Sunday, October 13, 2013
What is to be done ?
The need for leadership
In many studies of community power structures, one fact stands out – you need leadership. The West Side Highway in NYC has been planned for 50 years. The division of authority prevented action since the end of Robert Moses, the master builder, who knew how to get it done - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zGMdyCdCT9c Robert Caro: Understanding Power
F:Robert Moses Fand the Fall of New York: Robert A Caro...
"Surely the greatest book ever written about a city." --David Halberstam "A masterpiece of American reporting. It's more than the story of a tragic figure ...http://www.amazon.com/The-Power-Broker-Robert-Moses/dp/0394720245
Atlanta has a focus for community leaders, so does Chicago, Minnesota twin cities, Omaha, Orlando, Austin less so Boston, Houston, L. A., Miami, as shown in Sports stadiums and big down town projects.
Now there is a lack of leadership in Congress, and POTUS has not been all that skillful. So little gets done since Republicans took over the house and disaster is around the corner.
Handsome Lake as leader:
People undergoing a serious paradigm shift suffer from delusions and hear voices of the white buffalo cults. This was the state of native Americans after the plagues, wars lost, their gods in disarray and in retreat from the invading aliens.
Indian society -Native Americans had been decimated by Small Pox, and diseases from Europe that they had no immunity. They had fought on the side of the French in the wars and lost.. Their gods had forsaken them - they fell into mystic cults and pathological delusions.
Death and Rebirth of Seneca The story of Paradigm, gestalt of death and rebirth
Anthony Wallace Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, Sep 1, 2010 -
the moral and religious revitalization of an American Indian society -
The origins of the TEA party – are in tribal traditions of fundamentalism; Tribalistic and collectivist societies do not distinguish between natural laws and social customs which are the LAW as handed down from their law-bearers, so that individuals are unlikely to challenge traditions they believe to have a sacred or magical basis, see Pat Buchanan Culture Wars let God be our guide and God is what I say she is.
For example Pat Buchanan's Culture War (Krig och kultur was the Nazi program that was anti catholic and racist) IT is like a person engaged in jihad that is called a mujahid; the plural is mujahideen. . His world is a totalitarian monotheism as commonly accepted meanings of jihad: an inner spiritual struggle and an outer physical struggle. The "greater jihad" is the inner struggle by a believer to fulfill his religious duties This non-violent meaning is stressed However, there is consensus amongst Islamic scholars that the concept of jihad will always include armed struggle by any means necessary against persecution and oppression.
The Open Society and Its Enemies is a two-volume work on political philosophy by Karl Popper. Written during World War II,
Popper saw the open society as standing on a historical continuum reaching from the organic, tribal or closed society, through the open society marked by a critical attitude to tradition, up to the abstract or depersonalised society lacking all face-to-face transactions.
For its advocates, government in the open society is purported to be responsive and tolerant, and political mechanisms are said to be transparent and flexible.
Popper saw the classical Greeks as initiating the long slow transition from tribalism towards the open society, and as facing for the first time the strain imposed by the less personal group relations entailed thereby.
Et tu Eric
NOT as good as their word:
The basis of legislative business deal making depends on commitments, verbal agreements, and trust. T here are no contracts or rarely written agreements, except to join as sponsor, cosign a letter, as part of a group. The process depends on trust and the ability to deliver. Now enter House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) who as leader of the majority in the house can speak for the house, he sets the agenda, he sets the rules, he is responsible. If in this case he can not deliver, can not deal for the majority, what good is it talking to him, its a waste of time. For a long time after the civil war we had “Congressional Government” a book by Woodrow Wilson 1885
teachingamericanhistory.org/library/document/from-congressional-government-conclusion-excerpts/
Capital is the breath of life to this organization, and every day, as the organization becomes more complex and delicate, the folly of assailing capital or credit becomes greater. At the same time it is evident that the task of the legislator to embrace in his view the whole system, to adjust his rules so that the play of the civil institutions shall not alter the play of the economic forces, requires more training and more acumen.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Speakers_of_the_United_States_House_of_Representatives
For a long time the speaker was the most powerful federal official, more than the President. So Boehner is bad at his job. He is a weak and “hollow” leader, which is no leader at all in a time of crisis – he has a permanent rebellion by the TEA party radicals. But he has not learned to defang, declaw, and out maneuver large parts of the caucus, his staff is weak, his staff work and vote counting is bad, etc.. so he needs to be removed now. Don't cry for him, he will be in fact better off than in a job he can not do. So now its Eric's turn. Speak softly and carry a long knife.
A deus ex machina is a plot device whereby a seemingly unsolvable problem is suddenly and abruptly resolved by the contrived and unexpected intervention of some new event, character, ability, or object. Depending on how it is done, it can be intended to move the story forward when the writer has "painted himself into a corner" and sees no other way out, to surprise the audience, to bring a happy ending into the tale, or as a comedic device.
So how does this end? The votes to fund the government and raise the debt ceiling are there, and always have been: every Democrat in the House would vote for the necessary measures, and so would enough Republicans. The problem is that G.O.P. leaders, fearing the wrath of the radicals, haven’t been willing to allow such votes. What would change their minds?
During the general strike in UK during the depression of the 1930's Churchill rejected the idea of negotiations with the strike leaders as non-negotiation was critical to saving a constitutional electoral system. If the government gave into blackmail the system would no longer be one where elections decided who rules but power went to the street, unions, mob passions; as happens in France, and to passionate minorities as in the House of Representatives.
Whereas tribalistic and collectivist societies do not distinguish between natural laws and social customs, so that individuals are unlikely to challenge traditions they believe to have a sacred or magical basis, the beginnings of an open society are marked by a distinction between natural and man-made religious belief).[5]law, and an increase in personal responsibility and accountability for moral choices (not incompatible with religion)
Perhaps the years of ambition and accommodation in a party that’s imprisoned by its own ideology had emptied Boehner out to the point where the thing he gave up as the price of leadership was his own ability to say no. Perhaps being the Republican leader had begun to rot him from the inside.
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/georgepacker/2013/10/darkness-in-washington.html
In Arthur Koestler’s “Darkness at Noon,” based on the Soviet purges of the thirties, the old Bolshevik Rubashov is arrested and interrogated by younger, more hardline, more brutal party members. After months in prison, Rubashov confesses to crimes against the revolution—crimes that he never committed. Why? George Orwell, in his essay on Koestler, provides the answer, and it isn’t the self-interested one, that is, to stop the torture:
Rubashov ultimately confesses because he cannot find in his own mind any reason for not doing so. Justice and objective truth have long ceased to have any meaning for him. For decades he has been simply the creature of the Party, and what the Party now demands is that he shall confess to non-existent crimes…What is there, what code, what loyalty, what notion of good and evil, for the sake of which he can defy the Party and endure further torment? He is not only alone, he is also hollow.
When people in groups face serious changes in the paradigms they live by and are threaten in their essence that make a culture what it fundamentally is, and without which it loses its identity. The white southern men of the silent majority of the ongoing culture wars against liberals and secularization, integration, feminism, the counter culture, the rise of scientific methods over the traditional authority of religion.
For its advocates, government in the open society is purported to be responsive and tolerant, and political mechanisms are said to be transparent and flexible.
Popper saw the classical Greeks as initiating the long slow transition from tribalism towards the open society, and as facing for the first time the strain imposed by the less personal group relations entailed thereby.
"The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country.." Second State of the Union address (1862)
The failure to understand and deal with what is going on is a fault of framing the interpretation. The assignment of meaning to the symbols in formal languages are as used in mathematics, logic, and theoretical computer science are defined in solely syntactic terms, and as such do not have any meaning until they are given some interpretation. The general study of interpretations of formal languages is called formal semantics.
The plot is about social status and identity rather than policy. The policy discussions followed by the media pundits are not the irrational stillness as it appears. The right wing is associated with extreme pessimism and a radical skepticism that condemns modern, secular, scientific existence in favor of an imaginary past, before uppity gays, blacks and women appeared in today's complex realities. A true believer have no loyalties, and no purpose , except perhaps, an impulse to destroy. The causes are because of the anomie, the general mood of despair at the perceived pointlessness of modern existence. The radical right, white southern, males rebel against the realization that in today's society there has been a loss of traditional norms, rules, or laws that protected their self image and social standing.
Whereas tribalistic and collectivist societies do not distinguish between natural laws and social customs, so that individuals are unlikely to challenge traditions they believe to have a sacred or magical basis, the beginnings of an open society are marked by a distinction between natural and man-made religious belief). which is the law, and an increase in personal responsibility and accountability for moral choices (not incompatible with religion)
Popper argues that the ideas of individuality, criticism, and humanitarianism cannot be suppressed once people become aware of them, and therefore that it is impossible to return to the closed society;[6] but at the same time recognized the continuing emotional pull of what he called “the lost group spirit of tribalism”, as manifested for example in the totalitarianism of the 20th century.[7]
Ironically, considering who got us into our economic mess, the most plausible answer is that Wall Street will come to the rescue — that the big money will tell Republican leaders that they have to put an end to the nonsense.
But what if even the plutocrats lack the power to rein in the radicals? In that case, Mr. Obama will either let default happen or find some way of defying the blackmailers, trading a financial crisis for a constitutional crisis.
This all sounds crazy, because it is. But the craziness, ultimately, resides not in the situation but in the minds of our politicians and the people who vote for them. Default is not in our stars, but in ourselves.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/30/opinion/krugman-rebels-without-a-clue.html?hp
As Tocqueville wrote long before Bush v. Gore, every big issue in America ends up sooner or later before the Supreme Court. Let’s face it: that’s where this issue has to go.
Why haven’t creditors sued years ago? Bondholders, defense contractors, states that live from federal paycheck to paycheck, all could have sued to challenge the debt ceiling and their right to be paid what they are owed, even if default had not occurred. The debt ceiling amounts to what’s known as an “anticipatory repudiation of a contractual obligation.” How does a doctor know if he or she should perform surgery on an over 65 Medicare patient if the government says that it reserves the right not to pay?
It is true that Section 4 of the 14th Amendment is pretty powerful: “The validity of the public debt authorized by law … shall not be questioned.” Aside from that provision, Congress simply does not have the authority to default under the Constitution’s Article I, which enumerates its powers. Default deprives citizens of property, i.e., contractual rights to payment.
The issues raised by the White-House involve future sale of treasury bonds if there is a legal question about the authority under which they were issued. Any cloud over US full faith and credit should be avoided. Alexander Hamilton's decision to pay in full notes used in the war (land certificates) in place of hard cash established the credit of the new republic. It would be a shame to mess it up now.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourteenth_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution#Validity_of_public_debt
Section 4 confirmed the legitimacy of all U.S. public debt appropriated by the Congress. It also confirmed that neither the United States nor any state would pay for the loss of slaves or debts that had been incurred by the Confederacy. For example, during the Civil War several British and French banks had lent large sums of money to the Confederacy to support its war against the Union.[152] In Perry v. United States (1935), the Supreme Court ruled that under Section 4 voiding a United States bond "went beyond the congressional power."[153]
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/08/opinion/obamas-options.html?hp
The debt-ceiling crisis in 2011 raised the question of what powers Section 4 gives to the President, an issue that remains unsettled.[154] Some, such as legal scholar Garrett Epps, fiscal expert Bruce Bartlett and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, have argued that a debt ceiling may be unconstitutional and therefore void as long as it interferes with the duty of the government to pay interest on outstanding bonds and to make payments owed to pensioners (that is, Social Security recipients).[155][156] Legal analyst Jeffrey Rosen has argued that Section 4 gives the President unilateral authority to raise or ignore the national debt ceiling, and that if challenged the Supreme Court would likely rule in favor of expanded executive power or dismiss the case altogether for lack of standing.
http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2013/10/02/can-obama-ignore-the-debt-ceiling/creditors-power-exceeds-the-presidents-on-the-debt-limit
The ruling classes need to promote rational conservative primary candidates in the districts of trouble makers and dangerous fools; a group of 62 conservative GOP lawmakers. In the Senate CR cleared a procedural hurdle, 79-19, with 25 Republicans joining the Democratic caucus to end debate on the bill. The 200 democrats in the house need only 18 of the 233 republicans to solve the problem. Who cares about the Republican Speaker of the House John Boehner doing such a lousy and thankless job, almost anyone might do a better job, giving in to terrorist encourages terrorism.
We, this nation of ours, need quickly to create a brains trust with Haley Barbour, the former governor of Mississippi who previously led the Republican National Committee, Ed Gillespie, a former Republican chairman, Pete Wehner, a former George W. Bush aide and former Gov. Jeb Bush of Florida, Gov. Brian Sandoval of Nevada, Roy Blunt, Republican of Missouri, Governor Haslam of Tennessee, Dan Coats of Indiana, Ron Johnson of Wisconsin and Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire —. Mr. Bush cited the accomplishments of three Republican governors and potential presidential candidates — Scott Walker of Wisconsin, Bobby Jindal of Louisiana and Chris Christie of New Jersey — who he said were offering “a more positive, hopeful, optimistic message.” Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York, and Lamar Alexander, Republican of Tennessee, Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), GOP Sens. Kelly Ayotte (N.H.) and Lisa Murkowski (Alaska) seek relief from the sequester, progresive tax reform, remove debt-ceiling limits,
These leaders with their contacts with the chamber of commerce, business round-table, main line Republicans, democratic activist and main line elected officials, political and marketing consultants, non-profit foundations, the Rockefeller, Pew, DuPont Sloan, Ford, family foundations - to targets and promote with money and organization rational conservative primary candidates in the districts of trouble makers and dangerous fools; a group of 62 conservative GOP lawmakers. In the Senate it cleared a procedural hurdle, 79-19, with 25 Republicans joining the Democratic caucus to end debate on the bill. The 200 democrats in the house need only 18 of the 233 republicans to solve the problem.
The trillion dollar secret
Imagination: you are the manager of a quadrillion fund – private (pension, reserves, banking) or sovereign wealth – and the USA goes into “default”. Do you really believe you will not be paid, now and in the future? America is not Argentina or Greece, or even Italy etc.
Now if you think there is extra risk because the market price of US securities has declined and the interest rate has gone up; where do you go?
America is not Britain when the pound as a reserve currency was under attack. There were alternatives, dollars, Deutschmark, commodities, (GOLD) and real estate including farm land. Maybe you buy more treasuries at the lower price?
Thus this is not a real crisis like the euro crisis but a paper (media) psychological war for domestic political purposes, i.e. democratic recapture of the house, and republican suicide pact encouraged by democrats.
The myth of past shut downs
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2013/10/07/a-visual-history-of-the-past-17-government-shutdowns/http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2013/10/07/a-visual-history-of-the-past-17-government-shutdowns/
During the Ford and Carter administrations, funding gaps caused 6 partial shutdowns that affected only the departments of Labor and Health, Education, and Welfare. These lasted from 8 to 18 days and the primary issue of dispute was federal funding for abortion. During the Reagan administration, there were 8 funding gaps with technical shutdowns lasting less than 48 hours or over weekends while spending measures were negotiated. A funding gap during the George H. W. Bush administration also caused a weekend shutdown, resolved late the following Monday.[2]
During the Clinton administration, after conservatives made massive congressional gains in the 1994 Republican Revolution, there were two full government shutdowns lasting 5 and 21 days respectively, both the longest and most severe to that date. These shutdowns led to massive furloughs and significant disruption. The primary issue was the United States budget deficit.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_shutdown_in_the_United_States
The trillion dollar secret
Imagination: you are the manager of a quadrillion fund – private (pension, reserves, banking) or sovereign wealth – and the USA goes into “default”. Do you really believe you will not be paid, now and in the future? America is not Argentina or Greece, or even Italy etc.
Now if you think there is extra risk because the market price of US securities has declined and the interest rate has gone up; where do you go?
America is not Britain when the pound as a reserve currency was under attack. There were alternatives, dollars, Deutschmark, commodities, (GOLD) and real estate including farm land. Maybe you buy more treasuries at the lower price?
Thus this is not a real crisis like the euro crisis but a paper (media) psychological war for domestic political purposes, i.e. democratic recapture of the house, and republican suicide pact encouraged by democrats.
For a long time after the civil war we had “Congressional Government” a book by Woodrow Wilson 1885
teachingamericanhistory.org/library/document/from-congressional-government-conclusion-excerpts/
Capital is the breath of life to this organization, and every day, as the organization becomes more complex and delicate, the folly of assailing capital or credit becomes greater. At the same time it is evident that the task of the legislator to embrace in his view the whole system, to adjust his rules so that the play of the civil institutions shall not alter the play of the economic forces, requires more training and more acumen.
