Psychopolitik 2.0

Ezra Klein, the other day:

Moral of the day: Selling access to government officials who are willing to contribute their time and power to the media’s cause is a bad revenue model for newspapers. Another way of saying that is that newspapers should not be funded by indirect government subsidies. But the whole brouhaha confirms my long-held belief that newspapers should be funded by direct government subsidies. (emphasis mine)

Which one’s more amazing: the audacity of someone who happens to work for a newspaper openly advocating for their livelihood to be paid, by force, by people who don’t buy the paper he works for?  Or the irony of the underlying favortism to an outdated model of disseminating information coming from someone posting a fucking web column?

Overheard a moment ago on CNN’s “Situation Room”: “We will have more updates on Michael Jackson, but first we go to the news out of Alaska on Sarah Palin…”

The MSM has been covering his death — which is looking less surprising by the minute - incessantly, shoving aside other news to the point where entire shows are being yanked for more expression of cult-like attention.  Ironically, the people you would expect to be talking about it, such as entertainment reporters, aren’t covering it any further than anything else.  CNN & MSNBC have been scooping E! on it’s own damn territory, for cryin’ out loud!

So a news story, one that they’re actually intended to follow, on a show that by its name invokes a focus on political news, is introduced as an annoyance.  “Ho hum, we have to go back to doing our real jobs for a moment…but we’ll be right back to the circus in no time, folks!”.

Sarah Palin is one of the names that is regularly batted about in the too-damn-early 2012 Republican presidential run talk.  As slim as any chance was of them getting Obama out after one term (the sky itself would have to fall for that to happen, though with all that is going on that’s not too far fetched…), there was a scenario under which this woman got control of the US’ nuclear launch codes.  As such, what she does can be considered important, in the sense of politics. Much as people hate hearing about her, and most realize she’s an empty-headed troglodyte who gets attention largely because she happens to make old Republican men squeeze their sausages, there being a reason for people to give half a fuck about her is arguable.

In contrast, let’s add up how many ways the death of a musician who peaked in the 80’s & the resulting legal fallout affects the health, wealth, and liberty of the average citizen: Zero.

BTW: if anyone has seen the rambling mess Palin thought fit the definition of a speech (she’s resigning from the Alaska governorship) and can figure out WTF she was getting at, let me know.  My gawd, she could’ve come closer to making a point if she’d simply broken into an impromptu karaoke tribute singing of “Don’t stop ’till you get enough”…

-Something I didn’t know: merely being gay is illegal in India.  Correction, was illegal.

-Those IOUs are going out in California, & the big banks are giving people a week to redeem them.  Here’s the truly interesting part though:

Note that banks will earn something for their troubles: The state will pay an annualized 3.75% tax-free rate of interest on the IOUs until it redeems them.  If recipients of the IOUs don’t need the cash right away — which might be hard to imagine in this economy — they can hold on to them until the state finally pays up. They’d collect whatever interest has accrued to that point.

At 3.75% — and tax-free — the interest is far better than what you’d earn on short-term savings in a money market mutual fund . . . or at a bank.

That is, assuming they’ll ever be able to pay them off.  Isn’t failure fascinating?

-Speaking of California: apparently if you’re a judge there, your website is never truly yours.  Please, you think that’s smutty, wait until someone stumbles across Clarence Thomas’ personal website…

-Land: they’re not making more of it.  I’ve expressed in the past that, long as the state still exists, it should be paid for on the basis of resources use, whether in terms of separation of the commons or of asking who uses the power of government the most.  Here’s someone else floating that balloon, invoking Henry George’s “Single Tax”.

-More water follies: Israel stopped a boat carrying humanitarian aid intended for Palestinians off the coast of Gaza, claiming it entered their water.  It happened to also be carrying Cynthia McKinney…

-In the No Shit Sherlock department: “What?  Organic as a government applied seal means nothing?  Who’dathunkit?”

-Meet the new boss…etcetera, etcetera:

The Justice Department is declining to release Dick Cheney’s interview with federal investigators looking into the Valerie Plame leak, arguing — as it did under President Bush — that doing so would discourage future high-level officials from cooperating with criminal investigations.

For this argument to have any sense to it whatsoever, wouldn’t that assume that high-level officials tend to cooperate?  Scooter Libby — and the mere fact that over time the case became less “who leaked it?” and more “goddamn, who DIDN’T leak?!?”, w/ the original leaker going unpunished — begs to differ.  This is just another small example of why “the rule of law” is a myth.

-Last shot, and it’s a painful one: …dammit, you might as well start fitting them for another ring right now.

Much as I hate any team with Kobe on it, if they don’t lose anyone else I’m having trouble imagining a team that can beat this combination.  Orlando may have added Vince, but they lost Lee (who would’ve been a nice backup to Carter) to get him (and are in the process of losing Turk), meaning unless they deliberately go smaller below Howard & Lewis they won’t have Pietrus as a bench swingman.  Their depth could be questionable w/o another move.

As for the Cavs…no.  They needed a perimeter scorer or finesse bigman, instead they got The Big Artery Clogger.  Now the “Lebron’s gone after ‘09″ talk is starting to make sense to me.  If they’re not going to have a 2nd option consistent enough to keep defenses honest on Lebron (Shaq is completely paint oriented, so he just makes James’ job harder if he gets going — unless you can imagine Lebron practicing his range so well in the offseason that he gets 40% from 3), then they need to switch to a run’n'gun offense & overwhelm people with speed. Somehow, I’m not looking at the 2009 Cavaliers & seeing the 80’s Lakers…

Pirate Bay sold out…

So it’s going to attempt to license content under the new ownership.  Knowing the absurd heights that the demands of the RIAA & MPAA can reach, I think I know where this goes: GGF offers semi-reasonable model, only to be forced to adopt an absolutely stupid one, and people leave the site in droves until it becomes an anarchonism as a result.

Going back even to IRC days, there’s been a consistent lesson about content distribution behind every p2p method.  Until the opposition learns that lesson, they’re just playing whack-a-mole, their responses destined to be looked at with the same incredulity past generations looked at “recording radio?  Sharing tapes?  THIEF!!!”.

Explain how this makes any sense: seeing it as a sign of top talent, w/ unemployment at long term highs employers are favoring…people that already have jobs.

I can’t even imagine the boss in the Dilbert comics doing this.  That’s how ridiculous it is to me.

Props (& more commentary).

Last year I read something along the lines of this.  Some of the speculation was wrong:

-A “tight money” policy has not been embraced, actually the opposite.

-The Fed has MORE power now.  In fact, so much so that H.R. 1207, Ron Paul’s Federal Reserve Transparency bill, actually has enough co-sponsors to pass the House.  Clearly it wasn’t principle that led to that, otherwise it would’ve happened a long time ago, but fear.  I suspect many supporting it think of it as a stopgap to save the Fed, as opposed to something that’ll popularize calls to bury it.

Anyway, that wasn’t my point.  This is:

Officials with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) have informed Bernanke about a plan that would have been unheard-of in the past: a general examination of the US financial system. The IMF’s board of directors has ruled that a so-called Financial Sector Assessment Program (FSAP) is to be carried out in the United States. It is nothing less than an X-ray of the entire US financial system.

As part of the assessment, the Fed, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the major investment banks, mortgage banks and hedge funds will be asked to hand over confidential documents to the IMF team. They will be required to answer the questions they are asked during interviews. Their databases will be subjected to so-called stress tests — worst-case scenarios designed to simulate the broader effects of failures of other major financial institutions or a continuing decline of the dollar.

That was June 2008.  Tommorow will be July 2009.

So…what happened?

In case anyone is wondering what I’m doing at the moment, I’m enjoying some vintage Dillinja (”Jah Know Ya Big” is playing right now) at the moment with a brew.

Hope you’re enjoying yourselves.  I am.

BTW: trust me, that beer is a lot better than it sounds like it’d be.

Edit: now I’ve got some Sharon Jones playing.  Fuck the hipsters, I like this deep-soul revival shit anyway.

Keynes: “In the long run, we are all dead”

Average person: “…and I’d like the cause of death to not be starvation”:

Households pushed their savings rate to the highest level in more than 15 years in May as a big boost in incomes from the government’s stimulus program was devoted more to bolstering nest eggs than increased spending.

The higher savings rate is healthy in the long term, economists said. But without vigorous consumer spending, the government may have to do more to revive the economy, possibly through further tax breaks and spending. […] The savings rate, which was hovering near zero in early 2008, surged to 6.9 percent, the highest level since December 1993.

“What?  People are saving money in preparation for leaner times instead of buying iPhones?  Disaster!!!”

All you had to do to figure out the problem with “stimulus” was consider why spending cratered in the first place: the economic status quo of consumption beyond boundaries of reason ran into the brick wall of “Hah!  Now you have NO money!  Take THAT!”.  When people are in fear of going broke, when they do have extra money the rational thing to do is keep it, because for all you know you might need it later.  This is only read as troubling if ones concept of the economy is that spending at all costs is key & damn the future.

People will spend again when it doesn’t look like a bad idea to do so.  Saying the economy won’t get better until it gets better sounds like mere crankery, but it has actual meaning, in that “better” in the first case refers to a healthy level of activity.  It’s the latter definition — the economy structurally making some kind of sense, so people can rationally participate — that is the hard part.  Savings is creeping up, fulfilling the piss-off-Paul-Krugman part of the recipe, the rest is yet to come.

Noticed this story about a inter-bureaucracy gang fight re: the southern border:

A proposal to send National Guard troops to the U.S.-Mexico border to counter drug trafficking has triggered a bureaucratic standoff between the Pentagon and Department of Homeland Security over the military’s role in domestic affairs, according to officials in both departments.

The debate has engaged a pair of powerful personalities, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, in what their subordinates describe as a turf fight over who should direct the use of troops to assist in the fight against Mexican cartels and who should pay for them.

At issue is a proposal to send 1,500 additional troops to the border to analyze intelligence and to provide air support and technical assistance to border agencies. The governors of Texas, Arizona, California and New Mexico made the request in January, drawing support from Napolitano but prompting objections from the Pentagon, where officials argue that it could lead to a permanent, expanded mission for the military.

No surprise there.  Large organizations in general, and the government in particular, function with a certain internal tension even within their tightly defined culture.  They aren’t going to argue border patrol vs no border patrol, so they argue about who is in charge.

So what does Dear Leader have to say about this?

President Obama has signaled that he is open to the idea, asking Congress for $250 million to deploy the National Guard while also saying he was “not interested in militarizing the border.” The issue, which has been stalled before a National Security Council policy committee, will be decided by the president. (emphasis mine)

You see, he doesn’t want to militarize the border.  He just wants to send a bunch of people, in uniforms, who work for the government and are authorized to carry weapons for purposes of state, to the imaginary line that demarcates where the United States of America ends & Mexico begins…

Nice one.  I can imagine the application of this logic in everyday life now:

-”Officer, I wasn’t speeding, I was just in my car going faster than what that sign back there says”.
-”No, honey, I didn’t stay out late getting drunk at a strip club, I simply had several beverages made from fermented grains in a gathering place where young women do clothing-optional dancing & acrobatics, and enjoyed their talents so much that I felt it an insult to leave the show early”.
-”Naw, dude, I didn’t smoke your stash, all I did was simultaneously study the effects of igniting dried marijuana leaves & measure my lung capacity”…

A couple months back, I insinuated that Antonin Scalia was “objectively pro-molestation” due to his line of questioning in a case before the Court.  Today, a correction.  Even Scalia has limits:

A public school violated the privacy rights of a teenage girl who had to disrobe on suspicion she had ibuprofen pills, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled on Thursday in its first decision on student strip searches.

By an 8-1 vote, the justices upheld a ruling that the school and its officials violated the U.S. constitutional right that protects against unreasonable search and seizure.

The ruling by the nation’s high court was a major defeat for school officials who had defended the strip search as necessary for student safety, school order and combating a growing drug problem

There was a partial dissent, with only two in the majority saying that the school officials could be held liable.  Along with the cowardice of shielding the school from liability, there was a troubling subtext of “well, if it was something more dangerous than Ibuprofen…”.  But one positive thing about cynicism is that low expectations are easy to reach, and if you’d asked me before the ruling I’d have bet 5-4 against the violated girl.

So, 8-1, and Scalia wasn’t it.  Who was odd man out?

Only Justice Clarence Thomas dissented from the part of the ruling that Redding’s privacy rights had been violated.  Thomas said the ruling “grants judges sweeping authority to second-guess the measures that these officials take to maintain discipline in their schools and ensure the health and safety of the students in their charge.”

Clarence Thomas: objectively pro-molestation.