The Deceit in the Decade of the Aughts

My sister reported this week that the accident which my mother had had two years ago driving to a post-season baseball game, a rear-end accident, really was not my mother’s fault. Because it seems, my sister was driving. I have not inquired yet of the reasons why the deception. I did not recall if the accident was two or three years ago, only that it was during the Bush Administration when the Twins were playing Oakland, and Frank Thomas had hit a home run to decide the outcome that day–game one of the opening post season.

There has been a lot of deception around the past few years. About bailouts. And banks and money laundering. In an era when an American government was not all that different than the Mexican government. In an era when we wondered which Heisman Trophy winners had received payment, and who was using steroids, in post season baseball which allowed a wild card team to go the farthest in the post season, for an extra round of television ratings. In the decade of war which started over weapons of mass destruction.

The Bush Administration talked only about the upfront costs of the War in Iraq which mostly were handled still five years after the war began by emergency appropriations. By the time we went to war, costing $12 billion a month but not in the budget, Bush and Congress — even though the United States already had a massive deficit—cut taxes. So the war had to be funded by more borrowing. And thus the low interest rate policy and quantitative easing.

So budgets seemed to have, because of the War on Terror, mostly hidden items. So that the collapse of the banks was blamed on sub-prime loans, but when the fault lies also with the votes of Congress to go to war in Iraq, based on the theory of weapons of mass destruction which had never existed. Funding of war is now running at a monthly $16 billion if you include Afghanistan.
All of these wars, with quantitative easing and little or no economic sacrifice. The hallucinations back home about the war in Iraq. The war in Afghanistan. Or the drug wars. Easy money. And banks laundering the money to fund it all. And all the costs hidden in the defense budget, and for national security, in the war on terror which my Congressperson, prior to 2006 “shoulder to shoulder” with Mr. Bush, has witnessed over her ___years. Though I think she has been around since the 1990s, I will have to look. Apparently, like my mother across the river, she even had approved of bailouts.

In elections when no one asks about the deception. Journalists do not ask— perhaps more conscious than ever about the financial condition over the precipice of their own employer— when they are allowed to question candidates during the debate. If any of these television news people were journalists.

Yeah, my sister reported this week that accident which my mother had had two years ago when, it seems, my sister was actually driving. It was time to inquire the reasons why the deception. Because the deceptions were becoming a way of life here. Overall, according to a new report from the Congressional Research Service, the U.S. has spent $1.1 trillion on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Between 2009 and 2010, the average monthly expenditure of the war in Iraq fell $1.8 billion to $5.4 billion. While in Afghanistan, monthly expenditure was $5.7 billion, up 63% compared to the unhidden expenses in the prior year’s budget. And if it was anything like when the Shriners’ convention came to town, or with the Super Bowl when politicians promised a seven-fold spending result for each dollar expended, in the derivative world with no real regulation, was this war costing $7 trillion? On top of the bailouts? Two years later?

My mother called in the wake of the news about all of her deceit in this auto accident. She wondered if I wanted to attend a meeting with her at Wells Fargo Bank on Monday. Yeah, the bank which had acquired Wachovia. Wachovia, with all of the bad sub-prime loans which still are not resolved. Wachovia which made a lot of money, hundred of millions, in money laundering for drug lords in Mexico. But she liked her banker, who seems like a nice guy.

A lot like the subsequent president, my mother still has not spoken about all of the deceit in the two or three years since the car accident. Maybe I had become like too many Congressmen and Congresswomen, and I don’t want to know. In the case of the accident, I don’t think the deceit involved more than the family circle. All I knew was it was really was not my mother’s fault, just a tap, and no one believed that the other driver was injured, or if she really had more than $200 in damage.

I don’t understand a lot these days. About how it became some how a cause of patriotism to die upholding the wars of deceit. Too many have not inquired the reasons for the wars of deceit. Some attribute the cost to the War on Terror. The ones which have allowed wiretaps and water torture, encroaching upon the highest ideals of the Founding Fathers.

Mostly I think we had allowed ourselves to be deceived. By institutions. Academic ones. Religious ones. Political ones. By people who seemed like nice guys. Older popes. Even Pulitzer Prize winning economists from Princeton, telling us how to avoid a decade long depression, without ever looking at all this deceit around.

The anger at Mother Church. The one based in Rome. At all the deceit. With all of his complicity, why this pope had gone to the United Kingdom at this point in history. Accepting an invitation from the queen, herself a head of state and head of a religion. A Protestant herself, inhabiting castles and ivy towers. As the Irish could just hang their heads. About why this guy was in charge. And why did he not just go away? But when the same electorate would choose his successor. As the Irish could just hang their collective heads.

Yeah, my sister reported this week that accident which my mother had had two years ago, when it seems, my sister was driving. And my mother bailed her out. This sister does not drink. Or so we think. A lot like that original bailout vote which failed, the accident happened at mid day. And a lot like Republicans and the Democrats, I was not quite ready to forgive either of them. As Obama and Congress — even though the United States already had a massive deficit from the wars stemming from deceit— were in discussions once again about continuing the tax cuts. And when it also seemed patriotic to fund such wars. Because now everyone needed jobs.

While the Jews around the world were getting ready for the Day of Atonement this weekend, I was not quite ready. In a world with less and less belief, I still needed a few more weeks.

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Slumdog Millionaire, Part III

Alex Rodriguez violated the unwritten code of conduct in baseball last night in Oakland when after Robinson Cano’s foul ball down the left field line, following his own one out single, he cut across the pitching mound and touched the pitching rubber on his return to first base, infuriating the pitcher Dallas Braden.

Braden yelled at Rodriguez, telling him to get off the mound. Rodriguez characterized the confrontation as “pretty funny, honestly.” According to the New York Times, he did not remember where he was running or whether he did, in fact, step on the rubber as he returned to first. ‘It’s not really a big deal,’ he said.”

According to the New York Times, Braden said of the New York Yankees. “It’s kind of disheartening to see that not show through, or be reflected by somebody of his status. They are an extremely classy organization with guys who always tend to do the right thing every time.”

To Braden, it was big deal. After the game, Braden said: “I don’t go over there and run laps at third base. I don’t spit over there. I stay away. You guys ever see anybody run across the mound like that? He ran across the pitcher’s mound. Foot on my rubber.”

This was the A-Rod who in Toronto in 2007 as a base runner called for a pop fly, violating the unwritten code of conduct. Whether written or unwritten, this A-Rod ignores all codes of conduct. Like with steroids. It was in October 2007 when Selena Roberts wrote: “Do you like the new A-Rod who doesn’t care if he is liked?”

Nothing had really changed.

Declarations of Bankruptcy

With the Wednesday anniversary of the $787-billion package of tax cuts and spending in the Recovery Act, in defense of the stimulus, President Obama said, “One year later, it is largely thanks to the Recovery Act that a second Depression is no longer a possibility.” Democratic and Republican leaders in Washington marked America’s legalized corruption by sniping at each other. Bankrupt after 8 years of the leadership of George Bush, Republican lawmakers stepped up their attacks on what was the Paulson-Bush stimulus plan, calling it wasteful and ineffective.

From an article by Simon Johnson in the Atlantic, America’s Legalized Corruption

“The crash has laid bare many unpleasant truths about the United States. One of the most alarming, says a former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund, is that the finance industry has effectively captured our government—a state of affairs that more typically describes emerging markets, and is at the center of many emerging-market crises. If the IMF’s staff could speak freely about the U.S., it would tell us what it tells all countries in this situation: recovery will fail unless we break the financial oligarchy that is blocking essential reform. And if we are to prevent a true depression, we’re running out of time.”

From the transcript of Frontline on February 16, 2010:

“We didn’t truly know the dangers of the market, because it was a dark market,” says Brooksley Born, the head of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission [CFTC] — an obscure federal regulatory agency — who not only warned of the potential for economic meltdown in the late 1990s, but also tried to convince the country’s key economic powerbrokers to take actions that could have helped avert the crisis.

“They were totally opposed to it,” Born says. “That puzzled me. What was it that was in this market that had to be hidden?”

They being the same people advising the current president. Then Assistant Treasury Secetary Lawrence Summers, Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, as well as Alan Greespan heading up the Federal Reserve. And who did Timothy Geithner worked for through this all? As Henry Paulson got his start working in the Nixon White House; was it for Erhlichman or Haldeman? He learned under the best of hatchet men.

It had taken 40 years of the media making us all world experts, and this expertise along with the lobbyists had bankrupted American government. It was why I felt uncomfortable having my retirement accounts with Fidelity, with Merrill Lynch, with Morgan Stanley. They all had hijacked the government of the United States, through the Democratic Party and the Republican Party.

One year later, President Obama was sounding a lot like George Bush, announcing victory in Iraq. Or Henry Paulson and Ben Ben Bernanke, with their similar pronouncements all along, when the Bush Administration on July 13, 2008 rescued Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, or Bear Stearns. When that second Depression “was no longer a possibility.”

The Congressional Oversight Panel, chaired by Harvard law professor Elizabeth Warren, warned on the same anniversary date that it remains “deeply concerned” that commercial loan losses could jeopardize the stability of many banks, particularly the nation’s mid-size and smaller banks. Highlighting yet one more hurdle for this country’s fragile economy, a wave of commercial real estate loan failures could threaten over the next few years America’s already-weakened financial system. The Congressional Oversight Panel was formed as part of oversight for the Troubled Asset Relief Program.

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Bud Selig To Retire

Commissioner Bud Selig told a New York Times columnist. “I’m concerned about the pace of the game.

Hypocrisy is a charge leveled when someone fails to live up to the virtuous standards being expounded.

On spectating. On the theatrics of spectating. I attended sports events to watch. More and more there are these spectating participants. Who stood up and blocked my view. And they looked for others in the crowd to do as they did. As if they were participating in what was gonna happen on the next pitch. Orchestrated. Over-managed ritualized standing, watching the Joe Girardis and the Ron Gardenhires over manage. Baseball 2009. Embracing the language of the age, and ritualistic noisemaking. On Fox Television.

Fox Sports. The prior owner of the Dodgers. Bigger than life Fox Sports that gave me week in and week out on their local affiliated cable station broadcasters that stole enjoyment from the game. It was like that Mr. Potter in It’s A Wonderful Life who owned everything in town. When the Mr. Potters controlled the broadcast rights. With an FTC that just allowed the media to drain credibility with sponsors who equally sponsored politicians through lobby groups. When baseball was just a small part of the problem, only reflecting all off society’s ills. Drugs. Steroid use. Sexual harassment, with the Mets, at ESPN. Those Stanford grads managing the Diamondback to a last place finish. Bud Selig’s New Age Baseball.

Bud Selig and dermatology. His thin Wisconsin skin that was bothered if he spent any time in October in New York. About criticism of umpires versus instant replays. Bud Selig making TV more important each October. What now happened each year with all post season baseball. Making the audience at home more important than the ticket buyer. With a disregard of playing conditions once a game began. Like the scheduling of baseball in November. Bud Selig New Age Baseball.

Fox Sports. During the regular season. Making television so important until no one was watching televised baseball during the regular season. Without regard to the clocks. And those 4 hours games. As if this was the NFL. Fox Sports and their good drones who cover the games, and don’t ask any uncomfortable questions.

TBS. And Chip Caray, never mentioning the incident of Miguel Caberra in the playoff game, of the circumstances of his drinking until 6 a.m. Too inconvenient for everyone. Those MLB partners. The Tigers. And Caberra’s wife. Not explaining how there might not have been a playoff in Minnesota.

TBS. And Chip Caray, making more errors than the umpires. Let’s share the performance enhancement drugs with the broadcaster. And Joe Buck. Whatever happened to likable broadcasters? Honest broadcasters who were not some shills of MLB, TBS, or Fox Sports. People who knew something and were worth listening to discuss baseball. Likable guys. Like Skip Caray. Or Jack Buck? Men not born with silver microphones in their mouths. People who reached the national stage not on their pedigree. But based on talent.

Joe Buck. Where there was melodrama everywhere. And “good at-bats.” Melodrama everywhere, created by your broadcasters. And Joe Buck encouraging those spectating participants in the crowd. To stand and block my view. While he sat in his pressbox. Elevated above it all.

I was a spectator. I knew my role. I had paid to watch. As ticket prices escalated. Thanks to collusion. When the commissioner was now colluding with the Major League Players Association. Every 4 or 5 year. In the basic agreement. When Bud Selig gets his $15 million cut each year. He was good at colluding, as an arbiter had once ruled. And so was Donald Fehr who was just given an $11 million severance package with his retirement. Collusion to increase revenue from the working stiffs who bought baseball tickets. While those artificial drones in the broadcast booths, and journalist still cheerleading the expenditures of dollars on free agents. In publicly financed stadiums. Thirty three years later after free agency began. New stadiums were needed to pay for this system.

Free agency. Because players would talked to the Peter Gammons s and the Murray Chase s who fed Marvin Miller’s New Age Music. All this artificial participation. By stand up guys everywhere. In the stands and in the dugouts. Guys like Scott Boras and all the other stand up cheerleaders in L.A. With the Yankees playing the Angels in the American League Championship Series in Anaheim, did Scott Boras, visible in virtually every center-field camera shot conspicuously standing in the home plate suite, ever sit down? And in Chavez Ravine. But not just in L.A. Give Scott Boras a visible location and maybe more of his clients will sign with the Dodgers, the Angels, or the Yankees. All this endorsed artificiality by Boras and all those stand up cheerleaders in Dodger Stadium.

According to Joe Buck, there should not have been a focus in the attention given in an 10-1 game on umpires and the bad calls. Not in the newspapers. Joe Buck who thought about it, and five minutes later, in an intro of “not to beat a dead horse” umpire discussion, talking about the threat of baseball’s credibility, about replays. Instant replay.

About the threat of the loss of credibility. Joe. Get a mirror. Or listen to yourself tells us what wonderful baseball we were watching in New York, in spite of the rain and cold temperatures. And all these good at-bats that contributed to the perversions of length of game. The game was supposed to be about hits, not walks. When the purpose of the bat was to swing. And not have to listen to Joe Buck drone on and on. Get out of your heated booth and feel the conspicuous rain for 210 minutes. Then tell us of the wonders of a good at-bat. Umpires used to postpone such games because of rain and cold. Maybe you can tell the writers what to write about in those wonderful games 10-1 games when the games take 210 minutes, however hard it was to be consistent in the spotlight so much on one microphone.

As ticket prices escalated. The threat of baseball’s credibility. When Commissioner Bud Selig told a New York Times columnist. “I’m concerned about the pace of the game.” With instant replays which would add to the length of game. Other than making TV and Fox Sports even more important. Those fans at home more important than anyone in the park. People in the park who paid to conspicuously watch everything except the instant replays. Or what those spectating participants did not obstruct.

Bud Selig’s New Age Baseball. And Selig’s concern about “the pace of the game.” Hey Bud, what about the length of the season?

This Bud is empty. He has just announced his retirement. In 2012.

Remembrance Day

On Remembrance Day, there is still a poignant remembering overseas of the cost to Europe. War had a way to bring home the present day cost of risk appetites.

Social mood. Political campaigns. Financial fate. Markets go up and they go down, even in the age of austerity, as in the age of conspicuous consumption. By understanding history, humanity has the power to change history. War, and the way we live our lives.

We live in a world that has perverted the concept of remembering people. The media had a cheap story to fill the airwaves now on each September 11th and November 11th. In Europe they still called it Remembrance Day, where the people remembered the war dead and not the military. I was in London on this day in 2000. “Flanders Field.” Armistice Day was not a promotion for the armed services or to be used by the National Guard to recruit the mostly local youth, a lot like those pro football players and their fans in town who “root for laundry,” as Jerry Seinfeld reminds his audience. The living athletes of combat. Cannon fodder. The human cannon fodder, used too often in the name of nationalism. The “National Guard” that had been perverted by public policy to become an invading army in Iraq, and maybe one day in Afghanistan? Today was supposed to be a day about the individual people lost to war, not about the uniform worn. At the end of the Great War, in 1919, because of the missing bodies to bury, the November 11th observance was introduced, with a two minute silence. Unbearable mourning continued long after a war was over. Today was supposed to be a day about peace. About real people gone.

Reusse & Company this morning. How does an interview of Major General Larry Shellito of the Minnesota National Guard relate to November 11th and Armistice Day? A day about peace!. Armistice Day was about turning swords into plowshares. November 11th in Europe was Memorial Day, not for the military industrial complex, as Dwight Eisenhower called it, but about individuals compelled to go to war in the name of government and nationalism who died in service. And the people who went, that the world would one day be a better place.

The“National Guard” that had been perverted by public policy to become an invading army in Iraq and in Afghanistan? How had it happened? The “National Guard” that had replaced the all volunteer army. And why? Since September 11, 2001, the U .S. has deployed troops in 33 countries, according to Major General Larry Shellito. Why? And about the expense of all this? Was the Department of Defense any different than that vote on health care. Which was not at all about health care but health care insurance, and paying for all of this. Without much discussion at all about the real issue of health care. How many MRI machines were needed in a community. Without a discussion of preventative medicine. Why did local kids need to be dispatched to 33 countries in the last 8 years? And where was the discussion on all of this? About the use of “The National Guard?”

No one asked why. Elections have been spun to be one long drone of an argument between two sides. The two sides that had long ago quit communicating, in a world that was unable to find much in the way of meaning. If you thought that television and radio were sounding boards on the issues of the day, then your moderators had become nothing more than game show hosts.

In a current world without conscription, in a world of voluntary service, somehow the message was getting across about the glamor of swords. And now a word from the sponsors.

I am not sure why Major General Larry Shellito of the Minnesota National Guard was invited on Armistice Day of all days to be a guest. On morning radio, on Reusse and Company. I did not listen long to the remainder of the show. I don’t think there was a discussion of what happened when you take the young and place their lives in peril, in places where they are seen as the enemy. In some of the 33 places. Thirty-three places. Invading armies? An invitation to the major general as a guest by the same guy who wrote today on his blog:

“Pro football players were merely mercenaries moving through a city for the purpose of collecting a large paycheck. There would be replaced by a different group of mercenaries in a few years, and the foolish fans would cheer for them for no reason other than the appearance of their jerseys.” So wrote Pat Reusse today.

In the civilian world, leadership has to be re-earned in each generation. By sons who followed fathers and grandfathers. In attempts to try to see the future through the past. My grandfather won a purple heart in World War I. He paid a price for his medal every day for the rest of his life. It was more than what combat had done to his hearing. The life expectancy of those Woodrow Wilsons was always so much shorter than the soldier.

“Be careful when you break horses that you don’t break their spirit too.”

If sons and daughters took the time to try to understand history, humanity had the power to change history. In Minnesota, people spent more time contemplating the NFL than they did the deployment since September 11, 2001 of U .S. troops in 33 countries. We thought more about the people there than we about the dollars it had also cost for them to be there. And not many folks were asking why. Or why this was done under the auspices of “The National Guard.”

There was a cost to all of this. In a world of voluntary and involuntary thrift, with personal savings and public policy focused on taxing. In a world where voluntary service could fast become involuntary, as government officials induced borrowing rather than pay now these out of pocket expense. The single greatest risk as the equilibrium between asset classes remains a seismic shift in currency markets. What was this defense policy doing to the U.S. dollar? When a currency holds a nation together, and “the economy — perhaps society at large — assumes more, not less, risk as a function of the path of our attempted fix,” writes Todd Harrison. A Congressman from Tennessee cited Albert Einstein’s belief, in a joint hearing chaired by Senator Kent Konrad from North Dakota, that the greatest power on earth was not atomic energy but compound interest, in this case as a threat to the future of America.

Counting the cost. On Remembrance Day, there is a perversion to discuss the engines of financing as much as there is to discuss the success of recruitment as Major General Larry Shellito of the Minnesota National Guard was asked. In a nation that just no longer discussed war.

On Remembrance Day, there is still a poignant remembering overseas of the cost of war. It is seen in the streets of London. In America, Armistice Day was politicized, used as a photo opportunity by politicians hoping to remain an elected official for an entire career, and calling it Veterans’ Day. It was not longer remembered to commemorate the War To End All Wars. About the real people gone. Except in a Europe, which continues to manifest the loss of one generation, of its best and brightest. Watching the scenes this week at the Brandenburg Gate, and seeing the difference in the caliber of leaders 4 generations later, wondering if Europe had ever recovered from void of the War to End All War. Counting the cost.

It must have seemed really heroic to fight in The War To End All Wars.

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Robbing Peter to Pay Paul

In January 2009, UnitedHealth based in Minnetonka, Minnesota agreed to shut down their Ingenix database and settled a lawsuit with the New York Attorney General by paying $50 million, it was reported in the Minneapolis-St. Paul Business Journal. According to an item in the Minneapolis-St. Paul Business Journal, the investigation by the New York Attorney’s General office uncovered a fraudulent and conflict-of-interest-ridden reimbursement system, which the state of New York then proceeded to replace with a not-for-profit company, FAIR Health Inc., to be headquartered at Syracuse University.

That $50 million was used to form a new, independent database at Syracuse University. After settlements with other similar companies, the New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo announced Tuesday
a new independent database for consumer reimbursement as part of this Upstate research network in what sounds to be a reformed plan for Ingenix’s health care reimbursement database. Only this time allegedly with “transparency, accountability and fairness.” Funded by the litigation of Mr. Cuomo. Offering no defense of the operations at UnitedHealth here, public policy in New York apparently involves using the courts to transfer jobs to their state under the umbrella of the health care debate?

This new research network, reportedly funded with nearly $100 million in settlement money recovered during an investigation by Cuomo’s office into how the health-insurance industry reimburses consumers for out-of-network health care charges, “will develop a new Web site where for the first time consumers can compare prices before they choose their doctors.”

This is an innovative way for state government to create new jobs in their own state.

Performance Enhancement After Affects

Tsunami warnings. Times of panic. When the water recedes.

Money-market funds are no longer insured by the US Treasury. When the Reserve Primary Fund share price fell last September a bit below a dollar, the U. S. Treasury stepped in offering protection against losses, to prevent a “run” by money-market depositors. Commercial banks paid premiums for federal deposit insurance for such protection to the federal government which they are required to have. That money-market fund protection continued in the panicked climate of the last 12 months but came to a stop Friday.

On September 3, 2009, Chris Oliver wrote a piece about the biggest movement in gold which might have gone little noticed by currency traders. The Hong Kong Monetary Authority, which functions as the territory’s unofficial central bank, will transfer its gold reserves stored in other vaults to the depository later this year, the Hong Kong government said in a statement. Local newspaper reports said the Hong Kong Mercantile Exchange had signed an agreement to use the depository for its physical settlement and storage needs. According to its International Reserves and Foreign Currency Liquidity statement, the Hong Kong Monetary Authority reported $63 million in physical gold reserves as of July 31, 2009, thought to be stored in London.

A newly built 3,660-square-foot depository, located at the city’s main Chek Lap Kok Airport,will serve as a “storage facility for local and overseas government institutions. The facility would support Hong Kong’s emergence as a Swiss-style trading hub for bullion and would lessen London’s status as a key settlement-and-storage center, Chris Oliver wrote. Marketing efforts will be launched to convince Asian central banks to transfer their gold reserves to the Hong Kong facility, according to Raymond Lai, finance director with the Hong Kong Airport Authority. Managing director at Scotia Capital, Sunil Kashyap, said the facility was the first with official government backing in the region. Martin Hennecke, a financial advisor with the Hong Kong-based Tyche Group, said, “Central banks are increasingly aware of the importance of having gold reserves at time of financial crisis and having it easily available at their own disposal,” and this could be appealing to regional central banks unnerved after watching the global financial system teeter on verge of implosion last year.

Management firm Value Partners planned to launch an exchange-traded gold fund that will use Hong Kong instead of London as a repository for the gold backing the fund, a local newspaper reported. Traders said the new depository facility could foster new financial products, such as exchange-traded funds based on precious metals. “Having a central government-sponsored vault would create a situation where you could conceivably look at Hong Kong as being a hub, where metal could be traded for the region,” said Sunil Kashyap.

China has always shown a respect for the American dollar which comes from the history of the dollar. Now however, a larger interest is growing in China not to fall prey to wide currency fluctuations. Exports which have until now needed a reasonable balance in foreign accounts, a major share made up of the U S dollar. Paul Volcker spoke last night on the Charlie Rose show of the need in China to avoid social tension that is directly linked to currency.

The moves by the Fed last October are now starting to look a lot like a patient weened off steroids. It was not just the American electorate looking at how all the newly minted money was going to be paid for. It was either through tax increases or budget cuts. If the dollar was going to maintain any kind of value.

In the Shadows of Those Cloakrooms

Twelve months ago, there was talk of a revolution coming in the financial markets, which was financially supported by the 3500 lobbyists in Washington, for both parties. There was a new form of fascism in those stories at the time. That is if “fascism” was a word about comforts, with government offering instruction how all of us could live easier. With the help of former Goldman Sachs officers in government, government was now deciding, 12 months later, who were saved, which among us were rescued, at least amongst financial institutions. The free market had been replaced.

If the revolution in the financial markets was not enough, how did you feel as Congress was coming back from summer recess, from all the dog and pony shows, to address not the health care crisis but how, with a nation with an aging populace, to pay for health care. At a point in time when government through Medicare had not exactly been covering the cost of new technology in hospitals, was not paying a fair share. Yet health care itself had never been better.

In the debate, there are people who desire government to decide all of the issues of health care. How much to pay medical institutions, when government was not, had not been, reimbursing hospitals the true cost of taking care of patients with Medicare. Government now wanted to mandate the amount of reimbursement for all procedures, and somehow distribute the cost throughout the entire population in the form of premiums. People who thought government was honest seemed to support the concept. Did they know about the 3500 lobbyists in Washington who had been working for more than a generation to make sure the system was not fair? How had these health care reform supporters felt about the bailouts? (In the case of my Congressional Representative, Betty McCollum supported both the bailout and health care reform.)

Like in those financial bailouts, government was now deciding, if Betty McCollum got her way, who would be saved, which among us would be rescued, amongst both health care institutions, and their patients. Suddenly aware that government knew it had the power to print money, increase property taxes in the states, and if the need were come, to confiscate everything, now they would decided every health care procedure. We had yet to hear specifics how Washington would replace those Blue Cross Blue Shield claims people to make the same kind of every day decisions with all the love and care I found when I went to renew my license plate tabs.

The timing was not real good in September 2009, less than 12 months after the revolution in the financial markets. Not when this discussion seemed more like elective surgery. With a lot of swine flu around. I hoped the vote might be postponed for 6 to 12 months. Until the patients had a lot more strength. Until the president had the courage to introduce the specifics of a bill himself, with some accountability, rather than rely on Congress or the 3500 lobbyists in Washington to take the citizens to a health care destination. Congress had not done a very good job dealing with triage in the last crisis, but that might have been due to a president who just wanted to get out of office after creating the mess himself rather than actually lead.

I wonder if somewhere in those August dog and pony shows from New Hampshire to Montana, if the president heard someone ask when he might introduce the actual legislation that might work. If Congress had spent the time to approve his appointment so he had enough staff to work on a bill.

In the Wake of the Aquino Death

Cory Aquino died this week.

There had been a revolution in the Philippines after her husband who was the opposition leader had been killed.

In 1972, Ferdinand Marcos declared martial law. No one knew how long it might last. Marcos effectively exiled and deported Benito Aquino, probably the most popular politician in the country. In 1983, following a kidney transplant, with access to the president curtailed by physical health issues, Imelda Marcos and Chief of Staff General Fabian Ver limited access to the president. Imelda Marcos was said to have flown to New York in May 1983 to convey that Benito Aquino would never again set foot on Philippine soil. There was total chaos as no one knew what was happening, and how the Filipinos might regain control of their country.

Benito Aquino swore to return and, in August 1983 he did, amidst the medical and political crisis. Aquino was assassinated on the tarmac of the airport as his plane landed, by one of the aircraft guards. The guard then committed suicide. Though it was widely believed that Imelda Marcos pursued the elimination of the opposition leader, the chief of staff Ver was tried for the assassination and received a not guilty verdict. The day of the verdict, Cory Aquino announced her candidacy for president, as the EDSA ‘People Power’ revolution removed the Marcos dictatorship and restored democracy in the Philippines in 1986.

The majority of the young people in the Philippines today immediately give an adjective of their Congress men and women. Corrupt is the adjective. Filipino history provides the basis for these feelings, for what occurred bother before Cory Aqunino’s election and history subsequent to her time in office.

The strength of a democracy is judged by the safety extended to journalists pursuing their stories. Th Philippines ranks next to Russia with pursuit of justice when either an opposition leader or a journalist is killed.

Those Domestic Situations

The New York Times reports today that the Bush administration in 2002 considered sending U.S. troops into a Buffalo, N.Y., suburb to arrest a group of terror suspects in what would have been a nearly unprecedented use of military power.

According to U.S. Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) and U.S. Rep. Brad Sherman (D-CA) said that as U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson pushed for the Wall Street bailout in September 2008, he brought up that that the crisis might even require a declaration of martial law, as a worst-case scenario.

The Associated Press notes that dispatching troops into the streets is virtually unheard of. “The Constitution and various laws restrict the military from being used to conduct domestic raids and seize property.”

A 1994 U.S. Defense Department Directive (DODD 3025) allegedly allows military commanders to take emergency actions in domestic situations to save lives, prevent suffering or mitigate great property damage. The Clinton administration had set up the Joint Task Force-Civil Support in October 1999 as a “homeland defense command.”

In 2002 the Pentagon established the U.S. Northern Command, charged with carrying out military operations within the United States. Prior to this, under the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878, the U.S. armed forces had been barred from domestic operations, except in specific, limited circumstances.

So that Associated Press note about “dispatching troops into the streets as virtually unheard of” is a historic note. It is a mistake to say the “constitution and various laws restrict the military from being used to conduct domestic raids and seize property.”

Pentagon officials at one point to end 2008 were projecting some 20,000 active-duty U.S. troops to be stationed in the United States by 2011.