Tony Benn on democracy

Re-watching the Michael Moore film Sicko, in preparation for a ‘thing’ on campus later in the week (I function as a health economist – if one who knows very little about US health care financing or delivery). I did, however, take the time to stick it into the wonderful programme SimpleMovieX, thence to Youtube (Fair Use doctrine, if you please), to share this with you:

On government by politics

I figure I haven’t been accused of hating America(ns), lately. Following on from the previous post on why your/our governments are happy to have us as dysfunctional gambling addicts with nobody to blame but ourselves, and having dealt with a day in which my wife and I were thrown some $1,000 worth of bullshit charges – which, I insist, in my other two countries of reference, would not happen. Yes, one of them is health-insurance related-and, yes, I can assure you that the procedure would most certainly have been undertaken in both countries.

Why does this happen? Is it as simple as Billy Bragg’s anti-Thatcherian complaint about when the great and the good gave way to the greedy and the mean? Yes, frankly. Probably. Here, since even before the Gingrich revolution, with its K-street acceleration of politicisation of government and access therein for every asshole with a chequebook, we have suffered a burgeoning culture of shenanigans, forgiven if they are gotten away with. Tom DeLay can write an autobiography called No Retreat, No Surrender, for Cliff’s sake, and not be stoned in the street for the insult. Bill Frist can pretend his family’s fraud against Medicare never happened. Anybody who points out that this goes as far back as the US government itself just plain misses the point, and badly.

It just never ends, and it is one thing that, truly, trickles down. Via the so-called “beltway”; via Fox News and CNN; via the Iraq war and No Child Left Behind.

The message we send is that we’re circling the drain, and you’d better get what you can while it’s there, because sharks are all that is left. Since your first day in school, the flag and that bloody hateful pledge of allegiance is shrink-wrapping your brain into believing this is all there is.

In England, it’s the silent-majority superiority of an ageing middle class; in Australia the snivelling, racist insincerity of 10 years of John Howard. Countries have their own varieties.

In the US? Here is what set me off (it was not, believe it or not, my afore-described day. I came here with my eyes wide open, and I’ve yet, honestly, to be all that surprised, by the Warren Ellis-like proportions of what I see going down). In the space of sitting down with a cup of tea I wandered across the following. I was reminded the next few stories as well – all from the last few days.

All while Presidential candidates joke about protection from aliens, but while we can’t even educate or invest in the health of our children, or build a decent highway system.

Political television advertising to reach $3 billion

The cost to try to influence the 2008 election could exceed $3 billion, according to TNS Media Intelligence/Campaign Media Analysis Group, CNN’s consultant on political television advertising.

This is nearly twice as much than what was spent in 2004 when political and issue-advocacy television advertising rang in at $1.7 billion. In 2006, $2.3 billion was spent on political and issue-advocacy TV commercials.

I Can Get Your Kid into an Ivy

Hernandez may well be the most expensive college coach in America, charging as much as $40,000 to get a student into an elite college. As one of this fast-growing industry’s most visible practitioners, she uses methods that are publicly scorned by rivals but are nonetheless becoming part of the profession’s standard operating procedures. She is a divisive figure in an already controversial field, regularly drawing condemnation from admissions officers who say she is selling advantage to people who least need it.

You should absolutely read that one – especially if you have kids. I don’t know what that sinking feeling is that you have, no.

Getting Around Rules on Lobbying

Despite New Law, Firms Find Ways To Ply Politicians

In recent days, about 100 members of Congress and hundreds of Hill staffers attended two black-tie galas, many of them as guests of corporations and lobbyists that paid as much as $2,500 per ticket.

Because accepting such gifts from special interests is now illegal, the companies did not hand the tickets directly to lawmakers or staffers. Instead, the companies donated the tickets back to the charity sponsors, with the names of recipients they wanted to see and sit with at the galas.

The arrangement was one of the most visible efforts, but hardly the only one, to get around new rules passed by Congress this summer limiting meals, travel, gifts and campaign contributions from lobbyists and companies that employ them.

Will Private Equity Stay With K Street?

Private equity firms and K Street lobbyists have spent this congressional session in the throes of a beautiful romance. With the Democratic majority publicly considering a major tax hike on record private equity earnings, private equity ramped up a previously anemic lobbying presence, spending more than $5 million so far this year to defeat the proposal.

Today, The Washington Post reports that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid says the proposal probably won’t make it to the Senate floor because of a crush of complicated proposals competing for floor time. So what does that mean for K Street? Will the Private Equity Council, The Blackstone Group, The Carlyle Group, and other big private equity interests cut back on their lobbying contracts and slow the flood of money that has poured into K Street?

VH1 Presents Little Beauties: Ultimate Kiddie Queen Showdown

Move over Miss America! The Little Beauties are coming to town! They’re gorgeous, they’re talented, they’re six-years old and with the helping hand of eager moms, determined pageant coaches, fabulous spray tan artists and “flipper” (fake teeth) makers, not to mention a couple of Pixie Sticks for energy, these girls are taking the stage at pageants all over the Southeast U.S for the chance to win cash prizes and crowns!

A Shot At Love With Tila Tequila

MTV debuted its new bisexual dating show this week, “A Shot At Love With Tila Tequila”, in which 16 straight men and 16 lesbians compete for the chance to move into the MySpace star’s mansion. The show featured MTV’s trademark casual racism, like “I’ve never been with an Asian chick before, but I love Chinese food.” Classy.

And on your news, tonight?

So if/when/as you wonder whether something might not be quite right. Here, this always cheers me up:

UPDATE: before I’d even finished this post, my wife sent the following email:

I also received in the mail a “gift card” for the value of $100. I called up the activation number to see what it was about. A man answered the phone, and the first thing he said was that it was a misprint, and actually the value is for $300. He then proceeded to tell me that I can redeem that money if I provide an online testimonial for his company, after I consolidate my school loans with his company. And it’s that simple!

Everything is, in the famous words of Moby, wrong. Anybody who tells you otherwise either hasn’t had to face a single problem, or can’t see around the corners of that wonderful flag enough to realise that the rest of us don’t live like this. We don’t live in fear. We aren’t made victim by a ‘system’ whose very purpose is to make us feel so overwhelmed that, even if we could get our own heads around the sheer scale of all that is stupid and corrupt, here, we’d never manage to explain it to another person, still less organise a resistance to it. We don’t need to police every law our government passes on our behalf.

Don’t get me wrong (oh, hell. Go nuts. Why not?). Wander around this blog – I clearly know, and engage with, the problems of at least my own country, as well as the one to which I plan on returning. I don’t hate Americans. I hate this America, though. I hate that America is so far from its potential, while parading around as though it has surpassed it. I hate the cruelty. I hate the hypocrisy.

It’s all so unnecessary. It’s all such a fucking waste. We’re so busy being Red-State-Blue-State we don’t even notice that our governments simply don’t give a shit who we think we are – we’re all paying for their abuses, and they’re making more hay than even the shining sun thought was possible.

And I’m what? 500,000th in line, 30 years, 50 years running, saying we need to wake up? We’re not going to wake up. Hardly any of us, in real terms, realise (or can be convinced) that there’s even a problem.

On casinos. Or, if you can’t spot the sucker in the room, it’s you

Jim Kunstler’s latest post takes up the issue of casinos:

I was out in Iowa last week, in the vicinity of Waterloo, where the John Deere corporation has laid off hundreds of workers in recent years. The town’s solution to this problem was to invite a casino to town, and it now stands out above the cornfields like a grinning Moloch, mocking the aspirations of those who remain in the area — and reinforcing the other foolish and destructive activity going on there, which is the corn-to-ethanol racket aimed at propping up American car dependency.

Of course the idea that the backwaters of Iowa might compete with Las Vegas or even the ghastly Atlantic City for gambling tourism is laughable, so who exactly did the local officials imagine would be patronizing the blackjack tables of Waterloo at eleven o’clock in the morning?

Having studied gambling back in Canberra, I have a piqued interest in state-sponsored (i.e. State-profiting) gambling. Not to mention living in Sydney, with its endless panoply of poker machines, and ever-expanding servicemen’s clubs.

Living out here, I also have a new interest: the impending conversion of the long-abandoned Bethlehem Steel site into a casino. Here are a couple of relevant pieces of media:

Audit: Bethlehem outspent income

A draft of Bethlehem’s 2006 audit shows that the city spent $1.6 million more than it brought in last year, reigniting a debate over how the city pays its bills and setting the stage for the budget talks — and possible tax hikes — next month.

Councilman Joseph Leeson Jr. said the audit shows a budget deficit, which he believes violates state and city law.

Mayor John Callahan’s administration describes it as a cash-flow problem, something that will be rectified once the Sands BethWorks casino opens within two years and starts generating millions in fees and taxes for the city.

Bethlehem’s feeling flush as first income flows in from casino

Bethlehem just got its first big payday from the Sands BethWorks casino project: a $1.7 million sewer fee.

The news doesn’t surprise the city officials who had budgeted the money this year, but Mayor John Callahan called it a “milestone” for his struggling city.

Over the past couple of months, the city learned that the casino won’t be finished until 2009, which means the $8.7 million host fee, property tax and other levies the city will get will be delayed.

It doesn’t matter who suffers from problem gambling, or what manner of social gradient is attached. What matters is revenue for states and counties, in an era when Federal government (this includes Australia, most certainly) kicks back more and more responsibilities (Orange Alert! No Child Left Behind! Non-funded mandates are supposed to be unconstitutional!), but less and less of the revenue they collect.

Out here I pay 7 distinct taxes on my income, to all three levels of government. No one level seems to pay any heed at all to the overall burden of revenue raising – there just isn’t that sort of grown-up government co-operation.

So Sydney drowns in poker machines because of the tax revenue for the NSW government. Casinos spring up all over America because of fees and taxes local – and state – governments will collect. Social outcomes? Pshaw.

Back to the never-more-appropriately-named Clusterfuck Nation:

I don’t entertain fantasies that gambling can be eliminated from any society, but inviting it to operate in the mainstream under state sponsorship is just tragically stupid. There is a rightful place for gambling: on the margins of society – and the crippling ideas that go hand-in-hand with it belong on the margins, too, like the belief that it’s possible to get something for nothing. Real political leadership would take stand on this, even if it was unpopular.

Once again, and more and more often, we lose big time because we handed government over to politicians.

When is price gouging not price gouging? Almost always, actually

Every long weekend in Australia (for example), accusations of price gouging fly as petrol prices increase. Increase, that is, in the face of an expanding demand curve right before everybody drives off to the coast for 3 days.

Price gouging, on the other hand, is – at best – suppliers jacking up prices for goods when/as they’re needed: e.g. in stated emergencies. Long weekend? Not an emergency.

The weekend’s post about the secondary market for Hannah Montana tickets? Not price gouging.

These aren’t non-economic abuses of the market. They’re abuses by the market itself – basic economic principles. When a commodity’s yield goes through the roof and we suddenly get cheap milk, bread, coffee, oil, sugar, do we, as consumers, feel bad for our low prices? Of course not.

And to the Yankees. Or rather, bloody politicians. Via Streetsblog:

Councilmember Monserrate decided to introduce the bill after he joined with friends to attend Sunday’s post season baseball game between the NY Yankees and the Cleveland Indians. He observed a dramatic increase in parking fees around Yankee stadium to $50 and even attempts to charge up to $150 by unscrupulous operators.

“As a Met Fan from Queens, I decided to attend [read: drive to] last Sunday’s game and show some support our other New York Team, the NY Yankees. I observed several lots with Parking Lot Full signs, all operated by Central Parking Company. They were advertising a $50.00 fee to park. Shockingly, and to add insult to injury one particular lot, (also operated by Central) had a “FULL” sign in front but the attendants told me if I paid $150.00 they would park my car,” Monserrate said.

A) If the sign says FULL, that may, for example, not include a parking spot that the employee gets for themselves (maybe they can sell it, maybe not: it’s not our problem, surely, as a local government). One wonders, also, whether he’d care if the guy had recognised him and offered him the space for free.

B) If not, that is a form of corruption only as defined by (well, besides a normal person) the charter of the private company – it is not the same as charging $50 legitimately.

C) First-year bloody students can tell me what will happen when supply is fixed and the demand curve shifts outwards: the bloody price will go up. Quickly.

It is not price-gouging. It is not “unfair”. It is the way markets work. It’s what makes America great! As Streetsblog’s writer points out,

So, to Monserrate, being asked to pay market rates for auto storage at a sporting event that is accessible by transit qualifies as an “insult.”

Their gripe, of course, being more related to the fact that this tit wants government regulation to further incentivise people to drive to an event that already does not have enough fucking parking spaces.

Politicians, man. Do they start this stupid and underqualified, or does it develop over a brain-atrophying term or two in office?