Psychopolitik 2.0

This is cool.

That’s all.

CNN in the background.  Notice within earshot they intro a story about the weather in Fargo w/ a shot of iced-over trees, with the song “Cold as Ice” playing over it.  The M.O.P. version.  Seriously.

Ed Henry (correction) Tony Curtis then says “…I like that song.  Got a vocal version?”

I needed the laugh.

Apparently the latest round of begging by GM & Chrysler got the same result as the Sooners’ 3-point shooting the other day.  As a result, GM’s boss is out & Chrysler is merging with Fiat.  I’m not in the most talkative of moods today, so I’ll just pop the impending bubbles of inaccurate reaction by the Serious People:

-The right wing yelling about this as an usurpation of power will completely ignore the following: the companies came to beg for tax dollars in the first place, they cheered when the State was extracting concessions from union autoworkers, and that failed corporations get ANYTHING AT ALL is an indication of what the power of government really does.  Economic outcomes being political decisions is not in and of itself socialist, in the current context its actually the most capitalistic thing one could do — that is, policy in favor of capital.

-No, this is not some kind of populist victory.  In case you can’t be bothered to scroll a page, after the restructuring period they’ll still get billions (the begging is failure in that conditions are being placed on it, as compared to them previously getting whatever the hell they wanted.  For them, it’s a loss).  Also, once this finally shakes out we’ll have The Big One-and-a-half rather than The Big Three,  and no one that isn’t looked at as a total nutjob will bring up the possibility that The Intermediate Twelve or The Relatively Small Employee Co-op’d Thirty would make more sense.

The UAW might as well have just fucking seized it.  Now instead they can watch as Obama assumes that even more labor concessions are necessary out of a false sense of fairness.  Enjoy the rest of your day.

Edit: right on cue…:

Is it about time the government took forceful action or do the moves smack of socialism? And why go after the automakers but leave the management at failing banks in place? (emphasis mine)

The latter sentence disqualifies the premise of the former.  But let’s not let logic get in the way of a convenient media life-blood giving meme…

Shorter John Schwenkler: “STFU w/ the royalist case for marijuana legalization, you’re makin us look bad!”

I know The Mighty Tax Revenue case on its face seems cynical enough to sway people, but it’s a total dodge of the principled issue with the entire War on Drugs.  We’re pissing on liberty and destroying lives both at home & abroad simply because we as a society can’t seem to come to terms with the fact we like to get high, preferring to mindlessly lash out rather than risk asking the fucker in the mirror what we’re really getting at with those chemicals.  THAT is the problem, a possible few extra dollars going to the State (more than likely to go where our money usually goes: shiny new death machines!) is emphatically NOT a “benefit” and no one in their right mind should be treating it as if it is one.

Besides, it’s too easy to grow your own weed.  Turning the marijuana market into an oligopoly (thus making it easier to tax, & creating another palm-greasing interest group to pander to) would be damn near impossible.  If they could treat it like tobacco they would’ve already, & you’d be buying mexican ditch weed joints in a shiny package labeled “marlboro greens” at the gas station w/ your lottery ticket & cheetos.

File this one under “news that belongs in The Onion”.  All emphasis mine:

With many U.S. newspapers struggling to survive, a Democratic senator on Tuesday introduced a bill to help them by allowing newspaper companies to restructure as nonprofits with a variety of tax breaks.

“This may not be the optimal choice for some major newspapers or corporate media chains but it should be an option for many newspapers that are struggling to stay afloat,” said Senator Benjamin Cardin.

A Cardin spokesman said the bill had yet to attract any co-sponsors, but had sparked plenty of interest within the media, which has seen plunging revenues and many journalist layoffs.

Cardin’s Newspaper Revitalization Act would allow newspapers to operate as nonprofits for educational purposes under the U.S. tax code, giving them a similar status to public broadcasting companies.

Under this arrangement, newspapers would still be free to report on all issues, including political campaigns. But they would be prohibited from making political endorsements.

Translation: “Tell you what, we’ll carve out favorable loopholes for you small-time papers, if you ease up on us.  Pay no attention to that whole 1st Amendment thing, let the conglomerates do the talking”.

This is missing the point anyway, the reason newspapers are suffering is because the “paper” part of the word is outdated, & the quality of the “news” part suffers due to the documented groupthink handed down from the conglomerates.  At least the “paper” part is not only easily solved, but is in the process of solving itself: web format.

Mike G recently had an IM discussion about the dangers of the State & what an alternative may look like, and posted the transcript on his site.  Read the whole thing.

My thoughts: the concept of free-market dispute resolution taking over in a post-state society where criminal law currently holds sounds reasonable, in as much as it breaks the common modern interpretation of government down to its most basic — dispersal of risk, a.k.a. Insurance* — and removes the centralization problem.  I do have a couple questions though…

-Say, hypothetically, that someone due entirely to no fault of their own is unable to afford the DROs in the area they live in.  I’d personally assume in that case the following: either others in similar position band together & at least fulfill the prevention end of the equation (though obviously not the financial part), or that DROs would exist that essentially operate as charities.  Am I far off?

-Another hypothetical: what if the person that commits an act that’d bring the DROs into play is a child? I’d assume the parents would more than likely be held responsible.  Correct?

Maybe it’s my upbringing or something, but my personal conception of a post-state society has been more along the lines of a radical localism, an organizing by common culture such that the odds of violation are sharply reduced, with self-sufficiency & self-defense filling much of the gap, and harm handled as a regional matter.  To put it VERY short, Mike G connects aggression to torts while I see it as a form of invasion.  That’s not to diss his view, merely simple comparison.

(* – This is basically the only other thing the State does besides overt violence.  Take the current approaches to economic crash, for example: a small section of the population — the financial elite — failed really badly, and the response was to use the income of the masses to cover their spread.  This type of thing is why mainstream liberals propose government administration of health insurance, they see the spreading of risk but don’t realize why it always applies overwhelmingly to corporations in practice.)

Thought of mine during a UFC fight:

“That floor in the octagon must be really absorbent for them to be able to fight on it even with the blood stains from the last match.  Eh, makes sense, since it ain’t like they can have someone hose it off…”

All this time I thought the reason I was never big on bottled water was because of the sheer absurdity of bottled water (H2o + absolutely nothing) costing more than pop (H2o + high-fructose corn syrup + artificial flavors), and it turns out it’s a cultural thing too.

Pretty much I’d co-sign that whole article, both about the meaning of bottled water & the place of beer as a key to interaction.  Though, along with the obvious social aspect of beer, lately I’ve come to deeply appreciate the unpredictability and diversity of brews (this obviously applies more to the smaller-scale craft brewers).  It’s a relatively simple process once broken down, yet so many different aromas & flavors can come from so few ingredients.  I even socialize with complete strangers when drinking in public, but sometimes I like to have a good beer by myself, either while reading something or just letting my mind casually stroll off to nowhere.   Who says beer can’t be an introspective lubrication?

What part of “since no one is dumb enough to buy those ‘assets’ without government nudging, their true value is zilch” do they not understand?

I had more to say, but Ioz beat me to it.

Earlier today, Larry the Cokehead (a.k.a. Lawrence Kudlow), in attempting to make a point about fiscal policy, gave a dollar bill on camera the woolah treatment.  Someone on Media Matters saw this & said what anyone would: that it was ironic that he made his point in that manner, since anyone remotely knowledgeable about currency knows that if you physically destroy a bill the value of other bills in circulation slightly increases.

Hahahaha!!  I’m kiddding.  They worried that he broke Teh Law.