Never have the policies and politics of this country been more frustrating. Not only to myself, but to everybody: approval ratings for the president, Congress, and both political parties are cratering. Is it any surprise? Nothing is getting done. The American house is on fire, Republican leadership is arguing whether now is a good time to finally hold that garage sail, and Obama, meekly pointing to the flames on the roof, capitulates and sells the water hose to the guy across the street. One side is locked into a worldview that is increasingly distanced from reality (the leading Republican candidate for president is campaigning on chain emails, apparently never hearing of Snopes). The other side has thrown up its hands and bothers less and less to fight. The winners are pundits and inside-the-Beltway types who get paid to spill ink and electrons talking about what ails us. The losers are the people who are still unemployed because the U.S. can’t bother fixing its own problems.

Read the rest of this entry »

• Current Mood: Holiday
• Currently Listening To: "Golden Years", David Bowie
• Currently Reading: "Fooled by Randomness", Nassim Taleb

Perhaps this isn’t the great philosophical difference between people that I think it is, but I find it significant enough to believe that it may explain at least some of the difference in people’s worldviews…

Working for the legislature, I get to hear a lot of comments and criticisms from people who are not always thrilled about what is going on at the Capitol. One complaint that always makes me chuckle is that “teachers and public employees get too much time off and benefits!” I chuckle not because it’s actually up in the air whether public workers are overpaid in salary and benefits combined compared to similar jobs in the private sector, but because I think people are looking at it from the wrong direction: the problem isn’t that some people get too much vacation, it’s that too many workers don’t get enough.

When I think about the vacation/benefits issue, I think, “Yes, absolutely, all workers should have good health insurance and mandatory vacation, just like other grown-up countries!” However, other people see the same issue and think, “Some people have better benefits than I do. They don’t deserve them, they should have the same terrible benefits I have to deal with!” Instead of bringing everybody up to the same level, they want to drag people down.

Like I said, maybe it’s not a huge difference. But it happens consistently enough such that I think it does represent a view of the world. Some people see the “undeserving” everywhere. Me, I think that we do better when we lift everybody up.

• Current Mood: Punchy
• Currently Listening To: "One Slip", Pink Floyd

So Tim Pawlenty has dropped out of the race for President. I’m not sure if anybody is really surprised; certainly, nobody should have expected a different outcome (I certainly didn’t). Which makes you wonder exactly why nobody bothered to tell him, although as long as the paychecks were still being signed I’m sure his advisors would have told him anything.

Read the rest of this entry »

• Current Mood: Chilling
• Currently Listening To: "Long, Long, Long", The Beatles

The quickest explanation of why we are in such a huge economic contraction/retrenchment is this: the real estate bubble of the aughts gave more equity to consumers in the form of rising home prices. They turned this equity into cash to fuel their spending. Now the bubble has burst, consumers have more debt than their homes are worth, and so they have cut back on spending and don’t plan on increasing it until they pay off debt. I’m avoiding how the bubble got inflated, who was responsible, etc. for simplicity. It’s boiled down two pretty much one thing: too much debt.

Read the rest of this entry »

• Current Mood: Rested
• Currently Listening To: "Young Americans", David Bowie

I didn’t watch last night’s Republican debate in Iowa since it sounded about as much fun as, well, listening to Rick Santorum and Herman Cain and Michelle Bachmann wax political. The highlights were more than enough for me, and even those few minutes had me utterly confused and depressed.

Read the rest of this entry »

• Current Mood: Friday
• Currently Listening To: "all in the name of grace", Eddy Burke
• Just Watched: Kramer vs. Kramer

On first blush, the results of yesterday’s recall elections in Wisconsin would appear to be disheartening for Democrats. They won only two out of the six elections, one short of taking over the state senate. The goal of changing the dynamics in the legislature was not achieved, and so some may feel it was all for naught. However, if you think about it a bit more, the results can only be a victory for those activists who set the recalls in motion earlier this year.

Read the rest of this entry »

The economy is in terrible shape these days, not only in the U.S., but around the globe. And there doesn’t seem to be any way out of it. In Europe, the debt crisis clearly calls out for two solutions, default and inflation. Unfortunately, these are anathema to the ECB, leaving the continent to muddle along until the zombie banks simply run out of brains to ingest and it all falls apart. Here, consumer spending is going nowhere (although luxury spending is just fine), while corporations sit on mounds of cash they aren’t spending. It’s hard to see how the market is efficiently allocating capital right now. It’s almost as if the tragedy of the commons is real and requires government intervention to take some of that capital and redirect it to projects that benefit everybody, like infrastructure.

I don’t see how we are going to get out of this slump anytime soon, so we may as well shoot for the moon. Why not a goal to make the country carbon-neutral by 2050? Sure, it would be a monumental undertaking, with no guarantee of success. But it would put us on the forefront of technology that is going to happen sooner or later, and what we are doing at present clearly isn’t working. Is there anybody who can provide the leadership to arouse the public support for a project like this comparable to the Apollo Program? Our country’s future may depend on it.

• Current Mood: Morning
• Currently Listening To: "The Man Who Sold The World", Nirvana
• Just Watched: Casino

One of my most talented friends, Murali Balaji, whom I have known since we were sitting in Russian class and cheering the Vikings as U of M undergrads many years ago, has started a new blog (long overdue, I say). In one of his first blog posts, he talks about the knowledge disparity in this country, and how he is in the rarefied atmosphere of academia, much different from where most people spend their lives. It definitely resonated, as I feel that I am on the same side of that widening gorge.

Read the rest of this entry »

• Current Mood: Weekend
• Currently Listening To: "Born in the U.S.A.", Bruce Springsteen

The U.S. defeated the Fascists, built the Interstate Highway System, put a man on the Moon, and heralded in the end of Communism and the spread of Democracy. These were major undertakings, but they were successfully completed, and with a lot of government help to boot! These days, however, all we hear from Republicans is “No We Can’t”. No we can’t raise the debt ceiling. No we can’t put people back to work. No we can’t fulfill the promises we’ve made to seniors. Enough is enough.

Read the rest of this entry »

• Current Mood: Fire and brimstone
• Currently Listening To: "The Burning of the Midnight Lamp", Jimi Hendrix

It’s stories like these that make me wonder if having a rational, adult conversation about budget priorities is even possible. People like roads. They use them every day. Most people would say that the quality of roads in this country is not great. And yet nobody wants to raise the federal gas tax, despite the fact that it has remained unchanged for eighteen years.

Read the rest of this entry »

• Current Mood: Hot
• Currently Listening To: "Casey Jones", The Grateful Dead