Lawmakers Ignore Economists. Economists Unsurprised.

Economists protest Paulson's bailout proposal. You can check behind the link to see who they are and where they work.

Meanwhile, please sign CREDO Action Network's petition, or the one from Avaaz.org here, which will go to Representatives Pelosi, Boehner, Hoyer, Frank, and Bachus, along with Senators Reid, McConnell, Dodd, and Shelby.

As economists, we want to express to Congress our great concern for the plan proposed by Treasury Secretary Paulson to deal with the financial crisis. We are well aware of the difficulty of the current financial situation and we agree with the need for bold action to ensure that the financial system continues to function. We see three fatal pitfalls in the currently proposed plan:

1) Its fairness. The plan is a subsidy to investors at taxpayers’ expense. Investors who took risks to earn profits must also bear the losses. Not every business failure carries systemic risk. The government can ensure a well-functioning financial industry, able to make new loans to creditworthy borrowers, without bailing out particular investors and institutions whose choices proved unwise.

2) Its ambiguity. Neither the mission of the new agency nor its oversight are clear. If taxpayers are to buy illiquid and opaque assets from troubled sellers, the terms, occasions, and methods of such purchases must be crystal clear ahead of time and carefully monitored afterwards.

3) Its long-term effects. If the plan is enacted, its effects will be with us for a generation. For all their recent troubles, America's dynamic and innovative private capital markets have brought the nation unparalleled prosperity. Fundamentally weakening those markets in order to calm short-run disruptions is desperately short-sighted.

For these reasons we ask Congress not to rush, to hold appropriate hearings, and to carefully consider the right course of action, and to wisely determine the future of the financial industry and the U.S. economy for years to come.

Thanks to Dana Hunter over at En Tequila Es Verdad for the link to the Avaaz petition. Here it is again.

Are we going to war with Iran? Seriously?

I would really like my American friends to read this. Because this does affect you. I shit you not, this does matter, and you will regret it if you pretend this isn't happening.

Entry from En Tequila Es Verdad (good blog if you're like me and prefer your news with a little wisecracking to make it go down easier):

Really fucking unhappy right now. Not only did Congress flush the Fourth Amendment down the loo, they seem hell-bent on shitting away what fragments of sanity they have left:

Just when you thought a Congress could not debase itself any further, having just approved massive funding for the Iraq war and given the corporate criminal accomplices of Bush's attack on the Bill of Rights a free pass... along comes the mother of all insane resolutions of our time. This is even worse than the notorious Iraq War Resolution. and is likely to pass Congress like a glassful of laxatives.

Resolution 362 in the House (not officially named the "Iran War Resolution", but nonetheless amounting to nothing less than that)will effectively demand the US to impose a naval blockade of Iran, an act of war.

Please take action this weekend.

Yes, please do. The last fucking thing we need is another fucking unilateral war. This country's military back is broken as it is, not to mention the ethical, moral, and diplomatic concerns involved. We shouldn't be provoking a war with Iran to begin with, but to do so when we have two fucking unfinished wars on our plates - that's beyond insane. I don't think we even have a word for how batshit crazy that is.

After all, even Bush's chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff favors diplomacy:

In an interview with National Journal published today, Mullen speaks favorably of directly engaging with Iran, even though he says Iran has not always shown a “propensity” for it:

NJ: Given Iran’s role as a spoiler in the region, and with so much now at stake for the United States, doesn’t it make sense to directly engage with Iran to discern its motives and explore potential accommodations?

MULLEN: I would like to have a healthy dialogue with Iran, but many different administrations over a period of decades have been unable to achieve that. But I do think engagement would offer an opportunity, certainly, to understand each other better. That said, the Iranians have to want to talk too. It can’t just be a desire on our part. And the Iranians haven’t shown much propensity for dialogue.

Mullen isn’t the only administration official who has eschewed Bush’s absolutist rhetoric in favor of a more diplomatic approach.

I'm not entirely hopeful that the voices of reason can drown out the war drums, but it's past time to try. We have a disaster on our hands now - what we'd have with a third war is catastrophe.

As for Iran not showing much of a propensity for talking with us, who the fuck can blame them? Look at who they'd be talking to. George W. "I'll see your crazy and raise you a batshit insane" Bush.

Remember a few things in the run-up to this new war. Bush lied to get us in to the last one. He used fear and patriotism to shut down dissent. And too many of us, myself included, simply threw up our hands and didn't do a goddamned thing.

Not this time. Not another war. Listen:

We need to stop House Resolution 362 in its tracks. Right now.

And to stop or substantially slow the push for war AIPAC needs to disgraced and here's how you can help.

The key talking point : anti-Jewish attitudes have been on the rise over the past decade, both in the US and worldwide. Sure. And Pastor John Hagee, alleged friend of Jews and Israel and key AIPAC ally, AIPAC's 2007 star speaker, has helped drive that increase in anti-Jewish hatred.

Is Israel's well being the point ? Maybe. But good faith efforts towards Mideast Peace clearly are not:

IN 2003, according to this American Prospect story, the Bush Administration chose to spurn an Iranian peace offer that would have given EVERY concession the US and AIPAC now demands from Iran.

Thus, the alleged reasons for the push for a US war with Iran are probably lies. Iran was willing to concede everything - it's nuclear program, its support for Hamas and Hezzbollah...

Hear that? That's a call to arms, that is. Don't believe the lies. Don't accept another useless war pushed on you by warloving hatemongers. It's time to stop these sick fucks dead in their tracks.

We couldn't stop FISA, but we are fucking well not going to bend over and take this.

Let Congress know you won't tolerate it.

Blessed be the Carnival.

First off, I encourage everyone to go check out the Carnival of Elitist Bastards. In honor of my fellow eggheads, I figured I'd quit linkfarming for a second and actually post something I'd written myself.

As long as I can remember I read several grade levels ahead of the other kids. What's more, I remembered what I read. When I ran out of books at home I hit the encyclopedia or my little illustrated-for-kids dictionary. I was a latch-key kid without cable TV, what else was I supposed to do?

One day in class, we were in the library and the teacher asked who knew what an encyclopedia was. I raised my hand, thinking that it'd be better if someone who knew the answer did so rather than the teacher calling on someone who didn't know. I told her that it's a book or set of books containing information in alphabetical order. Some subjects, such as art or history, have their own encyclopedia.

I wouldn't remember that definition to this day if not for the reaction I got. There was no relief that the other kids didn't have to answer. They recoiled like Puritans from a suspected witch. The teacher called on me again, and again, wanting answers from me. It only made it worse. I had transgressed. It turns out that the correct response to a teacher's question is to be one of his or her hapless victims so that other students can feel a solidarity in the face of all this horrid "schooling."

It was not until I was about twelve that I learned the trick. Until then I'd doggedly read and written and answered and done my best. Until then I got it wrong. The trick is to make people laugh. It's not that making people laugh will create happiness. Primates don't always (or even often) smile because they're happy. It's to relieve tension. It's a survival skill.

If you don't make them laugh, they will hate you.

So I became something of a class clown to bridge the social gap. People had an idea that I was smart, but because I danced and jigged and used my intelligence to make their day more amusing... I was okay despite the crime of intelligence. They knew I wasn't one of them, but at least I was in their service.

That's how I got through high school, and it got me through college. It was okay for me to know a few more things than other students as long as I used that knowledge to make them laugh. Gradually I came to rely on it. It became a mode of control. I had to make people smile, had to make people laugh, had to make them feel the way I wanted them to feel. It was the only power I had.

Unfortunately this doesn't work everywhere. My mother often proclaims her great pride in me, the first woman in the family to get a college degree. I'm the good kid, the smart kid, the world traveler and scholar who's making it without help from mom and dad. And yet I know she resents me as well. As glad as she is that I've accomplished what she wanted before she got knocked up, I think she resents me for being the one who did it, for being the one who went further.

I didn't really realize it until during an argument she brought up what was evidently supposed to be an example of my withering superiority. I used the word "obelisk" to describe something while in the car with my parents, and I guess it's not the kind of word that a wise daughter uses. When they didn't know what an obelisk was, it took me a second to find some less precise way to define it. To me an obelisk is an obelisk. Eventually I think I came out with "thin pointy tower" or something.

I guess my pause was too long, expressing some deep-seated disdain for these imbeciles I was trapped in a car with. During our recent argument, my mother commented defensively, "We can't all be as brilliant as Ashley Holmes."

What's the alternative? Treat her like she's stupid? Coming from a worldview that values intellect, it's hard to imagine wanting people around you to assume you're uneducated. It's hard to imagine wanting people to err on the side of dumbing themselves down for your poor benighted overloaded mind. I knew what an obelisk was, and I assumed she knew.

Both of these social failures, one in grade school and one only months ago, stem from the same sin. I slipped up and I didn't adequately hide my intelligence. I think it was Francois de La Rochefoucauld who said, "It is a great ability to be able to conceal one's ability." Great and valued. And necessary.

So I tip my hat to Dana and the others over at the Carnival. People need a space where it's safe to be intelligent and where you can assume other people value their knowledge... and yours. It is badly needed, and until the rest of the country catches up... Blessed be the Carnival of Elitist Bastards. Bastards unite!

Flag pins>living wage.

A blog entry from one of my new favorite bloggers over at En Tequila Es Verdad

Happy Hour Discurso

Today's opining on the public discourse.

The Carpetbagger Report has a quick overview of "red meat" issues for both parties:

So, for Dems, throwing red meat to the base is taking on wage discrimination and insurance companies denying coverage. For Republicans, it’s constitutional amendments on gays and the flag.

Someone's priorities seem to be a little fucked up. Maybe I'm just sheltered, but I haven't had anyone tell me that they put flag protection above a livable wage. Why do people vote Republicon, again?

In related news, Republicons not only have difficulties with priorities, they seem to have a congenital inability to understand science:

Programs teaching U.S. schoolchildren to abstain from sex have not cut teen pregnancies or sexually transmitted diseases or delayed the age at which sex begins, health groups told Congress on Wednesday.

The Bush administration, however, voiced continuing support for such programs during a hearing before a House of Representatives panel even as many Democrats called for cutting off federal money for so-called abstinence-only instruction.

[snip]

Rep. John Duncan, a Tennessee Republican, said that it seems "rather elitist" that people with academic degrees in health think they know better than parents what type of sex education is appropriate. "I don't think it's something we should abandon," he said of abstinence-only funding.

That's the most entertaining definition of elitist I've heard so far. An "elitist" is someone who actually knows what the fuck they're talking about compared to, oh, say, John or Jane Public. Lemme tell you something from experience: some parents don't have the first fucking clue about what's best for their kids. They have a completely pollyanna view of what their darling angels get up to, and no amount of reality changes their minds. Back in the day when my high school classmates were trying to get AIDS education on the agenda, their parents were saying, "But our kids don't have sex." This, mind you, is when an average of five girls were running around pregnant out of a student body of 500. Females are half a given population. You do the math and tell me nobody's having sex.

But for Republicons, anyone with a better understanding of reality than them is "elitist." Feels good to be an elitist, don't it?

Speaking of the terminally reality-challenged, John McCain's cunning plan to assist struggling families in our tanking economy is - wait for it - to offer "choices" on such things as education and health care, instead of providing what he likes to call "hand-outs." He further shows his spectacular lack of common sense by making this little speech before people who wouldn't be able to afford those choices should they be presented. Carpetbagger turns him over a knee for a well-deserved spanking:

So, on the one hand, McCain wants to cut taxes dramatically to benefit “corporations and upper-income families,” and on the other, McCain wants to cut federal spending. Since spending cuts for the military and national security are off the table — indeed, he’s vowed to
increase spending on both — it would necessarily mean McCain would make billions of dollars in cuts in spending that would benefit those who aren’t in “upper-income families.”

But if you’re in Appalachia and living in poverty, forget about a “handout.” In a McCain administration, they’re reserved for the same wealthy interests that have benefited throughout the Bush years.

What’s more, in about five months, Republicans will tell these same people in impoverished areas that they shouldn’t even consider voting for Barack Obama (or Hillary Clinton) because what really matters are flag pins. It’s like an arsonist telling a family whose home is on fire not to trust the man outside in the firetruck.

Indeed 'tis.

Just had to pass that on.