Just A Thought

There's an Old Testament book called "Judges".
Oddly, there isn't one called "Congress".

Think the Almighty was telegraphing a message about relative authority there?

John Paul II

Still dead.

Don DeLay

When you're involved in the rackets, no one eats alone. Try it, and you'll find the cops stopping by frequently, or maybe just a couple of gentlemen with a desire to explain how things work around here. Unless you're crazy, or have a serious expectation that you can carve off your own territory from a bunch of hungry, entrenched criminals bent on killing the competition, you instead come to an arrangement.

Every week, you pay the vig. Depending on the size of the book you're making, or the number of whores you're pimping for, the vig will be small, or the vig will be large, but you've got to pay the vig, or you're not going to be in business, in town, or possibly above ground for very long.

Which brings us to Tom DeLay:

DeLay's lobby operation is more complicated but equally important to Republican Party hegemony. As described by American Enterprise Institute scholar Norman Ornstein, the K Street Project by which DeLay domesticated the corporate lobby is a "Tammany Hall operation" that ensures only Republicans are hired for big lobbying jobs that pay as much as $1 million a year. Once hired, "everyone is expected to contribute some of that money back into Republican campaigns," Ornstein told me when I was working on a book on DeLay last year. According to Ornstein, DeLay and the K Street project have even locked up the entry-level lobby positions that pay from $150,000 to $250,000 a year -- with the understanding that anyone who gets a job "maxes out" in contributions to Republican candidates and campaigns.

In the mob that the Republican party has become, no one eats alone. Fortunately, there's a law targeted right for them, RICO:

Section 1962(b) makes it unlawful for a person to acquire or maintain an interest in an enterprise through a pattern of racketeering activity. Section 1962(b) is perhaps the most difficult RICO claim to express in practical terms. A stereotypical violation of section 1962(b) occurs when a victim business owner cannot make payments to a loan shark; upon default, the loan shark says: "you're either going to die or you're going to give me your business." Given the threat to this life, the victim transfers control of his business to the loan shark. Usually, the victim business owner remains the owner on paper but the loan shark controls the business and receives all income from the business. Thus, the loan shark has acquired and maintained interest or control over an enterprise (i.e. the business) through a pattern of racketeering (i.e., loan sharking and extortion).

Section 1962(d) makes it unlawful for a person to conspire to violate subsections (a), (b) or (c) of the RICO Act.

By far the most useful and common civil RICO claim is found under section 1962(c), which makes it unlawful for a person to manipulate an enterprise for purposes of engaging in, concealing, or benefiting from a pattern of racketeering activity. Given its broad utility, the general elements of a RICO claim will be discussed in the context of a section 1962(c) claim. Distinctions will then be made between section 1962(c) claims and claims under 1962(a), (b) and (d).

It's time to take down Don DeLay, head of one of the most feared, dangerous and well-financed mobs in American history: the Republican Party.

Bush Causes Panic: American Economy Collapses

The President really is an idiot. I think one of his handlers forgot to tell him that the dollar's no longer backed by gold, and that the full faith and credit of the United States is the only thing standing between us and financial collapse:

"A lot of people in America think there is a trust -- that we take your money in payroll taxes and then we hold it for you and then when you retire, we give it back to you," Bush said later in a speech at the University of West Virginia at Parkersburg. "But that's not the way it works. There is no trust fund, just IOUs that I saw firsthand," Bush said. Democrats charged that the president's remarks were misleading, as well as dangerously close to implying that the federal government won't stand behind trillions of dollars in debt held by creditors around the globe

"If the 'full faith and credit' of the United States means 'just IOUs' then our entire financial system will come tumbling down," said Rep. Charles Rangel, D-N.Y., the senior Democrat on the House Ways and Means Committee

In a letter to Bush, House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi of California and Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada said the president's statements about the trust fund "could raise needless doubts among American and foreign investors about the United States' willingness to meet its fiscal obligations. This has potentially broad ranging and damaging implications for our economy." At issue are the special-issue Treasury bonds - now totaling around $1.7 trillion - that make up the trust fund. Paper facsimiles of the bonds, which like most modern-day securities are issued in electronic form, are held in a file cabinet at the Office of Public Debt Accounting. That's what Bush visited earlier in the day.

Whether through stupidity or by design, like Ronald W. Reagan before him (see: Selling Weapons to Sworn Enemies) George W. Bush is a traitor, and its time to impeach the bastard before he utterly destroys this once-proud nation.

Death Watch

I've heard it said that celebrity deaths, like plane crashes, always come in threes. So, with Terri Sciavo dead, and John Paul II still dead, despite the round-the-clock vigilance of the media's PopeCorpseCam, who's the third celebrity set to shuffle off this mortal coil?

Could it be Tom DeLay?

I'm not suggesting the poster child for Tammany Hall rehab will actually die in the near future, but for a man like DeLay, political death is a kind of death.

If you haven't been following the story, after racking up three rebukes from the House Ethics committee before its fangs were pulled by DeLay and his cronies in the U. S. House of Representatives, the scandals have just been piling on the House Majority Leader like dogs on top of Bugs Bunny. For a while, I assumed that DeLay was so entwined in eldritch evil that he would even survive the scorn of an entire nation and the defection of numerous allies to miraculously appear on top of the dog pile, triumphant and smirking, ready to obliterate his persecutors with rabid legislation aimed at each one individually, under Congress's new policy of not allowing the fall of single sparrow to go unnoticed.

Now, I'm not so sure.

Dark Lord of Sith Dick Cheney last week distanced himself from the Bugkiller's remarks against the judiciary, and the drumbeat calling for DeLay's head just gets louder and louder, with a quick one-two punch from the NY Times and the Washington Post today.

Tom DeLay is a criminal. Available evidence suggests he's violated campaign laws in Texas, numerous ethics rules of the House, and chances are he's managed to defy a few Commandments into the bargain. Satan has a trick or two to learn from this sleazebag on how to consolidate his rule on Earth, for which DeLay has helped lay the foundations.

However, even fellow Republican politicians, steeped in evil and knowledgable of its ways, are backing away from the stench and corrosive effects of their suddenly very publicly vulnerable leader. When DeLay finally detonates, everyone wants to be out of the blast zone and well clear of the fallout, and they're all hoping the explosion happens soon, so that the echo will fade well before November 2006.

It's no accident that DeLay had become the public face of the Republican Party, incarnating as he does the party's avarice, contempt for the law, preening venality, and hypocritical mouthing of virtues he does not share.

I've seen some in the blogosphere fret that DeLay's untimely demise might limit his blast zone, leaving other rich targets unscathed. To them I say, Rejoice, brothers and sisters, in the unraveling of evil, in whatever form it takes.

To Tom DeLay, I say, Live. Live to once more crawl into the stinking underbellies of our houses, seeking to exterminate the outward manifestation of your blackened soul. Let DeLay be returned to his proper station.

This Just In...

Pope John Paul II is still dead.
Is anything else happening in the world today?

Superpower

Charlie Reese has a good take on the real distribution of world power:

Mr. Bush has gotten Teddy Roosevelt's dictum exactly upside down. He shouts loudly and carries a small stick.

Let me put into perspective just how small a stick he carries. The European Union, in all but military power, is itself a superpower. It has more people than we do, and it has a larger gross domestic product. Its currency, the Euro, is very strong, and our currency, the dollar, is very weak.

Russia remains a military superpower, and its economy is growing faster than ours. It has recently undertaken an effort to modernize its nuclear strategic forces and even today has more than enough to blow us away. Furthermore, it recently signed a strategic defense agreement with China.

As to that part of the world, China and India, both with more than a billion people each, have rapidly growing economies (in part thanks to thousands of American jobs exported to their countries). China, in particular, has undertaken a military buildup, and, of course, all three – Russia, India and China – are nuclear powers. If Bush ever looked past his immediate political goals, he might foresee a future tripartite alliance that would mean big trouble for America.

In short, we are not the world's only remaining superpower, as the Washington cliché says, and if Bush could see past his ego, he would recognize that. Our economy is shaky. Federal, corporate and private debt is in the trillions, and Japan and China could wreck our economy just by dumping the debt paper they hold on the market.

One should remember what Osama bin Laden said. He did not say he would conquer us and convert us all to Islam. He said he would bankrupt us. If Bush gets us further mired in the Middle East by attacking Iran and Syria, as he seems likely to do, bin Laden might very well succeed. War is always a drain on the economy. War always produces death, destruction, debt and taxes. It hasn't been a profitable undertaking since the Mexican War, when as war booty we took most of what is today the American Southwest.

In short, real-world circumstances require careful, skillful and quiet diplomacy – not bombast. I fear, however, that we have put in place the wrong administration at the wrong time.

Ya think?

A Hard Act To Follow

I had a lot of differences with Pope John Paul II, but no one could accuse him of being inconsistent or not having the courage of his convictions. Smart, funny, erudite, polyglot, brave and caring, he's left his mark indelibly on the Catholic Church, elevating the office of the Catholic Papacy to the world stage in a manner consistent with the church's role as a spiritual advisor.

I think John Paul's converative Catholicism will never be fully reconciled with the American Catholic Church, which, arguably, is a different church from that Catholicism embraced by the nations of Africa, South and Central America. Offline, I've argued often that as much as Henry VIII saw a need to split his Anglicans away from Rome for personal reasons, there's as many compelling and personal reasons for American Catholics supporting abortion rights, the use of birth control, female priests, and a married priesthood to recognize that many of their beliefs cannot be squared with current Catholic Doctrine, which is unlikely to bend to the will of liberal Catholic Americans.

For those imagining that the next Pope will be more open to doctrinal revision toward a more liberal stance on certain social issues regarding sexuality, I have to bring you down to Earth, so to speak. The Church is not a democracy, but even so, the enormous weight of opinion of conservative Catholics in the southern hemisphere easily overbalances the liberal voices in United States and Europe.

In fact, just in case any Catholic Cardinals frequent this site, allow me to offer them the opinion that an African Pope would send an important message to begin the new century of Catholicism, and would raise the profile of a continent much in need of world attention.

Victor Simpson has a fine summary of the career and life of John Paul II.

Where Do I Take The Pledge?

Bill Maher has some thoughts on the efficacy of high-school abstinence pledges:

Is there any greater irony than the fact that the Christian Right actually got their precious little adolescent daughters to say to their freshly scrubbed boyfriends: "Please, I want to remain pure for my wedding night, so only in the ass. Then I'll blow you." Well, at least these kids are really thinking outside the box.

...so to speak.

Stability

Good thing we brought order to Baghdad, at least. And stuff:

What came next has become typical for Iraq as sectarian tension and violence rise. Khudair's family formed an armed group of more than 20 relatives and neighbors who are demanding Khudair's release and vowing to kill those responsible.

"If something happened to my brother, no Shiite would be safe," said Khudair's brother, Sameer, who's convinced that Shiite militia members are behind the kidnapping.

The political instability in Iraq and the ethnic divides behind it are pushing Iraqis toward gang-like violence that many worry could start a slide toward civil war.

For decades, Saddam Hussein, Iraq's former dictator from the Sunni minority, ruled the nation harshly, sometimes brutally suppressing the majority Shiite population. In January, Shiite leaders swept Iraq's national assembly election.

The recent unrest, though, rather than coming from the top leadership of political and religious parties, is springing largely from the grass-roots of Iraqi society. It involves neighborhood-based forces, with Sunnis and Shiites seeking to protect themselves from each other or to exact revenge, and it chips away at Iraq's national unity.

More than eight months after the interim Iraqi government announced that the nation's largest Shiite and Kurdish militias would disband, they're still functioning.

Heavily armed gangs with private agendas disdainful of the authorities? How could that be a problem?

Um, And We're Defending This Place...

...why?

Insurgents attack Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison
Assault on jail results in 18 U.S. casualties, officials tell NBC News
BREAKING NEWS
By Jim Miklaszewski
NBC News
Updated: 2:18 p.m. ET April 2, 2005

WASHINGTON - A group of 40 to 60 insurgents attacked the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq late Saturday in a well-coordinated assault that inflicted 18 American casualties, U.S. military officials told NBC News. 

The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, could not immediately provide a breakdown on the number of dead or wounded.

The officials said the insurgents attacked with two car or truck bombs, 40 mortars and an intense ground assault.

U.S. forces in Iraq house many suspected insurgents at the prison outside Baghdad, which is at the center of a prison abuse scandal.

Instead of Americans dying to preserve this chamber of horrors, couldn't we let the prisoners go, and prop up cardboard cutouts of mocking soldiers on the ramparts to taunt the insurgency into demolishing the hellhole for us?

Just an idea.

Market Education

A post by Morbo on the The Carpetbegger Report about one woman's experience with the Washington DC school voucher system got me thinking and commenting, reproduced with some edits here. Reductio may have to weigh in and correct or expand some of my thinking on economics, since I merely play an economist on this blog.

The problem with robotically declaring that the private sector is better at providing all services is that there are some services that society requires whose motivation should not be profit, either because a) it’s difficult to make a profit at the given service, or b) mixing in a profit motive degrades the mission.

Other examples besides eductaion leap to mind. National defense, whatever your opinion of its current incarnation and methods of expenditure, would degrade if motivated by a highest-bidder regional model of applied service. Likewise, the national highway system, critical to country’s commerce, will not be profitably maintained by a private entity, but does benefit society as a whole (even though a well-supported rail system might figure better into a bang-for-the-buck calculation).

The astounding level of waste and inefficiency in American medical care (imagine those thousands of private bureaucrats whose salaries and functions could be consolidated in a single-payer system) is directly attributable to the profit motive. Insurance companies aren’t interested in providing health care, they’re interested in turning a profit for investors. The less service offered for a given price, the higher the profit, a lesson taken to heart when one examines the poor standing of health care in the United States when compared to other nations with universal health care systems. The same incentives and pitfalls apply to educational services.

“Free markets” are not “unregulated markets”. Free markets require regulation to function, to restrain monopoly and monopsonic powers between unequal actors and to help amelioriate the effects of asymmetric information, the importance of the last aspect revealed potently in the Enron collapse. If a critical component of society’s infrastructure such as schools is to be privatized, the only manner in which a truly free market can be assured is to mandate minimal educational standards, probably including a shared curriculum and open admission, to make certain that all competitors start with the proverbial “even playing field”.

I’m not philosphically opposed to private education, even funded by taxpayer money, however, I am oppposed to such programs on the practical grounds that an uneven delivery of service is inevitable without the heavy regulation that would be required to make a truly “free” market, and the inherent inefficiency of delivering a service when part of the funding it receives will be diverted out of the mission and into investor’s pockets, ending up in other sectors of the economy. While the US Postal system is "semi-private", it is still required to place a Post Office or provide a minimal level of service throughout the nation, regardless of whether it is profitable to serve all areas (and it isn't). However, as a society, we believe that it is useful and helpful to other sectors of the economy to provide such a service, so we fund it collectively.

Education, like the postal system, is too vital to leave to whims of irrational investors or to the level-headed short-term calculations of rational marketplace actors. The private sector is brilliant at innovation, but it is wildly inefficient with its massively redundant infrastructures to deliver like services to identical market segments. Does anyone seriously believe that private investors will fund competing efforts to educate the children of poverty? The Washington Post column would indicate a contrary experience.