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Missing the point on a Detroit rescue

An industry that has been poorly managed, with executives looting it for huge bonuses and protected employees compensated far beyond the average American, making products that have caused untold damage to the planet, comes to Washington seeking a bailout. Without it, the executives say, the entire economy could be severely damaged. Of course lawmakers should say "hell no."

But they didn't. When the so-called financial services industry asked for a "rescue," lawmakers couldn't move fast enough.

American automakers are a different matter. Asking a fraction of what has been plowed into Wall Street — with not much to show for it — they are getting the brush off from the Bush administration and much of Congress. Myths proliferate about union compensation, this from the same people who hail obscene executive compensation and bonuses for the top swindlers on the Street. In fact, the union has been giving back for 20 years.

It's striking that the same people who celebrate the bootstrapping entrepreneur and the sanctity of contract are contemptuous of blue-collar workers who have created most of the wealth in a given business and painstakingly negotiated labor agreements that allowed their families to reach the middle class. And there's much carping about how the top executives failed to build cars for an expensive-energy future or to protect the environment. Yet policymakers consistently refused to insist on even modest improvements. Now it's so easy to say to Detroit: Drop dead.

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The man in the tiresome cliched casual duds

Whatever else might be said about the departure of Jerry Yang from Yahoo, I'll be glad to see him go. I'm sick of seeing the chief executive of a major company so badly dressed. Alas, he represents the spirit of the age.

I hate casual dress. I date the decline of our civilization not only by the demise of men wearing suits and ties, but by "casual" clothes becoming a mandatory business uniform. Far from being something that makes people comfortable, it's just the new man in the gray flannel suit — except the latter looked better. This is no victory for choice or egalitarianism. When I wear suits, people invariably ask, "Why are you so dressed up?," as if I am in white tie. I want to ask, "Why are you so badly dressed?"

Nowadays, outside of a few professional pockets, it's the rebels that wear suits. (And women look smashing in them, too).

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The Paulson scheme

If you've ever wondered why these CEOs make hundreds of millions of dollars even if their companies are laying off thousands, their remaining employees have largely seen their paychecks stagnate and their stocks are circling the drain… If you've ever wondered whether you, or even the office boy, could have done a better job…consider the case of Henry M. Paulson Jr., the Secretary of the Treasury and former chief executive of Goldman Sachs. As is now becoming clear, Paulson has little more clue than the office boy about addressing the financial crisis.

After more than a year of denying the gathering storm, he suddenly rushed to Congress demanding an open-ended bailout of Wall Street, "to save the financial system." First the plan was to buy the "toxic debt" that had brought down much of the system. He was urged to inject capital directly into banks but rejected this advice. When the credit system seized up he changed the bailout to…inject capital directly into the banks. Yet the banks still refuse to do much lending, even as they use the taxpayers' money to buy competitors and pay fat compensation to their executives. Now the bailout has been changed yet again, to help "consumers." Well, not exactly: money would be given to companies dealing in credit cards, car loans and student loans. Don't expect any help personally.

Meanwhile, the real economy keeps spiraling downward as 401(k)s are vaporized, a million people have lost their jobs this year, the retail sector is moving into bankruptcy court and Detroit is facing collapse. This is one last gift of the Bush administration. Paulson's actions aren't incompetence on the level of Brownie — a political hack put in a critical position he for which he was completely unprepared. They may be worse.

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Steering the right course on the auto bailout

General Motors is running out of cash. Think about that. What was once the company that embodied American strength is running out of cash. Little wonder that Detroit is angling to get its own "rescue package" from Washington. We should do it — with serious strings attached.

Anyone who has lived in the Midwest can attest to the foundational nature of the auto industry to American manufacturing. It's not just the Big Three themselves, but the vast supply chain they have spawned, from steelmakers to precision machine tool companies to providers of all manner of parts. As we bail out a "financial services industry" that increasingly made little more than frauds and swindles, the auto industry, even heavily diminished from its former greatness, makes real products and is an essential prop of the middle class, particularly in the heartland. A hollowed-out economy can stand no more losses.

Yet the American industry is the author of many of its own problems. The decline of GM and its sisters began decades ago in an unholy alliance of complacency, greed and contempt for customers between management and labor leaders. Despite 20 years of plant closings and pledges of new days, the carmakers never really reformed. There's one exception: hundreds of thousands of union workers in the Big Three and parts makers lost their jobs — and communities their livelihood. Contrary to a persistent mythology, the decline since the early 1990s has been almost entirely the fault of management, not the United Auto Workers.

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The morning after

As one reader said last night, "Glad you were wrong." Thank God, America appears to have at last repudiated the poisonous, destructive politics of the past. A ban on gay marriage in California may be the last hurrah, for awhile, for the "values voters" who never seem to have social justice or equality as a value. Minnesota: How could the land of Humphrey even come close to re-electing Norm Coleman? Arizona: So typical, so sad.

But good news abounds. Democrats increased their seats in Congress, unusual in a cycle after winning control. High-speed rail appears headed for a decisive victory in California, as well as big wins for transit projects in Northern and Southern California and Seattle. Elizabeth Dole, a onetime moderate Republican who allowed herself to be yoked to the most despicable extremist campaigning was thrown out. The once proud Republican Party finds itself reduced to a regional redoubt in the white South and the libertarian and Southernized parts of the country. And we have President-elect Obama. Thank God.

Now the hard work begins. Rather than discuss the policies needed for the new administration, let's begin with a more fundamental, foundational task. After years of distractions about gays, "the real America," red states vs. blue, color-coded terror threat levels, the right to bring guns in bars, socialism, blah-blah-blah, we must begin the difficult task of returning to the reality-based world.

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LANDSLIDE

Some journalists still know they are writing the first draft of history, as with the magisterial lede from Adam Nagourney's story in the New York Times:Barack Hussein Obama was elected…
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The GOP declares intellectual bankruptcy

So it comes to an end. Much of me still believes wealthy Republican John McCain III will win — and if that happens, all of me believes it will be national suicide. Never forget the powerful interests that believe they have too much to lose from an Obama presidency.

It's notable that the McCain campaign has been all attacks, all the time, against Barack Obama. McCain has no real platform, no serious position on anything. He would indeed continue not only the Bush policies, but the conservative policies that have brought us into this vale of tears. That the Republicans are left sputtering "communist" and "terrorist" shows the complete bankruptcy, exhaustion and corruption of conservatism. John McCain, who preens about his honor, has run a historically dishonorable campaign. It reached farcical proportions when the McCain campaign attacked a respected Palestinian scholar (and Christian) as a terrorist bud of Barack's — when in fact McCain had helped the man get funding for democracy efforts in Palestine.

Republicans also left warning about one-party government. Understandably, that didn't bother them through most of the Bush years, when even the federal judiciary had been turned into another branch of the Republican hack political machine.

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Gunslingers, sheriffs and the militarization of law enforcement

By Cal Lash, Guest Rogue

Human social evolution created the gunslinger.

Human Cowardice bought us the political lawman.

Since the beginning of socialization and the family unit, group control has been administered by the dominant figure in a group. Groups grew larger and became villages, towns, cities, states, kingdoms and empires.

In Europe, royalty hired out tax collection, to the “High Sheriff.”  The Sheriff also attended to other civil disputes, attended royal ceremonies and was responsible the enforcement of some criminal statutes. As Europe grew, municipalities provided their own law enforcement constabulary and contemporary High Sheriffs now have few genuine responsibilities and their functions are largely representational.

Marshal Wyatt Earp may or may not have been the best thing for Tombstone, Arizona, but he set the tone for paid protection along with other gunslingers and companies like Pinkerton. These hired “lawmen” were given a badge and the responsibility of making a town safe for the people who out of fear believed this was the way to create a safe environment. Different versions exist of the deeds and the resultant benefits or determents of people like Wyatt Earp and Tom Horn, who was a hired killer for cattleman. Horn’s killing of “rustlers” was tolerated until he allegedly shot a young boy.  Eventually many citizens in the old west began to wonder if the hired gunslinger was not worse than the problem they hired the gunman to solve.

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Endorsing John McCain

I long ago stopped reading the opinion pages of the Arizona Republic. The diversity of opinion that former editor of the editorial pages Keven Ann Wiley brought to the paper is long gone, replaced by a plodding, deeply unserious recycling of right-wing talking points and boosterism that would be hilarious if the stakes were not so huge. Yes, to declare an interest, I chose to leave the paper in 2007 rather than accept a new assignment that would have eliminated my centrist (“socialist) column.

Still, I came across a mention in the New York Times that wealthy Republican John Sidney McCain III had won the endorsement of his “home” state newspaper.

The endorsement is remarkable:

We have seen the irascible McCain. The bawdy and irreverent McCain.
And, yes, the temperamental McCain. Likewise, we here in Arizona have
seen the former Navy pilot and war hero evolve – slowly and with lots
of fits and starts – into a statesman. We have witnessed John McCain become a leader – not only of a
delegation from a fast-growing Southwestern state, but into a national
leader with a reassuring habit of stepping to the front when things
seemed most difficult.

It’s almost as if we’ve been watching two different presidential campaigns. Obama has a big lead in newspaper endorsements, including many Bush ’04 editorial boards that switched sides. But not in Phoenix.

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Yet another financial swindle sneaks into the ‘rescue’

So what did Americans really get when Congress approved a bill giving the Treasury power to spend some $700 billion to stem the financial panic? It's becoming clear that Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson has mishandled the crisis in typical Bushian fashion. First with incompetence, by allowing the investment banking sector he came from to march over the edge of the abyss over the past year, long after it the cataclysmic risks to the system were clear. Then, in mad improvisation, he allowed Lehman to fail. He refused congressional suggestions of a direct capital infusion into the banks — until it was clear it "buy toxic debt" scheme wasn't working and Britain and the EU led the way with direct infusions. Brownie, call your office.

Also typically Bushian was the stampede to act, on a bailout plan with no oversight that would have given Paulson unprecedented power. Iraq, anyone. Congress made some oversight improvements, and Obama has made it clear he will alter the "rescue" further if he wins the White House. But everybody had a gun to his or her head to "do something" as the markets collapsed.

Of course, we're not dealing with drowning poor, black folks in NOLA, here. So ultimately, the administration was willing to take any "socialist" action to save its wealthy friends in the investment banks, the hedge funds, etc. So maybe the Brownie analogy is not quite right. Yet we should be on guard. Remember another hallmark of Bush governance: enriching the politically connected and powerful through privatization. How could that happen in the "financial rescue"?

Now it's becoming clear

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A little fun, from the Web

Dear Red States...We've decided we're leaving. We intend to form our own country, and we're taking the other Blue States with us. In case you aren't aware, that includes California, Hawaii, Oregon,…
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Weekend reading

New York magazine writes the most penetrating piece yet on Palin, Wasilla and Alaska, and just how different they are. Rolling Stone on unprecedented Republican efforts to block the vote.…
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