Matt Taibbi is the greatest who has ever been. That’s just a given. In the latest issue of Rolling Stone he explains how Goldman Sachs might as well be our government, for all intents and purposes. I’ll be honest, I wanted it to be more engrossing than it was. But I think I just zone out when people start talking about financial matters. However, Taibbi is probably the funniest living political writer, and how can you resist an article that includes gems like this:
In fact, at least $13 billion of the taxpayer money given to AIG in the bailout ultimately went to Goldman, meaning that the bank made out on the housing bubble twice: It fucked the investors who bought their horseshit CDOS by betting against its own crappy product, then it turned around and fucked the taxpayer by making him pay off those same bets.
Unfortunately, the entire article is not online, which is 90% of the reason I still subscribe to Rolling Stone (the other 10% is because of their stellar Jonas Brothers reporting). You can read excerpts here, or you can stop being a cheapskate and just buy the damn thing.
Health insurance is the dumbest system anyone could ever create for dealing with sick people. Insurance in general makes no sense. I can understand paying for things that you are going to use. If I buy a CD (plastic containment system for music, popular circa 1985-2005), then I get to keep that CD and the music that is on it. One does not have a similar thrill of ownership with health insurance. My insurance company won’t even give me a book listing my benefits. I am paying approximately $2400/year for a plastic card. They could at least make the cards out of something slightly more substantial, like pewter.
At its heart, health insurance is a punishment and reward system for bodily functions. According to Wikipedia, the health insurance system as it stands today did not develop until the 1950s. Before that, when you went to the doctor, you paid him for the doctoring he gave you. Now you pay the insurance company in advance for the doctoring you might get in the future, and then you pay the doctor a little bit more when he actually gives you that doctoring. What Wikipedia does not say, and what I have always been curious about: why does health care have anything to do with employment? I can understand that it is in a company’s best interest to make sure their employees are physically well. But there are an awful lot of areas where my employer does not seem to care about my health. Like food. Employers do not buy my groceries. Or sleep. I am required to buy my own mattresses and make sure I get to sleep at a reasonable hour.
Salon posted a 100% amazing discussion in Congress between Texas Representative Joe Barton (Republican, natch) and Steven Chu, the Nobel Prize winning physicist/current Energy Secretary.
Barton: You’re our scientist. I have one simple question for you in the last six seconds. How did all the oil and gas get to Alaska and under the Arctic Ocean?
Chu: (laughs) This is a complicated story, but oil and gas is the result of hundreds of millions of years of geology, and in that time also the plates have moved around, and so, um, it’s the combination of where the sources of the oil and gas are–
Barton: But, but wouldn’t it obvious that at one time it was a lot warmer in Alaska and on the North Pole. It wasn’t a big pipeline that we created in Texas and shipped it up there and then put it under ground so that we can now pump it out and ship it back.
Chu: No. There are–there’s continental plates that have been drifting around throughout the geological ages–
Barton: So it just drifted up there?
Chu: That’s certainly what happened. And so it’s a result of things like that.
Those pranksters at Guantanamo sure know how to have fun!
I’ve put this detail in a series of posts, but it really deserves a full post. According to the May 30, 2005 Bradbury memo, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was waterboarded 183 times in March 2003 and Abu Zubaydah was waterboarded 83 times in August 2002.
On page 37 of the OLC memo, in a passage discussing the differences between SERE techniques and the torture used with detainees, the memo explains:
The CIA used the waterboard “at least 83 times during August 2002″ in the interrogation of Zubaydah. IG Report at 90, and 183 times during March 2003 in the interrogation of KSM, see id. at 91.
I can’t wait to hear why waterboarding someone 183 times in one month in order to extract information from them should not be considered torture. I’m trying really hard to think like a Republican, and I’m coming up blank on this one. That is what torture is. Um, doing that.
So Obama released the torture memos yesterday. These are memos written by the legal masterminds at the Department of Justice who think keeping a person awake for 11 days is a good way to acquire accurate, totally-not-crazy information. And that dudes who have been behind bars for 8 years still somehow have quality inside information about terror plans.
Here is the list of interrogation tactics that were approved:
Attention grasp, walling (hitting a detainee against a flexible wall), facial hold, facial slap, cramped confinement, wall standing, stress positions, sleep deprivation, insects placed in a confinement box, and waterboarding.
I’m not completely sure what there is to debate on this topic. I have yet to hear anyone say that torture is a great way to get information. So no one is pro-torture. The argument is over what constitutes torture. Which, come on. Don’t play stupid, dudes. You know that making someone fear for his life in order to elicit information is pretty much the textbook definition of torture. Admit it: you’re just being dicks.
The only way to possibly win this debate is to prove that information obtained by “insects placed in a confinement box” has helped us stop terrorist plots. Because what’s the point of drawing up lengthy memos giving permission to engage in tactics that are completely useless? But I haven’t heard a shred of evidence that these tactics helped us. How long have we been fighting wars and capturing enemies? And we still haven’t figured out how to obtain information from them?
Here’s the best comment I’ve read so far on the memos, from Politico:
A former top official in the administration of President George W. Bush called the publication of the memos “unbelievable.”
“It’s damaging because these are techniques that work, and by Obama’s action today, we are telling the terrorists what they are,” the official said. “We have laid it all out for our enemies. This is totally unnecessary. … Publicizing the techniques does grave damage to our national security by ensuring they can never be used again — even in a ticking-time-bomb scenario where thousands or even millions of American lives are at stake.”
This guy’s argument is that terrorists now know our secret patented torture techniques, so they’ll know ahead of time that we’re going to slap them and push them against the wall, and they’ll be prepared and won’t be tortured by those techniques anymore. Because they had never heard about slapping and pushing against walls before this. And then when there’s a ticking-time-bomb scenario that has never really happened but might possibly some day and we need to interrogate people super quickly, slaps won’t work anymore because Obama’s release of the memos totally negates the power of slaps. Whoever this top official is (Dick Cheney), he sure is el smarto.
Matt Taibbi, my favorite writer of the moment, writes a terrifying and enlightening piece in this week’s Rolling Stone that argues the United States is basically over.
As complex as all the finances are, the politics aren’t hard to follow. By creating an urgent crisis that can only be solved by those fluent in a language too complex for ordinary people to understand, the Wall Street crowd has turned the vast majority of Americans into non-participants in their own political future. There is a reason it used to be a crime in the Confederate states to teach a slave to read: Literacy is power. In the age of the CDS and CDO, most of us are financial illiterates. By making an already too-complex economy even more complex, Wall Street has used the crisis to effect a historic, revolutionary change in our political system — transforming a democracy into a two-tiered state, one with plugged-in financial bureaucrats above and clueless customers below.
Which, ouch.
Update:And, ya know, the thing I was trying to get at in my highly controversial (seriously, it sparked a Webwide frenzy!) post from the other day is that there is dirty, dirty stuff going on deep behind the scenes that will probably never be reformed because it’s hidden under layers of financial confusion, so the thing that by default gets people riled up is the thing that’s easiest to explain, i.e. the AIG bonuses. And now they’re working on getting a bill passed that will ban bonuses at any firm accepting public funds.
Which, fine. Baby steps. But meanwhile, the most sinister, multi-trillion dollar public fuckeries go on behind the scenes, unabated, simply because there are only a handful of reporters intelligent enough to even grasp the problem. And I don’t think anything will really change until the government recognizes that any business culture that allows a handful of companies to control its economy will inevitably destroy the country from within. As long as AIG is allowed to exist in its current form, it will find ways to pay its employees ridiculously overinflated salaries for ruining America, be it through bonuses or incentive packages or “AIG fun bux.”
This morning the LA Times (in my trusted opinion, a better daily paper than the New York Times, by the way) ran an article about a talk Justice Scalia gave at a town hall meeting. This is the picture they chose to run with it.
Okay. So maybe the media does sometimes have a slight liberal bias.
Voters in Los Angeles will notice a funny difference between this latest primary ballot and those from years past. In order to get his budget passed, Schwarzenegger agreed to remove candidates’ political parties from the primary ballot. Basically, the tiny amount of information we can generally glean from ballots is now reduced to zero. The only information listed is (are?) the candidates’ professions and nicknames. For instance, Villaraigosa’s competition includes Bruce Darian, a “General Contractor” and professional “Whistleblower”, Phil Jennerjahn, an “Entertainer,” and David “Zuma Dogg” Saltsburg, a “Badass.”
Luckily for you, I have taken the time to give a passing glance at the candidates’ statements of intent. So although this voting guide is woefully underinformed, it’s at least a tiny bit better than the giant void of non-information found elsewhere. Are you ready, Angelenos? Let’s begin!
City of Los Angeles
Mayor My pick: Antonio R. Villaraigosa. There ain’t too much of a contest here. Why fight it? I don’t know that Villaraigosa is doing that outstanding a job, but his competition is pretty lackluster. If you want to exercise your freedom, though, I would recommend a vote for my man Zuma Dogg. I like this guy’s passion:
City Attorney My pick: Noel Weiss. This one’s somewhat of a toss up between Weiss and Carmen Trutanich. Weiss’s bio stresses his accomplishments in the field of housing, while Trutanich talks about his environmental advocacy. What won me over was this statement of Weiss’s site: My governance philosophy is one of ’smart governance’ – What I call the `Five-P’s’ of Governance. No program or policy should be implemented unless it is (1) Practical, (2) Pro-active, (3) Positive, (4) Progressive, and (5) Principled.
Controller My pick: Wendy Greuel. The other two candidates seem focused on business interests, while Greuel plans to “Fight to ensure that Los Angeles becomes the greenest and cleanest big city in the United States.” She’s got the experience as a City Councilwoman … give it to her.
Los Angeles Community College District
These races have no impact on most of our lives. However, we do get to vote on them. And if there’s one thing that pisses me off when it comes to elections, it’s candidates who don’t supply their biographical information to the League of Women Voters. I mean, really. It’s the least you can do. So please join me in punishing those who were too lazy to give the voters the information they need to make an informed decision.
Member of the Board of Trustees, Seat No. 2 My pick: Angela J. Reddock: Only two candidates who supplied their bios – Art Sims and Angela J. Reddock. Reddock has great experience and seems committed to the cause.
Member of the Board of Trustees, Seat No. 4 My pick: Kelly Candaele. Candaele writes for The Nation. Automatic win.
Member of the Board of Trustees, Seat No. 6 My pick: Jane Ardigo Scott. She wrote a position paper entitled “Generally 5.5% voter turn out for the Community College Election” which says “Holding a political office was NEVER intended to be a life long career. Therefore, I am asking for your support to replace an incumbent on the present Board.” Ask and ye shall receive.
Member of the Board of Trustees, Seat No. 7 My pick: Miguel Santiago. Endorsed by the Sierra Club.
City of Los Angeles Measures
I’m voting yes on all. Measure A proposes to hire an independent assessor to make sure the Fire Department is running well. Sounds good. Measure B is in favor of solar energy development. Despite Zuma Dogg’s displeasure with the measure, it sounds like a good goal to me. Measures C and D have no opponents, so they get an automatic win. Measure E just proposes that we change the city charter to allow the city to give incentives to businesses. I would hate for them to use it for corporate welfare, but it seems like a right a city should be allowed to have.
Remember when people were like, “I’m not voting for Obama, because he doesn’t have any leadership experience”? And now he’s totally kicking ass and they’re like, “whatever. He’s still black.”
