I Hope This Helps, Mr. Koch

Posted on April 8, 2014 by wellsdc

Charles Koch has a sad.

He wants us to know that he only wants what is best for us, even if we can’t always see it or understand it at first. (He’s even asking his employees to help him get the word out about what a great guy he really is!)

But we just keep on giving him a hard time, and it’s making him glum. Since I hate to see anyone in a bad mood, especially plutocratic oligarchs, consider this: people often root for the villain as much as, if not more than, the hero. Consider the Bond films. People remember who played Bond, of course, and they may have strong opinions about who did it best (although any answer besides Sean Connery is wrong). They also remember the best villains, and the actors who played them.

The Bond films wouldn’t be the same if we didn’t have Gert Fröbe’s Goldfinger, Donald Pleasance’s and Charles Gray’s Blofeld (sorry, Telly Savalas and all those other people, but Pleasance and Grey were better), Christopher Lee’s Scaramanga, or Christopher Walken’s Zorin, just to name a few.

And, while such a position is obviously beneath you, let’s not forget the henchmen, particularly Robert Shaw’s Grant, Harold Sakata’s Oddjob, Bruce Glover and Putter Smith’s Mr. Wint and Mr. Kidd, Hervé Villechaize’s Nick Nack, Grace Jones’ May Day, and Famke Janssen’s Xenia Onatopp. A special place of honor is reserved, of course, for Richard Kiel’s Jaws.

I hope that makes you feel better, Mr. Koch. I mean, you already seem to see us as caricatures of oligarchic underlings, so you might as well complete your own transformation into a caricature of evil.

What I’m Reading, April 3, 2014

Posted on April 3, 2014 by wellsdc

Chris Piascik (chrispiascik.com) [CC BY-ND 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/2.0/)], via Flickr Sorry, Folks, Rich People Actually Don’t ‘Create The Jobs’, Henry Blodget, Business Insider, November 29, 2013

Entrepreneurs and investors like me actually don’t create the jobs — not sustainable ones, anyway.

Yes, we can create jobs temporarily, by starting companies and funding losses for a while. And, yes, we are a necessary part of the economy’s job-creation engine. But to suggest that we alone are responsible for the jobs that sustain the other 300 million Americans is the height of self-importance and delusion.

So, if rich people do not create the jobs, what does?

A healthy economic ecosystem — one in which most participants (especially the middle class) have plenty of money to spend.

The Bitters Tears of the American Christian Supermajority, Chase Madar, Al-Jazeera America, March 30, 2014 Continue reading →

What I’m Reading, March 31, 2014

Posted on March 31, 2014 by wellsdc

We’re not Envious, we’re Disappointed: US Firms Stash $2 Trillion in Tax Havens, Costing us Billions, Juan Cole, Informed Comment, March 30, 2014

“The politics of envy are the wrong politics in America,” Wall Street shill and former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers proclaimed to Politico. “The better politics are the politics of inclusion where everyone shares in economic growth.”

There it is — the sound of the other shoe dropping. Because the second half of the argument goes that instead of being jealous, we all should be working in harmony together to create jobs and opportunity. Problem is, the deeply rich talk about building the economy but do almost nothing about it. There’s a lot of take and a lot of keep, but not much giving back.

An Actually Weak President, BooMan, Booman Tribune, March 29, 2014

It seems one of the lasting features of the Bush administration is that people simply don’t think that Bush was calling the shots and, as a result, they are inclined to give him a pass on the decisions he made.

That’s a mistake.

If he and his subordinates were held responsible for what they did, we wouldn’t have to listen to his subordinates mouthing off about how weak the current president is.

You’ll know that the current president is as weak as Bush when students line up to protest former vice-president Joe Biden and completely ignore Obama.

Put Your Fiscal Responsibility Where Your Mouth Is

Posted on March 31, 2014 by wellsdc

If Republicans like Chris Christie really believe so strongly in fiscal responsibility that they’re willing to make such difficult sacrifices (of other people’s pensions), they should really just go all in and forego their own salaries and benefits entirely. What better way could there be to signal support for the “job creators” than to work for free?

I don’t know how much money that would save (which could be passed on through tax cuts to the direct benefit of Cayman Islands bankers), but it would make a bold statement, and that’s all this is really about, anyway.

What I’m Reading, March 20, 2014

Posted on March 20, 2014 by wellsdc

A Brief History of Mold-A-Rama, Rob Lammie, Mental Floss, March 18, 2014

Long before 3D printing was a thing, kids of all ages were plunking quarters into Mold-A-Rama vending machines to get plastic sculptures made right before their eyes. Let’s take a look back at the history of these mid-century manufacturing marvels.

GOP Plutocrat Ken Langone And New Dem Wall Street Shill Jim Himes Are Waging Class War Against American Families, Down With Tyranny!, March 18, 2014

Langone’s siren song, while extreme and filled with the class warfare hatred the entitled rich feel towards working families, isn’t just a Republican song. When it comes to serving the interests of great wealth, conservative Democrats– particularly Blue Dogs and New Dems– are no better than garden variety Republicans.

Two Reasons That Explain Why We’re All Obsessed with Game of Thrones, Charlie Jane Anders, io9, March 18, 2014

Why is Game of Thrones such a huge cultural phenomenon, among all other fantasy series? It comes down to two huge cultural trends, that are rooted in our widespread anxieties about life in the 21st century.

***

Game of Thrones captures the real anxiety at the root of our apocalyptic fascination — the sense that disaster is coming closer at an almost imperceptible rate, and we can never really know when it will arrive. We all sense that our unsustainable economic system will collapse, and/or our biosphere will no longer support so many humans, but we don’t know if the crunch will come next week or in 50 years.

And the endless wars and scheming show how short-sighted people can overlook a looming disaster, due to political infighting and stupidity. You wonder why they don’t look over their shoulder and see the ice zombies creeping closer — until you realize that their denial is nothing compared to our own.

***

When we’re not consuming futuristic dystopias and world-breaking disasters, we’re obsessing about a somewhat idealized past in which men were men and women were women, and everybody Knew Their Place. Often, these visions of the past include a soupcon of social change, a hint that the Times They Were a-Changin’, and the seeds of today’s world were already in place.

***

Game of Thrones is like the perfect idealized-but-awful past. Especially in the television version, everybody looks beautiful and has perfect teeth, but almost everybody takes a turn of being that peasant in Monty Python and the Holy Grail who shouts, “I’m being oppressed!”

What I’m Reading, March 19, 2014

Posted on March 19, 2014 by wellsdc

By John Martinez Pavliga from Berkeley, USA (Contemporary American Auto Dealer) [CC-BY-2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons What Do Car Dealers Do? Gerard Magliocca, Concurring Opinions, March 17, 2014

What is the public purpose behind a statute or regulation that says that you can only buy new cars through a dealer? I’ll grant that the dealership model has been around for a long time, and dealers are a powerful lobby, but is there anything else to this regulation? For example, can you say that car dealers do a better job at protecting consumer safety or welfare than a store owned by the manufacturer? I find that hard to believe. I’m not sure these dealership statutes are constitutionally irrational, but they are ridiculous.

Continue reading →

“You’re no longer the underdogs, it’s very important that you realize that.”

Posted on February 21, 2014 by wellsdc

John Oliver rips into Silicon Valley douchebags, and it is glorious. Hopefully the video embeds below (WordPress can be weird about that):

Just one of many awesome quotes:

There are only winners here this evening. There are winners, and people who failed to win. So if you don’t win an award, you are not a loser; you are a failure. There is an important distinction there.

To quote Salon’s Andrew Leonard, “[Y]ou really need to watch the entire nine-minute video for maximum effect. And decide for yourself, is the laughter that greets Oliver’s bracing jabs the sound of people who are in on the joke?”

Biting the Hand that Still Feeds Them

Posted on February 20, 2014 by wellsdc

Fibonacci Blue [CC-BY-2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/)], from Flickr Richard Eskow wrote a piece published at AlterNet a couple of weeks ago entitled “5 Obnoxious Libertarian Oligarchs Who Earned Fortunes from the Government They’d Like to Destroy.” To be fair, not all of the people he identifies want to destroy the government per se, but they certainly fail to appreciate the extent to which said government made their success possible in the first place:

We’re dealing with a cohort of highly fortunate, highly privileged and highly unaware individuals who have been inappropriately lionized by society. That lionization has led them to believe that their wealth and accomplishments are their own doing, rather than the fruits of collaborative effort – effort which in many cases was only made possible through government support.

But instead of thanking the government and the taxpayers for their good fortune, they’ve allowed their own good press to go to their heads. And they’re biting the hand that feeds them, attempting to shut down the system of taxpayer support and government action which created their world.

One of my principle complaints with libertarianism as practiced*, besides its tendency to rely on vague terms like “liberty” and define them in highly self-serving ways, is that it generally ignores all or nearly all of the contributions of the rest of society to certain individuals’ success. (I have many other complaints, but that one sticks out.)

By Leonard Kleinrock [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Pictured: Socialist tyrant.

The internet, which came into being because of massive government investment and development, is a singularly ironic place for such disdain for the government to arise. (Any jokes about Al Gore in the comments will get deleted, FYI.) Yes, the private sector made the internet profitable, but it did so once the basic infrastructure was already in place. It’s doubtful that a private company, concerned over quarterly earnings reports and the like, would have taken it upon itself to invent the internet from scratch. Other industries also benefit extensively from “big government.” To give a snarky example, Whole Foods is able to ship and receive products around the company with minimal fear of bandits.

1. Eskow first identifies Tom “Kristallnacht” Perkins, who does something involving venture capital, I think, but who clearly doesn’t have a strong understanding of broader American society or European history: Continue reading →

The True Truth About the Federal Reserve

Posted on January 27, 2014 by wellsdc

I recently engaged in yet another attempted dialogue with a complete stranger on Facebook who wrote something generally indecipherable about the threat posed by the Federal Reserve System. It contained many of the usual tropes you might expect, held together by misspelled conjunctions, crimes against grammar, and explanations that the issue just makes the person so. angry. that. they. can. not. type. correctly……

It got me thinking, though. I don’t really know that much about the Federal Reserve, and it certainly has a not-insignificant number of people feeling threatened. It’s just that I can’t seem to find anything addressing the problems with the Fed that don’t quickly descend into conspiracy theorism. It seems as though anyone who has really looked into the workings of the Fed (or claim to have done so) come out as semi-coherent crazy people. And that’s when the truth hit.

It has been staring us in the face all this time.

The Federal Reserve is Cthulhu.

By BenduKiwi (Unknown) [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html), CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/) or CC-BY-SA-2.5-2.0-1.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5-2.0-1.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Think about it: it’s vast, it’s older than any of us, and to try to understand it leads inexorably to madness.

Perhaps Lovecraft himself said it best:

The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of the infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far.

He might have even written about an early foray into the depths of the Federal Reserve itself:

It lumbered slobberingly into sight and gropingly squeezed Its gelatinous green immensity through the black doorway into the tainted outside air of that poison city of madness. … The Thing cannot be described—there is no language for such abysms of shrieking and immemorial lunacy, such eldritch contradictions of all matter, force, and cosmic order.

Photo credit: By BenduKiwi (Unknown) [GFDL, CC-BY-SA-3.0 or CC-BY-SA-2.5-2.0-1.0], via Wikimedia Commons.

Today in Texas Financial News

Posted on January 6, 2014 by wellsdc

Alvimann from morguefile.com Two important bits of news that came out today were the announcement of Janet Yellen’s confirmation as head of the Federal Reserve, and the official announcement that Charlie Strong will be the new head football coach at the University of Texas at Austin.

I expect to see much more analysis, speculation, and navel-gazing about Strong than about Yellen in the coming days/weeks/decades, and let’s be honest, people are likely to perceive that story as having the greater cultural—maybe even financial—impact. With a rumored $5 million annual salary, Strong will probably be paid about as much as the entire School of Engineering. Meanwhile, the doings of the Federal Reserve are of little interest to anyone except libertarians and conspiracy theorists (but I repeat myself.) Did I just rip on libertarians, our great national obsession with the bread and circuses of competitive sports, or some combination thereof? History will decide, maybe.

Photo credit: Alvimann from morguefile.com.

Cryptic Philosopher

Didn't Stop Believin'

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