Sad news after the Christmas Season

This week has not been full of good news. The biggest issue of course is the Tsunami disaster in Asia. The last count I saw was 115,000 dead. This is not necessarily unprecedented as far as number of lives lost, although it is one of the worst, but it is unprecedented in the vast geographical scope of the disaster. Please make sure you donate to some of the relief funds. My wife and I donated to the Red Cross using Amazon.com's home page and it was very easy, but whether you donate to them or someone else, please just donate.

We also need to encourage our President to do more. It took him days to publicly offer any kind of condolence, since he was so busy on his vacation in Crawford Texas. His initial offers of aid were phenomenally small. He has now pledged 35 million dollars in aid, which might sound reasonable, but remember we have spent 200 billion (that is 200,000 million) on the war in Iraq. It seems to me that it would be a public relations boon for the U.S. to spend all we can to assist the mostly Muslim victims of this disaster, instead of only spending money on killing (sorry, liberating) Muslims.

Fortunately Americans (and millions more around the world) are stepping up and offering help on their own, and I am hoping you will too.

The other sad news this week is from Iraq, where hundreds more have been killed in military action, suicide bombings and executions. We are only one month away from the elections, and it will be a miracle if they go well. I hate finding myself in this kind of a position, but I really hope that the election goes well, even though it will be a victory for Bush. The Iraqi people have suffered enough from our actions.

Take Fallujah. One of the most famous quotes from the Vietnam war was from an army officer: "Well Sir.. We had to destroy the village to save it." I think this applies fairly well to Fallujah. The city simply doesn't exist any more, there are no citizens living there, it is just a pile of rubble which is continually being fought over by our troops and the insurgents. Civilians who recently tried to return simply gave up and went back to their refugee camps, vowing they would never return. They say their homes are destroyed, and there is nothing left.

Well done! Is this our new strategy? Simply destroy every Iraqi city until the people are all in refugee camps? I know that the U.S. military will say that it is not their fault, they were only liberating the city from the foreign terrorists and insurgents, but they know that the majority of the fighters in Fallujah were Iraqis. While these Iraqis may be the enemy, they are fighting to defend their homes from an occupying power. They are rebels fighting for self determination (at least in their own minds). While the country would be far better off with a solid democracy and being out from under Saddam's boot heel, we have no guarantee that this will be the final outcome. Far more likely at this point is a Shiite dominated religious government similar to that in Iran. So if you are a secular Sunni, I can understand 100% why you wouldn't be too happy with the idea of U.S. backed elections.

It is just so sad that our soldiers and the Iraqi people are dying in record numbers, all because we were misled about the threat that Iraq posed to us. Remember this war did not start in order to liberate Iraqis. It started because they were going to give Nukes to Al Qaida who was going to use them on our cities. Oh how far we have come.

So what is the ray of light? The ray of light in this situation is what you can do yourself. You can support our brave troops who are in an intolerable situation, placed there by their commander in chief. You can give generously to relief agencies who are doing miraculous work in Asia, Africa and Iraq. You can get involved, and help people understand the realities of our world. You can do something.

Merry Christmas.
Before I start getting pessimistic, I want to wish every one of you a Merry Christmas, or if you are not celebrating Christmas, at least a Happy Holidays. We need a little of that Holiday spirit right now.

I haven't been posting much, for two reasons. First I have been very busy. Secondly, because things have been getting so bad that I have found myself avoiding the news. I simply don't want to know what is going on half the time. For me that is really sad, since I had just started getting out of my post election funk, when everything seemed to start going downhill.

From the Republican's trying to change filibuster rules so that the Democrats can't stop Bush's radical nominations, to the continued snow job of Americans over Social Security reform, to the continuing economic problems and the abandonment of fiscal discipline, to the increasing attacks on rights by the religious right, we haven't seen much good news.

There are two standout issues though, of course. The first is Iraq. Even Bush has now admitted that things are not going well in Iraq, and that the insurgency is having an impact on how Iraqis and Americans view the war. FINALLY. It was the first acceptance of reality I have seen from him for a long while, although it is after the elections so maybe he just doesn't care what people think anymore. Iraq is a disaster. We are stuck between a rock and a hard place with no good options. Do we pull out and likely leave a civil war in our wake? Do we continue our occupation and continue to incite increasing levels of violence against us? What exactly do we do? Of course we should never have been there in the first place (remember we invaded because they were going to give nuclear weapons to Al Qaida), but now we are there we have no good options. I am so incredibly mad that our soldiers, and the people of Iraq, are dying at an increasing rate because of our unnecessary invasion. Just this weekend dozens of Iraqis were killed in bombings. Just yesterday dozens of Americans and others were killed in another attack. The longer we stay, the greater the violence, and the more danger we add to the situation. Of course we can't leave either, so I don't know what we should do.

Personally I am kind of glad Bush is going to have to deal with this, and not Kerry. He created the mess, let him deal with the consequences.

The other issue I wanted to highlight today is Bush's tax cuts and their implications. Old news you say? Why am I still talking about it? Well I have always maintained that when people support tax cuts, they never seem to realize that they will require cuts to programs that are often important. It is really simple to want to keep an extra $50 a month, but when you realize the impact, it can make the tax cut less attractive.

Well it was just revealed that the Bush Administration has notified a number of different food aid agencies that it will not be able to meet the financial obligations we had with them. We had promised 100's of millions of dollars in food aid to a number of international food agencies, and now we are renegging on those promises, because of our budget crunch. Please don't forget that the reason we have this budget crunch, is because we have billions less in revenue because of Bush's tax cuts. So in order to make sure that the wealthy get to keep more of their wealth, we had to take food from the table of those who have the least. The food aid was designed to help poor countries and communities bring themselves out of poverty. Unfortunately we no longer have the money to help them because we had to give more to the wealthiest.

It makes me sick.

So Merry Christmas! For me it seems increasingly that I have to retreat into my own family and ignore the world around me in order to feel the spirit of Christmas. Seems to me that Christ would not approve of helping the rich have more at the expense of the hungry, or causing so much death and destruction in Iraq, based on falsehoods and distortions. What a wonderful world we live in.

Money in Politics

First of all, let me say that money is the main problem with politics today. This is my personal opinion, but I feel very strongly about this. Our politicians spend half their time fundraising, and the other half of the time appeasing those who gave them money. Donations are legal bribes, and nothing more.

Campaign Finance Reform bills such as the McCain/Feingold bill do help, but they don't do enough. As long as politicians need millions of dollars to even come close to being able to run a successful campaign, we will never escape this problem.

Why is this such an issue? A few good reasons:

- Money disqualifies good candidates. Unless I have access to millions of dollars (either my own, or some wealthy benefactors) I have absolutely no chance of running for office, at least at a Federal level, but increasingly even at a local and state level. So I could be the absolutely best candidate for the job, but I have no chance.

- Money corrupts the process. Money always does. Anytime someone needs these quantities of money, they will have to do something to get it. In political terms this means taking care of those who fund you.

- Money removes access. Our politicians are supposed to represent us, but of course they don't . If you have two people, one a major donor, the other a constituent, and both need to speak to a candidate to express their views. Guess who will have the access they need. Having money so intricately involved in the process means that only those with money have access.

- Money is a distraction. Our politicians spend inordinate amounts of their time raising money and courting donors. This time would be better spent actually governing. Don't we need them worrying about the issues rather than worrying about how their vote will effect their money stream?

There are other issues as well but these are the main ones. Money in the process is the main reason why politics is the mess it is in today. Unfortunately we have zero chance of changing this. Those who would have to change the law are the same ones who have benefited from the current system. They do not bite the hand that feeds them.

One solution would be full public funding of elections, and the classification of campaign donations as illegal bribes. I am dreaming, but it would be better.

Since we cannot change the situation at all, we have to live with it and minimize the damage. This last election was actually a reasonably good example of this. The Democrats managed to raise more money than the Republicans, something no-one thought they could do. The reason for the surprise was the massive increase in small donations from individuals; $10, $20, $50 at a time. These small donations (if we have to live with the system) help dilute the power of the big donors, even if only ever so slightly.

Even more importantly though, maybe we can support those big donors who actually support our candidates. This may seem like dancing with the devil, but we have to do what we have to do. There are a lot of organizations and companies out there donating inordinate amounts of money to candidates on both sides. The majority do seem to support the Republicans (not too much of a surprise) but there are companies that support the Democrats. The Republicans are always talking about voting with your dollars, and maybe we should.

I propose that we all shop as much as possible with companies that mostly support Democrats. This may seem petty or strange, but every little bit helps. Here is a well known example. Wal-Mart is well known for donating almost exclusively to Republicans. Costco is the opposite, and donates almost exclusively to Democrats. If you have a choice between joining Costco or Sam's Club, choose the first. That way you are supporting the financial health of an organization that supports the causes you do. Seems pretty simple.

So how do you find out which companies to support? Well recent disclosure laws have made it much easier. Here are a few sites that can really help.

www.buyblue.org
www.opensecrets.org
www.choosetheblue.com

The hard thing of course is that in some categories your choices are limited. For example, whenever you need to fill up your car, the only gas company that donates more to Democrats is Shell. All others are Republican strongholds.

While I don't think this will be the solution to all of our problems, it certainly can't hurt.

Social Security - Bush finally comes clean.

Throughout the campaign, Bush continually accused Kerry of having financial numbers that just didn't add up. He accused him constantly of lying to the American people, because he claimed that Kerry would not be able to pay for all his programs without raising taxes.

This always drove me nuts, because Bush was clearly pushing for a program that was going to cost more than anything that Kerry was proposing. That of course was Social Security privatization. This program is going to cost an additional estimated 1 to 2 trillion dollars. Yes, Trillion. Why? Because Bush is telling seniors that he will not reduce their current benefits, or the benefits of anyone who is close to retirement. However, if younger people start contributing less to the social security program, then the program will have less money to pay the current seniors at their current rates.

So the question was always "how are you going to pay for it?" Bush never answered, until yesterday, when his Administration finally admitted that they would likely have to borrow that money. In other words, it would add to our federal deficit.

Do you remember in the campaign how Bush said he was going to cut the deficit in half over the next few years? What most people failed to realize (and the MEDIA never called him on) was that his calculations for that were missing two critical pieces of information. The first was the cost of the war in Iraq, which Rumsfeld recently admitted would likely last another 4 years at least. These costs, as well as other costs in the war on terror were never included in the calculations, because according to the Bush Administration they were "unknowable". So we may as well just ignore them and pretend they don't exist.

The second piece of information that was missing was the cost of the plan to privatize social security. This was a strange deficiency, because the costs for this were known, and even if the media did a poor job of pointing it out to people, the numbers were available. The Congressional Budget office, (a bipartisan congressional entity) estimated the costs at 1 to 2 trillion. The Bush Administration yesterday admitted the 1 trillion dollar level. These were not hidden numbers, but they were conveniently omitted from the president's calculations showing how "he was going to" reduce the deficit. So the truth is Bush had absolutely no plan to reduce the deficit, because he knew the SS costs were going to be high if he followed his plan, and he knew that the costs of the war on terror were going to be high as well. In other words, he lied to the American people, because he knew it was the popular thing to say. Oh well, par for the course.

The problem here though is that we are already at record levels of deficit. We are in danger of inflation, rising interest rates, increased weakness in the dollar and possibly all sorts of other financial problems. All because we cannot maintain reasonable fiscal discipline. If Bush pushes through his plan (and he holds all the cards, the house, the senate and the executive) then the deficit will simply continue to grow as we are forced to borrow money to keep paying current Social Security recipients. It is just phenomenal.

Now this is a really good reason to be opposed to Bush's plan. We simply can't afford it right now. We have to fix our financial situation, and we need to do it soon. Everyone also of course needs to remember that we are primarily in this position because of Bush's tax cuts for the wealthy. Remember Clinton? Remember the huge budget surpluses that Bush inherited from him?

However this isn't the only reason to oppose this plan. It is simply bad policy. It is a sop to the securities industry. They will makes billions in commissions, and they are salivating over the opportunity to manage all this money. It is also dangerous. If there is stagnation or even a fall in the stock market, then people's very existence is at stake. We have had 4 years of stagnation in our current stock market (all under the Bush Administration) for example, and what if it lasts another 4? If we had a similar situation as a whole generation was ready to retire, they would simply not have enough money to support themselves. That is just for a stagnant market, obviously a declining one would be even worse.

Now some will argue that over the long term, the market always does well. Yes it does. It certainly does. But that is just the market average. There are of course the outliers, those years (like the last 4 ) where little happens, or even worse, markets go down. If you are unlucky enough to retire during one of those periods; forget retiring! Also, since these private plans will be manageable by their owners, there is always the chance that poor decisions will put the retirement funds in jeopardy as well. Some will argue that this risk is inherent, and it is up to the owners to make wise choices. My question is "are we going to provide investment education for every American?" And what if I am just unlucky?

This is a recipe for disaster. Most likely will do fine, and many may even do really well, but there will always be those who are unlucky, and what will we do with them. We have a responsibility as a society to protect those who through no fault of their own are disadvantaged. It is part of our collective responsibility. No we don't have to do it, but we are wealthy enough to make sure we do. That was why Social Security was instituted in the first place. It wasn't meant to make anyone rich. What it was meant to do was ensure that every American who worked all their life, was eligible for at least a minimum retirement lifestyle. Shelter, food, clothing etc. We owe it to them, and the Bush Administration is failing in this responsibility. They are failing us. They are disadvantaging our future seniors, as well as our future children who will be paying for our deficits. What a wonderful world we live in!!!

Seattle Times Roundup!

There are a number of good articles today in the Seattle Times that I just had to point out. I couldn't just pick one :)

- The Bush Administration didn't wait long, but now that they are finally relieved of the need to be re-elected, they are moving strongly against environmental protections. The first blow? Bush "plans to reduce by more than 80% the miles of rivers and streams it designates as critical to the recovery of .... Salmon and Steelhead." According to the Seattle Times, this is just the beginning, they are also planning on reviewing forest protection plans that protect endangered species such as the Spotted Owl. At the same time they removed "dam removal" as an option in restoring habitat. I remember when Bush declared that "The Human Being and the Fish can coexist peacefully", but I guess those times are over, and we have declared all out war.

- The United Nations appointed a panel to review the international rules governing when countries can invade others, mostly in response to the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Their finding? Only the Security Council has the legal standing to declare a preventative war. This isn't new, in fact it is just a clarification of the rules that existed before we invaded Iraq, but the fact is that this is now a rebuke to the U.S. for its invasion. The article also mentions some other suggestions, including increasing the size of the security council, which will never happen since that would dilute the power of the current veto holders. The real significance here though, is a rebuke of the world envisioned by Bush, that of a single benevolent superpower that strides the world keeping the peace. The panel universally rejected that in favor of the rule of law. It is basically the difference between vigilante justice and our current court system. Sure, the court system can be slow and make mistakes, but it is a lot better than allowing someone to kill at whim.

- The Red Cross has released a report that found "Cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment of detainees at the U.S. military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba." The Red Cross identified interrogation techniques which they said violated the international rules against torture. If you will remember, those are the same rules that our new Attorney General informed our President were "quaint" and that he had the right to ignore them if he wished. Wonderful huh!

- Finally, on a bit of a different tack, one of the good things Bush did in his first term was make it mandatory for credit reporting agencies to provide a free credit report at least once a year. The article at the Seattle Times explains this a little more. If you live in the western U.S. you can get your free reports starting today! Go to www.annualcreditreport.com.