This week I’m going to rant about some issues that the new Obama administration should, in my humble opinion, address. However, it would be hard to post this without commenting on the Iraq/U.S. status of forces agreement approved on Thursday by the Iraqi parliament. This is, in essence, a timetable for withdrawal, setting an end date for our occupation of Iraq – something Bush repeatedly refused to do, used time and again to bait war opponents as being surrender monkeys, unsupportive of the troops, etc. (“Waving the white flag of surrender” as Sarah Palin put it.) So all of that…. was a lot of hot air again, right? Did you catch that too? Thought so.

Okay, back to the O-man. As I wrote last week, Gaza and the D.R. of Congo are festering sores that should be attended to with all speed. There are many other foreign policy nightmares to dispel, and again, I don’t think I need to mention Iraq and Afghanistan as part of that “short” list. Let’s make the list a little longer:

Russia. One thing that is creeping up on us gradually is the threat of a renewed cold war with Russia. While a McCain presidency would most certainly have been a disaster on this front, we are certainly not out of the woods. Russia has a massive nuclear arsenal, nearly on par with our own. The rising price of oil has helped that country climb out of the economic hole that we helped put them in after the fall of the Soviet Union. The rising distrust they have for us is largely the product of our support for the application in the early 1990s of economic shock therapy and the resulting demographic disaster that took place, our insistence on expanding NATO (what was a hostile military alliance) deep into eastern Europe and right to their borders, our idiotic deployment of the dysfunctional boondoggle known as “missile defense” in Poland and the Czech Republic, and our enthusiasm and funding for creatures like Saakashvili, who started the conflict in Georgia this past spring. Obama could do worse than to reverse this policy before it gets beyond asinine.

Venezuela. Related to the above in terms of manufactured threats, the Bush Administration and many others in Washington – including Democrats – despise Chavez for the simple reason that he cannot be intimidated by them. They tried to remove him in a coup, supported by the U.S. and Britain, which quickly backfired. Now they treat him like a dictator, though in electoral terms he has far more legitimacy than George W. Bush, having prevailed in contested elections and plebiscites a number of times. Our leaders deplore his tendency towards empowering the poor and chipping away at the privileges the traditionally U.S.-oriented elite sectors of Venezuelan society, but what REALLY irks them is his material support for independent development and greater regional integration in Latin America. My guess is that most of Obama’s advisors will be on the same side as Bush’s Latin America team with regard to Chavez, judging by what the O-man has said himself. And now, in true cold war fashion, they are making hay out of his arms purchase from Russia and the presence of Russian war ships in “our” hemisphere.

More to follow next week, but as I’m sure you’re aware, the institutional tendencies towards confrontation run strong and deep in our foreign policy. There will be plenty of opportunities to speak up in the next four years.

luv you,

jp

There’s been a lot of talk in the pundit universe and surrounding blogosphere about cabinet appointments. I suppose that’s the kind of news I should expect to hear between now and January 20, aside from reports on the continuing economic disaster, now rivaling Iraq as Bush’s biggest fuckup ever (if not in lives, certainly in dollars lost). For my own part, I’ll reserve judgment until more of the Obama administration is in place. I’d like to spend this longish constitutional intermission between election day and inauguration day talking about the issues that I think should be a priority for the new regime. Not that they will listen, but… here it comes, Mr. President-Elect.

This week, foreign policy.

The Congo War. This is the deadliest conflict since World War II (unless, perhaps, you roll all of the Indochina wars together), and it has gotten very little attention in our national media. This is pretty typical treatment for sub-Saharan Africa, but honestly… more than 5 million people have died over the past 10 years, and it’s still going. The war is often portrayed as impossibly complex and abstruse, but at its root are some very comprehensible motivations. The D.R. of Congo is a Western Europe-sized treasure house of mineral wealth, holding most of the world’s cobalt, as well as massive deposits of coltan and other materials necessary for the maintenance of our 21st-Century technology-obsessed consumer lifestyles. Whoever is doing the actually killing and mass rape at any given time – renegade Rwandan generals or Congolese government troops – these minerals continue to flow into our insatiable industrial economies, just as they did during Mobutu’s and King Leopold’s times. Seems to me that Obama’s foreign policy team could do worse than to make this war a priority, even if it isn’t costing U.S. lives. They could start by dropping the idiotic idea of creating an Africa Command for our military and taking a good hard look at U.S. companies – like Freeport McMoran – who do business in the Congo.

Israel – Palestine. The conflict in Israel-Palestine has run through eleven presidencies without resolution. Will Obama’s be the twelfth? I’m not sanguine about the prospects for an equitable resolution with Rahm Emmanuel, Dennis Ross, and Martin Indyk at the O-man’s ear. One can only hope that the President-Elect is smart enough and compassionate enough to recognize that what the Israeli government is doing right now, particularly in Gaza, constitutes a serious crime against humanity. There is only one obvious solution to this conflict and it’s based on the pre-June 1967 borders. Everyone knows this to be true, but we are frozen in the stalemate established by Nixon, Kissinger, and the Israeli government more than three decades ago. At the very least, Obama needs to apply some pressure to Tel Aviv to take the thumb screws off of those many thousands of families struggling to survive in Gaza, the world’s largest open-air prison. Something like this can only happen if people across our nation make their voices heard in support of that imprisoned population.

I’ve got more, but I’ll stop. Obama’s got a lot on his plate right now – don’t want to burn the guy out this early. Tune in next week, Barack-o. I’m just getting warmed up.

luv u,

jp

Yes, the Bush Administration is rolling to a close – sprinting to the finish line, as Junior has said – and they seem remarkably unfazed by a record of failure unsurpassed in modern presidential history. Just this past week Bush took the stage at the global economic summit in Washington and defended “free market” capitalism, “free” trade, and related virtues so dramatically discredited of late, warning his fellow national leaders not to depart too drastically from the neoliberal order concocted by Washington and implemented by the I.M.F. and World Bank. I was not in the room, but I imagine there were a few grimaces, maybe a laugh or two, and perhaps a lot of inattention during Bush’s remarks. Honestly, who is going to listen to the captain of the titanic as he lectures everyone on marine safety? How many of those people have one of those “Bush’s Last Day” countdown clocks on their desks? (Or wish they had one?)

Irony department: As Bush argued for hewing to the I.M.F./World Bank line, the I.M.F. released a report that was critical of the United States’ massive trade deficit… criticism which, of course, the U.S. can blithely ignore, in as much as we are an extremely wealthy nation and accept orders from no one. For the poorer nations, well, there are ways of making them cooperate, and any departure from the neoliberal order can bring consequences, often grave ones. This sounds like a double standard, but as Noam Chomsky and others have pointed out many times, it’s actually a very consistent single standard – wealth enjoys privileges. The “Washington Consensus” and the international institutions that enforce it were created by America and its rich international partners expressly to benefit themselves. Who will respect this system now that it has crippled its creators in much the same way as it has its subjects in the developing world?

It does seem as though people are becoming openly contemptuous of the administration’s financial team, in particular, in the closing months. Even ordinarily reserved public broadcasting was giving Treasury Secretary Paulson what passes for a hard time this past week, with somewhat prickly questioning coming from the likes of Robert Siegel and Jim Lehrer, for chrissake. Paulson and his assistant secretary Neel Kashkari have both been grilled by Congress (again, in a somewhat less incisive fashion than in previous decades, but nevertheless). Everybody is taking swings at them because public faith in the administration is so abysmally low… and with good reason. It’s pretty easy to shoot holes in the $700 billion bailout plan(s), which seems to be evolving by the minute. What amazes me is that, with states facing something like $100 billion in red ink, they don’t seem to show any impetus towards sending some of that money back to state legislatures just to shore up essential services. I mean, if we’re spending like sailors to get the economy going again, shouldn’t we at least consider a state government bailout? I’ve yet to hear it suggested by anyone other than economist Robert Pollin. (Would that Obama would make him treasury secretary…)

Oh, well. It’s nearly “over” time for them. Let’s try to make certain they don’t sink the ship before they jump overboard.

luv u,

jp

Looks like Nate Silver of fivethirtyeight.com was right. Never would have thought it. Barack Obama winning North Carolina? Virginia? Florida? Astounding. Pretty solid victory for a Democrat, I must say. (It bears remembering that Bill Clinton never broke 50% of the popular vote.) I will admit to a certain divided sentiment going into this election. On the one hand, it felt inevitable that Obama would win – not so much because of the polling, but because he just seemed like the person for this moment. On the other, I just found it hard to believe that this country would elect an African American guy named Barack Hussein Obama President of the United States. Up until the last couple of years, I’d always assumed that the first black president – if ever there was to be one at all – would be a Republican/conservative hawkish type, like Colin Powell…. you know, offset the “otherness” with a healthy dose of jingoistic cultural hegemony. But hey, w.t.f., so much for that. I guess it’s true until it’s not, like sitting Vice Presidents never win. Now … there’s going to be a black liberal Democrat in the White House this January.

Readers of this blog (all five of you) know that I have significant political differences with Obama and, more generally, with the Democratic party. But Tuesday was a source of both joy and relief to me. Joy after eight years of Bush and an even longer stretch of just plain bad government, descending into catastrophe over the last two terms. Relief that a hot head like McCain is not going to be driving the ship of state over the falls, or crashing it like one of his planes. I felt a little bit of this when Clinton won the first time, though I was never as comfortable with big Bill as I am with Obama. I suppose I experienced a kind of visceral charge out of, for once, pulling a lever with someone’s name on it and having that someone end up president. That didn’t count for much. And I can’t say that I was in a gloating mood around the McCain voters the next day… though I did leave the Obama lawn sign up for the rest of the day. (If I could endure the fool for eight years, they can stand that sign for a few hours.)

As it happens, there’s a personal dimension to the success of the Obama campaign. One of the first people to talk to me about the Illinois Senator was a neighbor, a retired school teacher named Lynn Beaton. He lent me Obama’s most recent book, actually, which I have yet to read (and yet to return). Sadly Lynn died of a heart attack last year, but since then it has almost seemed as though he were observing the race from afar, coaxing it along. Every time I thought Obama really didn’t stand a chance, he would pull it out somehow, and I’d think about Lynn. When my wife Karen and I went into the voting booth this past Tuesday, we both thought of him as we pulled that lever. How he must be smiling right now… and I don’t mean at all that stuff about Palin’s wardrobe (though he’d probably get a kick out of that, too). For all it means to so many people, I’ll always think of this election as Lynn’s. He was out ahead of most of them.

Anyway, congratulations to all those who wanted this to happen. Now the work begins.

luv u,

jp

All right, already. The general election is Tuesday next, and I hope you’re all planning on voting. Unless of course you’re voting for Admiral McCain – if so, please just stay home. There, that’s done it. Election over.

Not quite. Would that it were that easy. Of course, as is usually the case, people generally to the left of the political center have to overcome themselves as well as the legions on the right – legions of pre-organized churchgoing Republicans who march out to the polls each and every election and pull the lever or punch the card or touch the icon next to the biggest caveman’s name. (We’ve seen the results.) The liberal-left does not come in simple, pre-organized packages like this – neither do the folks in the natural constituencies for leftward political appeals, such as the poor and working class. We’re constantly carping at one another. We splinter in so many different ways.

A lot of people far to the left, like me, are disgruntled with Obama’s tepid positions on issues we feel strongly about. Understandably so – these are crucial issues of war and prosperity, health and civil liberties, etc. Still, I intend to vote for Obama and encourage you like-minded folks to do the same. In fact, I’m actively working for his election. Here’s why: McCain. He’s certainly the best argument for voting for Barack Obama. I don’t know about any of you, but the thought of having McCain in the White House after eight years of Bush/Cheney is enough to make me scream. This man is all over the road. He lurches from one thing to the next. His vaunted foreign policy credentials are bogus; just the fact that McCain’s taking advice from Randy Scheunemann, a prominent booster of Ahmed Chalabi six years ago, should be enough to convince anyone that his administration will be like a third Bush term. (Scheunemann looks like a prime candidate for National Security Advisor or some senior State Department post.)

McCain’s economic team is no better, hawking the usual G.O.P. prescription of cutting rich people’s taxes, gutting social programs, and glutting the war machine. In as much as that brain trust is likely to be headed up by UBS exec. Phil Gramm, former senator, and primary architect of the current financial meltdown. He would no doubt be joined by Joe the Right-Wing Talk Radio Wingnut (and unlicensed plumber), who is full of great ideas and is, in McCain’s words, a “national hero” and the Senator’s “role model.” (Honest.) Since presidencies are largely about the people the successful candidate drags with him to Washington, this does not augur well for a McCain administration.

Sure, Obama’s got a lot of points that irk a leftist like me. (The fact that Rashid Khalidi is somehow being used to “slime” Obama merely by his being in the same room as him at some point is astonishing to me.) But he’s marginally closer to my way of thinking than any Democratic nominee in quite a few years. I have less trepidation about voting for him than I did with either Kerry or Gore, frankly. And in a zero-sum match-up against McCain, I’ll vote Obama. I encourage you to do the same. Just don’t let it be your only political act of the next four years.

Let’s pull this thing out, folks. Otherwise it’s going to be another long four years.

luv u,

jp

All right – I was listening to journalist James Bamford on Democracy Now! talk about his new book on the NSA, The Shadow Factory, and it has really made me angry. Part of what is so irritating about this is that it isn’t even considered significant news – that people have become so inured to the notion of a government tapping their phones, reading their email, transcribing their private conversations, and archiving them for whatever future use they may want to put them to. For chrissake, these fuckers in the Bush White House directed the NSA to work with companies like AT&T and Verizon – companies that profit from our business – to sift through our correspondence without any limits, to the point where staffers at the NSA were actually passing around recordings of intimate phone calls between members of our military deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan and their spouses and partners back home. Hey, Charlie – get a load of this one! What the fuck.

But it’s far worse than just an invasion of privacy. In accord with typical Fortune 500 practice, the telecom “giants” outsourced the actual data collection and analysis to foreign-connected firms, including two companies named Narus and Verint, both founded in Israel. Verint can boast of a founder and former CEO who is currently on the lamb in Namibia to avoid prosecution for felony charges of fraud and other violations. Both companies have extensive relationships with intelligence services in anti-democratic and repressive regimes the world over. Bamford also tells of the NSA’s pre-9/11 fuck-ups, including not informing the FBI that two Al Qaeda 9/11 hijackers under surveillance by the NSA were living in Los Angeles and, later, within spitting distance of the NSA headquarters in Laurel, Maryland. (The hijackers even frequented the same restaurants and Gold’s Gym as NSA staffers.) Even more bone-chilling for me was his description of how NSA analysts in Georgia determine targets in Iraq and Afghanistan – i.e. houses to bomb or invade – based on sloppy translations of communications intercepts and often reckless assumptions about what is being said. So people are killed, wounded, and incarcerated on the basis of snap decisions made in a building thousands of miles away.

This obsession with all-encompassing surveillance and an expansion of our ability to project deadly force anywhere on the globe with the casual push of a button – it is all intimately intertwined. This has been the project of the U.S. government for at least the last decade, probably longer. It involves a massive investment in the technology of death – sophisticated unmanned drones, orbital launch platforms, etc., all capable of reaching any point on the planet nearly instantaneously whenever our interests are threatened, in a manner so easy and safe that even Cheney could do it. Those “interests,” by the way, include economic considerations, obstruction of trade, disruption of shipping or energy supplies, and so on. So this is the 21st Century equivalent of gunboat diplomacy, executed with a simplicity once seen only in television dramas. “Find the enemy. Kill the enemy.” In what is often called the most important election of our lifetimes, I have yet to hear this issue addressed by the major party candidates. What will either of them do about this steady movement toward the establishment of a global police state for that less-fortunate 70% of humanity?

Kind of seems like the answer is “nothing”. That’s why we need to push a little harder on this.

luv you,

jp

Last debate of the presidential season this past week – #49, I believe – and it was kind of hideous, in my view. Someone in the McCain campaign must have given their man the word to look at Obama, not just once, but frequently. And for god’s sake, don’t look too angry… try to smile from time to time, even when you’re looking at the Muslimy Kenyan guy who hangs with terrorists. Well, McCain appeared to have taken all this advice a bit too literally. For long periods while Obama was speaking, the Republican nominee leered at his opponent with a strange, pasted-on smile, leaning back stiffly in his chair, his eyes glassy, almost zombie-like at times. I know I’ve commented on this before, but McCain looks for all the world like someone applying anger management techniques in the most exhausting way. He has that tendency to deliver a speech in that slow, sing-song fashion, like he’s talking to preschoolers just before nap time. It’s like somebody squeezed a wolverine into a rabbit suit – that’s the John McCain I saw Wednesday night.

Of course, a lot went unsaid and I don’t know why, except that maybe neither candidate feels all that strongly about any of it. Stuff like, well… Iraq, a war that’s still killing and maiming way too many people. (Don’t think so? Look at Juan Cole’s regular synopsis of news from the region.) I know this was a “domestic issues” debate, but really… it can go pretty much anywhere the candidates want it to go. Why didn’t Obama ask McCain if he opposes the draft “security pact” that calls for total withdrawal of U.S. forces by the end of 2011? (Can you say “timetable”?) Presumably McCain opposes that – let’s get him on the record, eh?

How about Social Security? Not much, if anything, said in these last three debates, though I’ve learned that “Joe the plant”… I mean, “Joe the (right-wing talk show regular) plumber” thinks it was a bad idea. This very useful information aside, voters have been provided with virtually no information about either candidates intentions regarding S.S., particularly McCain’s rehash of the perennial G.O.P. plan to save the program by bleeding it to death. McCain doesn’t believe current workers should pay into a fund that supports current retirees…. but that’s precisely how S.S. works. It isn’t designed to individual retirement accounts – it’s designed to be a guaranteed minimum supplementary pension for any worker and/or spouse who reaches retirement age, regardless of whether they’ve been lucky investors or not. (And, as such, it’s been an immensely successful program, keeping old folks out of abject poverty for more than sixty years.) Like all Republicans and many blue-dog Democrats, McCain hates the idea and would rather hand the trust fund money over to the Wall Street pirates he now excoriates on the campaign trail, so that if a worker nearing retirement encounters a downturn (like right now) or is just unlucky in health or fortune, s/he can go to the soup kitchen for his/her pension.

There’s a lot else that wasn’t discussed – missile defense, private military contractors, politicization of the Justice Department, domestic spying, arbitrary detention, pre-emptive war, etc. What did get discussed, aside from the opinions of “Joe the plant”, was McCain’s idea of what constitutes a threat to the very “fabric of our democracy” – i.e. a volunteer organization like ACORN – and the fact that the “woman’s health” exception in anti-abortion legislation is some kind of extremist pro-abortion dodge. Sweet guy.

Oh yes… and Bill Ayres is a “terrorist”. Like McCain friend G. Gordon Liddy. Like every Republican’s friend Luis Posada Carriles. Like McCain booster Oliver North. Like still-president George W. Bush.

luv u,

jp

Skipped a week on you. Well, no sweat, friends, because today I’m loaded for bear. And no, it’s not just because the Republican party is playing their usual race-baiting, terror-scare election game (no surprise). It’s also because our two running wars are politically off the table, or – worse yet – are seen somehow as a stronger issue for that septuagenarian crank McCain, who was dead wrong on Iraq from the beginning and shows every indication of making the same type of error again and again.

I read an Associated Press article the other day that nearly blew the top of my head off. The Bush administration is still negotiating its “security pact” or status of forces agreement with the government of Iraq, of course, and the Iraqi position is that they want the last U.S. troops to leave their country by the end of 2011, unless they request us to stay (and we, of course, agree). Our negotiators are trying to talk them out of it. Why the fuck are they doing that? And why the fuck won’t the press and the politicians bring that point up a bit more often? If Iraq wants us out, why disabuse them of that notion?

This should be a problem for McCain. If it hadn’t been for him and the administration, our military people (including our National Guard, which never should have been sent there) might have been out of Iraq by now, or at least well on their way. The “surge” is just a stage prop for McCain – it has had little to do with the marginal reduction of violence in Iraq, and a whole lot to do with the scores of Americans and god-knows-how many Iraqis killed since its implementation more than a year ago. Violence is down (not gone) because a) the Mehdi Army is observing a cease fire, b) many Sunni insurgents chose to join the “Awakening Councils” and take the Americans’ money rather than continue fighting a civil conflict they were destined to lose, and c) ethnic cleansing in Iraq is substantially complete, with the country (and particularly Baghdad) divided into sectarian enclaves, some walled off from one another. The place is still a tinder box where people fear to wander out of their own neighborhoods and killings occurring at what would be considered a sickening pace anywhere else. (See Juan Cole’s blog for daily news out of that sorry country.)

Then there are the refugees – millions of them in Syria and Jordan. Most will likely never return home again. Their neighborhoods have been overrun by partisans of another sectarian group, their homes taken over, their lives threatened. The A.P. ran a story the other day about an Iraqi embassy program in Syria offering a free trip home for refugee families, plus incentives totaling about $1,800 U.S. This past Tuesday they opened a registration center in Damascus – no one showed up. Bupkis. This will be a problem for some time to come, and I suspect these refugee populations will not only strain the resources of the host countries (one of which – Syria – is being scapegoated and strangled by us) but provide a rich breeding ground for future extremists. Perhaps some of Hosni Mubarak’s “1000 Bin Ladens” resulting from the Iraq war will be raised in these camps.

Still, McCain assures us that the surge is “working”, that victory is at hand, and that a democratic Iraq will reduce Iranian influence. Is he lying or just stupid? Iraq is a majority Shiite country (like Iran) ruled by political parties once exiled in Iran (one of the main coalition parties – the former SCIRI – was formed in Iran). Democracy can only mean closer relations between the two former belligerents. (McCain – if you’re confused, ask Lieberman.)

Bottom line, to quote the late great Molly Ivins: Get. Out. Now. Why the hell isn’t Obama saying this?

luv u,

jp

Okay, now this is getting very strange. This is reminiscent of what my wife and I euphemistically referred to back in 2000 as the “election show” – the recount fiasco. Only this time the meltdown is happening before the voting begins. Holy jeebus – here we are in the midst of an economic train wreck that any fool could have seen coming from about a hundred miles away, and just as our bonehead president is about to close on a bailout deal, Admiral John McCain melodramatically “suspends his campaign” two days before the first presidential debate and declares that he is going to apply his renowned financial acumen to the negotiations. Next thing anyone knows, the congressional Republicans are bailing on their president’s plan, raising additional provisions (like their perennial favorite, another capital gains tax cut) and digging in their heals less than a day after their leadership indicated a deal was at hand. Mission accomplished, admiral!

Is it just me, or does McCain seem way too mercurial a figure to be trusted with the presidency, particularly at a time like this? I could almost see some sense in his rushing back to Washington if he served on any of the key committees (or if he had planned to even say anything at the White House meeting, which apparently he didn’t), but a knee-jerk move like this appears motivated only by political considerations. It was certainly the “you kids get off my lawn” McCain we saw at Friday night’s debate, gripping the podium like it was his fighter/bomber flight controls, grimacing hideously like a man trying to stick to his anger management strategies, and refusing to say a single good word about – or even look at – his opponent through the entire 97 minutes. His petulance made him, if anything, more vulnerable on issues that he shouldn’t own by any stretch of the imagination. If it weren’t for the sad fact that Democrats – Obama included – needlessly give ground to the Republicans on many of the most important issues of our times, there might well have been a knock-out on Friday.

But again – this is bizarro land. How could Iraq possibly be a positive issue for McCain? Even if he insists on taking credit for reducing violence in Iraq through his support of the “surge” (a crock of shit, but more on that later), he’s dodging the judgment issue on the much larger question of invading Iraq in the first place. That – not the surge – was the most important foreign policy question of the last 8 years, and he was dead wrong. McCain pushed for it, voted for it, supported it to the hilt, and the result is more than 4,000 dead Americans, hundreds of thousands of dead Iraqis, millions of refugees, a wrecked country, and a new ally for McCain’s despised Iranian regime. If that’s what victory looks like to you, vote McCain/Palin. Trust me, he and his Alaskan sidecar would get us into new and even more exciting military adventures, I’m sure. (She certainly appears to think war with Russia is a real option. Perhaps it’s her rapture-obsessed extremist Christianity at work, hoping to bring about blessed Armageddon.)

Foreign policy is supposed to be McCain’s “wheelhouse.” All I can say is, if this guy ends up president, they’d better give him the kind of wheelhouse Captain Wrongway Peachfuzz had in Rocky and Bullwinkle – one in which none of the controls are connected to anything. That’s the only way we would be likely to get through his administration alive.

luv u,

jp

Some mighty trees have fallen this week in the investment world. Lehman Brothers and Merrill Lynch, two of the most recognizable names in the multi-trillion dollar gambling casino we call Wall Street, are now no more. This is a meltdown of epic proportions – something on the scale of what had been predicted in “activist” literature over the past few years. Such a large portion of the world economy rests on a foundation of speculative investment, much of which is driven by impossibly complex financial instruments that effectively obscure the very concept of ownership and liability. The problem was a long time in the making, but it gained considerable steam after Congress voted in 2000 to gut the Glass Steagall act, eliminating the fire wall that existed between commercial and investment banking and essentially deregulating large swaths of the financial services industry. This action made possible the vast market growth of mortgage-backed securities and abstruse devices like credit default swaps that proliferated in the free-for-all atmosphere legislated by the likes of Phil Gramm, former Texas Senator, now a senior economics adviser to the McCain Campaign and quite possibly the next Treasury Secretary.

So now we’re on the brink of committing trillions of dollars in taxpayer money to make the whole corrupted mess solvent again. Junior to the rescue! Clearly Wall Street was buoyed by the news – you could practically see them uncorking champagne on the trading floors. What this means for the rest of us, however, is more of what we’ve seen previously – namely, federal money that should be going into schools and bridges and health care and other public goods will be siphoned off to prop up private enterprises dedicated to enriching a privileged few. It’s hard to imagine that neo-liberal privatizers in either major party aren’t pleased by this development. This will make public investment in health coverage, infrastructure redevelopment, and even Social Security less likely if not impossible. It represents, after all, a commitment of funds twice as large as the cost (so far) of the Iraq war (which is itself about 500 times and counting as large as the administration had predicted it would cost, so I wouldn’t hold them to those numbers). So whoever wins in November, you’re likely to hear, “Sorry, folks… we’re out of money.”

This couldn’t have worked out better if they’d planned it. The entire mission of the Bush Administration appears to have been one of crashing the U.S. government and making severe cutbacks on social programs inevitable. Because programs like Social Security and Medicare are popular, there’s no other politically feasible way to derail them than to empty the treasury of funds, then shrug and turn your pockets inside-out. Fortunately, Bush’s friends in the high-rolling investment community (fellow MBAs, many of them) have seen to it quite nicely. Now we will all underwrite their bad investment decisions, secure their bad loans, and take the hit on the defaults. And if profit is to be made in any of these enterprises, you can be sure that it will not accrue to the benefit of ordinary citizens. This is something like what used to be called “lemon socialism” – essentially privatize the profits and socialize the losses. And you can be sure Bush will be serving it up like lemonade.

Just bear in mind – these Wall Street firms are the same ones that would have managed privatized social security accounts, if Bush and friends had had their way. We don’t need that kind of socialism.

luv u,

jp