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.

Fear and Loathing in Minneapolis

Minneapolis is watching the machine do what it always does after it kills: it tightens its tie, straightens the paperwork, and tries to make the blood look like “process.” And in the last five days the pattern has become unmistakable.

First, they pushed new video into the bloodstream of the news cycle—an administration-approved angle, conveniently framed as the great exonerator. 

But when grown-ups with stopwatches and professional skepticism got their hands on the visuals, the story didn’t magically become clean. Reuters’ reconstruction points to a grim, almost clinical detail: the officer’s first shots came as the vehicle was moving past him. 

That’s not a verdict. It’s something worse for the people selling “obvious self-defense” as gospel: it’s doubt you can measure.

Then came the institutional tell—the part where the state’s credibility is dragged behind a truck because it’s inconvenient.

Minnesota’s Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, the outfit locals expect to investigate deadly force with at least some baseline public legitimacy, says it was cut off from evidence and interviews—effectively pushed out—when the federal apparatus decided the FBI would run the whole show. PBS and CBS local reporting, along with official statements, describe a reversal that left the BCA unable to meet its standards or the public’s expectations. 

Translation: the people who fired the shots get to manage the room where the facts are sorted.

And when career lawyers inside the Justice Department’s civil-rights machinery reportedly offered to dig in—do the hard work, run down the facts, test the claim of justification—they were told, in essence, No, thank you. CBS reports the Civil Rights Division prosecutors were told they would not play a role. Then the resignations started stacking up like a flare gun going off in the fog.

That’s not “normal.” That’s a system coughing smoke.

Renee Good’s family—left to stand in the crater—has now hired Romanucci & Blandin, the same firm known for representing George Floyd’s family, to investigate and publish findings because the official channels have not inspired confidence. When a family has to rent its own truth because the government won’t reliably provide it, the legitimacy meter is already pinned in the red.

Meanwhile, the city is trapped in the cruel logic of escalation. A second incident: a federal officer shoots another person in Minneapolis, this time reported as a man wounded in the leg amid a disputed encounter. And the response from the top isn’t humility, transparency, restraint—it’s the old authoritarian jukebox selection: threaten the Insurrection Act, hint at troops, dare the city to flinch. AP and Reuters both report the President floating that option as unrest spreads.

At the state and city level, Minnesota, Minneapolis, and St. Paul have gone to federal court trying to halt the DHS/ICE surge, arguing the deployment is unlawful and dangerous. Even the existence of that lawsuit is an indictment: it says local government has concluded the federal presence is not merely controversial but structurally destabilizing.

And in Washington, Democrats have responded with an impeachment salvo against DHS Secretary Kristi Noem—symbolic in a divided Congress, perhaps, but politically diagnostic: people in power are now publicly treating DHS not as a normal agency managing a hard problem, but as a machine that has slipped its restraints.

So here is the updated reality, stripped of euphemism:

• We have a killing still argued as “self-defense,” but increasingly litigated in public through video analysis and contested investigative control. 

• We have state investigators sidelined, civil-rights prosecutors reportedly shut out, and resignations that read like a warning flare from inside the hull. 

• We have another shooting, more street tension, and a White House response that leans toward force and threats, not accountability. 

• And we have a community and state leadership trying—through courts, through counsel, through public pressure—to keep Minneapolis from becoming a live-fire demonstration of federal impunity. 

If the federal government wants trust, it knows the price: independent access, full disclosure, and an investigation that doesn’t look like the suspect running the lab. What it’s offering instead—more secrecy, more spin, more muscle—is not reassurance.

It’s a posture.

And Minneapolis, painfully experienced, recognizes it on sight.

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. 

Nambia exambia

Say what you will about Pres. Trump. His ego is brobdingnagian. Of civil rights, he’s no champion. And as for leadership, well it’s clear his managing is more like mangling.

But I can tell you from personal experience that his endorsement of the health care system in Nambia shows great pansophy.

I’m not from Nambia myself. But I grew up in neighboring Pambia. As you know, the two countries have been close ever since The Nambia-Pambia Alliance Treaty of 1836. And I well remember as a young Pambian rambling through Nambia on autumnal visits to my Auntie Annie (herself a life-long Pambian). We would spend afternoons ambling around the expanding hamlets, and scrambling among surrounding brambles. We’d pass the P.M. with her prized pet panda, handing him samplings of salmon and jam.

Tramping back to her mansion, which had a commanding view of a babbling rapids in which I liked to do some angling, we’d spend a quiet evening chatting about things like traveling, gambling and her dazzling career in acting. One summer I even managed to scavenge some scaffolding and tackled the challenge of renovating her paneling.

Sadly, those days have passed. The housing crisis cramped her finances. No matter how much ranting and haggling she did, she couldn’t wrangle a way into withstanding the bankruptcy. She ended up abandoning and later dismantling the mansion.

But I’ll still have longstanding and everlasting admiration and gratitude for the mind-expanding understanding I gained from my time in Nambia. I hope nation’s leaders can channel the same compassion.

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.

Crimea river

No doubt Ukraine, or as I call it "The Ukraine" has seen some setbacks recently.

The economy is struggling, more so than the many struggling economies world wide. Government opportunism and political corruption run rampant. Paul McCartney is no longer knocked out by Ukraine girls.

Then of course there was the loss of all of that prime Black Sea beach front property with the "citizens" of the Crimean peninsula "voted" to "secede" from Ukraine and officially become part of "Russia."

It's almost enough to make a guy go orange with revolutionary rage, or at least make a guy want to move to Johnson County.

But there's one group in Ukraine that's prepared to strike back.

As Ukraine battles to stave off dark forces of its own, the Star Wars villain Darth Vader announced at the weekend he was running for president in a bid to restore glory to the downtrodden nation. 

The Sith lord, or at least an unnamed costumed protester often seen on Kiev's Independence Square flanked by his loyal stormtroopers during the winter protests, has been chosen as the official candidate of the Ukrainian Internet party (UIP) which has become known for its theatrical public stunts.

"After winning intra-party primaries by a landslide, comrade Vader will be our party's candidate," said the UIP leader, Dmitry Golubov, who spent time in prison after being convicted of using the internet to run a credit card fraud scheme.

tagged: Russia, Europe, Ukraine, Crimea, EU, Darth Vader, Star Wars

YouTube Tuesday: How To Hack A Website

This amazingly awesome satire series by Wired stars John Hodgman as an aging NSA agent who reminds me quite a bit of Uncle Nick. And, it's awesomely amazing. tagged: YouTube, Tuesday, NSA, satire, John Hodgman

YouTube Tuesday: I Vetoed

I just hope you knuckleheads made the right decision.

tagged: YouTube, Tuesday, video, Simpsons, Kodos, humor, politics

Messianic joe

For what it's worth, I predicted ages ago (and soon to be proved accurately) that Obama would be elected to a second term.

But as far as who will actually win the ? I'm with Jesus.

tagged: election, Romney, Obama, Jesus, satire, politics, humor

Death be not paneled

Did you see this? You might have heard about this. There was a news blurb and a couple of people were mentioning it on Facebook and other social sites…

So the Supreme Court Justice League got together the other day and got some constitutional interpreting done before their vacations to the Poconos's, and it turns out that according to (at least 5 of) them, it’s cool for men to date.

Wait, let me reread that… oh, okay. It's not man date. It's mandate. The mandate is okay. That makes sense. Although as far as I’m concerned, men dating men is okay, too. But I guess that’s a different Supreme Court case.

Anyhoo, the mandate that we all have to buy something that we may or may not want or else we have to go to jail is just fine with The Constitution — according to the people who decide these things (I think their official title is Supreme Deciders of the United States).

A lot of people are super stoked about this, as they see it as the next step to mandating daily consumption of 64 oz Mountain Dew Red and Jelly Donuts for everyone (Hah! In your FACE, Mayor Bloomberg!).

Of course there are a lot of people on the other side who think a government that pays $25,000 for a toilet seat has no business telling anyone to buy anything, let alone something that they may not need or use.

But I think both sides are really kind of missing the point. The recent SCOTUS decision and the ACA bill it upholds represent a golden opportunity for the enrichment of the American culture. Of course I’m referring to the great inspiration it provides for a renaissance in heavy metal band names.

It’s been a good 20 years since the zenith of Heavy Metal in pop culture. Sure it’s been around, as kind of a sub-cultural underground phenomenon. But I think with the heightened awareness fostered by such high profile events such as the recent SCOTUS decision and the impending “reasoned political discourse” that we're sure to see in the upcoming election season, concepts like Taxing Powers, Punitive Mandates, and Death Panels could easily percolate into the artistic forefront of this genre.

And to help kick start the artistic revolution, I’d like to take this time to announce that the experimental neurofunk-jazz-illbient-technofolk fusion band that Manningtheship and I have been working on for the past two years (you might have seen us performing during lunch time at The Record Bar) will be pivoting into the death metal genre with a new name:

tagged: politics, Supreme Court, SCOTUS, Death Panel, Affordable Care Act, ACA, music

System run by two parties

I've tried to make a real effort this year to steer clear of political topics, partly because nothing has changed even with a new batch of lawmakers, but mostly because, as Beck* might say, there's no point fighting for a lost cause.

But, I recently saw a Venn diagram that so accurately makes the point that I clumsily was trying to make with the popular (by this blog's standards, anyway) The Undeciders post from 2008.

You can go ahead and reread that post if you're feeling nostalgic, or just take a look at this diagram originally posted on The Strategic Retreat (you may have to click to embiggen).


*The post-modern alt-pop-blues-folk singer-songwriter, not the Fox News crybaby.



tagged: Beck, Lost Cause, video, politics, government, Republican, Democrat, two-party system

Who will saaaayave our souls?

I was humbled to get some link love from the great Joel Mathis at Cup o'Joel who latched onto my continued frustration with both political so-called parties after this week's elections.

He wonders if the government is even capable of governing anymore, and he rightly noted that we both think "that there's something unsustainable about the governance of our country."

I agree that our current government and bureaucracy is unsustainable. But it's not just our governance, it's our entire culture. As Americans we eat and drink more than is healthy. We consume way more than our fair share of energy. We live in homes that are way bigger than they need to be and pay for them much more than we should (indeed, much more than we can afford). We're more interested in voting results for American Idol than for American elections.

We demand free health care, free retirement, free food and water — hell, free digital cable converter boxes — even though, in the long centuries of human existence, no people have ever dared to dream of such things.

Somehow, over the last 80 years, we've become entitled.

So when Joel asks in the title of his post, "Can anybody save us?" The short answer is, no. If something is unsustainable and can't continue, it must come to an end.

The longer answer is something Cassius hit upon when he was having a beer with his good buddy Brutus at his boss's beach house in the hit film Weekend At Caesar's:

The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves… Hey, what's that thing stuck in Ceasar's back?

If we're honest with ourselves, we see that Obama isn't to blame for "the state of things," nor are the Republicans, the Democrats or the Tea Party; it's not Glenn Beck or Jon Stewart or Sarah Palin or Rachel Madow or that other guy who's name I can't remember from MSNBC...

When you get right down to it, we have no one to blame but ourselves.

We voted ourselves money and spending and benefits that we don't really deserve and certainly can't afford. And really, I can understand why we did it. That unsustainable culture I mentioned earlier? That's a fun culture to be a part of. I mean, who doesn't want to rock 'n roll all night and party every day?

It beats the hell out of allowing banks to fail from their own malfeasance... dragging us all into a great depression with them. That's just… depressing.

And aren't we all more than willing to take off our shoes and allow strangers to look at our naughty bits at the airport in order to feel a little safer about flying out to Las Vegas and maxing out our credit cards on overpriced booze and glorified money-sucking video games?

But we got ourselves into this mess. And we're going to have to get ourselves out. It's not going to be easy. I suspect that it will get much, much worse before it gets better. But I also think the best place to start is in your own neighborhood, in your own town, in your own city and state.

Democrats nor Republicans nor presidents nor senators will be able to help us. Relying on the government isn't the answer. We all need to pull together. Find people who need your help. There are a lot of great organizations and churches that are dedicated to feeding the hungry, housing the homeless, trying to heal the sick.

We need to focus on our responsibilities as citizens, not our rights. Make personal changes like eating better food and less of it, maybe start using less energy (I personally have lowered my body temperature to 94 degrees).

Voting is nice. But it is more important to get out and help than it is to get out the vote.

tagged: culture, politics, Republican, Democrat, America, election, Obama

Not so fast, my friend…

The Facebook message came through pretty early this morning. "I bet you're on cloud nine with the big Republican takeover in last night's elections..."

I responded with a rousing and resounding "meh…"

From what I can tell, in the scheme of things we still haven't seen any proposals for real change. And even if we have seen ideas for meaningful spending cuts and tax reforms from the newly minted House majority, there's no reason given the history of the last few decades to actually believe any meaningful steps will be taken.

I mean, many of the people who voted for Republicans actually think President Obama is solely to blame for "the state of things." But, for example, while Obama definitely had a role in the huge deficit spending stimulus packages that may or may not have had an affect beyond plunging us (and our grandkids) deeper into debt, the whole idea of TARP came about and was passed during the Bush administration.

The problem with campaigning against someone, as the Democrats have found, is that you're not really campaigning for anything in particular.

Of course, the problem with campaigning FOR something these days is that in order to really solve our most pressing national problems, you have to be an advocate of doing stuff that nobody wants to do. Nobody wants drastic, Grecian Formula spending cuts, but that's what we need. Nobody wants major tax and fee increases (certainly not me), but that's what it will take to balance our budget even if we cut spending.

So you get what we have now (which interestingly is frighteningly similar to what the Romans had near the end of their republic). Politicians make promises that, while popular, have little hope of coming to fruition without bankrupting the country. Political expedience makes meaningful reform impossible.

But at least we've got the new season of Dancing With The Stars to entertain us.

tagged: politics, election, Republican, Democrat, spending, budget, Obama

TARPography

The comment from Lodo came, not apropos of the post it was on but certainly an apt continuation of a conversation we've been having here for some time.

The comment was thus:

All that TARP money everyone was harping about has been paid back with interest.

We've been tossing ideas back and forth about the TARP and various government bailouts. My point is that the financial bailouts in toto are a bad idea because of the monetary cost and the long term cost of cultivating a culture reliant upon bailouts instead of sound business judgment.

Lodo's point is that, as a practical matter, the bailouts and stimulus plans are necessary to stabilize the economy. And whatever the risks happen to be, they're better than the certainty of a second Great Depression (I hope I've characterized the point fairly).

So, it's only fair for Lodo to point out that all of the TARP money has been repaid in full, with interest. I assume he's referring to a White House report that was released last month.

Now, I have no reason to think the White House would tell us something that isn't 100 percent true. What motivation, after all, could they have for not being completely forthcoming about a program as popular as TARP has been — especially in this climate where pretty much everyone is strongly in favor of doing all we can as a country to make sure that the poor banking executives make it through this trying time of tumultuous tribulation with their multi-million dollar bonuses intact?

I mean, what could they possibly gain especially since their party is poised to make such great gains during this election season?

But, out of habit I guess, I just had to do some double checking on this claim "fully repaid with interest." So I jumped over to one of the only journalistic enterprises I know of that still has any integrity left. The amazingly awesome website ProPublica.

ProPublica maintains a Bailout Scorecard website, where they track how much taxpayer money has gone to whom and how much has been returned. And incredibly, the numbers they have on their site show that not only has the TARP program NOT been repaid in full with interest, there is still almost $170 Billion in loans/investments outstanding.

I just found this almost impossible to believe. I was shocked, SHOCKED, to learn that there may have been a bit of fibbing going on from the White House.

I just assumed that perhaps the database at ProPublica may not have been quite up to date. So I fired off a quick email to one of the contact email addresses listed on the site…

Hey Paul,

Let me first say how much respect I have for the ProPublica organization. It has become one of the only news sources I really trust. Thank you for your efforts.

My question is about the Bailout Tracker portion of your website (http://bailout.propublica.org/main/summary), specifically the information on TARP. When the White House recently announced that all TARP money had been paid back in full with interest, I thought I should really check with you guys before I believed them.

So I looked at your site and saw that, according to you, there is still quite a bit of TARP left outstanding. I just wanted to check to see if the numbers on your site have been updated recently.

Thanks again for the great work you guys are doing.

Within a few hours, Paul wrote back…

Thanks.

The short version is if you really listen to what the White House is saying, they’re not saying all the money has been paid back. They’re basically saying that they expect the money to be paid back eventually. Our database shows things as they currently stand (and yes, it’s up to date). Even if the administration is right and we’ll be paid back, that won’t happen for years.

Separately, you have to be careful when talking about this stuff whether you’re including Fannie and Freddie or just the TARP. We include Fannie and Freddie in our database because, even though it was a different pot of money, it’s still one of the big bailouts that was started in the fall of 2008. And as you can see from our site, that’s involved nearly as much money as the TARP, and it seems like it won’t be long before there’s more outstanding from that bailout than from the TARP.

Also, here’s a recent roundup post we did on the 2 year anniversary of the TARP: http://www.propublica.org/article/the-bailout-yearbook-the-stars-and-the-slackers

Best,
Paul

So, there you have it. Don't take my word for it, I'm just a cave man. Take the word of someone who tracks this stuff for a living and who doesn't have a political interest in trying to make everyone feel like hope and change will get us out of this mess.

tagged: bailout, hope, change, TARP, ProPublica, White House, Goldman Sachs

Doubleplusungood

Okay, now that we've solved the health care crisis and everyone is living healthy long lives with instant access to the best medical care ever for free, and now that we've solved the financial crisis and our messianic leader has promised us that there will never, ever be another financial bailout by the government ever...

Now that we've accomplished those things, I think it's time that our administration turn it's attention to possibly the new most important issue facing our society: The problem of bad journalism.

By now you've heard of the deliberately sloppy reporting by an unabashedly biased conservative blogger that resulted in the firing and severe emotional distress of Shirley Sherrod, a completely innocent and kind-hearted servant of the people who has absolutely no agenda of her own other than the ennobling of all of mankind.

To review of the situation, let me quote yet another ennobler, the late, great Xaview Onassis:

Conservative blogger Andrew Breitbart posted a video of Shirley Sherrod (a HUGE PUBLIC TARGET, being Georgia State Director of Rural Development for the United States Department of Agriculture) addressing the NAACP.

The video appeared to show her exhibiting a racist attitude towards a white farmer who came to her seeking help. In a knee-jerk reaction by the racially sensitive Obama Administration, Shirley Sherrod was immediately fired.

But guess what? The 2 minute video had been intentionally and maliciously edited down from a 44 minute video to make it appear that she was saying exactly the opposite of what she was actually saying!

That a mere blogger can have such an impact on the administration of our country is clearly a national security risk.

And this kind of thing isn't isolated or even rare. Examples of improper journalistic behavior are common. Remember Stephen Glass's scandalous reporting for neo-liberal publication The New Republic where he made up fictional facts, quotes and even people in his stories.

And who can forget disgraced TV journalist Dan Rather, who created fraudulent government documents for the sole purpose of attacking and discrediting a sitting president.

It's clear that there are systemic and endemic problems with the state of journalism in our republic. This is a problem that we cannot allow to fester.

Journalism is our window into the performance of our leaders. We, as voting Americans, rely on the news media to alert us to government malfeasance, to let us know what our leaders are doing with our tax money and what our national policies are, to keep us abreast of Lindsay Lohan's jailhouse granny panties.

So I think we can all agree that our news media is too big to fail.

Given that, I think it's time for the Obama Administration to step in and take action. We need new regulations that will ensure that the news media is telling us the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

Since the free market is unable to guarantee this, we obviously need better government regulation of the news industry.

I propose a new cabinet level position in the White House, the Secretary of Truth.

This new secretary-level position, which I'll just call the Truth Czar, will lead the Department of Truth which will be given the mission of monitoring all news media (including blogs) to make sure all communications are truthful and contain no misleading opinions or partisan slants.

Using the latest technology from various other government agencies, the Department of Truth will be able to exert real-time control over all online, broadcast and print content.

Through the efforts of the government's new Truth Czar and his various regional Truth Agents, we will finally be able to rest assured that we're getting only the highest quality information.

Never again will we have to worry about good people losing their jobs because of unsubstantiated opinions posted on a person's blog.

tagged: Obama, Shirley Sherrod, journalism, reporters, news media, government, Andrew Breitbart

Separated at Birth II

Remember a couple of years ago when I did the Separated at Birth with Sarah Palin and Liz Lemon and then Saturday Night Live picked up on my joke and used it in their little skit show for the next 8 weeks?

Well, SNL, here's your new opening bit:

President Obama's nominee for the Supreme Court Elena Kagan...


...and former SNL cast member Jon Lovitz...

tagged: Separated at birth, Elena Kagen, Jon Lovitz, politics, pop culture, Saturday Night Live

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.

---

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.

---

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

René and Georgette Magritte with their dog after the war

Growing up, our neighbors -- I'll call them René and Georgette Magritte (to protect their anonymity) -- had a dog that was... well... it just wasn't quite right.

Oh, it was a nice enough dog. You could pet it. It would fetch you all kinds of stuff -- even stuff you didn't need or want.

But it had this funny quirk. If you waved your hand in a large circle, like you were drawing a pie on a big chalkboard, the crazy mutt would begin running around in circles chasing its tail. And it would just keep running around and around and around until it got dizzy had to lay down on the ground. It would lay there panting with these crazy bulging eyes like it was high on pot-laced Milkbones.

But then, after a 20 minute recovery period or so, you could make the dumb thing do it all again with the same wave or your hand. This went on for years.

The crazy canine never learned.

I thought of that crazy dog when so many people started celebrating another historic Obama win last weekend. Politicians waved their hands in the air and Americans went crazy running around in joy.

With the stroke of a pen, Obama yet again changed the game -- this time solving the health care problem for every last person in the nation.

Well, yet again, I have to remind you crazy dogs that nothing really is going to change.

Oh sure, there will be people who now will be forced to buy health insurance even if they don't want it.

And some people who do want health insurance will get it -- subsidized by the rest of us of course. I don't really have a problem with that per se -- I mean, no more of problem than I have with any of the other bajillion subsidies taxpayers pay for. Hell, at least in theory the subsidy doesn't go to a rich Goldman Sachs exec (in theory).

But all this really does is extend and strengthen the system we already had in place. A system whereby health insurance companies take monthly premiums protection money in exchange for the promise of taking care of you should you get sick or maimed.

Because the price of health care has been rising faster than Smiling Bob's jockey shorts, insurance company dons executives have raised the price of premiums and deductibles to keep their "profit margins" intact.

Luckily for them, they're about to get 30 million new customers. That should pad their profits nicely, even after all the kickbacks to Obama, Pelosi and their droogs.

So because legislators cautiously avoided taking any action to do anything about the costs of health care, which nine months ago everyone seemed to agree was the problem in the first place, we can expect more and more expensive health care, which in the end will lead to higher debt levels.

Yes, we have been told that there are provisions in the bill to pay for the additional costs through new fees and taxes. We've been told that the bill will decrease budget deficits. We've been told that costs will go down because government regulators will now have a better handle on insurance companies.

But then again, we've been told all these things before. And we chased our tails in excitement. The truth is, that dog just ain't right.

tagged: politics, health care, insurance, Obama, Pelosi, Enzyte Bob, Obamacare