Recommended reading: What Happened to Obama’s Passion?

It’s easier to raise public money for guns (R) and butter (D) than for science and education.  Science and education investments take a long time to show returns.  But when the returns come in, they change everything.

When the USSR launched its October surprise Sputnik, there was the blessing of right wing fear of being overtaken militarily and educated fear of being overtaken intellectually.  Presidents and policy makers were able to rally sustained support for public spending to reverse the trend, and a generation of kids grew up valuing knowledge, learning science, and dreaming the inventions you are looking at right now.

The Chinese dragon is far more devious.  Not an apparant military threat right now, China’s race to the top does not excite the passions of the short-sighted-right.  But it should.

It’s difficult not to get spooked by terms like “meltdown,” “radiation clouds,” and “radioactive leakage.” But let’s remember that nuclear reactors have operated peacefully, quietly, and safely for decades in countries from Japan to France to the United States.

Over the last five decades, there has been just one nuclear accident that caused any deaths at all. At Chernobyl, and that was a poorly designed reactor, unlike any of the ones in the United States or Japan. It had almost no safety codes or procedures.

The accident at 3 Mile Island in the United States did not actually kill anyone. There was no significant radiation leakage because in the US – as in Japan – all reactors have steel or concrete containers to prevent such leakage. That’s why there were no illness resulting from radiation after the 3 Mile island accident.

And the new plants that have been built in the last decade are safer – the OECD says 1,600 times safer than the old ones. And the 3rd generation reactors being planned now, which will be built later, are safer even than those.

Now, all energy sources have their risks when being extracted.

Oil and coal have far worse safety records than even decades-old nuclear plants. The BP oil spill, for example, was triggered by an explosion that instantly killed 11 workers and then poured 4 millions barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico.

In a thoughtful article in Slate, Will Saletan does the math and finds that if you add up all the deaths caused by oil explosions and the like, the rate of death per unit of energy extracted is 18 times worse for oil than it is for nuclear energy. With hundreds of people dying in mining accidents, coal is also much more likely to kill people working on it or around it than nuclear. And none of this counts the millions of people who get diseases and die a premature death thanks to pollution.

I know there is something about nuclear power that worries us. But it’s important not to make huge public policy decisions based on perception rather than reality.

When a plane crashes and hundreds of people die, we immediately panic and worry about flying. But we tend to forget that almost 50,000 Americans die every year in accidents on highways, making the act of getting into your car by far the most dangerous thing that an American will do every day.

We need all the sources of energy we can find. No one source is going to satisfy the world’s energy needs. Every one has some costs and some benefits. Nuclear energy can be scaled and it is clean.

We need to design the safest possible plants with the maximum number of back-up procedures. So far, that is the lesson we should draw from this tragedy in Japan.

Well said.

There hasn’t been time to contemplate where it all leads.  An Egypt-like peaceful popular revolution is not in the cards.  Nor is a return to business as usual.

It is difficult to see any other outcome than a prologed international defense of Benghazi, ending in a de facto “two Libyas” outcome.  You heard it here first.  East Libya, anyone?

Right wing politics are highly predictable. A cynical leadership rallies a foolish yahoo mob to act against their own interests, through idiot muscular metaphors, policies designed to preserve the advantages of a selfish few, and the intellectual poverty of those who vote for them. A climate of fear, domestic and international, not only helps intimidate opposition, it surges hormones that supress thought and motivate mindless acts.

It is convenient for politicians that fools cannot tell us what dark voices within move them to act. The act may be to pull a trigger, or to pull a lever on a voting machine.

That is the dark electoral secret of the Repugnant party.

A dumbed-down population is the real threat to our security and prosperity.  China has caught up (Top Scores from Shanghai Stun).  America, look out.

It was and will be the smart people who will create the industries, wealth, exports, and jobs of the future.

It is and will continue to be the dumb people who are attracted to the culture wars and live fire wars on offer by the right. Is it any wonder that the Repugnant party is consistently against good public education?  After all, who will vote for them if there’s an educated electorate?

The threat is real.  The solutions are obvious.  Bring in the best and the brightest (Give ‘em Green Cards), and train them at home.

Sputnik II?  We can only hope.

[W]e have gone so far overboard that we are beyond redemption

John C. Danforth, former Republican senator from Missouri

Whatever you may think of the policy prescriptions of the Elephant or Donkey, there is little question which party has lost its moral compass.

Traditionally, third parties have emerged on the fringes when yahoos from the far left or far right feel overly disenfranchised. Today, however, it is the broad center-right of America that has no political home. An entire political party has been hijacked by its lunatic fringe, and that fringe slaughtering its own most capable members.

Could the time be right for a new centrist party to emerge, to the right of the Donkey and to the left of the Tea-for-brains crowd?

Call it The Responsible Party.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

The truth of the matter is the government and the public are your partners and co-investors in everything you do.  They make it possible.  As rightful business partners in all your money-making activity, the public is entitled to be repaid for what they put in, and also to a share of the profits.

Whether you are a hard-working employee, a small business owner, or a large corporation, your entire operation is based on a large public subsidy, without which your success would be impossible, and you owe back a share of what you make to your business partner.

Your subsidy includes the roads and transit systems to and from your door, the education you and your employees received, the police and courts that keep others out and enforce your contracts, the regulations that keep others from fouling the air you breathe and the water you drink, and much much more.

You owe society for that investment.  Your debt includes not only paying the full cost of those benefits, but you also owe a share of the profits.  Your community invested to create the climate ripe for your hard work to flourish, and your social obligation is to return a share of the proceeds so that you get rich, and the society that invested in you gets richer, too.

Pay up and stop complaining.

Here’s the Policy Wonk Plan:

1. Extend for all under $250k, as proposed by Obama, plus

2. Extend and Expand tax break for all, but only for creating new jobs, in the form of:

• A tax holiday for all payroll related taxation for new employees (full or part-time) retained for at least one year, and
• A tax credit for all increases in venture capital investments over the prior three years.

The Repugnican leadership want you to believe that a tax break for the rich will create new jobs.  If so, let them show us the money and show us the jobs.

Our biggest immigration problem is not keeping out illegals. Our biggest immigration problem is getting highly educated Indians and Chinese to stay in America after they get their advanced degrees at American universities.

Used to be they wanted to stay; now many prefer to go home. And we do everything we can to send them back. That’s bad policy.

We need these highly trained and highly motivated individuals to create the companies and technologies of the future. How do we do it?

Give ‘em Green Cards. Earn a degree and get a Green Card.

Keith Olbermann’s suspension gives the lie to this defense.  While the rest of the news industry continues to attempt, however falteringly, to operate according to classical Columbia School of Journalism rules, Faux News continues undaunted.

No one is surprised that Faux’s Sean Hannity and Sarah Palin donate money to candidates interviewed on air, stump for candidates, and raise money for candidates.  Hannity’s cash donations include $4,800 to John Gomez, $5,000 to Michelepac.  Sarapac’s donations include $10,000 to Joe Miller, $5,000 to Lisa Mirkowsi, $5,000 to John McCain, $3,500 to Tim Green, $2,500 to Carly Fiorina, $1,000 to Tom Rooney.  Mike Huckabee’s donations include $2,400 to Doug Mayato, $2,400 to Anne Rankin, $2,400 to Daniel Webster, $2,300 to Curtis Coleman.  Neil Cavuto’s donations include $1,000 to George W. Bush.  If you are buying products advertised on Faux News, YOU made these donations.

Even if one doesn’t suspect, as many do, that NBC’s move is designed to curry favor with the resurgent Repugnant Party, it is now 100% clear that Murdoch is effectively without a challenger.

We are left with a media landscape composed of two elements, classicial unbiased journalism, which is dying a slow painful death, and right-wing propaganda profiting left and right, from advertising revenue, and, more importantly, from raping what remains of American national wealth for the benefit of a few.

NBC has no dog in this fight.  Never did.  NBC is not ideologically motivaed.  Murdoch marches on, with no one left to say boo.

Rachel Maddow Speaks Out (video)

Cohabitation holds out the possibility of centrist policies finding solid majorities in both houses.

Some define centrist pragmatically – can we fracture off enough members of the other party to get them to join us?  Some define centrist ideologically – we are the true center, and they are the extreme – if they will only join us, that will be centrist.  Quite obviously, neither of those views has any legitimate claim on the center.

Here’s my advice to members new and old who want to survive the next election: ask yourselves, how can we define legislation that addresses the most pressing problems of the nation in a way that attracts strong support from about an equal number of members of both parties, support roughly down the middle?

Such efforts can strengthen the middle against the extremes, and give members successes to take home to voters.  Those members with the potential to be seen in the middle had best take advantage of this opportunity, and make the needed compromises.  Why?  Failure to do so will invite attack from with wing-nuts of both parties, and you won’t have a defense.  A record of obstruction could play well to angry mobs, but if you’re not a credible wing-nut candidate (left or right), or don’t want to risk your political future that the looneys will control the next election, you better have a strong story to tell.

What better story than you got something done while others took cheap shots from the sidelines?  Reach across the aisle and get something done.

Our relative wealth and comfort in the world rests on a foundation of having had something that others wanted.  In the prior century, the then-center of the developed world, Europe, badly needed what America could provide – the industrial and military capacity to fight and end Europe’s internal wars.  We were richly rewarded for that effort, with global economic, political and military dominance.

Now, our conservatives continue to peddle the same export – military might and power.  However the conditions have changed.  No one is a buyer anymore, and, quite the contrary, our muscle flexing around the world is seen as unnecessary and unwanted.

Why care what others think?  Well, because our wealth depends on it.

What we need is a new export.  And the good news is we have it – if we will redirect our national resources away from military adventures and towards our best exports, high technology, high value add manufacturing, medical technology, and cultural exports are just a few examples.

Failure to refocus our resources will be tragic.  We will find our ability to manufacture at home gutted beyond repair, and that our trade and finance deficit will ultimately undermine our ability to import the goods we need from China, the oil we need from everywhere, our capacity to send the military around the world, and our ability to float the dollar as the world’s reserve currency.  We will all suffer if that occurs.

Export – or die.

Rich people will give you a job if only you will vote to lower their taxes

Rich people will stop trying to make money if they have to pay tax

War in a far off land will make you safer

Trillions for war will help the economy

Billions for roads, bridges, green energy, science, education will hurt the economy

You already have the best health care in the world so why risk breaking it (the truth is America is among the worst among all rich countries in quality, lifespan, and has the highest cost taken from your paycheck)

Private industry will give you safer food and a cleaner environment with less government regulation

Now, ask yourself, who is the real idiot – the cynical selfish creeps peddling the B.S., or you, the sucker who is buying it?

We’re not that dumb. Even those of us who have lowered ourselves to using these rhetorical florishes know, in our hearts, we resort to it only when reason will not support the cause.

We all know true centrist politics when we see it. Problem is, we haven’t seen much lately.

The resurgence of polarized news outlets may be the cause or the consequence, it is difficult to tell, but the responsibility clearly rests with every individual who apes the vitriol proposed by others. Just say no to polarization.

The antidote – see the good in the views opposed to yours, and seek common ground and agreement. This is what leads to the best public policy, what makes us strong, and what holds us together as a unified nation.

Thomas Friedman’s tax swap proposal

Tax policy is social policy – we get less of what we tax, and more of what we subsidize.  For once, both conservatives and liberals are correct about the same issue.  Our current tax scheme is exactly backwards.  We discourage personal and corporate prosperity and we encourage dumping pollution into the commons while using energy that fuels our national deficit and risks our children’s safety and climate.

Easy fix. Slash personal and corporate and personal taxation, and tax the pollution.  Net result: corporations and consumers will be unharmed,  but consumers and corporations that don’t adjust will pay more, whereas smart corporations and consumers will have the opportunity to pick up additional profits or lower prices, and fix national energy policy at the same time.

It is disingenuous for the Wall Street Journal to decry this when the investor happens to be the Treasury or the Fed.  Bloomberg got it right, quoting a Delaware investors’ lawyer, saying “…it was inevitable, and it was their own damn fault.”

This is not creeping socialism, but tough, hard, unforgiving capitalism coming back to bite its most aggressive proponents and successful beneficiaries.

Taxpayers to banks: If you wany my money to run your bank, you’ve got to agree to my conditions.  If you don’t like it, get your money elsewhere.  If you can’t find the money, and you’re insolvent, well, we’ve got the FDIC to take care of you.  Take your pick.

This time around the battle is shaping up rather much the same, with a difference. There’s a pragmatist at the helm who should not let his avant-garde control the outcome. Look for a climb-down from the White House to accept a needed restructuring of private insurance, handing business and a smattering of Republicans a compromise that looks a lot better than what they’ll get if the dig in for a fight.

Here are the necessary elements:

1. Non-Discrimination requirement, that is, like grocery stores, taxi services, or phone companies, insurers should be obligated offer each and every health plan to anyone who will take it, at the same price to all for that particular plan, regardless of such factors as pre-existing conditions, age, race, gender, genetic markers, etc;
2. Mandatory Minimum Insurance requirement, that is, each citizen should be required to carry a health plan that meets certain minimum requirements, such as covering medical emergencies;
3. Free Market requirement, that is, employers may continue to offer a short menu of health plans as they do now, but each employee should have the right to take any competitive health plan they want, with the employer contribution redirected for that purpose, and the employee capturing 100% of the savings or paying 100% of the extra cost;
4. Subsidy for poor people to help them pay for mandatory minimum health insurance. It may be necessary to create an “assigned risk” pool and a government-set premium for the minimum insurance, or a public plan to provide the mandatory minimum insurance where necessary.

Items 1 and 2 combine to prevent adverse selection on either side, and prevent individuals from externalizing their health risk to others. Item 3 enables consumer choice market forces to drive prices down and quality up in a way that the current employer choice scheme cannot. Item 4 is not that different from the “free” care poor people get now at the emergency room, so the cost to the public would be the same or better, and more controllable.

These are the necessary minimums. Democrats would be well advised to take this much now while Republicans are on the ropes, and Republicans would be well advised to do what it takes to prevent the inevitable loss of business support and ultimate socialization of the system if they fail to accept solid, meaningful reform.

Some economists are preparing Americans for a reset – a step back to lower asset values, perhaps a lower standard of living, and then a return to more moderate growth rates, fueled less vigorously by excessive leverage.  Perhaps instead they should be preparing for an economic system that will be healthy and stable as economic growth approaches a natural limit.

Israel should adopt a new publically declared, predictable, and proportionate use of force in response to Palestinian attacks.  Israel should calculate the quantity of ordinance used in new Palestinian attacks against Israel, and launch its own attacks using ordinance only up to a limit of 80% of the ordinance expended by the Palestinians.  An objective measure, such as kilograms of TNT-equivalent power, should be used.  The figures should be updated and publically announced by Israel following each attack by either side.

A policy of responding to attacks with counter-attacks that are potent, but objectively less severe, may be a more effective deterrent than alternating periods of cease-fire and excessive retaliation, and both sides may find a way to spiral down the cycle of violence.

First, someone (other than management) must have the legal authority to unilaterally write down debt and re-write labor contracts.  A bankruptcy court is the usual scheme, but the atmospherics around that scare everyone.  Congress should empower an oversight board of bankruptcy, turn-around and non-detroit auto experts to do what a bankruptcy judge can do.

Second, higher gas prices are a must.  GM will be under political pressure to build more Green cars than the market requests.  This can only succeed if the cost of gasoline is artificially kept above a certain floor.  Without higher gas prices, consumer demand will rapidly shift away from Green, and GM will be left holding the bag.  We need a gradually rising floor tax on carbon-based motor fuels.  Start at $2/gallon today, and rise towards $4 in 6 years.  That will move Detroit faster than any C.A.F.E. standard.

Recall, too, that Saudia Arabia is not going to sit still, either, while we attempt to break their monopoly.  Look for a flood of cheap oil.  It’s already begun.  In the 1970′s, the Saudis successfully scuttled a drive towards energy independence, and they’ll do so again, unless we make it impossible with a tax that puts non-oil energy at a competitive advantage.

Pat Buchanan is right to recognize this problem, although his prescription, pure protectionism, is outdated and won’t work. He is also correct in his observation that the world will be buying literally billions of automobiles in the next decades.  The Economist estimates that by 2050 the world’s automobile fleet will grow from 700 million cars today to over 3 billion, with China alone driving more cars than the entire world fleet today.  We must have a substantial piece of this market, and that is why the bailout question is so vitally important.

Think U.S. automakers don’t stand a chance?  Think again.  A record 65% of GM’s sales in the first quarter of this year were outside America.

Barack Obama put it succinctly when he said the stakeholders in the auto industry must devise together a plan to create a sustainable auto industry.  If they will do it, that’s an investment worth making.

What they would do is exactly what they have just done – lower the price to keep that from happening.  Oil producers have a lock on the market simply because the consumers have been too short sighted to stop it.  And the solution for us is so very simple.  A one-time transition to an energy cost of about $60/barrel will enable all the capital and government research spending needed to transform our energy economy.  We need a floor tax, and we need the political courage to stay with the program, even when Saudi Arabia tries to lull us to sleep again with another flood of cheap oil.

Naomi Klein’s The Shock Doctrine is required reading if you want to understand the failure of the neo-cons to deliver prosperity.  She argues persuasively that economic crises have been used, repeatedly and effectively, to short-circuit emerging democracies and disastrously divert the wealth of nations, in such extreme measure that these societies have become needlessly impoverished and hopelessly in debt.  Sound familiar?

I think it’s safe to say that many of the Chicago School neo-cons who brought these economic policies to the developing world had envisioned far more beneficial outcomes, had not understood that their policies could only be implemented by brutal and criminal means, and have yet come to grips with their failure.  Read past the polemic radical tone.  There are valuable lessons to be learned here.

Why too high?  All the yammer about supply and demand missed the fundamental: demand did indeed drive the price, but it was not demand for oil per se, only demand for oil futures from those who never intended to use the oil.  Too much cash, much of it leveraged, chasing oil futures.  Then the credit crunch, de-leveraging all around, and speculators pull their cash out of the futures market.  Thunk.  Oil returns to a price driven by true demand.

Why too low?  If we’re ever going to get off of foreign oil (a must for continued prosperity), we need a floor on oil prices.  Investors in domestic oil, wind, solar, nuclear, etc. cannot justify these projects without a reasonable assurance of a market at the end – and that means an oil price at or about $60.  Newsweek was correct in calling for a penny-a-month increase in gas taxes (same on non-motor users such as power plants), but the tax should automatically adjust down if oil rises above $60.  Floor tax.

Why too volatile?  Imagine trying to run an airline when one of your biggest costs can’t be predicted.  How many planes do you lease?  How many employees do you hire?  Imagine trying to design cars two years out – first everyone wants SUVs, then you can’t give them away, then the price of gasoline falls to half in a few weeks.  Detroit has enough problems of its own creation.  We don’t need to make it any more difficult.  Policy fix?  See above.  Floor tax.  Keep oil at $60 or more.  Use the revenue for domestic energy R&D.

Stockholders – wiped out.
Creditors – fully at risk, substantially written down, and in control.  Including Uncle Sam, who will be last in, and should be first out.
Management - the creditors get to decide.  Largely out.
Board – the creditors pick a new board.
Employees – contracts void, wages down, numbers down.  Toyota’s U.S. plants will be the benchmark.
Suppliers – ordered to continue to supply.

Good for GM and good for the country.

There are times when I am especially moved and grateful to be an American, and this election day was certainly one of those times.  Many of you have shared your congratulations and good wishes.  Thank you for that.  As one of you observed several months ago, part of the wonder of America is its ability to adapt, to change, and to correct mistakes.  After a dark period hardly exemplifying our best qualities, I hope we have begun to do that now.

The feeling of joy and hope here is palpable, on the streets, in the way people looked at each other yesterday knowing we have accomplished a great thing, and although that may be a function of the views and politics here in the … section of the country, it is perhaps most surprising to see that even among the ranks of conservatives and supporters of John McCain, many of them had tears in their eyes as they spoke on television about the historic event that has happened here, and about the remarkable leadership qualities of this individual.  Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice spoke emotionally of her pride.  Even President Bush seemed moved as he spoke of the Obama family stepping through the doors into the White House on January 20.  I will be [decade] years old in a few days, and I can tell you that, even during the dark days of Watergate and Vietnam, both of which I remember very well, when the fabric of our democracy seemed close to tearing by political division, I have never seen an election that moved so many to vote, and so many on both sides to tears.  Although only time will tell, I hope we have chosen a good leader, and that he and our nation will live up to our best qualities and ideals.  Thank you again for your thoughts and kind words.

Some of what we have seen and heard:

From the New York Times (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/05/us/politics/05global.html):

GAZA — From far away, this is how it looks: There is a country out there where tens of millions of white Christians, voting freely, select as their leader a black man of modest origin, the son of a Muslim. There is a place on Earth — call it America — where such a thing happens.

Even where the United States is held in special contempt, like here in this benighted Palestinian coastal strip, the “glorious epic of Barack Obama,” as the leftist French editor Jean Daniel calls it, makes America — the idea as much as the actual place — stand again, perhaps only fleetingly, for limitless possibility.

“It allows us all to dream a little,” said Oswaldo Calvo, 58, a Venezuelan political activist in Caracas, in a comment echoed to correspondents of The New York Times on four continents in the days leading up to the election.

Tristram Hunt, a British historian, put it this way: Mr. Obama “brings the narrative that everyone wants to return to — that America is the land of extraordinary opportunity and possibility, where miracles happen.”

But wonder is almost overwhelmed by relief. Mr. Obama’s election offers most non-Americans a sense that the imperial power capable of doing such good and such harm — a country that, they complain, preached justice but tortured its captives, launched a disastrous war in Iraq, turned its back on the environment and greedily dragged the world into economic chaos — saw the errors of its ways over the past eight years and shifted course.

….

Former Secretary of State Colin Powell “wept at Obama victory”: http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/politics/2008/11/05/colin.powell.reaction.cnn