Category: News and Opinion

'The issue of economics is not something I've understood as well as I should. I've got Greenspan's book." —John McCain

Well thank goodness he hasn’t read it. As Dubya’s MBA has proven, a little knowledge can be a dangerous thing, and McCain has not yet attained even that level.

Nonetheless, in a society where the public yearns to have a few aspects of their lives protected in some manner from the vicissitudes of the marketplace (things like their retirement and their healthcare), the McCain platform and the McCain record is one of advocating that market forces be unleashed in the manner of a mad and rabid dog to render their magic and transform our society in ways unimaginable to those not suffering from acid-induced nightmares.

The $700 billion financial industry bailout now being debated is in addition to the $200 million for Fannie and Freddie, which some people have said will actually cost $100 million more, for a total of $1 trillion. How much is $1 trillion? According to the Statistical Abstract of the United States, federal expenditures on family assistance programs (ie. "welfare"; Aid to Families With Dependent Children AFDC and Temporary Assistance to Needy Families TANF) during the period from 1958 to 2005 totaled $568 million dollars. Now lots of those dollars counted for more than today's shrinking dollars, as a result of inflation, but the inflation-adjusted federal expenditure on "welfare" over nearly 50 years is apparently about $1.1 trillion.

Four years ago I was so outraged by the way the state legislature in Albany was selling out our collective future, to hand out money to privileged interests today, that I ran against them as a minor party candidate. Had I known what was going on in business, and in many people’s own lives, I wouldn’t have bothered, because what has been going on in Albany is what has been going on in our culture. We have had a long national orgy, a white collar riot, and the participans are going to make the non-participants and their children pay for the fallout.

There are a lot of Andrew Jackson quotes rolling around the internet now, mostly because of his opposition to privatized profits and socialized losses in the financial sector, and the government-backed organizations that facilitate this. Intrigued, I came upon a veto message from 1832 that, at its end, provides some general principles beyond the particular issues of his day, one that speaks to the past decade of federal and state legislation in Albany and Washington. The man on the twenty dollar bill sensed the country was going wrong because its institutions were being corrupted by special interests, and were threatened as a result. The veto message was posted by a well known Furman University professor of history, and taken from Messages and Papers of the Presidents, also posted here. In light of recent events, and the diminishment of our collective future by public and private actions over the past decade, it is well worth reading.

Kevin Powell 11,046 32.84%

Edolphus Towns 22,586 67.16%

“That is why I am proud to say I will be a candidate for Congress again in 2010. The campaign has already begun because of you”

—Kevin Powell 9/12/08

“Anybody else, I'd say what's gonna happen to you would be a lesson to you. Only you're gonna need more than one lesson. And you're gonna get more than one lesson.”

–Boss Jim Gettys in “Citizen Kane”

This is the second time (here’s the first) the opening of one of my pieces on the political travails of Hip-hop philosopher and boy genius Kevin Powell has contained a quote from the cinematic legacy of Orson Welles, a man whose talent for genius had much in common with Kevin Powell’s ego; both were exceeded only by their owner’s talent for self-destruction.

In 1775, Samuel Johnson wrote "patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundel"

Reading Sunday's NY Daily News, I think I learned what the first refuge is now.

http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/queens/2008/09/13/2008-09-13_anthony_seminerios_arrest_could_hurt_gop.html

The story speculated about how the recent indictment of Assemblyman Tony Seminerio could affect the State Senate race between Republican Seph Maltese and Democrat Joe Addabbo.

Do either of these two candidates realize what is going down? Do they have any idea what the financial situation of the country will be in when they take office? Or do they just not want to talk about it?

Perhaps by the time the debates roll around, it will be obvious enough that even the moderators will get it. Whoever wins had better work fast, because they’re only going to be there for one term. If we’re lucky, very lucky, things will be no worse than they were under Jimmy Carter and George HW Bush. Because as bad as the 1970s were, the U.S. was a net creditor at the time. Not a

The Service Nation folks provided me with a list of people I could request to interview as a blogger. I guess Governor Paterson was not available, because he was busy, because he never heard of me, or because he has heard of me. No matter. I spoke with one of my own kind instead, Dr. Robert Grimm, the Director of Research and Public Policy for the Corporation for National and Community Service, the organization that produces this report.  I asked three questions. Is there a problem of declining civic engagement in the United States? Why is the level of voluntary service so low in the New York Metro area? And did some generations let American down in this (and other regards), according to the statistics?

Earlier this week, I was confronted once again by the demons of blogdom; this time around, I found them to be both disappointing and tiring (see my column on “Eric Adams” and then view the comment section -www.r8ny.com). I still have a lot to say about Denver, and I know there are many who are waiting for my post-convention epiphany (which I have been sitting on): but suddenly I have lost my zeal. I also wanted to write a post-primary election analysis (especially dealing with Kevin Parker’s victory -the analysis of which would have surprised many), but there too the desire has gone. I have lots of info on next year’s primaries I want to share, and even a revelation or two about my recent experiences on the campaigns of Ed Towns, Cenceria Edwards and a few others; but right now I am not in a sharing mood.  

The strong emphasis by both candidates for President on military service, discussed in the previous post, could be considered a surprise given the issues that have convulsed the country in the past few years. There was, however, an unsurprising difference of emphasis in voluntary service. Senator Obama showed greater interest in federal programs to recruit and compensate social volunteers, and spoke to the need to attract people to federal civilian employment because federal agencies have been “hollowed out” in recent decades. He wants to “make government cool again.” While endorsing the expansion of organizations such as Americorp and Peace Corp, Senator McCain said “I also wanna emphasize there– it doesn’t always have to be run by the government. That’s why we also ought to understand that faith-based organizations, other volunteer organizations that are completely separate from the government, have nothing to do with the government, are amongst the most successful. So let’s not get entrapped by the idea that the government has to run these voluntary organizations and volunteer kinds of programs.”