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RESHMA SAUJANI: This is a new decade and we need a new direction…We need to put aside the policies of the past and start building the future because we are the future. That's going to take new ideas, new leadership and new bridges.
Translation of message to Carolyn Maloney:
MARLENE DIETRICH (in Orson Welles’ “Touch of Evil”): …Your future is all used up. Why don’t you go home?
or maybe
ROGER DALTREY: Why dontcha all f-f-f-fade away…talkin bout my g-g-generation
As I’ve documented at various times, this is a problem which has been present from the case’s inception and persisted throughout on all sides and even among those who’ve taken no side.
Since the sole reason for the existence of this Department is to make sport of such people, I am happy to report that the problem continues unabated.
The National Pastimes
By Michael Boyajian
Let me apologize in advance to fans of other teams, but my father was a lifelong Yankee fan and I am a lifelong Yankee fan. So I know a little something about baseball. I also know a bit about politics.
With an assist from the staff of the Medicaid Statistical Information System (MSIS), I’ve crunched down Medicaid beneficiary and spending data for FY 2007. The assist was required because the Datamart program only works with Internet Explorer, and my teenagers convinced me to shift over to Apple when my old computer wore out. Previously, I had found that the Regional Economic Information System disks from the Bureau of Economic Analysis could only be used on Windows machines, not I-Macs. I guess the federal government doesn’t do Apple, although I haven’t had a problem with the Census Bureau yet. Those who have read my past posts on this subject might as well just download the attached spreadsheets for the latest year, because not much changes. But for those who are interested in my analysis, details on beneficiaries, spending, spending per beneficiary and related information follows.
It is perhaps emblematic of the depths of despair currently implicating those of us to the left of center that not only have our factions begun firing upon each other, but among themselves.
A dedicated fan (except when I am writing about matters affecting Carroll Gardens) writes:
SHAMES: I think it is generally good to remind the "progressives" that progress is taken in successive steps and that incrementalism is a related concept of increase and no more a dirty word than progress. They don't seem to understand that they share their country with a lot of people who don't agree with them on everything and who also believe that they are right.
It appears that Generation Greed is responding to the upcoming elections the way it always does — by selling out the future of the country and younger generations. The Obama Administration came in promising investment in America's future, funded by borrowing, through the Build America Bond Act. But older generations don't want to build America, they want to securitize it as a way of getting more for less right now. And they are becoming more and more desperate as the diminished future ensured by 30 years of their past decisions continues to arrive.
So now, according to the Wall Street Journal, the Obama Administration proposes that the Build America Bond act be made permanent, with an ongoing federal subsidy (funded by the federal debt) for state and local bonds (more debt) issued not just for capital improvements (which might provide some benefit in the future when younger generations are forced to pay back the debt) but also to pay for more services and lower taxes right now. This might be the one Obama proposal that doesn’t get filibustered, as it is one that consistent with Republican principles. Not theoretical principles from the far off Republican past, actual ones from the past 30 years.
Crucifying Celebrities
By Michael Boyajian
There is a Beatles song about John Lennon and Yoko Ono where John sings, “they’re going to crucify me.” And that is what we do today, we crucify celebrities.
Why do we do this to people who entertain us, who make us happy and sad, who bring emotion into our lives and do little to harm to the planet like say our elected officials and corporate executives? Look at Tiger Woods, a golfer. No threat at all to the planet. Yet the media went after him as if he were a family values politician who was caught soliciting sex in a bathroom while calling for the president to declare war on say someone as revered as the Dalai Lama. I mean he was just a golfer. He hit a little ball around on the grass for a living.
Last night our president delivered his first official state of the union address: he was brilliant. Years from now speech instructors will be playing tapes of his speeches for their students; in fact; it’s probably happening already on many college campuses. Years from now books will be written compiling many of his speeches; some given even before he became one of the most historic of all our presidents. From here on in Barack Obama will be the standard by which great speakers are measured. He is undoubtedly one of the best public speakers ever (especially from a prepared script).
A funny thing happened on the way to the presidency though that bears noting. It was when he appeared before the congressional black caucus (at his request) to inform them that he was contemplating a run for the presidency. A significant number of black electeds thought the idea laughable. This is a fact. More than a few of them actually laughed at him and his idea. I mean that literally. Many others scoffed and others still were quite dismissive. They all know who they are.
In his State of the Union address, President Obama asked if anyone had a better idea to hold down the cost of health care, cover the uninsured, and reduce the deficit. I laid out the problems, proposals, problems with the proposals, my solution, and how to pay for it back when in the attached document, and my views haven’t changed. Just my optimism.
BERNSTEIN: Thatcher! That man was the biggest darn fool I ever met.
THOMPSON: He made an awful lot of money.
BERNSTEIN: It's no trick to make an awful lot of money if all you want is to make a lot of money.
—From CITIZEN KANE
The proof of the intellectual bankruptcy of Wall Street is their inability to learn. Rescued in the thirties from the depths of their own self-created degradation, they spent the next decade cursing the President who’d rescued them, and possibly capitalism itself, as “that man in the White House.”