The dealer's plan to rope us in

I've heard that drug dealers start with free samples, rope you in, and end up owning everything you have. Casino's don't take barter, but in an era of easy credit they can bankrupt you too.

Is the dealer's plan always to get you addicted so that he ends up with all your loot? It's probably always in the back of his mind.

Moving on from analogy to my real point, I wonder about the plan of the banks that loaned so much money to the Greek government, Greek banks, and Greek households. Did they think:

• Greece has good prospects long-term, and I've got loan quotas to meet.
• High payouts now, then fool someone else into buying the bad debt.
• Moderate payouts now, then the EU bails them out.
• Moderate payouts now, then foreclose and end up owning some picturesque property.

The last choice is how the drug dealer figures it, while the honest money left Greece earlier. So I wonder, was that the plan all along? This commenter thinks so:

"In a few years we'll be able to shoo the remaining stone age hunter gathers off some really valuable islands in the Aegean. I can see American, German, and Chinese developers competing to build condo complexes in the Dodecanese. Or maybe Crete will become the 51st US state after it becomes an American Protectorate in a couple of decades.

"A win-win proposition. Americans and Germans get new land to expand into, and the world learns the end result of socialism.  In very stark terms." -- Atlantic comment

And moving from Greece's situation to our own, what are the plans of the US creditors? I've heard the conspiracy theory that the Chinese, mining companies, and billionaires will be buying up the most beautiful parts of the country, the national parks. It seems far-fetched in this country, but not for Greece. Am I kidding myself?

Would Americans stand for selling off our public lands? Would Greeks? If you're the moneylender, or pusher, and your former debtors become your irate neighbors, maybe your strategy wasn't so good. But I don't think pushers think that far ahead, and it seems the banks didn't either.

So how do we stop the drug dealers, er, banks from getting us hooked, or do we have to hope they just won't try?

New owner for Mykonos?

Photo: agreekproperty.com

I would vote Republican if...

... they actually were the fiscal conservatives they think they are. Instead, they particularly target spending that helps Democratic constituencies, and that's a lot of the spending: poverty programs, federal employees, EPA, Medicaid, education, etc.

The GOP doesn't target other large spending programs, like defense, farm subsidies, oil industry tax breaks, etc. There's a distinct partisan bend to the areas where Dems vs. Repubs would cut. And of course neither party will propose how to rein in the growth of Medicare spending because ... it's an election year, and you can't piss off older voters and all their younger relatives.

As other writers have noted, for the GOP, deficits = spending that helps Dem constituencies. GOP-favored spending is exempt from that label, as are the tax cuts that the GOP Santa likes to give out.

Frankly, I don't have a fiscal conservative I can vote for in the presidential race. Anyone who thinks the GOP are the fiscal conservatives is operating on wishful thinking. Anyone who thinks the Democrats are the wise fiscal managers is smoking something.

Why, when there is so much need and space for sanity, is there no one filling that void?

Photo: blog.livingspark.net

Note to Paulistas: Yes, Ron Paul is a fiscal conservative. But he wants too small a government, whereas I'd like to keep the FDA, EPA, and other agencies that ensure safety and security, as long as they are efficient in terms of costs and benefits.

Silly Power Games

Yesterday 43 Catholic organizations filed suit against regulations from the Obama administration mandating contraceptive coverage in healthcare plans that cover other prescription drugs. Commenting on the news story, I wrote:

"This is happening because there’s a silly contest over who has power on this issue: the government or religion. It’s definitely not the people or the employees whose voices are being listened to."

John Powers rightly questioned me:

"Tell me again why your defending First Amendment rights is a 'silly contest'? Keeping the Government out of Churches has always sounded like a good reason to have a Bill of Rights. Freedom of Religion is a fundamental right in the United States, regardless of the voices of the 'people or the employees.' "

So this is my fuller explanation:

@John Powers, when churches stick to being churches, the government leaves them alone. When they become big employers, government is right to get involved in ways they are involved with other businesses/employers. But the churches-cum-employers then try to hide behind first amendment/freedom of religion, when, really, they just aren’t being allowed to conduct their employee relations the way they want. Maybe the churches want to avoid minimum wage or overtime laws too.

Are you really sure that freedom of religion is a free pass for corporate religions to do whatever they want? Maybe freedom of religion is an individual freedom, not carte blanche for organizations to ignore all government rules. I see more than one principle involved here, so it’s a balance of competing rights and principles, not just freedom of religion, as you say.

The reason this is a silly contest is that the Catholic Church in this country has lost the argument about contraception with its own adherents, yet the Church continues to pretend that contraception is so wrong that it can’t countenance including it in comprehensive medical plans. On the government side, it’s silly to mandate insurance coverage for pills that cost $9 a month at Walmart (not a myth–I looked it up). Yes, it is silly to anyone not wrapped up in the power play.

 Who is sillier?

Photo: fanpop.com

Last outpost of crazy: The Arizona ballot

I hope to make this a new series with equal access for all crazies regardless of their creeds--crazy is the only requirement.

This installment: Arizona may not put Obama on the ballot in November due to questions about his birthplace.

Yes, still.

I hope it doesn't happen, despite being curious about the national and regional reactions. My curiosity is no reason to encourage crazy or risk the spread of this contagion. There are plenty of other states that look susceptible.

 Another obvious fake, like all the others

Graphic: www.westernjournalism.com/floydreports/

Against dogmatism

I'm not a religious person, but I'm quite familiar with religion.  I grew up with fairly devout parents, several siblings are devout, and my sweetie enthusiastically goes to church nearly every Sunday and holy day. As I've said before, I greatly respect religion.

That said, religion is a horrible basis for politics. This suddenly strikes me as strange. Why is religion a good basis for religion, but a bad basis for politics? Such a simple question, but perhaps there's a lot to explore there.

What got me thinking about this is Andrew Sullivan's post about another blogger at National Review insulting his thought process. I don't want to comment on blogger squabbles, which are endless and tacky in their inbreeding, but it did remind me how important one idea is to me: empiricism.

I fell in love with philosophy in college, and have used critical thinking forever afterward. I also studied physics and psychology, with a sprinkling of art history and geology and other assorted bits. It was a wonderful example of a wide-ranging liberal education. Of all these fields, the one with the strongest basis was the philosophy of pragmatism.

Pragmatism has a lot of similarities to science. It calls for empirical observation, reflection, and testing. It is also explicit about some processes that are implicit in science: follow-through to see the results, iterations on promising theories to refine them, trying out alternative approaches. What makes pragmatism work is what makes science work so well: it is based on honest, unbiased, and careful observation. You don't jump to a conclusion, you wait for enough evidence. If only politicians of all stripes would do that.

"I wrote my dissertation on the primacy of practical wisdom in human conduct - in contradistinction to ideology... Dish readers can judge for themselves whether this blog is about imposing 'theoretical, theological, and ideological certainties' or whether it is about taking positions but always subjecting them to scrutiny, re-evaluation, re-thinking." -- Andrew Sullivan

 Graphic: chemheritage.org

Short: Supreme Court Confidential

We probably don't acknowledge that we've never had an ideal Supreme Court, filled with wise jurists making just the right decisions with the precision of the ideal judge of all, God. And, of course, looking solemn in their robes. Somehow, the ideal survives, but I don't know how.

Will this news and speculation about Souter's unpublished critique damage the Court? Not more than what the Court inflicts on itself frequently.

The decision two years ago to dismantle limitations on some political advocacy (Citizens United) has had drastic effects, as did Brown v. Board of Education and Roe v. Wade. Much of what the opponents feared is coming to pass, but maybe that's what freedom of speech looks like. The Supremes' decision isn't the all-wise/all-fair settlement we might wish for. Instead, it seems like an imperfect attempt at wisdom.

I've been hoping for the former and getting the latter, and have been horribly disappointed. But, really, I should remember the the Churchill quote that "democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms" and apply it to the Supreme Court.

Bolstering the mythology

Photo credit: brookskraft.com

Rant: This election is important!

With the primaries over, the election news is mired in trifles even more than before. That stinks because this election is important, but not for the talking point reasons that the GOP intones (pregnant pause) "THIS IS THE MOST IMPORTANT ELECTION IN OUR HISTORY BECAUSE WE NEED TO STOP AMERICA GOING DOWN THE SOCIALIST PATH." There's a grain of truth in that pile of horseshit, but the GOP isn't going to separate it for you.

The grain of truth is that there are a hell of a lot of fiscal issues facing the next Congress. The GOP is trying to avoid the sequester of defense funding it agreed to just last August by cutting social programs. I will bet anyone that there won't be an agreement passed on that issue. But that's just the beginning. The Bush tax cut expire again at the end of the year. They blew quite a hole into the budget, plugged (if you can call it that) with borrowed money. Then the recession and a large Dem spending splurge made the deficit even worse. (Where is all that money going?) The only action that has decreased the deficit is the sequester that the GOP are trying to undo. However, the Dems haven't presented themselves as the champions of fiscal prudence either. It's insane that with such important decisions to be made, we have news cycles devoted to:

• Romney's dog on the top of his car.
• Obama eating dog meat in Indonesia.
• Is Obama a traitor? 
• Is Romney a wuss for not defending Obama as a non-traitor?

This dreadful list will only get longer. (Yesterday, Romney said he deserves credit for the resurrection of the auto companies.)

Oh God, this is like the South Park episode where Stan refused to vote for a school mascot because the choices were 1) a giant douche, 2) a turd sandwich. Only after 20 minutes into the episode did I realize that it was a metaphor for most of our elections. Dems and Repubs--turd sandwich or giant douche? Our pick.

So, why could this election possibly matter if the choice is a douche or a turd sandwich? Because that's not the actual choice. The choice is Republicans who have little respect for government slashing the federal budget in many places, but especially where it hurts Democratic constituencies the most. The alternative is Democrats indiscriminately protecting as much as they can. Pick your poison, or try to balance them so that neither gains too much power.

 Graphic: thevine.com.au