implies). While claiming to hold the values of capitalism and liberty in high esteem, in truth they are closer to neoconservatism with a sick twist: that both conservatism and liberalism seek to control citizens’ lives. The prime motivation for this group seems a general fear of authority conjured up by an inability to fathom the meaning of social responsibility and governance.

I pick them out as an example because I promised I would after a thoroughly wrong-headed message was sent to all members upon their perceived defeat on Election Day last week. It asked those who believed in what Barack Obama stands for to leave the group. For the record, I joined the group because I believe a return to liberty is in order. However, they seem to believe that they can simply turn back the clock by embracing ultra-conservative politicians and go back to the glory days of the Republic. I just can’t stand it when people who mean well are so deluded. I think that despite their cries of “Wolf!”, these people will enjoy the administration of a good president that will bring us one step (or maybe a few steps) closer to being a Republic once again.

Thus far, multiple people have expressed via this group that liberalism equates to socialism or the taking of wealth from one person and giving it to another. For one thing, the right wing’s idea of socialism is flat-out wrong, as is the public connotation of the word - the first thing most people think of is Eastern Europe during the Cold War. That wasn’t socialism, it was a mix of totalitarianism and oligarchism. They then equate liberalism with the loss of civil liberties (the ideology is apparently Orwellian to them, which is fraught with irony) and the destruction of the free market. For another, that concept is wrong - what they allege is wealth redistribution is in fact a redistribution of the burden of government back to those who can afford to support it. I’m willing to bet that these people were unaware that prior to 1964, income over today’s equivalent of $400,000 was taxed at a rate of 91%. In 1980, this rate fell to 28%. I simply can not find a reason why today’s conservatives can support such tax policy while increasing spending elsewhere through various forms of corporate welfare or military imperialism - other than greed.

I have some news for these people. The liberal president-elect stands for restoring civil liberties lost during the reign of the current head of the party you would have us support instead. He is also willing to take the first steps to eliminate the corporate welfare (thought not as many as I would like - see Detroit bailout) that has gotten us into so thorough a mess and threatens to destroy our free market with yet more corporate welfare. These Regressionalists should instead be calling for the repeal of the Patriot Act, a massive reduction in our armed forces to a purely defensive (and citizen-based) force as well as dismantling our empire of bases, and educating themselves on the causes of our problems rather than relying on Faux News to inform them. I cannot stress the importance of a diversity of sources enough, as well as the authority of sources - this is something our schools are supposed to teach. But our schools are crumbling.

This is nowhere near as illuminating as I had intended. I am increasingly of the opinion that the people whose fallacies I wish to correct do not think logically and I simply do not have the energy to argue with irrational folk at this point in time. They will either grow wiser as time proves them wrong or they won’t. I expect the rational ones to recognize the nuggets of truth I’ve hinted at and ask questions - clarifying would then be worth my time as well as theirs.

Last week, an AP news article used the word “punishing” to describe what many people believe to be an unavoidable recession. I couldn’t agree more. But what are we being punished for? Who’s being punished anyway?

Certainly not the majority of the people involved in this mess. I hate seeing people try to blame everything on Wall Street and financiers of questionable character. What’s really to blame is our cultural outlook on monetary responsibility. We have none. Several friends of mine are deep in unwarranted debt they acquired from purchases they didn’t need to make. Even I am guilty of sometimes charging too much to my credit accounts - but I overdo it in amounts that can be measured in tens of dollars, not hundreds or thousands.

To me, this is merely a major symptom of the matieralism that runs rampant in our society. One of my family members used to buy new furniture and appliances every third year. The old stuff would be given to my immediate family as we had storage space behind our house…and a fair amount of it has ended up furnishing my college apartment. But they could afford to do this because they earned somewhere in the vicinity of $200,000 per year during the late 1990s (nowhere near being rich, but still plenty of money to live on). Living in the midwest, a family income of $200,000 seems exorbitant when you consider the cost of living, and yet I still hold people who live lifestyles like theirs largely responsible for our financial woes. Why do they need new things all the time? Perhaps we can call it Shiny Syndrome. The essence of materialism is greed, and that is exactly what we are being punished for.

There are people avoiding punishment, however. These are the people whose balance sheets may be taking a hit (and perhaps big ones), yet their lifestyle will not appreciably suffer. These are the people to whom the wealth as been excessively redistributed during the past 8 years, those who fall in the uppermost tax brackets. This is unjustifiable when our country is pledging to reach a target foreign aid contribution amount of just 0.7% of its GDP by 2015. Just yesterday I saw a news story about Goldman Sachs giving more dollars in end-of-the-year bonuses to executives than they requested from the government as part of the infamous $700 billion bail out bill. I cannot believe this is being allowed to happen.

The people truly being punished are those already struggling to make ends meet, or those who are beginning to do so. I am one of these. My family has made less than $60,000 a year since I can remember, which isn’t even close to the poverty level and yet times have been hard for my family since the early 2000s. I can’t imagine what life is like for families closer to or below the poverty level (somewhere around $15,000 annual income). It’s mind-boggling when compared to the lives of those relatively unhurt by this crisis.

My mother’s income increased $5,000 last year, and the federal government seems to think that the entirety of that increase should be put towards my college education. This “estimated contribution” (which has always been $0 in the past) has therefore decreased the amount of financial aid I am able to apply for. This is entirely unreasonable when combined with the fact that because of the disappearance of credit, the loans I had been receiving dried up this past year and I am still trying to find another lender willing to loan me money for my last remaining semester. If I don’t, I will be forced to choose between eating and paying rent or paying tuition (I won’t even begin to rant about that extortion scheme). I’m sure I’m not the only one in this situation.

What if Goldman Sachs used all that bonus money for an altruistic purpose? What if they invested that $17 billion in college education funds, to be dispersed as loan money? That’s $17 billion in bonuses. Bonuses on top of already-high salaries for well-to-do banker types. I find this concept disgusting beyond words. The burning sense of outrage I feel has left me speechless.

Greed still trumps altruism, apparently.

I’m a firm believer in reading as a way to stay informed and keep minds sharp. I’ve created a new page (Readings, up there at the top) that lists some relevant reading I’ve already been through. More will come as I reach a point in each book that I’m able to evaluate its worth and relevance to current affairs.

I am watching these debates and interviews with the candidates and the entire election process with more focus than I ever have before. Part of the reason for this is because I’m young, 25 years old. I’ve been able to vote in only one presidential election before this. The other reason is, like many Americans, I’m of the opinion that our entire government is corrupt and there is a sense of futility as a voter. I do not advocate not voting in any way shape or form, but when you see so much partisanship, lying, greed, and corruption; it’s difficult to stay interested in each new election that more often than not exchanges one bastard for another.

I don’t sound like much of an idealist yet, but keep reading. I keep hoping that the tide is turning, that this one will be different, that these guys are better than the others, this presidential campaign more so than ever. I’ve been an Obama geek since forever, and for the most part he hasn’t let me down. All in all he and Biden are running a mostly honest campaign. I didn’t like how Biden wasn’t apparently able to explain some of his comments about Obama not being fit to be president that he made when he was still running for the top spot himself. But the day that a politician explains that they have changed their mind about a former opponent because they have the nomination, I will eat my shorts.

My problem is the McCain campaign. I’ve been a fan of McCain for years. He actually used to be a maverick like he keeps saying, except now he’s as much of a maverick as Elmer Fudd. I understand to be elected president as a republican you have to be nice to some rather radical groups. Jerry Falwell was a man McCain called an “agent of intolerance” before this campaign, and later said he spoke “in haste” and went on to speak at graduation for Falwell’s Liberty University. I, for one, think he got it right the first time.

Unfortunately it isn’t just him reversing on his principles to get elected. He just isn’t the same man. He flat out lies and distorts the truth, and repeatedly. This whole line about Obama voting against funding the troops is the most annoying to me. The truth of the matter is that Obama voted for funding with timetables for withdrawal and against funding without timetables. McCain voted the opposite, against funding with the timetables and for funding with. It is flat out distorting the truth to say that he voted against funding the troops, he only voted against not having any timetables. And despite being corrected in the first debate by Obama, McCain continues to repeat this fallacy, and in fact Palin repeated it in the VP debate last Thursday, where Biden corrected her. The only reason for them to knowingly continue to say something so blatantly untrue is that they hope that people will hear that and hold onto it while not hearing or ignoring the truth. This shows an incredible disrespect for the American voter that is unfortunately not entirely unfounded. Even still though, it’s an underhanded slimy tactic that is really depressing to see.

In the first debate, McCain had this smirk on his face, and refused to even look in Obama’s direction. It was utterly shameful. Obama kept looking over at McCain incredulously, amazed that McCain would blatantly lie right there in the middle of a debate where Obama could easily call him out. I’m not sure how many times Obama said, “That’s just not true” in the debate but it was more than a few.

John McCain is a man who used to pride himself on saying and doing what he thought was right, regardless of what people thought. In this bid for the presidency, he has lost every positive aspect of his character. I can only hope that if he is elected, that on the day that he moves in the white house he pulls a 180 and turns back into his old self. This is where I’m the starry-eyed idealist. I hope this man is only being the sniveling coward that he is in order to get to a position to where he can do some real good. But then I wonder how many people have gone to Washington with a drive to fight corruption and improve the system, and have been sucked in and beaten into submission.

Only time will tell.

The New York Times ran a short story today about the Republican Party’s turn towards populism. Of course, this doesn’t quite apply to the Republicans in the Senate - by virtue of longer terms and more diverse constituencies, they’re able to retain their status as members of the “party of business” a little better than the vast swath of House Republicans who voted against the federal bailout bill last week.

Of greater note than this observation is the conclusion of the article: “Some Republican Party leaders privately fear that if Mr. Obama is elected, he could usher in a pro-Democratic realignment much like Mr. Reagan did for the Republicans after the economic stagnation and drift of the 1970s”. As the vast majority of citizens in this country become poorer due (in general) to the greed of Big Business and their bought-and-paid-for political allies in positions of power, it’s only natural that many of them turn towards leaders with more sensible policy positions. In addition, the Republican Party can no longer claim to be the standard bearer for small government with government spending and deficits at all-time (and worrisome) highs and still increasing, with no end in sight.

Lately I’ve been somewhat of a pessimist about the prospects of reconciliation between the polarized factions in our country. We’re split along so many lines that we seem to have lost the notion that positive change only occurs when we compromise and work together somewhere amid the shouting. But perhaps the country isn’t swinging Democratic so much as swinging towards a revival of this common spirit - that we’re all in it together. Such a notion brings a glimmer of hope into an otherwise bleak American political landscape. If we can get that back, we can move on to the most serious problems facing our country in its history.

I sit here watching Governor Sarah Palin flatly state (and believe) that certain foreign nations hate us because of our freedoms and our respect for women’s rights. She also states that Israel is a vital US ally - the merit of this statement is questionable on an extremely sunny day. We have to “assure them that we will never allow another Holocaust”? I wasn’t aware we were threatening them with such an atrocity, but I wouldn’t put it beyond the current foreign policy.

But this is all beside the point (so is the fact that Palin also says “nucular”). What needs to be addressed is the root cause of the anti-American resentment throughout the world: our strutting self-righteousness in dealing with other nations and our insistence upon stationing thousands of American troops at hundreds of bases on foreign soil. Our enemies hate us because of this insistence. We “require” bases in Saudi Arabia to fight in Iraq. Why? We have countless naval vessels capable of providing the same support to our troops on the ground. I’m willing to bet that the money we spend maintaining this presence in unnecessary countries (Britain? Germany? Italy? What’s the threat there?) could be better spent domestically improving our schools or health care - or god forbid, even enhancing our State Department capabilities.

Think about this for a moment, really think: did you know there are more people on our Nimitz class aircraft carriers than there are in the entire Department of State? There are roughly 54,000 people on our 9 “super carriers” (Nimitz-class, there are two others in service). There are 12,000 people in the entire Department of State Foreign Service, with another 7,400 in the Civil Service. Only if you count the foreign nationals in the employ of the Department do the numbers begin to show parity. These 31,000 people help with local needs, bringing the total to 50,400 - still over 3,000 shy of our carriers alone. No wonder our foreign policy is dominated by the military. It negotiates - without Congressional oversight - Status of Forces Agreements (SOFAs) with countries in which we have bases. These agreements then function effectively as treaties that govern how our troops interact with the host country, and almost without exception our troops are immune to local laws.

Osama bin Laden and other militant foreigners hate the United States because we are hypocrits. We routinely violate international law (the UN Charter) and compromise a foreign nation’s sovereignty on a daily basis. Our war in Iraq is an illegal war. Our incursions into Pakistani territory without their approval are illegal. These are all things that can be addressed later.

We must focus on what needs fixing immediately. Right now, this moment. We cannot wait - we need to take the distractions away and focus on the issue. Everybody says this, but nobody does it. They don’t do it because Americans are not crying out for it. And the issue is how to end our imperialistic foreign policy before it ends us. One of these days, we’re going to reach too far and it will be the last mistake we make. A good start might be to reel in our military and bring foreign policy back under civilian control. Only then can we begin to make progress abroad. The best way to start that process might be to refuse to buy a single F-22 and divert that money to the State Department instead - at $138 million each, we can create over 3000 entry level careers in the Department of State Foreign Service at starting pay of $45,000 per year. By dropping just one stealth fighter from our military budget (which we don’t need to maintain our military superiority, but we’ll save that for another day), we can eliminate the embarassing fact that the State Department is staffed by fewer people than American aircraft carriers.

“He has poisoned our water forever”, as journalist Hunter S. Thompson wrote upon Richard M. Nixon’s death in April, 1994. Fourteen and a half years later, evidence abounds that Thompson was correct. Numerous American problems can be traced directly to Nixon’s acts as President of the United States.

A common complaint against government is that all news is “spun”. The Nixon Administration was the first to create a daily message for the media, and the first to organize daily press events. Every administration has done this since. One can conclude with reasonable confidence that these daily messages were meant to portray the administration in a favorable light and that this practice continues today. It only further emphasizes the importance of being personally well-informed and taking in news from a variety of sources. Nixon’s Watergate fiasco was essentially the beginning of today’s scandal-oriented political journalism and politicking. But the chronic media and attitude problems we face are nothing compared to what may be an impending disaster.

In what has been called “the single most destructive act” of the 20th century, Nixon dismantled the Bretton Woods economic system - in other words, he took the United States (and the world) off the gold standard and allowed currencies to “float” in relation to each other. Anyone with an elementary knowledge of political economy, exchange rates, or the evils of finance capitalism, can deduce that this was a watershed event for today’s American economic catastrophe. For better or worse, our financial life is about to change in a fundamental way.

Activists love to rant about the evils of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank (institutions created by the same agreement that created the Bretton Woods system) and their ineffectiveness in combatting poverty and political-financial corruption in undeveloped parts of the world. They have good reason to do so. Not only have they been ineffective, but in many cases these American-dominated organizations have managed to make matters worse. While these may be part of the problem, it is my view that they have the potential to make a good solution. There is another aspect to the world’s economic problems that most people are slow to recognize - that of floating currency values.

It would seem that this floating exchange rate system (which is a misnomer - currencies both sink and float) is taken for granted as a permanent part of international economics. The value of a nation’s currency has since become a measure of its economic strength. So what happens when the world’s most potent economy begins to see a decrease in the value of its currency relative to others, as we see in the United States today? Nixon abolished the system because he faced a choice between continuing the gold standard and sustaining an enormous federal budget deficit - attempting to do both was simply not possible. Had Nixon not done so, the government would have been forced to reverse its deficits, caused in large part by the excessive costs of the Vietnam War.

The gold standard was reintroduced in the Bretton Woods system for a reason: if all currencies are given a fixed value, then progress may be made to address economic inequality by increasing international trade. Such inequality is universally recognized as a major cause of war. The greatest conflicts in world history were driven by economic problems, and we are still experiencing fallout from the world wars of the 20th century. Even pushing those considerations aside, there is no telling how much suffering Nixon inflicted upon the poorest (and what are now the poorest) citizens of the world by abolishing it. In the absence of such a system, currency speculation allows for predatory investors to “bet against” the value of a foreign currency and cause it to fall, making profits on the “short selling” (selling a good before possessing it) of units of the currency at a higher price and later buying it at a low price. In addition, the imperialist actions of the United States, both within the IMF and World Bank and without, caused the creation and bursting of bubble economies (sound familiar?) in East Asia in the 1990s, which would not have happened in the absence of a floating exchange system.

Nixon was the vilest of men. He is universally recognizable as a political demon straight out of an Orwellian dystopia - it can’t be coincidence that the conniving politician in our treasured political cartoons bears Nixon’s likeness. In my nightmares, Big Brother, Death, and the ubiquitous swindling politician all wear Nixon’s face. And when I consider our future, I can’t help but fear and despair that we can never repair the damage he has done. He is the American Father of Lies, and his evil legacy will haunt us until the end of time - or at least until the end of American politics.