NOBODY WORKS ALONE

Just as it takes a nation to keep a well-equipped soldier in the field, there is a whole industrial army behind every guy who swings a hammer, supplying him with all he needs, from lumber and nails, to blueprints and boots. 


The quality of his work is the sole purpose, and the whole point, so far, of a complex network of logistics trains, all working towards the same ultimate end. All the parts have to be right. Not just his hammer, not just his lumber. 


I offer three apparently unrelated examples: footwear, raw materials and engineering.

Boots uncomfortable? Slow job. 
Bad nails? Bad job. 
Inaccurate blueprints? Expensive job.

Despite the initial bookkeeping, the cost for any of these failures is spread out amongst the players, and then slowly across the entire economy. Not immediately or evenly, perhaps, but ultimately all these costs are distributed.

The bad boots costs him sore feet, they cost his wife a grumpy husband, and they cost his kids a hike with Dad. They cost his boss overtime and profits. They cost the manufacturer future sales and your sister has her hours cut at the boot factory. Her friend is laid off, she doesn't buy that new car. 

The bad nails cost him aggravation (and maybe a sore thumb) and his boss overtime and profits, or if they pass undetected, they cost his customer, and his tenants, and their customers, and their families, when the structure fails prematurely. Not only does the cost spread, it increases. This is the multiplier effect at its hairiest.

The blueprint error costs everyone who relied upon it except the guy with the hammer (who, entrusted with finding and fixing it, is paid to rework it at least once), and is therefor disputed by the various insurers and litigated for years.

Whoever loses, the cost of any problem (along with the legal overhead required to argue it) is ultimately added not just to the cost of the particular job, it is also added to the price of future transactions, in the form of higher wage and benefit costs, capital costs, insurance rates, bond requirements, fees raised, rents charged and price tag jumps. 


These new price levels instantly become the new price floors, so over time, mistakes drive up the cost of just doing business in general. Prices must rise merely to maintain existing margins. Mistakes are therefor inflationary by their very nature.

 So you see it is critically important that every seemingly unrelated task is sufficiently incentivized to ensure quality work-product, for some may be working by themselves, but nobody really works alone.

THE CLASS-WARFARE CARD

In the run-up to the last election, I heard Fox  cable "news" anchor Larry Kudlow accuse a guest (who was being slightly critical of the Republican's "hands-off business-no-matter-what" policies) of "playing the class-warfare card". 
It got me thinking, just how many rich men are there who have no rational economic opportunity after High School but to enlist in the Armed forces? Just how many poor people control editorial boards? How many poor people set corporate policies? Investment strategies? Just how many rich men died digging the gold and copper out of other mens's mines? How many rich men died building the mighty railroads that criss-cross America's mountains and deserts?

 Do I hear you right, Larry? Two plus two isn't four because my shoes need a shine? That's no defense at all, it's a simple logical fallacy, Dr. Aristotle.  This old ad hominem defense,  accusing your critics of "playing the class-warfare card" just isn't gonna work, Larry. When what you are trying to defend are self-serving deceptions, byzantine frauds, massive greed, selfish motives, predatory reflexes, evasive accounting and PAC behavior that smells exactly like plain old-fashioned bribery. the jury is gonna want to hear a whole lot more than that. http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/ad-hominem.html

It doesn't take an economist to tell a dairyman from his cow. The one ending up with all the milk is... not the cow. Even more revealing, your remark marginalizes the glaring fact that there truly is a class war furiously raging, but it's been pretty one-sided so far, with one side doing all the warring, and the other? All the dying.

The "Class-Warfare Card" has been on the table for a long, long time, fruit of "the root of all evil..."

From Teddy Roosevelt: ”...the most dangerous members of the criminal class, the malefactors of great wealth...”. Asked how a meeting went, “It tires me to talk to rich men. You expect a man of millions to be worth hearing, but as a rule, they don't know anything outside their own business.” 

E. H. Harriman,
Skull and Bones

Of railroad magnate E. H. Harriman Roosevelt said, “...he said he could buy a sufficient number of Senators and Congressman to protect his interests, and when necessary, could buy the Judiciary.”

House Tyrant "Uncle Joe" Gurney

Senator Weldon Heyburn of Idaho: In opposition to the eight-hour workday: “People should toil from sunrise to sundown and to hell with the clock.” On calls to regulate lumber and mining interests in the West, “It is revolutionary to insist that the rights of the public to the national resources outweigh private rights.” 

Idaho Senator Fred Dubois

Idaho's Fred Dubois, Heyburn's Democratic colleague in the Senate from 1903-07, wrote to mine owner Harry Day,  of Weyburn, "You and I both know his faults, but at the same time he has virtues. One of these is that he will be outspoken and fearless in protecting all the industries of Idaho"".

Through the clear eye of history, the real "class-warfare card" looks just like a funeral invitation. 

SEE THE FUTURE! (Drive South)

Those of us concerned with civil liberties have been fighting with our eyes closed. The reason that we are getting no traction is that we are dismissing the reality of the brutality and terrorism being committed everyday by the meta-criminal organizations that now straddle the Mexican border. 


IT IS THIS VIOLENCE that is driving the increasing militarization of even our own police forces. It is not the weakness of our arguments, it is that we are proposing no alternative to the constitutionably-questionable executive tactics that have accompanied the desire to prosecute ever-stronger cartels and organized terror. 


I have found the motives, the intent of those charged with our safety to be honorable, even laudable, they're not fascists, they're overwhelmed and they are scared. When they adopt historically-repressive tactics in desperation, it is for lack of any other ideas.


We are trying to protect liberties by poking holes in their arguments in favor of harsh tactics, when it is not their arguments that drive the harshness, it is the facts.


What we need to address is "How else are to to protect ourselves?"


When unreasonable practices blooms, reasonable peoples do something about it. OK, what? 


What we are already doing is the only option anybody has yet placed on the table. When it hasn't been effective the only response so far is has been to do more of it. 


If progressive forces are to have any positive impact upon the way suspects rights are managed in the face of global terror AND well-funded murderers chasing profit, it is incumbent upon us to propose a more, not less, effective alternative.


Police corruption is the favorite tactic of both terror and crime. Corruption leads to compromise, cops are getting killed. Honest cops are open to new approaches, they don't want to die, they don't want to be blackmailed, or to have their families placed in jeopardy, either. If those charged with fighting corruption are corrupted, we have no effective tool at all against civil corruption. The press is powerless, a target of the same people, too. Without secure local reporters and local papers, all the remote media can give us are the crime blotters. Prepared by the police.


This is what is upon us all, left and right:

"A crackdown on a vicious Mexican drug gang has led to the arrest of five Tijuana police officers, including two who had been at the forefront of the border city’s efforts to rid the force of corruption...The five officers were caught at a house along with six cartel members who were holding two rival gangsters captive, Ramon Pequeno, head of the anti-narcotics division of the federal police, said... About 130 Tijuana officers have been jailed on corruption charges in a force of about 2,000. An additional 250 have been fired or pressured to resign.

"President Felipe Calderon has deployed tens of thousands of soldiers across the country to lead the crackdown on cartels. Drug violence has since surged, claiming more than 15,000 lives since Calderon took office in December 2006. Most were victims of turf wars between rival gangs, but police, government officials and journalists have also been targeted."

From http://www.streetgangs.com/cops/020910_tijuana

"Thirty-one police officers have been arrested in a central Mexican state on suspicion of collaborating with a gang of drug cartel hit men. The Public Safety Department says the officers were arrested as part of a months-long investigation into alleged ties between police and the Zetas in Hidalgo, a state north of Mexico City. Ninety-two police were arrested there in June, and the latest 31 were detained Monday...The investigation began last October, when federal police arrested seven suspected Zeta accountants and found evidence of monthly payments to Hidalgo police from the gang, which is linked to the Gulf cartel. Hundreds of police have been arrested across Mexico for alleged ties to cartels during federal government’s battle against drug trafficking".

From http://www.streetgangs.com/cops/091509_mexicanpolice

This did not become business as usual on this scale until fairly recently, and is one of the Elephants in the Room in any discussion of civil liberties. Only the Department of Homeland Security can tell you how big the corruption problem is in the battle against terror, and one cannot help but wonder about our defense and intelligence organs in their some-times quiet battles against state-sponsored forces.

(c) 2010 Craig Chereek

THE RED QUEEN WEARS A BADGE

Are we headed towards a Police State?

Not yet, not compared to the rest of the world. Abuses have always happened, if for no other reason than because justice is administered by human beings. With apologies to Lewis Carroll, in 1871 when the Red Queen in "Through the Looking Glass..." said, "First the sentence and then the evidence" this is what she meant. 

The problem is the old one about power corrupting. 80 years before Alice met the White Rabbit, the Bill of Rights was ratified to help reign this in, so it’s hard to make the case that it is Un-American to wish to deter corrupt acts and willful abuses against individuals committed under color of authority. It’s not being “soft on crime” to oppose crimes by public officials. Any failure of political will to resist and frustrate even "small" official abuses historically leads toward broader and broader police discretion. Ask Europe. When mishandled, this abets official crime. 

Better training won't overcome a mean streak in a police officer, greed in his supervisors, or in those who may have corrupted them.

When we encounter willful official abuse, we'd like to think reporting it usually leads to stopping it.  The recent arrests of key city officials in Bell, California are the exception, not the norm. Let'see how motivated the new State Attorney is to continue pursuing these common crimes in other cities now that the 2010 election is past...

I submit that a Police State is just around the corner when abuses become routine, inevitable when they become accepted, and has arrived when they become policy. You’ve seen the news, where are we now? Where is north Mexico? Counting bodies. Juarez, a city of just 1.5 million recorded 2,600 killings in 2008. Think they don't wish Martial Law had been declared earlier, before the drug cartels grew so powerful? Think it can't happen here? Ask the San Diego PD. 

Ladies and Gentlemen, the Top 10 Signs you may be living in a Police State

#10 Police Administer “Instant Justice”

The list of documented unnecessary police beatings could fill a phone book. One such beating nobody can quibble about is the one we all witnessed, that of Rodney King in Los Angeles.If it later turns out ANY suspect “had it coming,” under the Constitution, it’s up to the Judiciary, not the arresting officers, to administer it. 

“Failure to follow instructions” is NOT acceptable grounds to cripple a person, no matter how alone, excited or scared you may be.

#9 Police Massage Reports
A large part of the training every officer receives addresses HOW TO fill out reports, not so that they are complete, logical, clear, factual and concise, but so as to make them more useful to the Prosecutor. The key message they take from the Academy is "Give the Prosecutor ALL and ONLY what he needs to get a conviction with no “complications..” No graduate believes his reports are intended to facilitate a just outcome, that's the defendant's lawyer's job, let him get his own evidence. It is the prosecutor, not the arresting officer, who has an adversarial relationship with defense attorneys, and is no reason for peace officers to "shade" their reports.

#8 Courts Turn Blind Eye to Police Misconduct
The King beaters were acquitted. If they hadn’t been caught red-handed, they would have never been prosecuted at all. 

On-duty cops should wear helmet cameras like race drivers, and turning one off should be a crime all on it’s own, like removing a Court-ordered ankle-bracelet. If you’re not willing to defend the actions it might record, don’t take them. 

It would also serve the function of putting the lie to every FALSE charge of police brutality as well. Why subject juries to unreliable "he said, she said" evidence when the FACTS are easily obtainable  with just a little readily-available, over-the-counter technology? The Police Unions and the ACLU should both be eager for this.

#7 Burden of Proof shifts to the Accused
Article 1, Section 9 states, “The privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it.” For better or worse, the Homeland Security Act now gives authorities not just the authority, but the responsibility to ignore the entire spirit of the Bill of Rights. When a situation is so dire as to require the suspension of Civil Rights, the only lawful Constitutional mechanism is an Executive Declaration of Martial Law. Although technically only Congress can suspend the writ of Habeas Corpus, it is almost certain in the wake of 9/11 to have done so. 

Washington (Whiskey Rebellion), Jackson (War of 1812), Lincoln (Civil War) and Kennedy (Civil Rights unrest in Selma, Alabama) had the courage to make it, G.W. Bush did not. 

Congress has not yet had the courage to face the conflict, and badly needs to strip those types of provisions from the Act when it next comes up for renewal. 

What does this matter to you and yours? Plenty. For when the government has to make no showing at all as to why someone is being detained, anybody can be detained for no reason at all. Or for nefarious reasons, like when in the pay of cartels.

#6 Evidence is “Prettied Up” by Prosecutors
When police reports and subpoenaed evidence are received by prosecutors, they have a legal duty to make it available to the other side. “Concealment, destruction or withholding of, or refusal to give material evidence which one has or knows and is legally or morally bound to reveal is normally considered ‘obstruction of justice,’ a criminal offense”.

From http://www.businessdictionary.com 

But to progress in their personal careers, prosecutors need a high conviction rate. Who will prosecute the prosecutor for obstruction? 

This is a structural conflict of interest, with nobody working to resolve it. If the conviction rate is the only metric by which a prosecutor is to be measured, the ruler is flawed.

#5 Population Fears Police More than Criminals
In how many neighborhoods is a victim of crime more likely to turn for help to members of the local gang than the police? Too many. The Police are certain to investigate the victim, too. If you call “G-Dog”, the worst that happens is that the crime goes unpunished. If you call the police, it may still go unpunished and you may be jailed yourself, for anything at all, from unpaid traffic tickets to immigration status review.

#4 Enforcement is Guided by Whim and Politics, not Law
When the local cop watches the well-known local make a lane change without using his turn signal, he says, “There goes Matt from the hardware store,” and just keeps on going. When a stranger does it, he says to himself, “No turn signal,” and immediately pulls him over. This is easily dismissed as just human nature, but it is also an individual deciding what laws to enforce on whom. In his mind, he is merely exercising the discretion delegated to him when, from a broader vantage point, he is making a consequential Policy Decision. Certainly it is of consequence to the individuals involved. So what? It leads to the same thing at work on larger levels. A textbook example is the creation of “Sanctuary Cities” where local governments instruct local Law Enforcement NOT to follow Federal Law. [specifically, the 1996 Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act ( IIRIRA ) that requires local governments to cooperate with Department of Homeland Security’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)].

And if cities can "opt-out" of this Law, why not other laws? Now we have a real problem: For if nobody knows what the rules are, or whether or not they are currently being enforced where they are at any given moment, how could anybody be expected to follow them? Nobody should be surprised when not everybody tries.

#3 Abuse Under Color of Authority Goes Unpunished
 “Police misconduct isn’t just about the obvious — police beating suspects because it’s easy for them to get away with it. It’s also about things like making up false charges to justify bad arrests, refusing to testify about other officers’ crimes (code of silence), refusing to accept complaint reports from citizens, threatening suspects who would otherwise take their charges to court into pleading guilty, and coercing women into performing sexual acts. And when police do things such as beat their wives, they can count on the fact that few other police officers will arrest them for it, and that the District Attorney will be lenient in bringing charges — if any are brought at all.“

from http://michaelbluejay.com/police/

#2 More Citizens are in Prison than Graduate from College
Approximately 2.700,000 were behind bars in the United States on December 31, 2007.

(from http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/content/pub/pdf/p08.pdf). 

Only 1,169,275 received four-year College degrees that year.

(from http://nces.ed.gov/pubs97/web/97415.asp).  

That means in 2007 you were more than twice as likely to be in prison than to graduate from college. 

#1 You are afraid to admit you are already living in a Police State.

Denial won’t help you when both the Police and Prosecutor feel not just free, but obligated to “manage” the facts. They do it all day, every day, and so they are very good at it. You, on the other hand, probably aren’t. Not only that, but they are, for the most part, “above suspicion”, while you, being suddenly “under suspicion”, have no credibility at all. To admit that you live in a police state would obligate you morally to do something about it, which just might lead to a knock on YOUR door, or worse. No wonder we stay in denial. 

No I don't think we live in a police state, but if the nation isn't eternally vigilant, one is always a risk with no upside.

POWER FROM THE PEOPLE

POWER TO THE PEOPLE

 Corporations  now have 1st Amendment rights, which means they can contribute directly to political campaigns. More accurately, the individuals who direct their political contributions have the right to make contributions in the Corporation's name, using the Corporation's money (while remaining anonymous themselves). Thereby the electoral and legislative impact of the 1st Amendment exercises of all  living breathing people is diluted, if not dwarfed. 
Who directs a corporation's political contributions? It's Board of Directors. Now they can do it in secret.
How much stock would a "sovereign equity fund" have to buy to elect their own slate of Directors? ONE SHARE. One share permits them to gather proxies from the required 50% of the voting shares. When done through a third party offering shareholders a bigger dividend, it's not hard to do. Ask Carl Icahn.


For more on the subject see my post of FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 26, 2010, MY MOTHER, THE CORPORATION.

IT COMES WITH THE UNIFORM

Anyone who has ever spent time hanging around the Courthouse KNOWS cops lie. No, they don’t lie all the time, they don’t have to, there are plenty of actually, factually and provably guilty defendants, certainly most. But when they think it helpful, cops lie. The occasional innocent defendant learns it gape-jawed, but nobody else is ever really surprised. Prosecutors rely on it, defense attorneys strategize over it, the clerks knows it, the stenographers, too. All judges know it, the press knows it. Juries suspect it.

Why would cops lie? In addition to all the regular reasons anyone lies, they lie to manufacture probable cause for a search, they lie to obscure their own misbehavior, they lie to check a box, they lie to hide entrapment, they lie for the sake of getting a conviction and the approval of those around them. They lie to get to lunch on time. They lie for each other. They lie to their supervisors, they lie in writing, they lie in oral testimony before a jury right after swearing to God “to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth,” with one hand on the Bible. The funny part is, nobody has to tell them to lie, and they certainly don’t think of themselves as liars, they are just being “good cops.”

If they are just being loyal to the uniform, doing the job, meeting expectations, where do those expectations come from? Surely, none of their mothers raised them to lie like that, these people weren’t all liars before they were cops, were they? No, they probably were not. so it can’t really be lying, only liars lie, right?

Maybe it’s not that simple. You see, it’s in their job description, but not in black and white. It is written in BLUE.  Every morning, right there in the mirror, they assumes the expectations when they puts on the blue uniform. Cops call themselves the “Blue Gang” on the streets. A contract issue can lead to a walkout, called the “Blue Flu.” If you wear the uniform, it’s not lying, it’s loyalty, and we all know loyalty is a virtue… so the fault can’t be in the individual, he is pretty sure he is walking the more virtuous path, on a very tangible level. Like personal hygiene, or physical fitness, a steady gaze and a shoeshine, it comes with the uniform. And like it always seems to have, it forever will, until somebody says otherwise, and that has to come from the top, without the wink or the nod.

At least it does in many police departments, (although surely not in yours or mine). More enlightened departments recognize this only raises the anger and disgruntlement on the streets, making their job bigger, and harder. They have come to learn that it is far better to let a possibly-innocent defendant walk than constantly have to pound home the point of their authority by proving they have the ability to commit and get away with perjury.

We all get it, you have the gun. There is no need to belabor the obvious. The case a lie may “save” is not worth it just for one more symbolic opportunity to point at the gun, not when lies add up to making the job harder for everyone tomorrow.

Let the prosecutor make his political bones on the provably guilty. There's no shortage...

MY MOTHER, THE CORPORATION

Like people, the nation is capable of making a wrong turn.
We do have some safeguards against one persisting, but they are spotty, and they are slow. A Presidential Executive Order can be reversed simply by electing a new President who issues a new one. It may take four years, if the electorate feels strongly enough about the issue to vote in a candidate determined to do so. 

Now, when Congress screws up, it takes a lot longer to reverse it.  Congress, of course could pass a new law, repealing the first, but has been historically reticent to admit it's errors, and the same interests that lobbied for the old law are still paying for the committee chairman's lunch... 

Otherwise, first, someone has to violate the new law, either be convicted and lose each appeal all the way to the Supreme Court,  or be exonerated and the prosecutor looses each appeal all the way to the Supreme Court. If it chooses to hear the case. and agrees with the defendant that the law allegedly broken is unconstitutional, it will so rule. We are talking here about more than a decade from the first charges, minimum. 

But when the Supreme Court screws up, it takes far, far longer to correct it. 

Plessy v. Furguson (163 US 357, 16 S.Ct. 1138 41 L. Ed. 256) (which codified racial segregation with it's "separate but equal" ruling) of 1896 was only reversed in Brown v. Board of Education (347 US 483 and 349 US 294) FIFTY-NINE YEARS later. In sum, a screwup by the Supreme Court is the hardest to reverse, and the most consequential because it is the slowest to reverse, and may well drag it's consequence and effects down the generations while the wheel creaks.

What makes this important NOW is that the court has just invited the camel into the tent. On January 21, 2010 the Supreme Court endowed Corporations with more of the same inalienable rights that God gave the rest of us. See  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens_United_v._Federal_Election_Commission ( 130 S.Ct. 876 )  Corporations now have 1st Amendment rights, which means they can contribute directly to political campaigns. Thereby the electoral and legislative impact of the 1st Amendment exercises of living breathing people is diluted, if not dwarfed. 

Living breathing people disclose their names when they make campaign contributions, The investors directing a corporation's donations do not. 

Talk about Judicial Activism. 

Big dollar mischief is afoot, and once it is apparent to all, it will take decades (at best) to reverse it. 

Maybe in fifty years a better-qualified Court can choose to revisit the wisdom of taking the government of the people away from them and giving it to those controlling corporation political contributions. Lest you are worried  about Rupert Murdoch, Steve Forbes or George Soros,  these are small fry.  The threat is much bigger, for to fully flex this new muscle, I predict a slew of new straw corporations and corporations being taken private by Sovereign funded foreign equity in syndicate with a Wall Street concerned with naught but commissions. Buying an American Election anonymously might look pretty attractive to Iran, or to China, no? Even impoverished North Korea and dysfunctional Yemen can afford a small cap or two. 

Has anyone thought this through? It's the Manchurian Candidate all over again with a twist: the Manchurian Board of Directors. 

And with their new corporations new 1st Amendment rights, there's not much we can do about it.

MOMMA GRIZZLY FACES A LIMITED MENU

We have a systemic problem, it's not a fair fight, and it never will be. 


Every two years our ballots send a fresh class of rookies to Congress, usually with new and limited mandates, who will instantly be asked to join the quiet battle against entrenched multinational financial interests who's sly mandate hasn't changed since the crafting of the second dollar. They take a longer view, and their veteran lobbyists take advantage one freshman learning-curve at a time. They've been grooming congressmen for generations.

We may have a Congress which is more doctrinally "pure" but much less inclined (let alone prepared intellectually) to govern. Tell me we're not sending up people unwilling and/or helpless to defend the national treasure effectively from the onslaught of organized and prepared profiteers and cutthroats whom they will find waiting for them in their new offices. Waiting with smiles, campaign assistance and the Party Whip on speed-dial.

When the approval (and future campaign contributions) of any small, but well-heeled minority is the only outcome that matters to a politician, what is best for us as a whole is not very likely to control his or her decisions. 


Even a momma grizzly's gotta eat. 

LOOK OUT HUCKLEBERRY, THERE'S A WOLF IN THAT SHEEP...

WHO'S PAYING FOR THE PARTY?

People are right to be concerned for the well-being of America, but I think we've got it all wrong. Liberty is under attack, not from the Progressive left but from the Financial right, and the Political right is (unwittingly perhaps), providing the foot-soldiers. The SuperPAC end-around in our current Campaign Finance law sanctions complete donor anonymity. and anonymity is a gentle word for secrecy. Disclosures will not be forthcoming. 

I am deeply troubled by the recent disclosures of foreign entities (through the US Chamber of Commerce!) helping to bankroll a strategy of  stage-managed public disorder clothed in the garb of free expression. I'm not talking about WTO protesters, here, I'm talking about the Tea Party Town Hall shout-downs. If we're not going to talk about the issues, what good is an educated electorate? As to the Tea Party Rally in Washington, the johnny-come-lately buy-in of the movement by GOP candidates in close races meant that by the time we all got there it was not even slightly grass-roots, as contrived as Dollywood. and as carefully choreographed as Swan Lake. 


I am even more troubled by the eagerness of American political Parties to take part in the charade, playing the puppet. I am still saddened that it worked, that the electorate didn't see through it.  Never under-estimate the gullibility of a mob, I guess. Especially a well-dressed one.

I get frustrated when we disagree, but I dearly love that we can. I just wish we would do so without subterfuge and trickery, it is unworthy of a free people. Don't we trust the democratic process enough to let it work on the level? If your donors' profits, not national interest, is your North Star, what course will you set? Who and what might you find expendable? We're about to find out, aren't we, Mr. Speaker?

Until corporate money is separated from the political process by a reform of our campaign finance laws, we have little hope of EVER escaping the ravages of their creation, Government by the Corporation, for the Corporation and of the Corporation. If government hears only the voice of corporate interest, who will look out for the interests of people?

LOOKING FOR THE BEST

I admit it, I'm greedy. 

I want an America worthy of our revolutionary and democratic heritage, farmlands, neighborhoods and cities that are more than healthy, that feel good to live in. 

I want a nation of homes worth caring for, taxes worth paying, jobs worth working, lives worth living. It's still about a fair shake for the little guy, Woody, yet it feels like we're going backward. 

It's gonna take more than an occasional exchange of vitriolic verbal uppercuts, it's gonna take some ever-fresher thinking. We may reach some  of the old conclusions, but if so, we need to have done so rationally, not emotionally. 

AN NFL TEAM IN L.A.?

How bad do we need an NFL team in Los Angeles? That depends upon who "we" are.


If "we" are Joe Sixpack, the archetypical fan living in Los Angeles (myself, less the beer, included), the answer is not at all. We see 50% more televised games than anyone living in an NFL market, because we face no blackouts. If we want to venture into the neighborhood of the Coliseum for a game, we can already do that, USC plays there. When they are on the road, UCLA is playing a home game in the Rose Bowl, 15 miles away. If the arguement is Super Bowl windfalls, we already get that. In mid-January, where else but in Southern California can you play football outside?


If "we" are Tim Taxpayer, the answer is even more emphatically not at all. In 16 years of "negotiations",  the NFL has made it very clear that unless PUBLIC funds are provided to build them a billion dollar stadium, it has no interest in coming here.


The much-chewed Public/Private "partnership" is the catch phrase, yet these have proven to be parasitic relationships at best, with the public needing a permanent tenant to recover our investment, and the NFL demanding stiff concessions every time a short-term stadium lease expires. The public never has any leverage in these negotiations, faced with a vacant stadium if it tries to get fair value.


So who wants it? Only the politicians seeking campaign contributions from hopeful businesses who believe they stand to benefit from additional foot traffic on Sundays. If that was sincere, they would announce the location of the proposed stadium first. As long is it might go anywhere, contributions can be sought everywhere. Even the NFL really has no need to be here, the current franchise-holders (who alone control the NFL) make more in TV contract negotiations off the IDEA of an NFL franchise coming here (as they proved in the last negotiations) than the owners stand to net from an actual Los Angeles team.


If the argument in favor of public funding of what are essentially private enterprises is that it will be good for the local economy, I submit the case of Arlington Texas. A few years ago it spent $ 250 million dollars towards the construction of a new baseball stadium for the Texas Rangers. Then it spent another $250 million dollars towards Jerry Jones new Cowboy Stadium. Both are up and running. Arlington should be a veritable boom town. It clearly is not.


A muddle-headed California assemblyman said on ESPN this morning that the NFL should not be blamed for the lack of progress in bringing a team to L.A., for they have a "right to a profit"!


NONSENSE.


A profit is never a right. Oh, it can ethically be earned by correctly pricing the right product in the right market, but unless this has suddenly become a reverse socialist state, no investor has a RIGHT to a profit, not as long as he gets to choose when and where to invest his money. WHY in the world would the taxpayer want to insure his risk AND contribute to his capital costs as well? Isn't the risk he takes with HIS money the whole of the justification for profit in the first place?  He has a right to put his money elsewhere if he thinks that is in his best interests, and I say, if you can't make an NFL franchise profitable in Los Angeles WITHOUT a public subsidy, go right ahead, spend that money elsewhere.


Maybe he can try his luck in the stock market, for we are already all-in, fully encumbered: we have a chronically dysfunctional State Government to support, an endless inflow of economically unsophisticated immigrants looking for a better life, a badly dilapidated infrastructure to rebuild, public safety to ensure, children to feed and educate, the sick, injured and aged to care for... and a third game to watch on Sunday.


And we've heard it all before.