Should "Occupy Wall Street" Become "Dismantle Wall Street?"

I've been paying close attention to the Occupy Wall Street movement in America and other parts of the world. Could we be experiencing an "Arab Spring" right here in our own backyard?

Well, maybe. But it's hard to figure out what these American kids are really asking for? Mainly because, they won't say. They produce a wide-ranging list of social cures, many which seem to lead towards socialism and away from free market capitalism to the casual observer. For me, that's a non-starter. I love capitalism and, being from Canada originally, am no fan of anything that smells like Trudeau-style socialism.

But what if we refocused on the initially defined villian for a minute - Wall Street. The true extent of the global damage that these clowns inflicted on the world was not apparent to me until I read the book "Boomerang" by Michael Lewis. Wall Street "geniuses" intentionally wound up a giant time bomb of free-flowing money that not only wreaked havoc in the U.S. but in many other countries as well. Iceland tried to remake itself as a investment bank, using the collateralized debt obligations (CDOs) from Wall Street, bankrupting itself in the process. Ireland caught the real estate bubble fever and, using free money from the U.S. investment banks, created enormous debt for its banks, and, subsequently, the Irish taxpayers. And, most damningly, the Wall Street firms cynically played the German banks for suckers right up until the entire debt crisis came crashing down.

So what should we do with these assholes? I, personally, am not a fan of political witch hunts. I have no interest in tracking down "the guy" who is responsible for it all and throwing him in jail for twenty years. There is no "one guy." It's the whole Wall Street system.

I propose that we immediately begin engineering a "Dismantle Wall Street" policy in the U.S.. Here's what we should do:

• Execute a one-time fine against all the Wall Street firms, the maximum amount that will still allow them to continue operations but that will help bail our federal government out of the mess it is in (at least a drop in the bucket).
  


• Break up all Wall Street firms into tiny little shops maybe 1/50th the size they are now. Dismantle the fucking place. Wall Street dudes are so well known for their highly competitive nature, well, let's see it! Compete against one another as 600 or 700 itty bitty firms and let's see you tear each other apart. No investment bank needs to be $45B. If ever an anti-trust break was required in our history, this is it.


• Increase transparency of derivatives. I know some of this is already in progress, but the 2008 answer of "I didn't know what was in the thing" has got to be fixed. Derivatives must be transparent, understandable, taxed at a high rate and regulated like hell. Derivatives do not add to the benefit of the country, they are just card tricks to try to make some money. That's fine, fiddle away, but we're going to tax your ass and watch your ass, so keep it clean (pun intended).
  

I think these three steps would really help to change how things work on Wall Street. Thomas Friedman says in his new book "That Used to be Us" that the U.S. needs some "shock therapy" like we've been so eager to administer to other countries that get into financial trouble of their own making. Let's take our medicine. Let's start with Wall Street and make some big fixes. See what happens and incrementally keep fixing our institutions.

Wall Street fat cats will howl. Newt Gingrich will have to cry. But who cares? All Americans want to see something get fixed after the 2008 financial crisis. This is at least a step towards that.

Fox News Is Making Stuff Up

Fox News has been reporting that the Dow Jones Average went down during a speech by the President when the stock average actually went UP. Hey, Fox-holes - it's one thing to show the "other side of the story," but you can't just make stuff up to suit your purposes!

Wake up, Fox! We can tell when you're lying!

All this after showing a six-month old clip of Joe Biden and pretending that it was current (shows at the end of the clip).

My Letter to President Obama

Okay, we elected you, Mr. President-Elect. We're really happy that you made it to the White House, but now it's payback time, big guy.

I'm going to give you my Top Ten Issues to work on. How you do it is your business. But these are the issues that are most important to me.

1. Revoke all harmful environment deregulation from the Bush era.  I need you to take back all those horrible laws and policies like the "Clear Skies Act" and "Healthy Forests."  We know what they really were - giveaways to the corporations who wanted to do logging in our national parks and pollute our drinking water and air.
2. Stop all the wars. I know you've said you will create a plan to bring our troops home from Iraq. To tell you the truth, fighting a war in Afghanistan isn't going to help find bin Laden either.  This is a matter of cooperation with those governments, not a policy of war.
3. Restore America's luster abroad.  This is so important. I would like you to meet with foreign leaders worldwide and tell them that we want to be their friends again. Start with the top twenty most important countries, and don't forget the former Eastern Bloc countries like Poland and the Ukraine.
4. Use the Internet to involve the citizens.  Help us redefine what it means to be a citizen of America. Help us think of ourselves in terms of being citizens instead of consumers.
5. Move our healthcare system toward cheaper, safer, more effective holistic healthcare and away from drugs and surgery.  You haven't mentioned this in your campaign, but I think it is definitely one of my Top Tens.
6. Make it cool to work for the government. You said you could do this in a Rolling Stone interview. Public service should be a badge of honor.  I know you see it that way.  Now help the rest of us to see it that way also.  Teachers and government workers of all walks of life should feel so proud to be serving their country.  I believe you can help us make that happen.
7. Put your renewable energy plan into effect.  From everything I can tell, you have followed the Apollo Alliance plan pretty closely.  Solar panels, wind turbines, hybrid plug-in cars, getting utilities off coal (including "clean" coal), a mixture of decentralized and centralized power generation, etc.  I couldn't be happier about that.  Now put it into place, as an absolute top priority.
8. Rebuild our country's infrastructure.  We need new bridges, roads, public transit.  I know that these things need to happen largely within states and communities, but you can help with funding tweaks and using the bully pulpit of the presidency.
9. Put a strong focus on civil rights and women's rights.  I trust you very much to do this, Mr. President-Elect. Give us Supreme Court justices who will uphold Roe v. Wade and let's continue our helpful policies towards minorities and women in the community and the workplace.  I don't think quotas and most affirmative action are that helpful, however, but you've mentioned a number of ideas in your books and on your Website that make more sense for all of us than those older ideas of civil rights.
10. Put a sharp focus on Internet policies.  Revise outdated laws like copyright and patent to reflect the Internet age, and please make net-neutrality a reality.

My Photos from Obama Rally in Downtown Columbus Today

Here are my photos on Facebook from the Obama Rally that I went to today in Columbus, Ohio.

Photos

Why You Should Vote for Barack Obama

Here's why you should vote for Barack Obama. We so seldom get a chance to put someone in office who is simultaneously a) smart, b) has good morals and c) is hard working. This is our chance to do that by voting for Barack Obama.

Oh - and you get a chance to tell your grandchildren that you gave American racism a good, hard kick in the teeth when you made history by putting a black man into the White House.

Review of The Predator State

Here is my review on "The Predator State: How Conservatives Abandoned the Free Market and Why Liberals Should Too" by James K. Galbraith.

What an interesting book. The American Economy was in a much different state when I began reading this book than when I finished it (last night). I think what I learned from this book has helped me think about possible solutions for our economic meltdown.

Here are some points from Galbraith's (yes, Kenneth's son) book. I'll give indication of my opinions on his ideas as well.

I had no idea how long this post was going to be (even though my notes while reading the book were copious.) Maybe I should summarize my summary as well. Here goes:

Galbraith says that liberals who are for the following things should reverse their thinking: balanced budgets, free trade, open markets / monetary policy, tax cuts and the importance of savings.

He attacks each idea with an obvious depth of economic prowess and an even more obvious bias towards big government thinking.

His argument against balanced federal government budgets is perhaps his most compelling. He provides a simple equation that shows that the U.S. federal government (unlike all other countries) is positively incapable of balancing its budget and should not even try. To do so results in pain for consumers and business in the U.S. Galbraith actually won me over on this point. (See below for details.)

Galbraith isn't exactly against free trade itself, but against the unfettered access we seem to have as a goal where environmental and labor regulations aren't part of our agreements. He seems to have a fairly typical liberal view on this point, and I agree as well. He aggressively debunks the notion that the free trade agreements are remotely linked to job loss in the U.S. Instead, he blames deregulation and union-busting for the job losses.

Galbraith deftly points out the failures of the "open market" and, in many ways, foreshadows what happened in the weeks and months after his book was published in August 2008. He was right on almost every account on this point. Just this past week we saw Alan Greenspan admitting to the "flaw" in his own thinking about markets and monetary policy. Galbraith must have had a giggle about that. He points out that the countries where open markets were most vigorously applied were dramatic failures (Argentina, Brazil, Chile). He says that Milton Friedman's motto of "freedom to choose" is actually just "freedom to shop." He shows how the big industrial companies lost their brain trusts in finance and technology to Wall Street and Silicon Valley respectively, and the damage this has caused. He shows how extravagant CEO pay has been a destructive force in the economy. He says that government "planning" is needed because "markets cannot think ahead."

I didn't take many notes about tax cuts. He saw the George W. Bush tax cuts as irresponsible and, in general, the trickle-down economics as a joke. I think most people would agree, including me. On financial inequality in general, he says that we must use government controls to close the gap between the rich and the poor, and if we do so, we will experience a better and better economy. He uses Denmark as an example of high equality and low unemployment.

With the importance of savings, I think Galbraith is of two minds. It seems that he is opposed to supply-side economics, which emphasizes the importance of savings, but he also, later in the book, says that he is in favor of the government having some control or influence over how/when people save money, so I ended up a little confused on this point. I, personally, am a crazy saver and I think Americans need to have more of a saving/investment mindset than we currently do.

When I first picked up this book, I did so because the title and sub-title was threatening and abusive to my own thinking. I had to find out what an accomplished economist knew that I didn't know about my deeply held beliefs about capitalism and economics.

I found out a lot of things. Perhaps only a handful of books I've read in my life have forced a bigger shift in my thinking than this book. I cannot say that I am a far-left liberal like Galbraith himself, even after reading this book. However, I can say that I've shifted left-ward knowing what I know now, and I'm sure my opinions have also been drastically impacted by the lurchings of the American economy this fall of 2008.

With that said, here now are my detailed notes on Galbraith's book.

• Galbraith says that this book is for the liberal who today says they are for a) balanced budgets, b) free trade, c) open markets and monetary policy, d) tax cuts and e) the importance of savings. (Hey, that's me.)
• It all started with Ronald Reagan and Paul Volcker.
• Together, they gave the American economy a type of "shock therapy" when the Fed raised the interest rates extremely high in the early 1980s. They thought that this would encourage savings (supply-side economics) and all the market to work most efficiently. It failed. America fell into a recession immediately and they abandoned the supply-side theory very quickly thereafter.
• He says that the combination of open, perfectly efficient markets and supply-side economics is incompatible. If we need to encourage savings, the markets must not be perfectly efficient. (This seems very academic to me, kind of objecting to it based on purely theoretical terms. The question for me is if they work together in reality or not).
• He says there are no economic conservative academics left, and certainly none in the Bush administration.
• One of the problems is that the only people who benefit from encouragement to save are the very rich. Tools for encouraging savings are things like IRAs and 401(k)'s. (I don't really see how these things only benefit the super rich.)
• A good point that he brings up is that the countries who followed the Washington Consensus, like Argentina, Chile and some African countries, failed economically, while the countries who followed other paths, like China, did much better.
• As a result, no countries trust the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to work with them anymore.
• Liberals need to create their post-Reagan economic policy (this is so true. In fact, it needs to be neither socialistic nor Reaganistic, but something really different.)
• Hurricane Katrina was to conservative government what Chernobyl was to communism
• Milton Freidman's "freedom to choose" is nothing more than just "freedom to shop"
• What is a free market anyway? It is a negation. "Not" government.
• The only beneficiaries of a free market are the largest corporations (as a former small business owner, I can say this is very true).
• To the free market proponent, there is simply something offensive about the redistribution of wealth from a moral point of view, since it robs a person of property to which the market has assigned a natural claim.
• Supply-side causes companies to move capital out of their retaining earnings and into executive salaries. As a result, society gets mansions and yachts instead of factories and office buildings.
• Galbraith actually advocates wage and price controls. (Yecch.)
  
• He says that "deficit spending works." (More on this later. It isn't as ridiculous as it sounds.)
• Macroeconomic principle --- A country's internal deficit - public deficit plus private deficit - equals its international deficit. (This was a big realization for me.)
• Very interesting how, in the 1990s, consumer and business deficit (credit cards, loans, mortgages) drove economic growth even as the federal government cut their deficit to zero.
• The surplus of the late 1990s did what government surpluses always do: a government running a surplus necessarily subtracts in taxes from private spending more than it injects in payments to private incomes. This forced the private economy to finance the expansion with a buildup of debt. (My comments: 1) This makes sense except, b) why doesn't he mention the cost of maintaining a debt (public or private), c) why does he advocate consistently using deficits, never surpluses, and therefore going into a neverending abyss of red ink for the U.S.?)
• The budget deficit no longer depends on the federal budget policy decisions, but rather on international trade and the financial position of the private sector. So long as American foreign trade remains in a permanent state of deficit (an overall trade deficit with all countries), which the U.S. has to do, actually, so long as a growing and unstable world economy requires U.S. dollar reserves, then the federal budget deficit is basically permanent!! (This is huge. We have to run a federal budget deficit otherwise we force consumers and businesses to run up their debt. The non-U.S. countries use U.S. dollars as their reserves, and those dollars have to come from somewhere - that's us.)
• Eventually, we may change the global financial system to alleviate this. This would be a very dangerous change, however, because the reason everyone uses the U.S. dollar for its reserves is because everyone else is using the U.S. dollar as their reserves.
• (This is my own thought.) It is possible to look at George W. Bush's presidency as a resounding success. Remember when he claimed he would be the first CEO President? Well, if you look at what corporations do, they try to get value from a market in whatever way possible, and give value back to their shareholders. If you look at Bush's campaign as the corporation, as America as the marketplace, and at his contributors as the shareholders, he did everything he should have. He took money from the market (America) into his corporation (his campaign) and gave it to the shareholders (his contributors in energy, pharmaceuticals, insurance industries, etc.).
• Back to Galbraith's ideas, NAFTA did nothing as far as job loss or gain. It simply made permanent the maquiladora system in place since 1965.
• China's success has to do with their lack of mature capital markets. When a Chinese company does not turn a profit, their management is not automatically fired. (I don't get this. I guess he is saying that managers aren't worried about the super-short term like here in the U.S., but to me you would want some type of accountability and not just losses year after year, which is what he's implying.)
• Labor markets do affect people's paychecks, but income inequity is only partly due to differences in pay. Other factors, such as capital gains, interest, dividends and proprietor's income have a large effect as well. So it is somewhat incorrect to say that the market forces of the labor market are solely the cause of income inequity. And further, to say that we will cause massive disruption in the labor market if we institute minimum wage increases or wage controls doesn't make sense. (It is a good point when he says that differences in pay are just part of the picture. But I do think that raising the minimum wage causes disruption, the question is just whether we are willing to live with the disruption.)
• When California and New Jersey increased their minimum wages, unemployment dropped. (Yeah, okay, but what about other states?) The U.S. tends to have increasing pay inequality during bad times and decreasing pay inequality during good times. (That's an interesting statistic if true.) And, of course, unemployment rises during bad times and drops during good times.
• In Denmark, there is high equality and low unemployment. (And what are their productivity numbers??)
  
• Inequality means a few "good" jobs and a lot of "bad" jobs by definition. So a lot of people queue up for the good jobs, causing inefficiency, unemployment and market disruption.
• It seems like Galbraith is against people donating to their alma maters and using it as a tax deduction. (I really don't get this.)
• He sees universities most important contribution as a way to keep young people busy and diverted while they are at their least employable. (What???) Keeping young people occupied and away from the streets is more important than the skills they gain while in class. (What???) Schools provide a similar function in society to prisons and the military, all three of which keep our young people from causing disruption. (I guess I can see a glimmer of logic here, but I do think that universities - the good ones anyway - provide skills that help us when we go into the workforce, as well as business connections and social skills on top of the technical skills we may learn. This point is a bit crazy, I think, or maybe just overstated for effect.)
• He says that when you add up the heavily government-influenced sectors of the economy - military, schools, universities, social security, healthcare (Medicare, Medicaid), and housing (HUD I guess?) - it makes up more than half the economy. And it has been a stabilizing force which has kept us from falling into another Great Depression. (I am willing to acknowledge this point, although he is very loose in defining what is "government-influenced. But I will agree that the private sector is not as large and as independent of government-influence as we might think it is.)
• It was not our social institutions that had been damaged during the Republican presidencies in the 1980s and 2000s. It is the corporation that has been decimated (This is super interesting. Read on...)
• The best financial people used to work inside the large corporations (Ford, GE, Sears, AT&T, etc.). But in the 1980s, 90s, and 00s, they all left the large companies and went to work for Wall Street. (Interesting point - I had never considered this.)
  
• The best technical people used to work inside the large corporations. But they, too, left to join Silicon Valley startups like Microsoft, Cisco and now, of course, Google. (I would also say consulting companies too, because it is often noticeable that consulting staff seem to be more technically advanced than the staff of the client companies they serve. Maybe that's just my bias as a consultant!)
  
• As a result of losing all this talent, the big corporations switched from being producers to consumers of financial knowledge and technical knowledge. They had to acquire the expertise of how to run their business financially from Wall Street and consulting firms, and they had to rely on technology solutions from custom software and packaged software from outside entities like Microsoft or IBM. (So they've had their heart and lungs removed and are on a kind of life support to these outside service providers.)
  
• The big industrial companies have to rely heavily on Wall Street for their finances and therefore Wall Street is able to dictate how a corporation should perform without ANY ACTUAL UNDERSTANDING of how the corporation works. This causes the "short termism" we can all see in the stock market that is killing the long-term viability of all public companies.
• The crooked goings-on at Enron, Tyco and WorldCom were not only not understood by Wall Street firms, but actually encouraged. The dual inability of Wall Street to understand the various industries (energy trading, telecom, etc.) and their singular focus on "the numbers helped to destroy these firms. (Remember that Galbraith is writing all this months before the economic meltdown of late 2008.)
• CEOs, instead of being specialists in a particular industry, have become specialists in cutting costs and raising stock prices for Wall Street's approval. This new breed of CEOs often not have the slightest clue to the long-term implications of their decisions. And the capital markets, not understanding business needs for investment, do things like overinvestment in fiber optics installations by sixty-fold that happened in the late 1990s.
• Galbraith explains the sub-prime mortgage crisis (this had already begun in early 2008 when he was still writing this book). Interest rates were set extremely low, which made T-bills unattractive. Big investment banks bought packages of home mortgages from traditional mortgage lenders as investments. These mortgages were on ultra-low teaser rates set up during the low interest period after 9/11. Once these teaser rates expired, homeowners could not pay the adjusted mortgage payments, as they had often been poorly qualified by the mortgage lenders, and the investment banks (Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, etc.) were left holding the bag.
• The Reagan, Bush I and Bush II administrations have not actually destroyed the public institutions of social security, Medicare, etc. What they have destroyed is the modern corporation. By pulling back on all types of regulation, they have encouraged the Enrons, WorldComs, Tycos, Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers of the world. They've allowed transient, unaccountable CEOs to deplete the corporate coffers for their own personal gain. And by giving control of government to a subset of industry - the worst polluters, the flagrant monopolists, the technological footdraggers - they've made life worse for the businesses that have played by the rules. (I have to agree.)
  
• Galbraith says that job training doesn't help! (He doesn't mention how many firms are searching for qualified people during times of high unemployment, but my own experience is that this is constantly happening. Employers cannot find the qualified people they need and simultaneously we have millions of unqualified or wrongly qualified people out of work.)
• Galbraith quotes Keynes as saying "A supply curve for labor doesn't exist." (I don't understand this. All my experience says that there is definitely a supply-and-demand relationship with labor like anything else. Galbraith does a very poor job of explaining this point.)
• He states that preschool isn't a help to anyone. (Really?)
• He says, overall, he isn't advocating "abandoning the free market." He is really saying that "government planning" shouldn't be considered an evil thing and some relic of communism, but instead should be combined with the free market and used as a counterbalance to the problems of the free market.
• He advocates planning a number of things: a) how much to save/invest, b) directions for new technology, c) how to deal with environmental issues, d) scientific knowledge, e) and culture.
• Government planning is needed because markets cannot think ahead. (I have to agree here.)
  
• Markets have two big flaws. Markets convey their signals only in proportion to the purchasing power of the individual, so the rich guy gets a thousand times more votes in the marketplace than the middle class guy. (Yeah, but there are a thousand times more middle class guys though. He doesn't mention this fact.)
• The second flaw is that markets don't have a way to represent the next generation, the not-yet-born. (Very true.)
• Galbraith argues in favor of certain wage regulations. In Norway, you are free to import, export and outsource as you like. But you are not free to cut your employees' wages. You can't go after cut-rate workers, whether native or immigrant. You cannot undercut the union rate. The effect of this on business discipline is quite wonderful. Businesses must find ways to compete that do not involve running down the wage standards of their workforces.
  
• The middle class in America was built by unions, regulations and wage standards and it will be rebuilt the same way. (You know, this is kind of a good argument.)
  
• Galbraith actually aggressively debunks the notion that free trade (NAFTA, CAFTA, etc.) has caused a loss of jobs. Instead, he blames deregulation for those issues in America.

Benjamin Barber - How Markets Corrupt Children, Infantilize Adults, and Swallow Citizens Whole

I heard Benjamin Barber's speech on the great, great podcast Big Ideas. This guy is worth listening to. I mourn my free market idealism as it fades thanks to this guy, Naomi Klein, James Galbraith and the damn American economy these days...

Obama's Energy Plan

I hear people say that they aren't exactly sure what Obama's position is on this issue or that one, so I thought I would blog about his positions.  How do I know?  It's on his friggin' Website, detailed in minute detail.  But who's got time to read his Website?  (I guess)

Here are the high points of Obama's energy plan (infested with my opinions on each point):

Short Term Fixes

• Emergency gasoline rebate ($500/individual, $1000/family) to consumers paid for with a windfall profit tax on energy companies  (I'm not crazy about this, it is politically expediency, but hey, it'll get him some votes)
• Crack down on energy speculation a-la Enron-style by (this is important) closing loopholes and increasing transparency (this isn't our biggest issue in energy but the loophole-closing aspect of it is good)
• Swap light and heavy crude, release oil from Strategic Petroleum Reserve (again, a short-term fix [as they note on the site] but might help bring prices down a bit)

Longer Term Strategies

• Cap-and-trade system for greenhouse gas emissions - goal - 80% below 1990 levels by 2050 (I would prefer a commons trust approach, but cap-and-trade is a great start)
• Work through the U.N. to make the U.S. a leader on climate change (smart)
• Accelerate commercialization of plug-in hybrid cars, encourage energy efficiency, invest in low-emission coal plants, advance next generation biofuels, build digital electricity grid (this is cool stuff, except for the stupid, stupid, stupid clean coal stuff, but it is there to grab votes, so okay)
• Create a "Green Vet Initiative."  Job placement for vets of Afghanistan and Iraq to gain skills in renewable energy jobs (love this soooo much - why isn't it talked about more on the campaign trail???)
• Invest $1B per year into switching manufacturing areas over to renewable energy (how many birds did you just kill with that one stone???  Love this)
• Increase fuel economy standards 4% a year (great)
• Put 1 million plug-in hybrids on the road by 2015.  How can a government do that??  Well, guess how big the government's fleet of vehicles is?  Obama is going to switch the entire White House fleet to plug-in hybrids in one year, then half of the entire government fleet by 2012. $7,000 tax credit for people buying plug-in hybrid cars!!  (great idea)
• A focus on "next generation biofuels" read: cellulosic, not corn.  (smart)
• Better prioritization of current drilling efforts for oil and gas (this is good, although not that exciting)
• Require 10% of all electricity produced to come from renewable sources (that ain't "clean coal")
• Safe and secure nuclear energy (I personally am in favor of this, although I know a lot of liberals aren't - it is part of the entire energy self-sufficiency picture)
• Big focus on energy efficiency (biggest, fastest payback)
• A new building code, all buildings carbon-neutral by 2030 (great)
• Reduce federal energy consumption.  The U.S. Federal Government is the largest energy consumer in the world.  Why not start there?????  (can you see why I love this guy??)
• Build more livable, sustainable communities (super long-term, but what is wrong with thinking super-long term??)

I really have to apologize for my cheerleading on each point, but, Jeez, I can't help it.  This is one great energy policy.  Half the points are things I've been wishing to see from candidates for years and years, and there are a lot of points that I hadn't even considered until I read them in the PDF.

By the way, I'm hoping my short post here encourages you to read the original PDF on Obama's Website.  This was put together by some really smart people.

photo credit:  Felix Francis on Flickr (creative commons)

Electoral Vote

I find the Website Electoral-Vote.com to be sooooo useful. I refer to it everyday. It shows a map of red and blue states as compiled with the latest polls of the day. It changes every single day and shows which presidential candidate is leading based on the electoral vote count (which is the only thing that matters). My impression is that too many of the news outlets are focusing on popular vote counts and ignoring the electoral vote count, especially now that Tim Russert is gone. He was very good at giving us run-downs of how things could play out with this-or-that state going red or blue. We miss ya Tim!!

(By the way, Barack has been ahead on electoral votes counts almost the entire time, with a very short Palin-bounce for McCain after the convention. The badge at the top of my post is accurate for the day you are reading this.)

The site also has great information on the close congressional races as well, although it does not focus on the individual polls for those.

And, if you're trying to figure out who should get your vote in November, go to GlassBooth.org. It looks at the various issues-of-the-day and tries to match your views to Barack Obama or John McCain. This was especially fun when the primaries were going on. A lot of people I know found out that their views closely matched Dennis Kucinich, and boy, were they surprised!!

Barack Obama Comments on How the Internet Will Assist His Government

These comments, taken from an article just published in Rolling Stone (available online) show that Obama is taking the role of the Internet very seriously in terms of shaping policy, getting feedback, increasing accountability.

A few times in the past few years there have been "anonymous holds" on bills going through the Senate. How slimy is that? Some senators want to keep a bill from getting voted on but they don't want to do it publicly, for shame of what they're doing. Hopefully we can stop this type of behavior.

Here are a few lines from Obama's interview with Rolling Stone:

How are you going to connect your support among young people to the governing process?
This is where the Internet is so powerful. One of the things that surprised me in this campaign is how well we were able to use technology to organize people. There's enormous promise — but we've just scratched the surface of what's possible when it comes to making government work for people. Virtual town-hall meetings, increasing transparency, accountability on legislation. You think about all the inefficiencies in government. We basically have a New Deal government in a 21st-century economy. We've got to upgrade it.

So you're consciously aware that this will have to be part of how you govern?
Yes, absolutely. The Internet gives young people a tool to be informed continuously. It gives them an opportunity to speak to each other and mobilize themselves. It gives them the opportunity to hold me accountable when I'm not following through on promises that I've made. It gives me a powerful ally if Congress is resistant to measures that need to be taken.

Quote from Barack Obama's Book "The Audacity of Hope"

Here's why I'm voting for Barack Obama. I see him introducing Politics 2.0, in word and in deed, an end to the partisan bickering and gridlock.

Just wait until he introduces Government 2.0.

A quote from his second book "The Audacity of Hope:"

Maybe the critics are right. Maybe there's no escaping our great political divide, an endless clash of armies, where any attempt to alter the rules of engagement is futile.

Or maybe the trivialization of politics has reached a point of no return, so that most people see it as just one more diversion, a sport, with politicians as our paunch-bellied gladiators, and those who bother to pay attention, just fans on the sidelines. We paint our faces red or blue and cheer our side and boo their side, and if it takes a late hit or cheap shot to beat the other team -- so be it. For winning is all that matters.

But I don't think so.

They are out there, I think to myself, those ordinary citizens who've grown up in the midst of all the political and cultural battles but who've found a way, in their own lives at least, to make peace with their neighbors. And themselves.

I imagine the white southerner, who, growing up, heard his dad talk about niggers this and niggers that, but has struck up a friendship with the black guys at the office and is trying to teach his own son different; who thinks that discrimination is wrong, but doesn't see how the son of a black doctor should get admitted into law school ahead of his own son.

Or the former Black Panther, who decided to go into real estate, bought a few buildings in the neighborhood, and is just as tired of the drug dealers in front of those buildings as he is of the bankers who won't give him a loan to expand his business.

There's the middle-age feminist who still mourns her abortion, and the Christian woman who paid for her teenager's abortion, and the millions of waitresses, and temp secretaries and nurses' assistants and Wal-Mart associates who hold their breath every single month in the hope that they'll have enough money to support the children that they did bring into the world.

I imagine that they are waiting for a politics with the maturity to balance idealism and realism, to distinguish between what can and what cannot be compromised, to admit the possibility that the other side might sometimes have a point. They don't always understand the arguments between right and left, conservative and liberal, but they recognize the difference between dogma and common sense, responsibility and irresponsibility. Between those things that last, and those that are fleeting.

They are out there, I think, waiting for Republicans and Democrats to catch up with them.

The Tide is Turning

The Tide is Turning (Roger Waters on the album Radio KAOS, 1987)

Understanding the Issues in this Election

If you'd like more of a focus on the issues in this election than the horse race or "poo flinging" aspects, read on.

A new Website has introduced a unique and simple way to evaluate the candidates on the issues.

With GlassBooth.org, you fill out two fairly short questionnaires (it will take you five minutes) and it tells you which candidate is closest to your views. Even better, it gives you a next best candidate, and the next, etc. It even will show you exactly how the candidate differs from your views, and what their basis is for determining the candidates views (text of speeches, Website, etc.).

Take the quiz. Wouldn't it be great if we all voted based on which politician was most likely to implement the measures we cared about, rather than based on fear or who made the best speeches?

For me, my top candidate was Mike Gravel. (Didn't know he was still in the running!) Second place was Barack and third was Hillary. McCain was a distant third (but I still love the guy - I'm sorry.)

As I've said before, this is a no-lose election for me. Any of the three top contenders will be a massive step up from what we've been dealing with for the past seven years.

In a related story, ThinkProgress has established a new blog called The Wonk Room. This will be a place where focus is placed squarely on the issues of the election, with no attention to the horse race or poo flinging. All from a decidely liberal perspective, of course, but it's better than nothing.

Barack Obama Makes His Speech on Race - March 18, 2008

Barack Obama made his historic speech on race in America today, partially to address comments made by his former pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, made in a sermon last year.

I thought Obama's speech was eloquent and effectively brought the conversation back to how we can heal our current issues, including race relations. So many of these issues have dogged our nation for decades or centuries, and my view is that Obama is the only politician talking about Politics 2.0 and Government 2.0 where we will rethink our approach to each and every problem, without limiting ourselves to a Red Solution and a Blue Solution.

View Obama's speech right here:

Why I'm Voting for Barack Obama

I think what is missing from the debate over the Democratic presidential contest is brought to light best by a seemingly unrelated NPR series that ran last week.

They profiled the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). In the report, NPR said that the FCC is trying to wedge all Internet services into a "type of cable service" while they are assuming that wireless frequencies are just for cell phones.

Professor Bankler, one of their guests, says that the FCC is actually charged with promoting the American communications industry as well as regulating them. How can they continue to operate like this?

Try explaining network neutrality or the success of YouTube to an agency that is stuck in a forty-year-old paradigm like this.

Barack Obama is the only candidate that I hear who is talking about rethinking politics and government. He is bringing a fresh perspective to the problems that ail America. The arguments about experience and years in office are distractions from the fact that American government needs to experience a Renaissance. Who has the politic courage and will to execute this Renaissance? I don't think it is Hillary Clinton or John McCain, because they are dismissing Obama's calls for change as "eloquent but empty." Is that what we need? Small tweaks to today's systems? Or simply to choose the Red Team or the Blue Team and then fight the other's ideas to the death?

I say no. We need to rethink government. We need to rethink the political process. To rethink the FCC, FAA and EPA. To rethink industry and commerce and pollution and our approaches to global warming. Rethink airports and roads and cars. Rethink intellectual property rights and "the commons." Rethink how we approach everything and look for ideas for better ways.

All three politicians are calling for an increase in "green collar jobs" by investing in renewable energy. But is it that simple? Just throw some money at this nascent industry and it'll flourish? Didn't Jimmy Carter do that in the 1970s? How did that work?

I think our solutions will be much more complicated than a Red Solution or a Blue Solution. It will be a complex intermix of ideas from both sides, plus perspectives that neither side has even considered yet. I feel like my approach to health insurance is an example of this (free e-Book here). Parts of it are probably despised by liberals (it includes Health Savings Accounts) and other parts are anathema to conservatives (although I'm not sure what). And even other parts probably seem strange to both Red and Blue (all this stuff about holistic healthcare). But it might be just the solution we need to help solve our healthcare crisis.

Anyway, enough of my self-promotion. The reason I like what I hear from Barack Obama is that he is starting the conversation we need to have - about a Renaissance in America. (By the way, Barack, or anyone else - feel free to use that line!)

The Holistic Economy Endorses Barack Obama

I'd like to take this opportunity to express my support for presidential candidate Barack Obama.

Obama has inspired me along with hundreds of thousands, maybe millions, of Americans. I believe there is nothing more important than a leader who can inspire us to do great things. I believe Obama is a person who is comfortable in his own skin. He is a competent manager, judging by the effectiveness of his campaign. And he is a good person.

His speech in New Hampshire after his loss to Hillary Clinton was especially riveting. If you haven't seen the video done by several musicians and actors setting part of that speech to music, please go watch it now. It is an emotional and important tribute to Obama's words.

Beyond pure inspiration, I urge you to examine Obama's Website. His positions on every issue, from renewable energy to security to immigration are sensible and well-considered.

I've included the words from Obama's speech below.

It was a creed written into the founding documents that declared the destiny of a nation: Yes, we can.

It was whispered by slaves and abolitionists as they blazed a trail towards freedom through the darkest of nights: Yes, we can.

It was sung by immigrants as they struck out from distant shores and pioneers who pushed westward against an unforgiving wilderness: Yes, we can.

It was the call of workers who organized, women who reached for the ballot, a president who chose the moon as our new frontier, and a king who took us to the mountaintop and pointed the way to the promised land: Yes, we can, to justice and equality.

Yes, we can, to opportunity and prosperity. Yes, we can heal this nation. Yes, we can repair this world. Yes, we can.

Deepak Chopra Says Barack Obama is "Self-Aware"

Deepak Chopra, well known New Age spiritualist, holistic health advocate and author, has provided a great insight into Barack Obama in his blog "Intent Blog."

Deepak cites Obama's quality of self-awareness as his best qualification for president. There is something about Obama that is unquantifiable, and maybe that's it. Obama just seems comfortable in his own skin, and maybe that represents true self-awareness.

Deepak quotes Benjamin Disraeli in saying that in order to be successful in politics, you need to know yourself and you need to know the times. Deepak adds that you also must be sought out by the times, which seems like it is happening with Obama as well.

I must admit that I've been so hopeful for 2008 (the entire year, not just the election) after I saw that Obama win the Iowa caucuses. I think he might be the person to make a difference in our country. And, as Deepak says, maybe America will become more self-aware in the process.

Sticking Your Kids With Your Debt

I typically have two big issues which I judge political candidates on: the environment and the national debt.

Almost every year, both issues have been completely overlooked in the election process by both parties. However, this year, the environment actually is being talked about and the Democrats seem to have some plans to improve things.

The national debt has had no discussion whatsoever. Have we forgotten that the yearly budget deficit, brought to zero under President Clinton, is now higher than it's ever been? President Bush and the Republican Congress ran up a massive amount of debt that we are going to have to pay back.

Correction - our children will be paying it. Which brings me to a point, brought up eloquently by Oliver "Buzz" Thomas, a minister, lawyer and author of the book "10 Things Your Minister Wants to Tell You (But Can't Because He Needs the Job)."

Thomas wrote a blog post for USA Today earlier this month about our penchant for debt. He feels that we are violating fundamental religious principles by running up this debt and putting in no effort to pay it back. Essentially, it is like building up a $30,000 credit card bill and then leaving it to your children.

Would you do that? Probably not. But, as Thomas points out, it is just easier when it is a distant, shapeless blob like the national debt. And our politicians, especially the spendy Republican President we have, don't help. Can't blame it on the war either. This administration has increased the national debt every year without even counting war expenses.

As Thomas puts it, "Whether you're Christian, Muslim, Jewish or Zoroastrian, your tradition has taught you at least this: a) Pay your bills and b) Provide for your children. Right now, we are doing neither.

So why aren't our politicians talking about it? Probably because it will be uncomfortable to pay back the debt. Services will have to be cut. Taxes will have to be raised (sorry W - your way ain't-a workin').

We have to re-insert this into our national discussion again. Do we need to resurrect Ross Perot to bring back the topic of paying the debt? I hope not.

The Four Boneheaded Biases of Stupid Voters (And We're All Stupid Voters)

Reason magazine is fast becoming one of my favorite news/opinion sources. They have a nice RSS feed and excellent articles.

I was especially taken by this article on the biases we all have about voting, and hopefully this explains how we end up with free-spending, policy-deficient politicians like George W. Bush.

Anti-Market Bias

I first learned about farm price supports in the produce section of the grocery store. I was in kindergarten. My mother explained that price supports seemed to make fruits and vegetables more expensive but assured me that this conclusion was simplistic. If the supports went away, so many farms would go out of business that prices would soon be higher than ever. I accepted what she told me and felt a lingering sense that price competition is bad for buyer and seller alike.

This was one of my first memorable encounters with anti-market bias, a tendency to underestimate the economic benefits of the market mechanism. The public has severe doubts about how much it can count on profit-seeking business to produce socially beneficial outcomes. People focus on the motives of business and neglect the discipline imposed by competition. While economists admit that profit maximization plus market imperfections can yield bad results, noneconomists tend to view successful greed as socially harmful per se.