A Tale of Two Balance Sheets

There are two ledgers in America now. 

One belongs to the Republic (that is, you, me and the rest of us non-billionaires). The other belongs to the Ruling Family.

The first bleeds red ink by the trillions of gallons. The other has discovered that foreign sovereign wealth travels first class.

Our country now carries nearly $39 trillion in national debt—a figure so immense that people react to it the way we react when Patrick Mahomes stays on the turf a beat too long. For a split second, everyone feels genuine terror. Then the cameras cut away, the crowd convinces itself he just needs to walk it off, and the game goes on as though panic itself were unpatriotic.

But, just when the federal government has ostensibly embraced austerity as its defining political virtue, billions of dollars in state-linked foreign investment have flowed into business ventures associated with the Trump Crime Family.

Those two stories—if they are reported—typically appear on different pages. They should be in the same sentence.

Trump returned to power promising nothing less than a controlled demolition of the administrative state. Through the Department of Government Efficiency—DOGE, because apparently every Trump initiative must first survive the branding department—it pledged to slash contracts, eliminate waste, and reduce the civilian workforce by roughly ten percent. Trump told Americans that somewhere inside the federal bureaucracy lurked the secret villain responsible for the nation's fiscal crisis.

Unfortunately, like most marketing campaigns, DOGE offered more snake oil than substance.

The 21-year-old interns in DOGE focused overwhelmingly on discretionary spending—the comparatively small slice of the federal budget devoted to agency operations and personnel. The principal engines driving long-term debt, including mandatory spending programs and rapidly escalating interest costs, remained largely untouched. Meanwhile, ill-considered mass personnel layoffs generated substantial near-term costs through severance obligations, while reductions in IRS staffing are projected to reduce future tax collections by hundreds of billions of dollars.

The theory seemed to be that enough pink slips could somehow frighten a $39 trillion balance sheet into behaving itself.

Arithmetic, however, has never shown much respect for political messaging.

So, let's try some missiles.

Military operations against Iran introduced tens of billions of dollars in expenditures that were never in what passes these days for a fiscal plan. Those operations, like so much of modern American governance, were financed through additional borrowing. The conflict also contributed to renewed pressure on global energy markets at a moment when inflation remained stubbornly above the Federal Reserve's target, complicating the path toward lower interest rates and increasing the government's cost of financing new debt.

Our leaders are remarkably adept at borrowing money to pay interest on what they borrowed to finance promises made before creepy Ty Masterson had discovered hair gel.

Through the first three quarters of the fiscal year, the Treasury accumulated roughly $1.4 trillion in additional debt. Net interest payments now exceed $20 billion every week, making the cost of servicing yesterday's borrowing one of the largest expenditures in the federal budget.

This is the bleak status of the public ledger. But don't worry, at least the private ledger tells a happier story.

While the public piles up debt to pay for debt, businesses connected to the Trump Family have attracted billions of dollars from foreign sovereign wealth funds and state-linked investors. Public reporting has documented substantial commitments to Trump-branded real estate developments, investment partnerships, and cryptocurrency ponzi schemes ventures involving capital originating from governments or government-affiliated entities in the Gulf region and elsewhere.

Apparently "America First" comes with a caveat that foreign capital remains perfectly acceptable, provided it arrives through the correct Trump-affiliated revolving door.

Whether every transaction is ultimately lawful is one question. Whether every arrangement reflects sound constitutional judgment is another.

The framers of the Constitution understood the difference.

Having watched European courts convert political influence into commercial opportunity, they knew corruption rarely looked like a sack of gold labeled "Bribe". It wore finer tailoring. It arrived bearing partnerships, investment opportunities, and mutually beneficial business deals. Human nature, they understood, has always hired excellent accountants.

They wrote that concern into the Constitution itself. The Foreign Emoluments Clause prohibits federal officeholders from accepting benefits from foreign states without congressional consent. The Domestic Emoluments Clause limits the president's financial compensation from governmental sources beyond the salary established by law.

Whether Trump's shady business deals ultimately violate those constitutional provisions remains unresolved. Previous emoluments litigation largely ended on procedural grounds before courts reached the constitutional merits. The legal questions remain open.

But the ethical questions don't disappear just because the legal ones are unsettled. They become more difficult.

Luxury developments in Qatar, Oman, Dubai, and Vietnam promise licensing income and management fees associated with projects backed by foreign capital. Jared Kushner's Affinity Partners has secured billions of dollars from Gulf sovereign wealth funds, generating substantial management revenue regardless of short-term market performance. None of these arrangements automatically establishes a constitutional violation. They do create the appearance of overlapping financial interests that the framers regarded with profound suspicion.

And it is super suspicious that we have a Trump administration telling us that sacrifice is unavoidable, agencies must shrink, efficiency requires layoffs and your services are going to be drastically reduced...

... And on the other hand is at the center of an expanding constellation of luxury developments, sovereign investment funds, licensing agreements, management fees, and private equity partnerships quietly demonstrating that austerity is apparently a policy preference rather than a lifestyle.

Perhaps the overlap is entirely coincidental. Maybe every foreign policy decision has been made wholly independent of private financial considerations. Maybe Trump doesn't care at all about money. 

Those extremely hypothetic possibilities don't eliminate the conflict. They define it.

The founders understood something the Trump Family wants us to forget:

Influence rarely arrives kicking down the front door. It books a reservation. It attends conferences. It hires prestigious law firms. It invests through sovereign wealth funds.

It purchases penthouses overlooking immaculate skylines while everyone insists that business and politics use separate elevators.

Corruption might change its wardrobe, but it rarely changes its business model.

America has survived wars, depressions, constitutional crises, and financial panics because it has generally insisted upon one stubborn principle: public office exists to serve the Republic, not the balance sheet of those fortunate enough to occupy it. 

The Emoluments Clauses were not drafted because the framers believed every officeholder would become corrupt. They were drafted because they understood that republics do not collapse only through dramatic acts of treason. More often, they erode gradually, one perfectly legal transaction at a time, until no one can remember where public duty ended and private opportunity began.

Noemland insecurity

The Department of Homeland Security is not a campaign ad. It is not a cable-news green room with a bigger budget, or a vanity social media propaganda app.

It is a 260,000-employee nerve center responsible for border enforcement, counterterrorism, cybersecurity, FEMA coordination, and disaster response. It is where managerial errors echo in real time.

And yet, in Convicted Felon Donald Trump’s second term, DHS has become the latest example of a governing philosophy that prizes loyalty over competence.

Kristi Noem’s tenure as secretary started out turbulent and only got worse. Immigration enforcement operations drew national scrutiny. In one widely criticized episode, victims killed in a fatal encounter with ICE agents were characterized as “domestic terrorists” before facts were established — a rhetorical leap that undercut credibility (a vanishing commodity in this administration) at a moment demanding precision.

As Noem flailed, the department entered a partial shutdown amid congressional dissatisfaction with its strategic direction, and its own inspector general accused DHS leadership of obstructing oversight work — an extraordinary charge for an agency entrusted with safeguarding constitutional order. 

At the same time, morale plummeted as enforcement priorities appeared increasingly driven by headline numbers rather than targeted, sustainable strategy.

Noem was removed earlier this week. It should have been a moment for recalibration — a pivot toward technocratic steadiness, toward a leader with deep experience in national security management or emergency coordination.

Instead, the felon-in-chief signaled his intention to nominate Sen. Markwayne Mullin.

Mullin’s résumé includes small-business ownership and a Senate seat. What it does not include is executive leadership in counterterrorism architecture, intelligence coordination, border command structures, cybersecurity infrastructure, or disaster logistics — the core machinery of DHS.

Hell, his résumé doesn't even include a bachelor's degree. 

The through-line is allegiance, not administrative qualifications.

Presidents are entitled to appoint leaders who share their policy views. That is democratic governance. But when blind loyalty becomes the primary credential for overseeing complex security institutions, the cost is self-inflicted vulnerability and avoidable national risk.

DHS is not built for improvisation. It requires fluency in interagency coordination, statutory limits, operational chain-of-command discipline, and crisis logistics. It demands respect for oversight, not friction with it. It demands credibility with career professionals who keep the system running long after political cycles end.

When leadership is selected for loyalty first and fluency second, agencies deform. Career staff learn that posture outweighs performance. Oversight becomes adversarial. Messaging drifts ahead of evidence. Mistakes are defended instead of corrected.

Homeland security can't and shouldn't function on personal devotion.

Noem’s malfeasance exposed the limits of appointing political allies to manage sprawling security institutions. Doubling down with another figure whose principal qualification is proximity to presidential power suggests the lesson absorbed was not “we need deeper expertise,” but “we need tighter loyalty.”

That is a dangerous substitution.

Border security, cyber defense, counterterrorism, disaster response — these are systems that either operate with disciplined competence or fail under pressure. The American public doesn't benefit from theatrical resolve. It benefits from steady, qualified leadership.

Loyalty may be useful in politics, but it's not a homeland security strategy.

The less things change...

"The real power in America is held by a fast-emerging new Oligarchy of pimps and preachers who see no need for Democracy or fairness or even trees, except maybe the ones in their own yards, and they don't mind admitting it. They worship money and power and death. Their ideal solution to all the nation's problems would be another 100 Year War."

– Hunter S. Thompson, 2003
"Kingdom of Fear: Loathsome Secrets of a Star-Crossed Child in the Final Days of the American Century

Local power still matters

I live here. You (presumably) live here.  We stand in line at the grocery store with city workers, teachers, dishwashers, kids in hoodies and retirees counting coupons. Kansas City isn’t a slogan or a headline to us—it’s a functioning organism.

And lately, that organism has shown a pulse. A spine. A refusal.

That matters, because the federal machinery has been circling again—quiet walkthroughs, coded language about “capacity,” the familiar smell of logistics masquerading as policy. We’ve seen what that prelude leads to. Minneapolis heard the same music before the volume got turned up and the neighborhood soundscape changed forever.

Here’s the difference—and it’s not small: Kansas City area leaders didn’t sit on their hands.

They moved.

KCMO’s city council didn’t wait for a ribbon-cutting or a press release. They slammed the permitting door and passed a ban on non-municipal detention facilities—five years of legal friction where ICE expected a smooth glide path. That’s not symbolism. That’s municipal muscle. Zoning, permits, land use—the boring tools that actually stop things from happening.

You cannot build or operate a detention center in this city without local approvals. City leaders used that leverage immediately. That’s what resistance looks like when you understand how power actually flows.

And it didn’t stop at city hall.

County officials across the metro—burned before by federal overreach and private prison shell games—have been louder, sharper, and more precise than they were a decade ago. They’ve demanded clarity. They’ve asked who pays, who oversees, who answers when something goes wrong. They’ve refused to treat “federal” as synonymous with “untouchable.”

This is the lesson Minneapolis paid for in advance: If you don’t force the questions early, you live with the consequences late.

Leavenworth learned it the hard way and then did something rare—it adapted. City officials there dragged a private detention operator into the daylight and into court, insisting on permits, hearings, public accountability. The result wasn’t a dramatic moral victory. It was better than that: a delay, a slowdown, a requirement that detention justify itself under local law instead of swaggering in under federal cover.

That fight matters. It sets precedent. It tells ICE and its contractors that the Midwest is no longer an open floor plan for human warehousing. Local governments can’t abolish ICE. But they can make expansion expensive, slow, and politically radioactive.

And that’s exactly what’s happening now.

Let’s not romanticize this. Some sycophantic state-level actors are still feeding the beast—deploying resources, signing cooperation agreements, lending legitimacy to an enforcement regime that thrives on proximity to local power. That tension is real. But it makes the city and county pushback even more important, not less.

Because when ICE expands, it does so through cracks: bureaucratic indifference, jurisdictional confusion, leaders afraid of looking “soft.” Kansas City’s leaders—at least for now—have chosen a different posture. They’ve chosen friction.

And friction can be the enemy of mass detention.

This isn’t hysteria. It’s memory. Minneapolis didn’t fall because people didn’t care; it fell because too many officials waited for certainty while the machinery was still warming up. Kansas City’s leaders appear to have learned that lesson. They’re acting while the doors are still unlocked, while the blueprints are still proposals, while the language is still evasive enough to challenge.

That deserves acknowledgment—and public backing.

Because resistance doesn’t always look like protest signs and megaphones. Sometimes it looks like a denied permit, a zoning code, a judge insisting on process, a council vote taken before dawn. Sometimes it looks like adults in public office deciding that this city will not quietly become a node in someone else’s detention network.

We should be proud of that. Cautiously. Vigilantly.

And we should keep watching—because the only thing ICE respects more than authority is persistence.

We're putting the blog back together

 Well, here we are. A few years older and none the more wiser. 

I thought we were pretty much over this shit, but I've come to realize that people who say "things can't possibly get worse," simply suffer from a lack of imagination. 

So, I've got a few things to get off my mind and no real place to vent. I left Twitter ages ago for obvious reasons. I've been skulking around Bluesky for a while, but that platform isn't conducive to long-form kvetching (i.e., more than 300 characters... talk about your baseline shifts), and Facebook is a bit too "let's make money for Techbros" for my taste (although, I get that Blogger isn't much better in that regard).

But, to quote Frank Costanza, I got a lot of problems with you people! And now you're gonna hear about it! (I mean, not YOU specifically, I'm talking about those OTHER people). 

So, stay tuned for some deep-fried, solid gold bullshit. 

We have a complete dossier on you…

"It’s just a game," a friend posted on Facebook recently.

A rather sophisticated augmented reality game where you use your mobile phone to capture “Pokemon” in a mix of real and virtual worlds. But still, just a game.

"That's it. No, there really isn't anything more to it than that."

But of course there is more to it than that. I mean, it is a game, but it’s a game that regular people like you and me can’t win.

The real point of such games (as well as the "My Vocabulary Size Is.. " and "My Celebrity Lookalike Is.. " and "If I were a Star Trek Character I Would Be..."  Facebook games that you see every week), is for big data companies to find a way to get people to voluntary sign up for software that allows them to collect tons of data about them personally.

They then sell this data to the highest bidder (usually companies associated with digital advertising) and productize you and other people who behave like you and sell you to advertisers.

A lot of people don't care that they are being packaged and sold, it's been going on to some degree almost since the beginning of advertising. The difference these days is that the data collected is waaaaaay more sophisticated than the advertiser suspecting your between 18-45 years old and you really like Jackie Gleason’s brand of misogynistic bombast.

These days, when you opt in to this kind of data collection, you’re telling them precisely where you are (down to the latitude and longitude coordinates) and when. You’re letting them in on which websites you're browsing, what products you're shopping for, what physical malady you happen to be suffering at the time.

The level of insight that can be drawn from this kind of data, the predictions that can be made about your preferences and behavior, would make Miss Cleo soak her pants.

You might have noticed that over there in the right-hand rail of your Facebook page there’s an ad for that pair of shoes, or shorts, or maybe that vacation getaway that you were Googling earlier today. That’s no coincidence. The advertisers have you pegged.

Again, some people don’t care about that. MOST people don't care about that. Indeed, some people say “Good. I get ads for stuff I’m interested in instead of some dumb punch-the-monkey spam for a high-rate mortgage.”

And that’s cool. That’s all just fine. Buuuuuut…

I just think we should all have our eyes open to OTHER ways the data could be used. I mean, some companies (like Niantic in the case of Pokemon Go) say they won’t sell your data to third parties. I mean they promise and pinkie swear and everything. But let’s face it, when the going gets tough and the investors are at the front door with pitchforks demanding their exit strategies and returns-on-investment, who do you think is going to get sold out?

That’s right it’s you, me and all of our precious behavioral data. And even more troubling, who do you think we’re going to be sold too?

The paranoid among us would say “the NSA… or even scarier, some nefarious foreign spy agency!” But the reality is government agencies don’t need to buy data about you since they already have a direct tap into ALL internet traffic and are already constantly spying on you (thanks for the heads-up, Edward Snowden!).


Anyway, if you think government agents snooping through your Google accounts and sharing your naked selfies with each other is the worst that can happen, then my friend you suffer from a lack of imagination.

Here are a couple of more likely (and probably already happening) scenarios:

First, it’s probably difficult to overstate the amount of lifestyle data that gets collected about you, especially if you use a FitBit or similar activity tracker. From your physical activity, to your food interests, to your drinking habits, to how much TV/internet video you watch… all of that is being collected and packaged and is super valuable to companies that aren’t advertising firms.

For one thing, insurance companies (auto, health) love to learn all they can about you. Do you think they won’t use your own data against you to jack up your premiums and copays? Of course they will. And since Obamacare now means we’re all criminals if we DON’T buy health insurance, well, they pretty much have us by the short curlies, don’t they?

But there are other more nefarious abuses that are (probably) already happening. Imagine what kind of web browsing/lifestyle data is available on pretty much every old whit guy making laws in Washington, DC. Do you really think it’s beyond a company like Koch Industries, or Goldman Sachs or even Google or Apple to use this kind of personal data as “leverage” on key legislative measures?

Do you really think it was out of the pure consideration for the public good that nobody from Goldman Sachs was prosecuted for ruining the global economy a couple of years ago? Do you really think all of the highly technologically literate old white dudes thought the Digital Millennium Copyright Act was good public policy?

No? Me neither (and your staring to get it, good job!) After all, our senators and congressmen are only poor corrupt public officials. They have kickbacks to pay and mistresses to feed.

So, what’s the upshot here? I guess it’s just to say that whenever an app or program or web widget asks for access to your Facebook page, or Google account or Twitter stream, you should tell it to fuck right the hell off.

Or make up a fake internet identity and spam the system.

May the Swartz be with you

I've been trying to avoid posting political stuff here, but the silly White House Petition site may actually prove to be of some use if it results in a very, very small measure of posthumous justice (not that there is such a thing).

“A prosecutor who does not understand proportionality and who regularly uses the threat of unjust and overreaching charges to extort plea bargains from defendants regardless of their guilt is a danger to the life and liberty of anyone who might cross her path,” said the petition.

tagged: Obama, Aaron Swartz, Carmen Ortiz, harassment, tyranny, big government

Decade dense

When I was in high school, still breaking in my new driver’s license, some buddies and I took a half-hour road trip into The ‘Ta to hang out for the day, maybe see a movie.

Long story short, our 1978 Dodge Omni (dubbed “The Omni-vore”) shot craps on the Canal Route, forcing us to ditch the Interstate at the 21st Street exit. I’ve not been to Wichita in, what?, 15 years?, and this story takes place at least 10 years before that. Which is all to say that I’m not sure what the neighborhood is like today. But back then the prospect of finding yourself, at the age of 16 with a busted car in a dodgy part of town with no cell phone (nobody had even heard of the Motorola DynaTac yet) was extremely dicey.

Everything turned out okay in the end. Maybe I’ll tell you about it sometime because it’s kind of a funny story.

But… fast forward a year or two when I’m on a student tour of Europe. It was the most fun of my short life up to then. While in Paris, a friend and I became separated from the tour group in the subways. Here we are, a couple of Midwestern kids from nowhere Kansas where the words “public” and “transportation” don’t have any real meaning when you put them together, lost on one of the more renowned subway systems in the world.

It was both terrifying and exhilarating. It was exhilafying.

Again, everything worked out okay in the end. I mean, I’m here writing this, right?

Fast forward again to adult life when my Supermodel Wife and I and some close friends returned to Europe on our own terms. The experiences above, and many more like them, had cultivated a sense of adventure and appreciation for discovering the unknown and unexpected. I had come to realize that, with a certain frame of mind, there’s no such thing as “being lost.”

Just have an idea of where you want to end up, and enjoy the process of getting there. All you really need is a map and a brain. And really, the map is optional. Cell phones and GPS units? They just get in the way of enjoying where you are. They’re a kind of safety net that dilutes your experience.

Needless to say, that trip abroad was filled with unexpected discoveries that we might not have had in the safety of a tour group. And it was the most fun I’d had in my life up to that point.

Then a few months later, somebody flew a couple of airplanes into the World Trade Center towers in Manhattan.

We all know what happened, so I don’t want to belabor the point. But a comment from a blog friend got me thinking about how there are now adults who were third-graders on the day of the 9/11 attacks. My oldest daughter, now in elementary school, has never known a “pre-9/11” world.

And that’s a shame.

Because after the attacks, we as a society pretty much went into lock down.

We have come to accept, with very little grumbling, being treated like cattle (or sheep) in the name of public safety. We put up with being herded, groped, scanned, and tagged. We have gladly handed over our privacy to a government that has pledged to protect us. We cheer our leaders when they kill the right people, because they are doing so that we will never again face certain death at the hands of those who wish us harm.

That the “kids these days” have never known it otherwise is a concern. Aren’t we deifying invulnerability way too much? Are we sacrificing liberty and risk and reward, at the altar of safety and security? Are we raising a generation that will be unprepared when the illusion of safety is exposed?

It’s tough. Because I want my kids to be safe. But I also want them to experience the kinds of things I experienced — learning that it’s okay to be frightened, just keep your head. Don’t be afraid of new and strange places and people.

I guess I just think that living in fear within a cultural corral is a sad way to go through life, and you’ll miss out on a lot of the best things life has to offer.


tagged: 9/11, Europe, Wichita, safety, security, terrorism

Putting the T&A in TSA

Just a few of my own thoughts (well, I suppose I'm not the only one with these thoughts) to close out the discussion on the TSA's aggressive security screenings…

Our own Midtown Miscreant rightly pointed out the other day that airport security screenings are not really that much worse than anything most ex-cons experience on a daily basis during their time in the big house.

His basic point, as with other proponents of the new measures, is that yeah it sucks to treat everyday, law-abiding citizens like the worst criminal in the world, but you have to do it for safety.

Is it the perfect fool proof solution? No. But I've yet to hear a workable alternative.

And this is part of the problem. MM, like decreasing majority of the American public, has bought into the scare tactics employed by bureaucrats and lobbyists who basically say "If you don't let us take naked pictures of you and grope you, you are going to be killed by terrorists."

In fact, many security experts have gone on record as saying none of these tactics would have foiled any of the terror plots that we've seen. Furthermore, the recent "tonor cartridge bomb" plot was discovered by other, less intrusive security measures.

Now don't get me wrong. I'd probably avoid the super backscatter scanning X-Rays they're using since I'm not crazy about having 1.21 gigawatts of radiation sent through my body (I like my chromosomes they way nature intended, thank you very much).

Of course, those of you more worried about modesty than radiation might not feel all that comfortable with a bunch of mall cop rejects checking out high-resolution scans of your nether regions. If you're one of those people, you might want to invest twenty bucks in some special X-ray shielded panties.

Personally, I enjoy a good groping by strangers as much as the next guy. And while I might consider having a sweaty, overweight guy with bad breath put his latex glove-covered hands down my pants at the airport a bonus, I can certainly see how some might find it objectionable, even invasive.

What concerns me more, however, is how we got to where we are.

It's like we've lost our minds here. We've been scared witless, and we're not thinking rationally. All the threats we've heard of — Shoe Bomber, Crotch Bomber, Tonor Bombers — are threats from abroad. Yet now we're clamping down on flights from Kansas City to Tallahassee? And that was only three or four cases out of hundreds of millions of flights.

So these measures, which are really just a kind of theater to make people feel like they're safer, have little real effect on a statistically insignificant problem.

I think a better approach is prudent and reasonable police work. The Israeli approach is probably pretty good. Use multiple checkpoints with security people actually trained in spotting real suspects — not frisking your 5-year-old niece.

Let's use our brains, citizens.

And there's one other germ of a thought that's been bouncing around in my brain lately. We, as a society, are expecting way too much out of our government.

Sure, the government likes it that way. The self-perpetuating bureaucracy loves the opportunity to assume more and more our responsibilities and is happy to accept more of our money and liberty in exchange for trying to keep us safe.

But the truth is, we have no reasonable right to expect to be 100 percent safe 100 percent of the time. A long, safe, healthy life is great. But for human beings, that's the exception, not the rule.

If I had lived 100 years ago, I'd probably have died before I reached my 38th birthday. Now I realize we live in the future and we've made advances in medicine and technology, but we're on a course toward asking our government to encase the world in Nerf for our own protection.

Anyway, there may be more on that line of thinking later.

tagged: TSA, travel, security, screening, airport, privacy, freedom, panties

Guest Post: TSA is here to protect the ingrates

As you know, from time to time I'll post guest editorials about various topical subjects. These guest posts do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of the editorial staff of 3 AM. Today's guest post is from Nathan R. Jessep, a mid-level Transportation Security Administration agent, in response to recent criticism of the agency's aggressive screening tactics.

What? So a few prissy travelers in their faggoty business suits think I'm invading THEIR privacy? That's funny! That's a joke!

You want the truth? You want the TRUTH!? You can't handle the truth! Son, we live in a world that has airports, and those airports have to be guarded by men with latex gloves. Who's gonna do it? You? You, Mr. Jillette?

I have a greater responsibility than you can possibly fathom! You weep for your groped genitals and you curse the TSA. You have that luxury. You have the luxury of not knowing what I know: that the groping of your private parts, while tragic, probably saves lives. And my existence, while grotesque and incomprehensible to you, saves lives!

You don't want the truth, because deep down in places you don't talk about on your blogs and on Twitter, you want me in that airport! You need me in your underwear! We use words like "bend over", "spread 'em", "cop a feel". We use these words as the backbone of a life spent defending something.

You use them as a punchline!

I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain myself to a country that rises and sleeps under the blanket of the very safety that I provide, and then questions the manner in which I provide it! I would rather you just said "Thank you," grabbed a tissue to wipe your tears, and went on your way.

Otherwise, I suggest you pick up a body cavity search kit, and stand a post. Either way, I don't give a damn what you think you are entitled to!

You fuckin' people. You have no idea how to defend an airport. All you'll do with your National Opt Out Day is weaken the illusion of safety that I provide. That's all you'll do. You'll put people's lives in danger.

Sweet dreams, son.

tagged: TSA, travel, security, screening, airport, Nathan R. Jessep, satire

Bullitt list -- 06.21.10

Today's category: Watching the watchmen

As we make the government more responsible for our everyday lives (food, shelter, health care, etc.) it stands to reason that it will require a more aggressive police force to, well, enforce all the rules we as a country have been begging for.

Well, welcome to the future…

• A group headed by the National Hispanic Media Coalition has requested that the FCC launch a probe to monitor hate speech and "misinformation" online. They say the FCC should gather and catalog information about who uses hate speech, when and where, then turn that information over to the NHMC so that they can "hold the media accountable" for hate speech.
  
  Aside from the obvious First Amendment violation this suggests (not that we actually care about the Bill of Rights anymore), this is a good example about being careful what you wish for.
  
  Often, a police state isn't forced upon a society, at least not initially. What happens is that through fear and ignorance, a group will demand the the government protect them from whatever bogeyman du jour they perceive to be out there. Then, too late, they realize they've given up their liberty in exchange for the illusion of security.
  


• Luckily, we live in a republic that recognizes certain inalienable rights that protects us from abuses of the state. Of course, just because those rights are inalienable, doesn't mean they can't be watered down.
  
  The highest court in the land got into the act recently when it declared that if you remain, then you give up your right to remain silent. Any watcher of TV cop drama's is pretty familiar with the Miranda Rights. I bet most of you could say it right off the top of your head.

  You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to an attorney. If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be appointed to you. Do you understand these rights as they have been read to you?

  Until a few days ago, the only way you could waive this right was to expressly say that you waive your right. Now the only way you can exercise your right to remain silent is to break your silence to expressly affirm that right. In other words, your Fifth Amendment (there's that pesky Bill of Rights again) right not to incriminate doesn't exist if you don't say it does.
  
  As my friend Joel rightly put it, police now get to assume you don't want your Constitutional rights. Makes trampling on the public that much easier, I guess.
  


• You know what else makes it easy to keep the plebs under your boot heel? Tasers, baby!
  
  That's right, another court ruling has established precedence that will allow your local stormtroopers to indiscriminately Taser your ass for something as harmless not wearing a seat belt while driving and wearing only boxer shorts and sneakers.
  
  Now granted, Tasing is probably better than having a cop pop a cap in you half-naked ass. And even I'll admit to seeing a bit of humor in the over use of the Taser in the past. But come on people, am I the only one who thinks its a bit of an over reaction to Taser these hippies? I know they smell bad, but I suspect this ruling might have turned our different if it had been caught on camera…
  


• …Then again, maybe it wouldn't. Another disturbing trend is that more and more people are being arrested simply for … taking pictures. In public areas… Where you would have no expectation of privacy… But there are police there.
  
  And this is one of the scariest developments in our nascent police state. Not only is the government using abusive tactics and ignoring constitutional rights, but now they are trying to criminalize the documentation of those abuses.

  A few weeks ago, an Illinois judge rejected a motion to dismiss an eavesdropping charge against Christopher Drew, who recorded his own arrest for selling one-dollar artwork on the streets of Chicago. Although the misdemeanor charges of not having a peddler's license and peddling in a prohibited area were dropped, Drew is being prosecuted for illegal recording, a Class I felony punishable by 4 to 15 years in prison.

  Look, I respect good police officers and I'm grateful for the work that they do. But in my opinion, the clear sign of an abusive officer is if they are afraid to be seen doing what they do. How else could this kind of law be interpreted other than to protect officers who abuse their authority?
  
  Kind of makes you want to right your congresscritter to complain. But that might not be such a good idea…
  
  
• You see, in a police state your best course of action is to stay low and try to maintain your anonymity. But that won't be so easy is some lawmakers have their way.
  
  A bill sponsored by New Mexico Democrat Harry Teague aims to use the Federal budget bribes to get states to collect DNA samples from ANYONE who is ARRESTED and put them in a national database.
  
  It doesn't matter if the person is charged, or even acquitted. Merely being brought "down to the station." This is some next level, pre-crime Minority Report meets 1984 meets Blade Runner type shit.
  
  Think of the message this is sending:
  
  "Okay kids, think what we want you to think, snitch on your friends, don't take pictures or we'll Taser your ass, haul you downtown and your DNA will be ours for the rest of your life."
  
  Sounds like Utopia to me.
  

tagged: Bullitt, police, abuse, Constitution, Bill of Rights, Miranda Warning, DNA, Taser, cameras

My Big Fat Greek Bailout

A week and a half ago, financial luminaries in Europe (and in the U.S. Federal Reserve Bank) decided to give bankrupt Greece a larger line of credit to bail them out of their financial crisis.

In simple terms, Greece, like many US families, went into debt by spending more than it produced. In fact, it's debts totaled 125% of its total national production.

That essentially means that if everyone in Greece put all of their annual income to paying off the national debt, they still wouldn't have enough to keep Tony Soprano's goombahs from breaking their kneecaps.

The total bailout for Greece is somewhere around $1 trillion, a jawdropping number for such a small country. But the bailout also came with a few provisos, the "austerity measures" that we've been hearing about and that the Greeks have been rioting about. "Austerity measure" is a nice term for "you've been eating more gyros than you can afford, and now it's time for some budget cuts."

I'm not going to go into an opinion on bailouts. I've done that before. Rather, I'll note that the Greek bailout is interesting because of how common and wide spread the circumstances are that have lead to it.

The Greek government, in order to get reelected, promised everything to the voting public. Government jobs, high salaries, pensions, health care, digital converter boxes... anything to garner votes from Androcles Q. Public. And the governed didn't really worry about how (or whether) all those bribes would be financed.

Anyone who was around two years ago during the "Hope and Change" campaign will recognize this. The "two" parties in the United States were falling all over each other to see who could promise more government bribes to voters.

The same has happened in other European countries. Spain, Portugal, Italy and Ireland are also in dire financial straits. In fact, the Greek bailout was seen as a way to forestall a financial domino effect that would leave those countries' economies in ruin as well. Even the U.K. is struggling, with some estimates placing it's debt at over 103 percent of its GDP.

Scott Mather, head of global portfolio management at Pimco (one of the largest bond buyers (i.e., "loaners of money") in the world) put it this way in a recent interview with NPR,

Most of the developed world is screwed. That makes this crisis particularly different from anything we've seen in our lifetimes.

The countries that aren't screwed are the emerging market countries. They have low levels of debt. The emerging market world is lending money to the rich world so the rich countries are continuing to spend more than they've made.

Mather noted that there is no easy way out of the debt mess. Bailouts like this only delay the day of reckoning. The only way to reduce debt is to either cut spending or default on your bonds.

This is going to happen in Greece and the rest of Europe. It will happen in the UK and in the US as well. People have to develop a better connection with what government spending means for them personally. We've had the better part of a couple of decades where people have lost that connection. [Government money] is viewed as manna from heaven and it's an entitlement, something that is deserved and shouldn't have an impact or repercussions on them.

When the country was discussing the "health care reform" bill a few months ago, one of the so-called arguments was that, as one of the richest nations in the world we can afford to give everybody great health care. After all, if Europe can do it, we can too.

Well, it turns out that Europe can't do it. We probably can't either, not without making serious sacrifices in quality of life. And let's face it, we're due for some drastic quality of life downgrades anyway. We've just had it too good for too long.

I don't know how much longer the strategy of bailout-bubble-burst will last here in the US. Hell, even now it's considered safer to lend money to Iraq than the State of California.

I do suspect that we will have the illusion of an economic recovery over the next two years or so. But you don't have to be Dave Ramsey to know that the party will eventually turn into a pretty serious debt hangover.

When that happens, it won't be just a Greek tragedy.

tagged: Greece, Europe, Greek, bailout, EU, Pimco, Scott Mather

Crude awakening

Sure, some people are calling the oil spill in the Gulf a "crisis." And I guess to certain people with certain world views, it is a crisis.

But I prefer to look on the bright side of things. Where some people see crisis, I see opportunity. In this case, it's the opportunity to look at our national energy consumption and talk about ways to make it better.

And I'm not alone. Two of my favorite bloggers have noted the increased awareness of our energy situation.

Xavier Onassis, reining Imperator of Independence made some great points in his post about a smart energy grid, or as he called it an "agnostic energy grid":

What we need is a … power grid that will accept input from any source at a standard, pro-rated, kilowatt-based compensation, feed that electricity into the grid where it is distributed as needed at a standard, pro-rated, kilowatt-based pricing system.

There are so many ways to generate electricity that with a distributed generation strategy and a unified grid, we can have all the power we need without depending on fossil fuels.

He then lists many different ways to produce electricity, including small nuclear reactors like those that have been used for years to power America's warships at sea.

That post dovetails nicely into R.Sherman's two-part series on the importance of nuclear energy to our energy future. It's a great series (as you would expect from one of Missouri's finest minds) that scientifically points out that the so-called "green" energy solutions won't be enough by themselves to provide all of our energy consumption needs.

All these points made me realize that as a culture we have a pretty limited view of how we generate electricity. It's either from nuclear plants, coal plants, hydroelectric or wind or some other grand scheme.

But let's not forget that there are many ways to capture energy that is wasted every day. It seems like there are many opportunities to generate-- or rather capture -- small amounts of energy over a very large area. Kind of a "long tail" approach to the energy problem.

For example, an Israeli company has developed a new highway surface that generates electricity as cars drive over it.

A United Kingdom company has developed a way to convert the kinetic energy of pedestrians walking down a busy street into electricity.

There have also been proposals to embedded piezoelectrics in shoes, clothing, even body parts to convert kinetic energy into electricity.

None of these plans individually generate very much electricity. But if created in mass and spread out over a national -- maybe even global -- smart energy grid, a dent could be made in our electrical consumption.

So my mind started to wander and look for ways to capture and convert more kinetic energy into electricity. They've got cars and sidewalks and shoes covered. People have even hooked bicycles up to generators.

And then I saw an opportunity literally right in front of me. We need to have tiny little piezoelectric generators embedded into every computer keyboard and mouse in the country.

Just think of the potential. Any time anyone presses a key on the keyboard -- and it's done billions of times a day -- a tiny electric charge would be created. Every time you move your mouse, every time you hit the enter key, every time you backspace to correct a misspelling you would be generating a tiny bit of power.

All of these tiny bits of power would cascade into the smart energy grid like delicate snowflakes on a mountain top. But by the time they accumulate, they would become an avalanche of clean electric power that anyone could have access to.

And finally, at long last, the millions of bloggers writing inane, uninformed posts about subjects of which they have little understanding would be serving a useful purpose.


tagged: oil, energy, nuclear, Deepwater Horizon, piezoelectric, blogging, environmentalist

Racing Arizona

Politicians and their sheeple have done a great job this year of bringing back race as a wedge issue.

We were all really concerned that once a black president was elected we would all finally move beyond race and racism, but it's a relief that they have recognized that race as a political wedge issue is still very valuable.

Just look at how well it has been used. If you think we're over taxed, it's because you're racist. If you think the government is spending money on the wrong thing, you're a racist. If you disagree with passing a law mandating 30 million new customers for the insurance industry, it must be because you are a racist.

If you think hundreds of teens should be home studying or working at a productive job on Friday nights instead of rioting on the Country Club Plaza? Well son, you're a damn racist.

Yes sir. Despite all of the hope and change, the race card is alive and well in politics today. Just look at all of mileage the race baiters are getting out of this new Arizona Illegal Immigration law.

Before even reading or understanding the law at all, Koolaid drinkers flew off the handle calling it unfair and racist. I'm no lawyer, and I haven't gone through the legislation with a fine toothed comb, but my friend R.Sherman is, and he has. He's a great guy despite being a lawyer and he points out that the Arizona law essentially takes current federal law and makes it Arizona State law, except that the Arizona law is more lax than federal law.

Look, I'm on record as being pretty status quo on illegal immigration.I certainly don't condone it anymore than I condone any other illegal activity. But then again, of all the problems we have in our country, I don't think illegal immigration is the worst.

To the people who are acting all outraged about the supposed racial injustice of the Arizona law, I question your sincerity. I don't think you're really worried about the rights of illegal immigrants. More likely, your worried about your voting blocks and creating a wedge issue.

That's to bad because there are real, legitimate reasons to not like the Arizona law. Just from what I've read I don't think it's racist, I just don't like the idea of giving the police more excuses to hassle us. Frankly, I think we're putting ourselves at more and more risk when we give the government more reasons to stop us and demand identification.

I mean let's face it. The human rights train left the station long ago. We've already pretty much established that the Bill of Rights is more of a punchline than a protection against government abuses.

But rather than trying to limit government abuses, we've done everything we can as a society to encourage it. We basically said "Here Uncle Same, take half my income. Take care of my neighbors so I don't have to. While you're at take care of my health and retirement planning as well. What? You say you need to read my emails and listen to my phone calls so that you can keep me from doing something that it bad for me? Well, okay. You know best."

And now you're worried about abuses in Arizona? Well, you should be. But as I've said before, we have ourselves to blame. When we put too much faith in "the authorities" to look out for us you can't be too surprised when those abuses inevitably occur. If we make the government collectively responsible for everything, then the governed aren't individually responsible for anything.

You can't have a nanny state without also having a police state.

tagged: race, politics, Arizona, immigration, law, illegal

Eat the rich

There was something I wanted to keyboard about a couple of weeks ago, but because I've got a good job in the city, working for the man every night and day, I didn't have time to get to it.

That's what happens with us salary types sometimes. Gotta punch the clock so you can bring home the Benjamins and, more importantly, pay the taxes without which everyone would get sick and die, starve and die, not have roads and die, or just generally freak the fuck out and die.

Ah, yes. That's what it was. I wanted to keyboard something about taxes. It was around April 15, Tax Day ... or as I call it, Pull Down My Pants and Slide On The Ice Day.

At the time there was a pretty concerted pro-tax increase public relations effort put forth by... well, who knows but the source was probably somewhere deep in the bowls of our bloated federal bureaucracy. Even a media avoider like me couldn't dodge the bevy of stories featuring "rich" people who want to pay more taxes. I first heard the NPR version of the story, but it was also pretty common in print and on blogs.

And I take the stories at face value. I mean, if the Washington Post reports …

"I'm in favor of higher taxes on people like me," declared Eric Schoenberg, who is sitting on an investment banking fortune. He complained about "my absurdly low tax rates."

… I'll take their word that this guy Schoenberg exists and that he wants to pay more taxes. According to the reporting, he's not alone.

But there's something fishy about such a sentiment. For one thing, what people like Schoenberg are saying (if they actually exist) is that they want the government to raise taxes on other people. This is a pretty common liberal viewpoint. And by liberal, I mean the current Democrats and Republicans who seem to think we can continue buying everything for everybody without having to eventually pay for it.

That's all well and good. I've pretty much started to come to grips with the fact that the battle is over and the forces of fiscal restraint have lost. Americans (those who bother to pay attention anymore) have discovered that it's easier to vote themselves other people's money and outsource their social responsibility for their neighbors to the government.

I just find it a bit silly that they feel like they have to wage a PR war to assuage their guilt. They're trying to convince me that raising taxes will be a good thing. That even the rich people want their taxes raised because they want to pay more taxes. Okay. Fine. Let the good times roll.

But here's the thing. If rich people want to pay more in taxes, they can. Now. Without any acts of congress or anything. If you're a rich bastard, you don't have to shelter all of your earnings. You don't have to hide your assets. You don't have to take the millions of deductions on your tax return.

Hell, I bet you could even write out a check for $50,000, take it to your local IRS office and just plain donate it to your government that is cash strapped because of its investments in General Motors and insane foreign wars. You'd probably even get a tax deduction for your donation.

So yeah rich people. If you're feeling guilty about not paying enough taxes, then by all means pay more. Just don't expect me to buy in to the BS that I'm getting a good value for my tax dollar.

tagged: Rich, income tax, policy, General Motors, government, Bill Gates, Warren Buffett

TARPitecture

Don't you hate it when you're trying to have a conversation, trying to reply to a comment, and you realize you've gone passed the character limit?

Happens to me quite often no matter how brief and economical I try to be with the words.

Anyway, there's this awesome cat, Lodo Grdzak, who classes up my joint every once in a while. I always appreciate when he stops by to leave a comment because even though we disagree on a lot of things, he's always thoughtful and writes intelligently. Seriously, this guy has some great perspective, an original voice, great stories and amazing taste in music. Really, if I wasn't already married... Well, I highly suggest you make his blog a regular stop in your RSS reader.

So why do I bring this up? Well I'm glad I asked.

Lodo dropped by recently and commented on my previous post re: Goldman Sachs. Here it is in it's entirety:

As a bit of a digression, I couldn't help but notice you failed to mention the billions of dollars made by the government in the TARP bailouts. Not only was all TARP money paid back; but at a huge profit to the government. Even Citi's loan (the most volatile of the banks) would yield a $10 billion profit to the government if we cashed-in our Citi stock now. But the government's waiting 'cause we'll make a lot more money than that. Obama's handling of the financial crisis (the worst since the Depression--'caused by Libertarian speculators that didn't want SEC oversight within the financial institutions) has been nothing short of genius. Particularly when you consider he handled it while planning war strategy in Afghanistan, passed health care reform (easy task I know), and had to appoint a Supreme Court judge. GM has paid back close to $2 billion dollars of their loan, and once they start selling stock again, the government's gonna clean up on that deal. All while maintaining 900,000 jobs. When you're wrong, you're wrong. And you should admit that the bailouts worked and retract comments you've made in the past that said they wouldn't.

I started to respond, but again ran out of characters. So I wanted to get this out there as a new post because, wow, there are a lot of claims in all of that.

I'll try to respond to each the best I can. But let me start by saying everyone should go easy on the Obama Koolaid. It's potent stuff.

I won't call the TARP campaign a "success" as such. Yes, companies have been saved. But we have succeeded in saving companies that should not have been saved in the first place. We have continued a precedence that started in the 1970s, where the government puts a ton of money behind a failed busies keeping it alive long after it should have died. These zombie corporations only serve to encourage bad/risky behavior by other business down the line.

If a company has no fear of being buried, it has no reason to act responsibly. John Q. Taxpayer is always there to bail them out as long as you grease the right palms in Washington. Hey, don't take my word for it. People much smarter than me have already pointed this out. I'm just the messenger, man.Secondly, in regards to the success of the bailouts, I think it's important to note that the TARP program was "only" $700 billion. Yes, that is an insane amount of money to waste on zombie corporations. But keep in mind that amount is a fraction of the $12 TRILLION committed in all of the bailout schemes.

The assertion that GM has totally repaid it's TARP loan is somewhat true. The problem is that, of the $50 billion that GM borrowed, it repaid only $6.7 billion in cash. The rest, was "repaid" in equity in the company, which means that the US Government owns 60 percent of post-bankruptcy GM. Since that stock is no longer traded, you can't really peg a value to that 60% holding, but it sure as hell isn't worth $43 billion (last trade was for 75 cents a share).

Furthermore, I'm sorry but saying that TARP has been totally repaid is just incorrect. According to ProPublica, just over $391 billion was disbursed, of which more than $186 billion is still outstanding. If you include Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in that, there's another $119 billion outstanding, bringing the total to over $300 billion that still needs to be repaid.

Regarding Citi, I'm not sure what Lodo's source was, but again according to ProPublica, Citigroup took $45 billion from the government and has returned about $23 billion, leaving them $22 billion in debt to us taxpayers. It's difficult to accept that we would realize a $10 billion profit "if we would cash in our stock" because the stock would immediately resume its downward spiral if the government decided to sell it.

Lodo also points out that the government-owned companies have seen nice stock gains, or at least stable stocks. This shouldn't be a surprise. Taking the investor's point of view, buying stock in a company owned by the US Government is pretty much a sure thing. Since we have a couple of years before our government is crushed under the fiscal weight of entitlements, bailouts and pork spending, investors can rest assured that companies owned by the government have been and will be bailed out of any mismanagement. At least until society completely breaks down in 2012 and we all get jobs as Road Warriors.

However, you should keep you eye on those stocks if/when Uncle Sam decides to sell.

As for the jobs situation, The Bureau of Labor Statistics recently reported that nearly half of states are still reporting increases in unemployment. Unemployment is still above 9 percent nationally, so it's still too soon to congratulate Obama on his masterful handling of jobs and employment policy.

The war stuff? Well, we're still at war, we'll have troops in the Iraq and Afghanistan for the foreseeable future, and Obama supporters don't seem to care about that now that it's their guy in office.

Anyway, the upshot of all of this it that we're a long way from me admitting I was wrong about the bailouts.

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EDTI. — In response a question about citing Pro Publica as as source, they are an independent group of journalists and one of the few highly credible information sources on the Internet. Here's what they say in their About page:

ProPublica is an independent, non-profit newsroom that produces investigative journalism in the public interest. Our work focuses exclusively on truly important stories, stories with “moral force.” We do this by producing journalism that shines a light on exploitation of the weak by the strong and on the failures of those with power to vindicate the trust placed in them.

I strongly suggest you begin frequenting their website.

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tagged: Obama, bailouts, TARP, Doomsday Cycle, economy, General Motors, unemployment