Make up your mind!

This is what I've always felt about Obama. I've heard a lot of folks complain that he's just a skilled Rhetorician and is all talk. That he makes all kinds of glorious promises but never delivers. But the more important (and painful) reality is that even in these glorious promises, he doesn't actually say anything.

It's not just a matter of throwing around euphemisms that stand for something else. It's euphemisms and statements and policies that mean nothing at all. In a rare moment of actually making a judgement, Obama said, "The decisions that were made over the last eight years established an ad hoc legal approach for fighting terrorism that was neither effective nor sustainable." That is probably one of the most commital statements he has made in his term thusfar, but in reality, all it commits him to is doing things differently than Bush and his administration.

So he promises to change everything. We're gonna close Guantánamo! But we're going to construct a legal regime to decide who should be detained indefinitely. How is that any different!?

Finally someone sees it -- and not even a conservative, but Rachel Maddow. All his re-branding of "prolonged detention" and rhetoric about "the rule of law" is just a clever way to change nothing. That's really what Obama wants: The status quo -- but it has to seem like everything has changed. He will keep from rocking the boat, but at the same time use flowery words to make it sound like he has swooped in and reversed every unpopular policy of the Bush administration.

Maddow has caught him in this. And I appreciate it.

Socialized Capitalism

In this blog post, Mark Cuban, owner of the Dallas Mavericks, provides a great explanation of the problem with the economy. I don't think his solution is viable, because as he says at the very end, "If you are a great financial engineer and make tons of money at what you are doing, more power to you.If you are good at what you do, you pay more to Uncle Sam, but you still make a boatload of money." We don't need anyone doing financial engineering, even if they're willing to pay more in taxes than they currently do. We need financial engineering to stop completely, and the only way to do that is to let institutions fail. Contrary to whatever they feel like they've done to help the situation, the government is the thing that keeps this system going. If the Fed didn't extend credit to huge institutions (let's call that socialism) every time those institutions' risky business got them in huge debt, institutions couldn't continue to operate that way for cycle after cycle. In other words, they learn to play by the rules or they're gone. As MxPx said, "Responsibility? What's that?"

I think most people in this country would say they are anti-socialism and pro-capitalism. But we HAVE socialism! It is socialism when the government bails out our supposed capitalism. Capitalism requires responsibility. So when you take irresponsible risks, your business may go under. No one bails you out.

Like classical Socialism, this "Socialized Capitalism" is a doomed system, and even more importantly, it is completely unfair to the 99% -- the less fortunate classes, who don't get in on the upside when the risks are being taken, nor get bailed out, but are in fact the ones doing the bailing out and losing their jobs when the other shoe drops. The poorest get thrown bones called "welfare programs" that are ostensibly meant to give them a chance to succeed, but in reality are just products of a system where that chance doesn't really exist. Because the precious few who "succeed" need the rest of us to bail them out.

So down with bailouts! They may or may not save jobs in the short term, but in the long term they prop up a system that amounts to giving to the rich, and stealing from everyone else.