Month: November 2010

On corporate capture of our governments, in 1913 Woodrow Wilson wrote:

If the government is to tell big business men how to run their business, then don’t you see that big business men have to get closer to the government even than they are now?

Don’t you see that they must capture the government, in order not to be restrained too much by it?

Must capture the government? They have already captured it.

Edward Kane at Boston College wrote:

This ugly financial episode we’ve all had to live through makes clear that taxpayers must protect themselves against two things:

1) the corrupting influence of bureaucratic self-interest among regulators and

2) the political clout wielded by the large institutions they are supposed to police.

That authorities and financiers could so callously violate common-law duties of loyalty, competence, and care they owe taxpayers and financial-institution customers is evidence of a massive incentive breakdown in industry and government.

All our regulators must:

…make themselves politically and financially accountable for the ways in which they exercise their discretion.

All our regulators must:

…fearlessly bond themselves to disclose enough information about their decision making to allow the community or interested outsiders to determine whether and how badly they neglect, abuse, or mishandle their responsibilities.

1) The people are rejecting both parties.

2) All recent elections were rejections, not affirmations.

Thomas Ferguson:

What the election really shows is not that the parties can’t agree — Democrats and most of the GOP leadership finally agreed on the bank bailouts, for example — but that the American people will not accept the policies that leaders in both parties prefer.

In 2006 and 2008, the population voted no-confidence in the Republicans on the war and the economy. They have just now presented the Democrats with another resounding a no-confidence vote. What makes the current situation intractable is the fundamental reason for these serial failures.

It’s obvious !

Big money dominates both major parties.

American political parties are mostly bank accounts. What you are told is the voice of the people is usually the sound of money talking.

If you want a happy ending, you probably shouldn’t follow our system too closely in the next few years.

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A few things to note… the two Presidents who added to the debt at the quickest rate were GW in first place and Reagan in second.

When people don’t scream and hurl nonsense invective at each other.

Jon Stewart nails it:

As Stewart persuasively argued, “We’ve all bought into the idea that the conflict in the country is left and right,Republicans and Democrats.” Furthermore, an insidious, attention-grabbing news media “amplifies a division that I don’t think is the right fight … [because] both sides have their way of shutting down debate.”

“It’s become tribal,” he declared, and the major culprits aren’t Tea Partying loons — they’re the CNNs and Foxes and, yes, MSNBCs of the world.

Meanwhile, “The real conflict is corruption vs. non-corruption, extremists vs. non-extremists.”

Is

Not

Republican.

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Here’s why the president will win re-election in 2012.

wtfhassarahpalindonesofar.com

Fizzle !

Election expenditures are “clearly adding to economic activity” but probably would have less impact per dollar than a direct government spending program such as President Obama’s stimulus effort.

Republicans, for example, spent twice as much on country clubs and golf courses, while Democrats spent more on caterers and liquor.

Washington Post:

Total spending for the midterms nears $4 billion.
The ‘Cash for Clunkers’ program was just $3 billion.

Campaigns paid banks to handle their money, consultants to map out their strategies and media buyers to book their advertising. Karl Rove Crossroads Media was paid more than $40 million.

The biggest winners of all were broadcasters, which together are expected to rake in about $2.5 billion in ad revenue from federal, state and local campaigns.

Please ponder Andrew Doran’s tweet:

“Cutbacks because of debt, debt because of financial bailouts.”

Who funded The Big Lie?

It seems to me that the last year or so has represented the triumph of untruth. —Andrew Sullivan

Certainly not the Tea Party on their sofa.

Let’s poke around to learn why politicians succeed with neither truth nor fact. Study the ugly nueromarketing of 2010 and try to stay on point, folks.

“The real risk is that politicians will not want us to know that they are using influencing tools.”

“It has already been used in the last two elections and I believe it will become an even more significant factor in the future.”

“It’s easier to trust the response you visualize on a MRI than to trust what people tell you.”

Republicans appear to be using neuromarketing more than Democrats, if this midterm is any indication. They are appealing to the emotion of voters’ triggers.

“No Democratic candidate I know of has used them [neuromarketing tactics], nor has any major Democratic organization appeared to express any interest in them.”

How to to capitalize on the narcissists in our midst.

Maybe we should reduce Congress to two members, one of each Party with the remainder looking on to approve or disprove. Why?

Groups with approximately two narcissists on board tended to outperform those with more or fewer narcissists.

Transparency | Number10.gov.uk

“We want to be the most open and transparent government in the world.

“Publishing all this information is a massive job…”

MEMORANDUM FOR THE HEADS OF EXECUTIVE DEPARTMENTS AND AGENCIES

SUBJECT:      Transparency and Open Government

My Administration is committed to creating an unprecedented level of openness in Government.  We will work together to ensure the public trust and establish a system of transparency, public participation, and collaboration. Openness will strengthen our democracy and promote efficiency and effectiveness in Government. Government should be transparent.

But these days, one source of anger trumps all others. We are perhaps most furious about our dysfunctional political system, one that cherishes acrimony over cohesion, backstabbing over unity, bickering over a calm and respectful, unified vision.

Mark Morford on keeping the anger, the dread, the paranoia alive —the Tea Party chugged it like Coors-flavored heroin:

You don’t have to believe me. Just wait until nothing at all is done to service the Tea Party non-agenda, because it’s ridiculous and impossible to service. Just wait until you note how there is no actual shrinking of government, no restoring some bogus sepia-toned idealism that never existed, no saving of your job.

There is, of course, but one GOP agenda: furthering their personal stranglehold on all things powermad and avaricious.

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“For there to be common ground, both sides have to be looking for it.” —Helen Philpot

The EPA backlog for evaluating chemicals for risk to health & hazard is 55 years !

Chiefs, kings, tyrants and thieves teach each other so many tricks.

“If they can give someone $300,000 for not winning a game then that means Zimbabwe should have no reason whatsoever to have people that are hungry, suffering or oppressed.”

Leaders get away with what they’re provided: our tolerance of up.

Decision Points. G.W. Bush is counting down to his book sale:  “11… 9… 10…”

He’ll be on the Today Show waterboarding veal cutlets.  —David Letterman

I’m not going to read it until he reads it.  —David Letterman

High Fiving Birth Certificates. “That the nation just cast millions of sour, terrified votes against some un-understood version of socialism is a not-so-necessary reminder of just how scary most people find this sort of talk outside of a football-related context.”

Cleopatra mythologized herself before anyone else had the chance.

Popes, pulpits, politics, pundits too. Y’think?

It’s dizzying to contemplate the thicket of prejudices, personalities and propaganda … biased, xenophobic, politically motivated and sometimes sensationalist writing… for an audience;  for an audience that expected to be dazzled…

Aw shucks. And here I thought hammers were for nails.