This diary originally started as a rambling screed about how right-wing extremists are still driving the narrative, no longer with genuine -- and mercifully transient -- Administration authority figures, but with sideshow barkers. And not even very good sideshow barkers. Whine, whinge, complain, etc., with perhaps one or two nuggets of well-crafted snark.
Then, this morning in the shower, I finally realized what it was I really wanted to say...
We're being distracted by a bunch of sideshow antics. They are not serious. They have never been serious. Their antics serve only to discredit themselves and the people who continue to give them airtime. Unless and until they're prepared to behave as mature adults, I don't want to talk about them or think about them any more.
Here's the sorts of things I think about, and what I would like to see talked more about:
Banking/Financial Recovery
There's a lot of popular resentment against the banking and financial sectors these days, and justifiably so. The questions I'm not seeing answered:
- Why don't we (the government) already have comprehensive balance sheets on these organizations? Why don't we know their precise financial state?
- Why are we allowing them to refuse to tell us their precise financial state?
- Why are we allowing them to refuse to tell us how they've used the money we gave them so far?
- Why haven't the people responsible for this mess, at the absolute least, been fired? Is there some "social capital" needing to be preserved? I can sort of understand that, for billions of dollars to change hands, you need to be comfortable with the person(s) you're dealing with, and that those ongoing relationships have value. On the other hand, if the person you're dealing with just destroyed their bank with obviously dubious investments, why would you want to continue dealing with them?
- As part of the process of recapitalization with public money, how is our not getting an ownership stake being justified?
- What regulatory regimes are being considered to prevent this from happening again? Who is participating in these discussions? I would think re-enacting the Glass-Steagall firewalls would be an obvious first step, but I'm not hearing many specifics.
NPR's This American Life had a typically excellent show on the subject of how we were brought to this point, called Bad Bank. It's splendid as far as it goes, but leaves questions unanswered, such as:
- What kind of idiot loans out 100% of a bank's capitalization without scrupulously checking out who it's being loaned to? What are the regulations here, if any?
- As a bank depositor -- essentially a bank creditor -- don't I have a right of inspection on the bank's books and lending practices?
Economic Recovery
We need jobs. A massive renovation of national infrastructure (roads, bridges, waterways, power grid, etc.) has been proposed, but it seems to me many of those jobs are not permanent. You'd have three to seven years of good, solid work, then... What?
What are the estimated number of jobs that would be provided by road repair? Bridge repair? Power grid repair? What would they roughly pay? How long would they typically last?
Longer term, it's even less clear what the government can do. Incentives to private industry typically take the form of regulatory and tax breaks, but we all know where that road leads...
Energy Independence
We've gotten ourselves into an enormous mess with our dependence on foreign oil. President Obama has made working toward energy independence a priority, and it's easy to imagine this sector providing enormous economic opportunity. Okay:
- What's the wind plan? What's the solar plan? What's the nuclear plan? What's the hydroelectric plan? Who's working on them?
- How is the NIMBY issue being addressed?
- Are we going to continue to pursue nuclear fusion?
- Is anyone talking about geostationary power satellites?
- How will transportation -- easily the biggest oil consumer -- be re-factored? Will there be a push for mass transit? Redesign urban and suburban areas to better optimize for foot traffic and mass transit? Will we have to sacrifice auto-mobility?
Environmental Recovery
Thanks to the recent diary on the subject, the North Pacific Gyre/Garbage Patch rather bothers me. The whole concept of it fills me with unease. There are several questions I want answered:
- Is it really as large as claimed? Twice the size of Texas? Could I get some corroborative data on that, please?
- What's it composed of mostly? ("Plastic.") Yeah, thanks; what kinds of plastic? The melt-it-down-and-reuse-it-for-something-else kind, or the this-stuff-is-so-vile-it-should-never-have-been-thought-of-as-disposable kind of plastic? Has its composition even been analyzed?
- If we presume that it can be recovered and the ocean cleaned up, where can the crud be put instead? We only have the one Texas-sized landmass, and the people already living there might be a bit miffed if it got dropped on them.
But even if you ignore the cleanup logistics (and we probably will), I wonder what might happen when Global Warming kicks in to high gear. Some say (sorry to use that phrase) that the fresh water from the melting icecaps may alter the flow of ocean currents. Right now the garbage appears to be relatively stable and well concentrated in a couple of areas, making cleanup at least conceivable. If the currents shift, it's easy to envision the North Pacific Gyre moving or dissipating completely, and all the crud that's collected there may be spread by the reformed currents all across the coasts of the Pacific Rim.
It doesn't even have to land on the beaches to be devastating; all it needs to do is poison the fisheries. Coastal ecosystems are already under enormous stress. They don't really need several billion tons of plastic waste dropped on them. And I shudder to think what that crap will do lodged in the baleen of migrating whales...
Is anyone thinking about this?
And this is just one environmental issue -- I could also bring up greenhouse gas emissions and Global Warming, the coal fly ash disaster in Tennessee, depleted stocks of ocean fish, Colony Collapse Disorder, etc, etc, etc...
The Wars
We still have troops being shot at in Afghanistan and Iraq.
- Winding down Iraq seems to be proceeding apace. Is that on schedule? What will the "done" state look like (they're a little murky on that)?
- Likewise, what's the end-game in Afghanistan? What is the plan for getting there?
Socio-Political Recovery
The Bush "Administration" did enormous damage to the unwritten (and written) social contract between government and the governed. The crimes committed were unconscionable, and the excuses for them fatuous and craven or, in many cases, non-existent. To date, no one has been punished for these acts.
Obama's clarion call for Change was interpreted by many -- okay, by me -- as an overt indication that, not only would this Administration do things in a new way, but that the old way would be dismantled and scrapped. No need to riot in the streets; just vote for him, and the Bad Acts would be exposed, and the Bad People brought to justice.
So far, to my eye, the fulfillment of that promise has been highly uneven. On the one hand, documents previously (and improperly) classified by Bush have been declassified and released under Obama; and the President has ordered that government departments should be forthcoming except where expressly required otherwise.
On the other hand, the Administration continues to pursue the State Secrets argument with respect to the ILECs' collusion with the government's unlawful wiretapping. They have not only reiterated Bush's claims to executive privilege, they have added new arguments to the pile. I'd like to believe this is part of a broader scheme to get these claims debunked as comprehensively as possible, destroying them so they can't be used by a future Administration bent on lawlessness. But, as we see, the trend so far has been uneven. (And, it should be pointed out, the Internet is still being comprehensively monitored. The eavesdropping equipment is still installed and operational in the ILECs' switching bunkers.)
Speaking for myself (and, I hope, many others), I think it is critically important to the preservation of the socio-political fabric of the country that the system be seen to work as we claim it does. That criminality -- most especially brazen criminality, as practiced by several Bush Administration members -- be exposed and punished. We should strive not to devolve into a lynch-mob mentality, and one way to do that is to illustrate very clearly and publicly that American ideals of justice are still being upheld, and that no one gets to get away with it. So:
- What investigations are currently being pursued vis-a-vis the previous Administration's wrongdoing?
- Will Harriet Miers or Karl Rove or anyone else who showed flagrant contempt for a Congressional subpoena be held to account?
- How deeply will the evident corruption in the financial sector be pursued? You got Bernie Madoff, but surely the whole mess isn't solely his fault.
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That's all I can think of off the top of my head :-). The answers to some of these may already be out there; I just haven't stumbled across them yet. In any case, I hope you'll agree at least some of them merit some thought.
So let Glenn Beck swat at imaginary elves all he wants. I'd very much prefer to discuss the things he won't -- and probably even can't -- talk about.