Outrage Fatigue

It seems like every day there is something new to be outraged about. It’s very tiring, trying to keep track of all the things that are just wrong, let alone trying to do something about it. The scandal of the day is greeted by many people with a sigh, followed by “Well, that figures. Tell me something else.” Another obstacle is set in the path of Getting Stuff Done, let alone Getting Ahead and our inner cynic just says to keep going. We are desensitizing to the various manufactured problems.

I call this condition “outrage fatigue.”

This administration has already given us a Medicare Drug Benefit that has caused the price of medicine to go up and provides corporate welfare to a select group of wealthy, profitable corporations. They have given us a bankruptcy “reform” that makes it harder for ordinary people to get on with their lives, oh, and provides corporate welfare to a select group of wealthy, profitable corporations. They would like to give us a Social Security “Reform” that will gut the system, slash benefits, and provide corporate “opportunities” to a select group of wealthy, profitable corporations. And even now the President is getting ready to unveil an energy proposal that, while he admits it won’t reduce the price of gasoline (no, he has to go begging foreign princes for that), won’t increase efficiency (despite the fact that increased CAFE standards would save more oil than would ever come out of ANWR), but it will provide corporate welfare to some of the most wealthy, profitable corporations on earth.

President Bush has nominated — and gotten approved — an Attorney General who called the Geneva Conventions “quaint” and a Secretary of State who may or may not have “respect for the truth.” He did not manage to get an easily bought adulterer who hires illegal aliens as the Secretary of Homeland Security. As for making a bully who thinks the UN does not exist our Ambassador to the UN, the Committee is still out on that one. And remember, folks, even though a Republican is the one who stood up and said no, it’s the Democrats fault.

And this brings me to Justice Sunday and the Nuclear Option — oh wait, somebody did a poll and decided that people don’t like the term “nuclear option,” so we should use “Constitutional Option” (even though the Constitution has nothing to do with it) and blame the Democrats for coining the term “nuclear option” (even though Republican Senator Trent Lott came up with it).

For the benefit of those who are unfamiliar with this brouhaha, here is the short version. President Bush nominated a bunch of judges last year. Ten of them were rejected for a variety of reasons, including not having a license to practice law, being bought and paid for by special interests, or just plain being nutcases. Here’s one that claims “that people of faith were embroiled in a ‘war’ against secular humanists who threatened to divorce America from its religious roots….” I’ll get back to that attitude in a minute, but let me finish the story. So President Bush resubmitted 7 of these people as nominees, and they are having a tough time. The Democrats are threatening a filibuster — keep talking and talking until somebody is willing to take an idea off the table just to make it stop. That seems harsh, but it is a way to protect us from majority whim. Senate Majority Leader “Dr.” Bill Frist, who famously diagnosed Terri Schaivo based on a videotape, is now threatening to take away the right to filibuster and force “a straight up or down vote” on these nominees. In support of this, he staged an event last weekend called “Justice Sunday” wherein a taped message was run at a variety of churches, with the idea that Christians would support this erosion of minority rights. This is being supported by megatelevangelist James Dobson.

They want to make this into an Us-Against-Them Christianity-Vs-Evil thing, when it is really about things like competence. It is insulting to you, insulting to me, insulting to the Lord that their Churches represent. How dare these people be outraged about judicial nominees and not outraged that a gay male prostitute had seemingly limitless access to the White House. How dare they forget that Article VI Clause 3 of the Constitution says “no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.” How dare they forget how the Pilgrims and many other groups of people left their homelands to practice their religions without Government interference. How dare they forget that we have tried theocracy on this continent, and found it lacking.

Oh, and how dare the churches that ran this message forget the obligations inherent to their tax-exempt status.

OK, they’re “nutty”

Some delegates to an international telecommunications commission have been bumped because they or their employers gave campaign contributions to John Kerry. A White House spokesman was actually quoted as saying “We wanted people who would represent the Administration positively, and–call us nutty–it seemed like those who wanted to kick this Administration out of town last November would have some difficulty doing that.”

Now, I respect the idea that they want their position supported, but this is the wrong way to do it. If they want their opinion voiced in this international, non-governmental, industry meeting, they should send an FCC delegate. This decision instead sets the standard of quid pro quo, a big banner saying that governmental support is directly related to contributions. In politics, that is often considered a bad thing. Wikipedia goes so far as to call such things “a breach of the public trust and a dishonest circumventing of the democratic process for special interests.”

In a way, it is refreshingly honest to say up front that in the future, political contributions will be a matter of simple extortion, and that if you support a loser, you can expect political retribution.

Wait… did I just say that?

Security Theatre Act VIII

We can’t have any of that reading on an airplane!

Apparently there is at least one TSA agent who believes there is a limit to the number of books you can bring on an airplane. (Thanks to BoingBoing) Inasmuch as these screeners have the authority to make their own judgments about what might be prohibited items, he is right because he says so. But in what way is it potentially “dangerous” to have more than two books in your carry-on? How could you use a third or fourth book as a weapon?

And what exactly is to stop anybody from buying as many books as they can carry at the newsstand on the other side of the security checkpoint?

Seriously, most people are not going to begin a vacation looking to finish out a dozen books. But what about traveling salespeople, who must carry catalogs and literature about their products? He can’t check that because he has to keep track of it; he has to know where it is and that it will really arrive at his destination. What about people returning from conventions or other events where they receive or even buy books and book-like materials? Sure would be a pain to pick up the latest edition of, oh I don’t know, “Procedures for Primary Care Physicians” at the big AMA convention only to have it confiscated by the TSA. What about students looking to catch up on some studying when they go home for Spring Break? And how do they define a book?

I think most of us would be a little more tolerant of this type of behavior if the TSA were doing a good job, but they aren’t. Even conservatives are unimpressed. The British press reports “Gaping holes” in US Security, including but not limited to thousands of unauthorized airport workers (dozens of whom were illegal aliens), ignored risks at smaller airports, airport workers who cause security breaches, and a soon to be missed deadline for baggage screening.

Nope, we are too busy worrying about how many books you have in your bag.

In closing, kudos to Howard Dean for standing up and saying what most Americans think: “The issue is: Are we going to live in a theocracy where the highest powers tell us what to do? Or are we going to be allowed to consult our own high powers when we make very difficult decisions?”

Brother, can you spare a Yen?

“For the first time in 14 years, the American workforce has in effect gotten an across-the-board pay cut,” the Los Angeles Times reports, adding that not only are wages rising slower than inflation, but more healthcare costs have been shifted to employees.

Add to this that the tech industry is slashing jobs — you remember, those good paying high tech jobs that we were all told was the future of our economy? Another 60,000 of them went away in the first quarter of 2005 alone. And you can’t blame it all on outsourcing. Part of the problem is “good-enough computing,” a problem (a problem for hardware and software vendors, anyway) where companies simply say “what I have works fine, why do I need more?” Many companies over-bought and over-hired, either in the Y2K buildup or in the Dot-Com boom. They are still working through the hangover capacity. They see no compelling reason to upgrade, no compelling new products that will clearly pay for themselves. They aren’t fixing anything that ain’t broke.

How sad it is that coporate earnings growth is slowing! Why, the S&P 500’s earnings are only expected to rise 9.5% That’s still faster than double the growth of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and the Consumer Price Index (CPI, the official inflation rate) combined.

One very big factor contributing to the effective pay cut for the American worker and the “slow” profit growth of American companies and the high price of oil and the record price of gasoline and the record trade deficit is very simply the price of dollars. The United States has allowed the value of dollars to slide sharply over the last 3 years in what I believe to be a giant game of chicken designed to make American goods cheaper overseas, force China to de-link their currency from ours, and (hey as long as we are at it) make a whole lot of money for big oil and oil services companies like Halliburton.

There is the potential for things to get worse. Asian nations have been propping up the dollar, mostly by buying our bonds and financing our debts, because they cannot afford to let their goods get too expensive for Americans to buy. Americans buy a lot of Asian goods, and it would be bad for their economies if we stopped. Imagine if the price of a Honda or Toyota went up 25%. Look around the shelves of any discount store or fashion retailer and imagine if the asian products were 25% more expensive. If Asian products went up 10% in price, you would notice. What happens now — whether the American economy and prospects for the dollar get better or worse — depends on whether or not everybody continues to play the game.

In the end, either they stop the car, we get out of the middle of the road, or everybody gets hurt.

Nauseating News

It would have been easy to miss this news item today. The United States military has freed 2 Iraqi women, a 60 year old and her adult daughter. A Lt. Col. Clifford Kent denies that they were hostages intended to force family members to turn themselves in. Please pay no attention the note left in the family home reading “Be a man Muhammad Mukhlif and give yourself up and then we will release your sisters. Otherwise they will spend a long time in detention.” Also please pay no attention to the phone number on the note that, when a Reuter’s reporter dialed it, was answered by American soldiers. Kent added that Americans don’t take hostages or “blackmail” people into surrendering. Bull! American forces have been doing that kind of nonsense for 2 years, and it’s still an outrage. Amnesty International points out that such tactics are against international law.

So the next time there are new casualties in Iraq, the next time there is news of an insurgent attack, the next time you are told they “hate us for our freedoms” or the freedoms we are supposedly bringing the region, remember this. This story is not likely to be an isolated incident. Maybe it isn’t our freedoms they hate after all.

Don’t get me wrong, there is some good news coming out of Iraq — including getting a new President — but that is despite American actions, not because of them.

It’s About the Money

To listen to various Bush Administration representatives, everything is fine with the economy. Granted, Friday we found out that 110,000 jobs were created in March — less than half what the experts expected, and less than what is required to absorb new entries to the job market, more than the 86,396 announced layoffs — but that’s “good” because it means there is less inflationary pressure and therefore Agent Greenspan will be able to keep interest rates low, low, low. Of course the international currency markets think interest rates are going up. The parade of bad economic news continues, and Bloomberg is nice enough to summarize for us: personal spending rose faster than personal income; first time unemployment claims “unexpectedly rose to 350,000”; factory orders did not meet the levels forecast in February; gas prices keep rising; disposable income up, but not as much as it was down the previous month; oh, and that may only be because of tax refund checks. It might also have to do with the fact that consumer debt outstanding rose $7.5 thousand million, and $11.5 thousand million the previous month.

Here are figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics This page may be updated with new information in the future, so let me give you some of the meaty bits. There are officially 7.7 million unemployed people by the narrow, Department of Labor definition, 21.5% of whom have been unemployed at least half a year. This does not count the 1.6 million people who are “marginally attached to the labor force.” The number of employed people, 140.5 million, remained unchanged despite our growing population. Although the official average hourly wage was $15.95 — a figure which is distorted by small numbers of high wage individuals — the average weekly wages were $537.32. That’s a typical workweek of 33.7 hours.

So wages aren’t changing much, employment is barely keeping pace with layoffs let alone new workers. Expenses are rising. Oil has been over $50 per barrel for a while now, and even Greenspan is concerned about the effect that will have on the energy markets and the economy as a whole. Inflation isn’t a risk; it is here. Gas prices are at a new high at a time when Americans are spending at least 20 minutes getting to work. So much for saving money by living farther from work.

That house “a little farther out” may still be at the outer reaches of the family budget, making the gas prices a far bigger deal. Mortgage companies have been bending over backwards to make home-ownership happen for people who can barely afford it. Some of the tools they have been offering, in particular Adjustable Rate Mortgages (ARMs) and “interest-only” loans, are going to bite these people in the wallet in the next few years. Here’s two takes on the subject, from the L.A. Times and The Christian Science Monitor. For goodness sake, if you have an ARM call your mortgage company today about locking in a permanent rate!

Between the mortgages preparing to implode and the fact that personal debt is rising by billions of dollars a month, that bankruptcy reform bill will be a real disaster for the working class if it passes.

In closing, I’d like to say something to my Texan readers. Your junior Senator went on record as saying something so jaw-droppingly mind-bendingly stupid that you cannot and should not ignore it. You remember Tom DeLay saying the judges involved in upholding the Constitution (to say nothing of doing what most Americans thought they should) would “answer for their behavior”? And do you remember Senator Lautenberg politely reminding Mr. DeLay that threatening a judge is a federal offense? Now Senator Cornyn of Texas has said, in veiled language, that violence against judges is their own darn fault because they make bad decisions. That Federal Judge in Illinois who came home to find her family slaughtered? She was asking for it (by putting bad guys in jail)! If that’s true, then we are all doomed. Texans, this guy is a first termer. Replace him before he gets any kind of seniority. The nation depends on it.

And I thought Phil Gramm said stupid things.

Three Things That Matter To You

Maybe they call them “judges” because they use “judgment.”

Today’s LA Times has an item called “Judges Say Overhaul Would Weaken Bankruptcy System.” Here’s the no registration required version. In short, a lot of bankruptcy judges — the guys who actually deal with debtors and creditors all day long and try to Get Stuff Done — say the bankruptcy overhaul passed by the Senate and under consideration by the House is a Bad Idea that will do more harm than good. The article is long, but meaty. Here’s a bit from near the end, emphasis mine:

Practically, they warn, debtors who would no longer qualify for Chapter 7 and fail to complete Chapter 13 repayment plans would either have to keep paying creditors indefinitely or drop out.

“If you’re confronted with a mountain of debt and have no hope of getting out from under it, you’re either going to go underground or turn to crime,” said Kenneth N. Klee, a former Republican congressional staffer who was one of the chief authors of the last major bankruptcy law change in 1978 and now teaches law at UCLA.

Yes, a Republican who has been a bankruptcy expert for 30 years says this thing is bad and he tells you why. It is not too late to write your Representative and tell him/her what you think.

Of course my favorite devilish detail is that this bill will drive up the costs to file bankruptcy. Brilliant. So it will be entirely possible to be too broke to go bankrupt.

Security Theatre Act VII: Insecure Flight

The latest version of CAPPS, known officially as “Secure Flight” is set to be implemented in 4 months despite the fact that it only meets 10% of required goals. Some of the little things that aren’t quite worked out yet include “developing redress procedures for passengers to correct erroneous information if they’ve been unfairly or incorrectly singled out for scrutiny on a watch list; conducting tests to measure the accuracy and efficacy of data used to screen passengers; establishing oversight policies for who can access data and how they can use it; ensuring that data is secure from outside intrusions or manipulation; and establishing privacy safeguards to preserve passengers’ rights.” No biggie, right? And experts say this is no surprise.

Of course it was just last week we found that the TSA lied about its use of information on 12 million air passengers. You can find top notch commentary and a link to the actual GAO document on Secure Flight in this post by security expert Bruce Schneier.

Get Out of My Bedroom!

Today’s big personal health news is that most people sleep poorly. I personally suspect that a lot of people simply don’t allow enough time for a “good night’s sleep” in the first place. Furthermore, half of Americans are at risk for sleep disorders and many are ahem too tired for intimate relations.

Speaking of intimate relations, I have something to say to the pharmacists who refuse to fill valid prescriptions for birth control on “moral grounds”: find a job that doesn’t conflict with your morals! Your job is to fill prescriptions. If you think there is a medical reason not to fill a prescription, take it up with the doctor. If you have moral problems with doing your job, you must quit. Today. Otherwise, you are saying your morals only matter when they inconvenience others. A vegan waitress knows she will have to serve meat unless she works in a vegetarian restaurant; a recovering alcoholic realizes he should probably not go to bartender’s school; pacifists normally don’t enlist in the armed forces. What is your excuse?

Maybe it’s time we all took a nap.

Let me make sure I have this right.

I really don’t intend to bore the world with yet another essay about Terri Schiavo. All I will say about her case directly is this: contrary to what some people think, she is not “someone who just needs some help to eat.” She needs help to eat because she is beyond knowing what a spoon is, beyond knowing what food is, beyond knowing how to chew and swallow. A newborn baby can cry when it is hungry; this woman cannot. Every one of the 19 judges who has examined the medical evidence has come to the conclusion that she isn’t “in there” anymore. There’s a pretty good roundup of opinions both right and left over at The Moderate Voice (gee, whoda thought?) But it seems like the thing most people can agree on is that at this point, fifteen years and 19 judges later, Congress has no business getting involved. Judge #20 agrees, and now it is before Judges #21-23.

But the thing that absolutely horrifies me about this case is the circumstances behind the “unanimous” Senate vote that pushed the case into the Federal court system. “Unanimous,” in this case, meant 3 votes. There was no quorum (def. 2). There wasn’t even a minyan. When all was said and done, they didn’t even manage to get together half of of the House of Representatives. This brings me to a scary question:

If 3 guys can get together on the Senate floor and pass any darn thing they want, what exactly is there to stop them from getting 3 guys to do the same on the House floor and ram though any darn thing the President wants?

And that, esteemed reader, is why “activist judges” are so important.

Because All Our Problems Are Solved

You would never know there were any real problems in this nation to look at the Congress the last few days.

First, a House committee decided to investigate steroid use in pro baseball. If they are investigating this from the standpoint of employers abusing their employees, perhaps they should remember that the employees in question are a bunch of college educated millionaires. If Congress cares so much about workplace conditions, maybe they should look to the conditions that average American workers endure. If, rather, the argument is that teenage athletes are emulating the dangerous behavior of the pros, I would like to remind Congress that every teenage athlete has parents. It is Mom and/or Dad’s job to be clued in enough to say “These pills are dangerous and you will not be using them.” (Just like it’s Mom and/or Dad’s job to control what kids watch on the TV, not some “organization,” not the cable company, not the FCC. But that’s another story.)

As if this were not a big enough waste of Congress’s time and our tax dollars, they now want to subpoena a brain-dead woman to testify about…. uh, something. This is by Bill Frist’s own admission nothing more than a scheme to prevent her feeding tube from being removed, despite multiple court orders allowing it. In the time it has taken to write this post, yet another court has ordered the feeding tube removal take place.

Will they hold her in contempt of Congress for refusing to talk?

Never mind Social Security, the Federal Budget, the War in Iraq, the War on Terror, the misuse of Federal funds to produce propaganda designed to look like news, the fact that a gigolo was allowed within meters of the President of the United States on a regular basis with a daily press pass under a fake name, the fact that corrupt and unqualified judicial candidates may be rammed through the Senate, the fact that the CIA is allowed to outsource torture, ethics problems within the House, or any of the other things Congress could be addressing right now. Please, pay attention to the Congressional testimony of the millionaire drug users.

The Bank that Cried Wolfowitz

One thing that struck me about the attack on the World Trade Center was the number of financial firms whose offices were destroyed. Granted, the towers were walking distance from the NYSE (Maria Bartiromo ran the distance backwards in heels so as to not miss anything. Now that’s a serious reporter). When I heard that the International Monetary fund and the World Bank had offices there, I thought surely that was the real reason for the attacks: disrupt the global bankers; disruption to the American economy was bonus. If you think this is preposterous, then you don’t understand how many people think that the World Bank and the IMF do more harm than good.

Fast forward to today’s news that Bush’s pick for head of the World Bank is none other than Iraq campaign “architect” Paul Wolfowitz. Please be so kind as to ignore last week’s news that he wasn’t even in the running, that maybe they would support someone like incompetent ex-CEO Carly Fiorina. Maybe they had to find someone whose lack of qualifications was more subtle.

This is not a done deal, however. Apparently — although the President of the United States traditionally gets his way — there are 24 directors who have to arrive at some kind of consensus. And Reuters is willing to make a headline out of the truth that Wolfowitz is a “magnet for criticism.” That is an understatement.

Oh, and why is that? For good reason! Bottom line, he made Iraq into a bigger mess than it already was, and now we want to make him head of the World Bank. Given his record — here are four biographies — I wouldn’t hire him as the shift manager in a Dairy Queen. I certainly wouldn’t buy a used car from him.

As this comes on the heels of appointing a UN Ambassador who has publicly called for the disbandment of the UN, I am forced to wonder what President Bush is thinking: That America is so powerful as to force its will upon the world? That the European Union really ought to have more influence in the world? Or maybe that it just doesn’t matter, since the Apocalypse is coming any day now.

Or, is this a smoke bomb designed to make us look away from all the truly insidious things happening in our nation’s capital these days?