Horton Hears a Heffalump

My previous reference to Oliphant and the chimpanzee rampage cartoon was somewhat ironic since one of Oliphant's new cartoons outraged the Semitic community. I’m not totally enthusiastic about the cartoon myeself because it isn’t really funny, and it’s too obvious to be clever. It has sort of a Dr. Seuss sense about it, with the little wheel under the monster star. Dr. Seuss produced patriotic propaganda during WWII, before he used the characters for children’s books. That's another lesson in recycling swords and plowshares. Maybe the Semites should give some thought to how Gaza has been coming across, however. Complaining about Oliphant isn’t exactly going to fix the problem, no matter how mindless the cartoon may be.

Oliphant 2009


Dr. Seuss 1942

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MSNBC published a somewhat uncharacteristic article about Bill Clinton signing off on the derivatives regulation exclusion in 2000. Some things the article neglects to mention are that besides burying the clause in a morass of complex financial legislation, in 2000 the Republicans (and I use the capitalized form lightly) had Bill on the verge of an executive layoff. It wasn’t like he could afford any showdowns over individual components of budget legislation. His veto would have been overridden faster than you can say “Monica Lewinski.”

We can blame nitwit Bill for doing something petty, arrogant, and self-indulgent in the first place, but somehow I can’t help thinking that in 2000 the Republicans should have been concentrating more on the economy and national security and less on presidential indiscretion. We would have all been better off in the long run. In a crisis, if you had to choose between whether the president gets oral sex or a long vacation in Texas, which one would you go for?
Here’s thinking for you.
Iffy

Another Pot of, Well, Gold

Spring Break is over. Another St. Patrick’s Day has come and gone. President Obama got in touch with his Irish roots. That must have been invigorating.

AIG bonuses are in the news again. The idea of a retention bonus seems to presuppose some kind of value to be gained from retention, although the value in the case of AIG employees is a little hard to conceptualize. How much value to a company can employees be who engineered a two hundred billion dollar loss, unless their expertise actually depends on sucking up government bailout funding? If that’s bad for company moral, Gee Whiz, excuse me all over the place. I’m sure there are many decent human beings working for AIG who don’t deserve to be identified with unfortunate company initiatives. On the other hand, I also suspect there are plenty of homeless people who made better choices than working for a conglomerate without moral principles.

Somehow the argument of contractual obligations leaves me unimpressed. Let’s see. I work for a company that loses vast amounts of money with operations that are barely even legal. Now I want a bonus to continue working for the company? Why didn’t I think of that in previous jobs? I could be a CEO myself by now.

Just say no. If they don’t like it, let them sue. Breach is always an option. I like Cuomo’s question about where would the bonus money come from if there was no bailout. There would be no bonus money.

Let’s look at it this way. If we don’t pay out million-dollar bonuses to keep these brilliant economic yahoos employed, they could wind up panhandling for change on street corners, and considering AIG, I’m afraid it would require a whole new infrastructure program to build additional street corners, but on second thought, maybe that would help revive the economy. It could be a win-win.

Here's thinking for you.
Iffy

Elmo Love Bernie

A fifty-four year old woman required treatment by teams of surgeons over a period of seven hours for injuries inflicted by a confused chimpanzee living on lobster and ice cream in Connecticut. If the victim survives, she will require years of treatment to repair the disfiguring injuries suffered after offering the chimpanzee an Elmo doll as a present. There is a temptation to speculate that the chimpanzee was not a fan of the Muppets, but unfortunately the consequences and implications of this event transcend humor, to the detriment of a New York Post cartoonist.
http://enews.earthlink.net/article/nat?guid=20090219/499cf560_3ca6_15526200902191164606112

Selma Hayek inspired international outrage by breast-feeding a starving baby. The baby has no doctors. The baby has no medical care. The baby has nothing to eat. Selma Hayek did the only thing a decent human being could do.

The chimpanzee died of gunshot wounds from police faced with the task of controlling an unpredictable animal the size of a large man with twice the strength. A controversial political cartoon subsequently appeared in the New York Post portraying police shooting a chimpanzee and commenting that the chimpanzee could have produced stimulus/bailout legislation more competently than Congressional legislators, suggesting a connection to the sad event of the Chimpanzee Rampage.

In a rather ironic political twist, civil rights activists compared the chimpanzee to President Obama, and complained about discrimination by the cartoonist. The cartoon tastelessly exploits an unfortunate tragedy in an unoriginal way that has been treated more effectively and humorously, by Oliphant during the Reagan administration, for instance, but the racial discrimination is in the eye of the beholder. The baby, on the other hand, will be lucky to live as long as the chimpanzee.

There is a moral in these events, confused as morals usually are, something about expending resources to establish and maintain impossible relationships doomed from the start, while the most basic needs of others go unanswered. Can I excuse myself any more than the nation or humanity? No I cannot. I have adopted defensive habits of moderation that regard punishment as the only reward for good deeds. Witness Selma Hayek. I have retreated into the noncommittal middleground of Martin Luther King’s frustration, yet I cannot help reacting, like touching something unpleasant in the dark, to the unregulated opportunism and unfocused excess of economic and administrative cowboy culture that has encouraged disregard for just responsibility and produced an environment characterized by the vast and historic scope of self-indulgence represented by the superficially benign but ominously paradoxical images of the Dick Cheneys and Bernie Madoffs and their spiritual kin.

As far as I can tell, nobody offered the baby an Elmo doll.

Here's thinking for you.

Iffy

Down with Tall Letters

The American Psychological Association distinguished the construction of citation forms in professional publications by removing capital letters from titles. I would like to suggest extending this efficiency to modification of all titles, such as “the wizard of oz,” for example.

In fact, the construction of all text could be vastly simplified by dispensing with capital letters entirely, thereby eliminating controversies over such thorny issues as hyphenated constructions (Web-Based or Web-based?), and other derivative terms. capital letters are really only a form of linguistic imperialism anyway, an extension of patriarchal dominance that privileges assertive thought. elimination of capital letters would therefore establish more gender-neutral and diversity-friendly language forms.

likewise, the complexity of language imposed by capital letters is at least equaled by complications imposed through punctuation. elimination of punctuation in addition to capital letters would also simplify the use of text no more controversies over dependent clause inversions set off by commas elements of lists or sentences connected improperly the meaning now depends as it should entirely on the context

having dispensed with the cultural tyranny of capital letters and punctuation consider the relative usefulness of various letters of the alphabet most vowels occur with a frequency that makes them intuitive the use of vowels is therefore redundant and merely contributes to spelling errors wtht vwls th lngg bcms vstly mr ffcnt nd n fct mny rptd ltts r qully nprdctv wtht vwls or dbl ltrs mny ns pr nfrquntly w rly nly nd th cmn ns gt rd f x y z k q v nd m d wth th rst ndgtrdspcs

And so I conclude my argument. APA has the right idea. Psychology rocks.

Here's thinking for you.

fy

Save the Lemmings

Would somebody explain to me the logic of raising credit card default rates to 30%? How exactly is this supposed to encourage economic activity or even protect lenders?

Consider the scenarios. Take employed borrowers interested in making credit purchases. Except in desperation, are they going to look at using or applying for credit cards with 30% default rates and variable rates up to prime plus 22%, or even more? Oh yes, they’re going to say “I can’t get enough of that. Give me more.”

Likewise, for someone laid off or on reduced income with dwindling assets, how exactly do astronomical default rates encourage continued payments? Even psychologists grasp the simple concept that organisms faced with insurmountable obstacles either give up completely or turn their attention elsewhere. How does compounding loss encourage recovery?

With billions in bailout money propping up credit providers, at the very least, a moral obligation has been imposed to moderate obligations, not to mention the simple business wisdom that raising prices, in this case the price of credit, does not increase sales. Increasing the price of consumer credit is a Reagan era bait-and-switch strategy that has been sustained by economic trends of increasing income and asset values, but in a depressed economy you might as well go out and beat yourself in the head with a brick.

Forcing consumers into bankruptcy with astronomical default rates will not increase recovery for lenders, only for lawyers. What it really does for lenders is to temporarily inflate balance sheets by adding theoretical debt to assets, an effect that got us into this mess in the first place, and a practice that is only just this side of outright criminal, and only theoretically this side.

In a free market economy, price increases are an argument of supply and demand, but it is abundantly apparent that neither the economy nor the free market are what they were cracked up to be. You must have either a genuine contempt for humanity or complete disconnection from reality to believe otherwise. Raising prices in a context of dwindling resources is either the depredation of a predatory monopoly (think oil), or the last resort of the truly desperate.

Price increase is the historic mentality behind failing businesses, and you would think after the lessons of the last presidential administration, that lenders would be smart enough to figure out business as usual won’t cut it. Evidently, hope isn’t the only thing that springs eternal. Bankers, like the lemmings of legend, want to lead us on over the cliff, but the truth is, even lemmings are smarter than that.

Here's thinking for you.

Iffy

Living Within Somebody's Means

The New York Times published an article arguing that the half million dollar salary cap requested by Obama for bank executives under the bailout plan isn’t realistic for NYC. The article wasn’t totally in earnest, but let’s make sure that NYC delight with its own costliness doesn’t excessively distort reality.

It may be true that bank executives have become accustomed to million a year life-styles, but they are going to have to realign their perspectives. In the first place, the limit is partly symbolic. They will probably find ways around it. Limits on compensation don’t necessarily preclude creative variations. There will probably be loopholes that allow some flexibility, if not too much. The only hope is that a definitive statement of limits will convey the message that some restraint has to be applied.

A hundred thousand a year mortgage in NYC may not be so unusual, but there is no valid principle on which bankers should continue to maintain wealth at the expense of people who have no jobs. Plenty of people are available to replace bank executives, and experience has shown that it might not be that bad of an idea. I’ve known grapefruit with more aptitude and moral principle. We have no obligation to be grateful for the opportunity to keep banks in business by rewarding the administrative class that both failed to forsee and to manage financial failures effectively, and as far as I’m concerned, that responsibility trickles pretty far down the food chain in the management of those organizations.

The name of the game is redistribution of wealth, unless we want to play O’Reilly-Limbaugh free market depression disparity again, and I fail to see the justification in that. Civilized accumulation and retention of wealth requires the cooperation of a complete society, not just individual performance. If you don’t believe that, I have some Congolese rebels and Russian Mafia I’d like to introduce you to.

Let them refinance their mortgages or give up their houses and move into five-thousand dollar a month apartments instead of ten thousand a month houses for awhile. If they don’t like it, let them go find jobs in Iceland, where people will appreciate their talents for what they are worth. Better yet, let them subdivide their million-dollar bungalows and rent out the back bedroom so they can get in touch with reality. Their children might even have to attend, shudder, public schools, where they would be crammed elbow to elbow with financially challenged low-lifes like me.

Here's thinking for you.

Iffy

All My Dreams Daschled Again

You have to allow some slack for the possibility that everything will not work perfectly in government. It’s inevitable that the Obama administration would eventually run into some kind of ironically appropriate and embarrassing obstacles, like unreavealed tax issues for a cabinet nomination, but you have to be impressed by the sheer scope of the impact with respect to Tom Daschle.

I like Tom Daschle, and the truth is that I think he would be okay as secretary of something, but $140,000 in back taxes? Let’s see, when was the last time I even made $140,000 in a whole year, never mind incur a $140,000 tax obligation? To tell you the truth, I can’t remember the last time I made $140,000 in a year. I must have been on drugs or something. Maybe that was the summer of love. But when I consider $140,00 in back taxes against a $150,000 wardrobe, to tell you truth, the wardrobe kind of palin’s by comparison. I consider tax evasion to be even more contemptible than expensive shoes.

How do you pay $250,000 for “car services?” There’s no love lost between me and Sarah Palin, which I’m sure is a great relief to Todd, and so far, I’m in Obama’s corner, but even speaking as a slightly liberal-leaning, independent conservative, if we’re not going to allow some kind of double standard here, Daschle did the right thing to hit the road. After all, he’s got a $250,000 car service to take him there. Maybe he should be secretary of transportation instead, or the treasury.

Here’s thinking for you.

Iffy