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

Free speech lip service

Talk about your absurd contradictions. There's something Onionesque about watching the Kansas GOP supermajority christen a “Charlie Kirk Free Speech Day” while simultaneously tightening the screws on actual speech and free expression in Kansas.

It would be absurdist satire if it weren’t entered into the official legislative journal.

SCR 1615, the resolution designating October 14 as “Charlie Kirk Free Speech Day,” moved through the legislature like crap through Canada goose (but not as pleasant). Republicans advanced it early. It consumed floor time. It generated speeches about liberty, the marketplace of ideas, the sacred American right to speak one’s mind without fear.

But those speeches — delivered with solemn cadence and patriotic flourish — carried the unmistakable stench of performance. Lawmakers spoke of courage and constitutional virtue, invoking free expression as if it were under siege. But for all the rhetorical bluster, the measure itself was nonbinding, symbolic, and materially inconsequential to the daily lives of Kansans.

It was a pageant of principle without policy — a moment of grandstanding that cost nothing politically and delivered nothing substantively.

The vote was decisive. The majority flexed. The calendar gained a commemorative square.

At the same time, debate inside that chamber was being managed with the precision of a soundboard operator hitting the mute button mid-sentence.

Amendments ruled not germane. Motions curtailed. Floor discussion was suppressed under procedural authority that only a supermajority can wield with such disregard for decency. Perfectly legal. Entirely within the rules.

And profoundly ironic (or should I say moronic? I guess both can be true).

Because free speech — if it means anything beyond a slogan — requires tolerance for dissent, not merely celebration of allies.

What unfolded was a kind of civic ventriloquism: a Legislature praising free expression in theory while suppressing it in practice.

The contradiction doesn’t stop at Statehouse chamber doors.

In recent years, this same Kansas GOP supermajority has advanced and enacted measures that critics argue narrow participation in the democratic process itself:

• HB 2332 (2021) restricted who may return advance ballots and created criminal penalties for certain ballot collection practices.
  
• SB 209 (2023) shortened the advance voting period and imposed new limits on ballot drop boxes.
• In 2022, a new congressional map was foisted on Kansans by the supermajority. The heavily gerrymandered map was a transparent attempt at suppressing Democratic voter voices in the 3rd District. 
• Not satisfied, Republican leaders recently went back to the gerrymandering well to try to dredge up even more voter suppression with a mid-decade redistricting effort. While they ultimately declined a special session last November, it won't be a surprise when they try to force this measure through in the current session. 

Supporters frame these laws and redistricting efforts as "election security" and "legitimate political strategy." Critics — including voting rights advocates and many Democratic lawmakers — describe them as structural barriers that reshape who participates and how much their vote weighs.

The dissonance is sharp enough to cut through the rotunda’s marble echo.

A Legislature celebrates “Free Speech” with a named holiday while curtailing debate on the floor through stifling procedural control and suppressing opposing voices with aggressive partisan maneuvering. 

Speech is applauded when it aligns. Participation is managed when it threatens.

Meanwhile, Kansans are told all of this is in defense of liberty? If liberty is the banner, then it is being flown at half-mast.

Free speech isn't merely the right to praise one’s champions. It's the willingness to endure dissent — on the floor, in committee, and at the ballot box. It's messy. It's inconvenient. It lengthens debate instead of trimming it.

What we continue to see instead is far more curated: a ceremonial embrace of “Free Speech” alongside a governing style that prefers efficiency over friction, control over contest.

When you declare a holiday for free speech while cutting off debate, narrowing voter access, and redrawing districts to consolidate power, you invite scrutiny and should expect criticism.

Free speech deserves more than a resolution number.

It deserves a microphone that stays on — and a map that doesn’t mute voters before they ever speak.

Racist is as racist does

There is a particular kind of cowardice that wears a necktie and speaks in complete sentences. It smells like caution, sounds like reason, and survives by never quite touching the thing it claims to condemn. Senator Jerry Moran’s response to Donald Trump’s racist AI video sits squarely in that tradition—clean, polite, and morally insufficient.

Yes, he called it racist. Yes, he said it shouldn’t have been posted. And yes, by modern Republican standards, this apparently qualifies as bravery. But let’s not confuse naming the fire with putting it out.

Moran’s statement reads like a man scolding a broken office printer. The video “should not have been posted.” An unfortunate error. A lapse in judgment. As if the President of the United States accidentally leaned on the wrong button and out popped a piece of digital minstrel propaganda depicting the first black presidential family as animals.

Oops. These things happen. Let’s all move along.

This is nonsense.

What Trump (a convicted felon, let's not forget) posted was not a gaffe. It was not clumsy humor. It was not a meme gone awry. It was a deliberate deployment of one of the oldest racist tropes in Western political history, now turbocharged by AI and blasted out from the most powerful bully pulpit on Earth. That matters. History matters. Power matters.

And when a sitting U.S. senator responds to that act with a gentle verbal wrist-tap while continuing to support the man who did it, we are no longer talking about intentions. We are talking about effects.

Here’s the part too many people want to dodge: supporting a racist and supporting racist actions is functionally indistinguishable from being racist. Not in the abstract. Not in the philosophical sense. In the real world—the only one that counts.

You can condemn the act in a press release and still enable the actor. You can say “this is not who we are” while voting, fundraising, caucusing, and aligning yourself with the very machinery that keeps producing this behavior. At that point, the condemnation is decorative. It exists to soothe consciences, not to change outcomes.

And spare me the moral-equivalence defense. The “both sides mock presidents” routine is the last refuge of people who know the line has been crossed but can’t bring themselves to say so plainly. Yes, presidents have been mocked. Cruelly. Stupidly. Sometimes viciously. That is not the same thing as the President himself distributing racist imagery rooted in centuries of dehumanization. Anyone pretending otherwise is not confused—they are protecting something.

Moran’s response tries to occupy a safe middle space that no longer exists. The ground has collapsed. You are either willing to impose consequences on racist behavior (and let's face it, other tyranical and anti-democracy behavior) from the presidency, or you are willing to live with it. There is no third option labeled “respectable disapproval.”

The old saying holds because it’s brutally accurate: racist is as racist does. And in politics, enabler is as enabler enables. When leaders draw lines and then refuse to defend them, those lines become decorations—useful for press coverage, meaningless for justice.

Senator Moran wants credit for saying the right words. History will measure something else entirely: whether he was willing to act as if those words meant anything at all.

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