What do the Republicans want from the stimulus package?

Sure, the Republicans are raising a big stink about the stimulus plan, but in the end it may not take too much to get a bunch of moderate Republicans to go along in the Senate. From a Reuters article by Richard Cowan entitled "Obama and Congress seek deal on economic stimulus":

McConnell said a main goal for the Senate Republicans will be to increase the amount of tax cuts in the package so they amount to 40 percent of the overall measure, with the rest in emergency spending.
The House-passed bill is closer to 33 percent being devoted to tax cuts -- not hugely different from McConnell's goal.

Give them another $10 billion or so in tax cuts and a number of moderate Republicans will go along with the deal.

I am sure the Republicans want a bunch of other goodies and to strip out some of the Democratic goodies, but the big deal is to assure that the moderate Republicans get enough tax cuts in the bill. Sure, that will make the bill bigger, but in this environment that is not a problem.

President Obama still has a good shot at getting his 80 votes in the Senate, but that is no slam-dunk. Still, 70 to 75 votes could easily be within reach and give the Senate version of the bill at least a somewhat bi-partisan flavor.

-- Jack Krupansky

Is the so-called Ground Zero mosque really "insensitive"?

There has been quite a bit of chatter that somehow the location of an Islamic community center two blocks from the World Trade Center site is "insensitive" to the families of those killed in the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Congressional Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y. on CNN's State of The Union addressed that issue squarely, as reported by USA Today:

As much as I respect the sensitivities of people, there is a fundamental mistake behind it ... The fallacy is that Al Qaida attacked us -- Islam did not attack us ... It is only insensitive if you regard Islam as the culprit, as opposed to Al Qaida as the culprit..

My point exactly.

Somehow, a lot of people out there have misguidedly confused themselves into believing that Islam and the Islamic world attacked us on 9/11. There is no compelling factual basis for such a belief. So, we are faced with the fact that those who rant about "insensitivity" are in fact more interested in promoting and inciting a crusade against Islam than being honest about who perpetrated the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Or, in some cases, they are mere opportunists who have latched onto a wedge issue that they can exploit for personal gain.

The 9/11 attacks were almost nine years ago, so there has been more than ample passage of time for the families of the victims to grieve and get over their loss and move on with their lives. Sure, in the first couple of years after the event it was quite appropriate to give them space and cut them some slack, but what we are seeing now is raw, naked exploitation by some of these people and the people who pander to them. 9/11 is now a page of history, not a current event that people should be obsessing over. It really is time for these people to move on with their lives. Those who continue to obsess after all of these years are dysfunctional or opportunists and either need professional counseling or simply need to be called out for their misguided actions.

In short, there was in fact a time for sensitivity, but that time is long past and everybody should be moving on with their lives. The only sensitivity needed now is to be sensitive to trying to creative a new and better future for all. We need to call out and say "No" to any and all pandering of or to those misguided individuals and groups who see Islam as the culprit, especially those seeking to hide their anti-Islamic agenda behind alleged "sensitivities" of families of the victims.

So, superficially the location of the Islamic community center may appear to be insensitive when framed improperly as some are doing, below the surface there is no significant issue of insensitivity that any of us needs to be beholding to.

-- Jack Krupansky

Poltical Revenue - All change is good

"Change" is a mantra thrown about by all activists, but only in a qualified form, such as "Change we can believe in." Well, change doesn't really work that way. Change is an inherent and fundamental force in the natural and manmade world. Accept change or be disappointed. We can't cherry-pick change, adopting the "good" change and rejecting the "bad" change. It's all or... well, it's all, period. My own personal view is that all change is inherently good. In fact, it is the very change that we find least appealing that typically has the most value for us, provided that we manage to effectively exploit that change and not fight it tooth and nail.

To state it simply:

All change is inherently good, especially that change which is least desired.

If it sometimes or even frequently seems that some particular change appears to have little positive value or an excessively negative value, it is most likely true that we have simply not tried hard enough to discover creative ways to exploit that change. Maybe we simply have blinders on or some outdated bias that interferes with our ability to see a path to a better future that exploits that change.

-- Jack Krupansky

Political 02

There is plenty of chatter about whether and how to cut the federal budget to reduce if not eliminate the federal budget deficit, but nobody is raising, let alone addressing the key question of how exactly should we be calculating the optimal size for the federal budget or even the size of the federal government itself. And this is just a fraction of the overall problem of grappling with overall government, including state and local government. I think most people are willing to accept that during a crisis, economic or otherwise, it is temporarily okay to run a federal budget deficit, even a significant budget deficit, until the crisis passes to moderate the crisis itself, to moderate the impact of the effects of the crisis and to help accelerate recovery from the crisis. Judging the acceptable size of a short-term budget overrun is hard enough, but at the same time we need to remain cognizant of managing the underlying non-crisis bulk of the budget and size of government itself so that once the crisis passes we will find ourselves back "on budget."

One key problem is that a good fraction of the growth of the economy over the previous decade was basically "fake" in the sense of based on unsustainable finance and business practices which led to the recent crisis, such as companies that would not even exist if credit hadn't been so cheap and readily available. Government itself grew in response to the economy growing, but now that we have "reset" the economy to be more sustainable (with more work still to do), we need to consider how to "reset" government itself. This means we need an extensive and open debate in two areas: 1) how much and how to shrink the baseline size of the federal government to reflect a sustainable growth rate (once all current artificial stimulus is removed), and 2) what areas of government actually need to be beefed up and by how much to assure "good governance" that will avoid a repeat of the difficulties of the past decade.

Ultimately, the key question is what level of "services" does the government need to provide to society to assure that public safety, civil rights, and economic security are "protected." This depends on also answering the questions of what roles and responsibilities should be played by individuals, families, local and state governments, businesses, and private organizations. And of course we have the issue of what the federal government needs to do as opposed to state and local governments.

Maintaining the status quo is always a bad answer, especially in a society and economic system that is growing and as dynamic as ours. As a trivial question, if population grows by X% and GDP grows by Y%, what Z% should government grow by? I have seen nobody even begin to address these types of questions.

I am not ready to propose answers here because to me the first step is that we have to get the questions right. If we as a society cannot even agree on what the "right" questions, agreement on the answers is moot.

To put the question simply, if you didn't know the size of the federal government and its budget, how would you go about calculating what size both should be?

-- Jack Krupansky

political 01

The "official" position of the U.S. government and various European governments is that Iran is "intent" on developing nuclear weapons, notwithstanding the simple fact that they have only a circumstantial case and little in the way of hard evidence that Iran's "nuclear ambitions" extend to developing nuclear weapons. In fact, other than the fact that Iran has a uranium enrichment capability, the U.S. and friends have something close to zero in the way of hard evidence of a credible Iranian nuclear weapons program. The "case" against Iran smacks of the case that the U.S. had against Iraq, or thought they had, or claimed they had. You'd think they would have learned. Or, maybe they did. Maybe the case against Iraq was really just a stalking horse, an indirect casus belli (cause for war) that didn't have to be true, just emotionally believable and viable as a means to get to war rather than a desire for enlightenment and a path to truth. Maybe that is exactly what is happening here with Iran as well. Sure, we don't have Neo-conservative Republicans leading the charge, but you still have a lot of politicians financially beholding to the so-called Pro-Israel lobby (Hillary and Barack among them.) In any case, the bottom line remains, as with Iraq, that there is no clear-cut case for believing that Iran is on a path to developing nuclear weapons. Yes, you can sleep well at night.

The first big problem is that the fear-mongerers have a field day by exploiting the ambiguity of the term "nuclear ambitions". The term includes both peaceful non-weapons programs and military weapons programs. By raising the term based on the fact of Iran's nuclear energy efforts, the fear-mongerers exploit the ambiguity and use it to allude to weapons when the facts do not support a weapons program.

Some argue that Iran has oil so it has no need for nuclear energy, but regardless of whether you believe in Peak Oil and Global Warming, oil is still a non-viable option for betting the energy future of any country, including Iran. Besides, crude oil is a great source of foreign exchange, so burning oil internally is not a preferable economic alternative.

Some argue that Iran should accept limits on uranium enrichment and contract out enrichment to other countries. That is fine as far as it goes, but violates Iran's sovereignty and puts Iran at risk of being subject to the whim of foreign powers, which is a non-starter given the record of Europe and the U.S. in the region. There is nothing a priori evil or sinister with Iran wanting to do its own enrichment and being in full control of the nuclear fuel cycle.

Some argue that once you get to 20% enrichment of uranium that it is "easy" to go all the way to 90% weapons-grade, but there is no factual basis for that claim. And, most important, no evidence of any Iranian intention to do so.

The most recent National Intelligence Estimate for Iran and its nuclear ambitions back in 2007 pulled the rug out from under the fear-mongerers by concluding that "we do not know whether it currently intends to develop nuclear weapons." Since the resultant firestorm of criticism by the fear-mongerers, the U.S. government has adopted a political conclusion rather than an intelligence assessment conclusion that Iran intends to develop nuclear weapons, despite the fact that they lack hard evidence. Earlier this year people were awaiting the imminent release of a revised intelligence estimate that was expected to come down on Iran more harshly, but here we are six months later and still no new assessment. So, the 2007 assessment still holds, despite the political calculation.

So, despite the fact that there is no imminent threat from Iran on the nuclear weapons front, the U.S. politically "needs" to act as if there were. In other words there is a "gap" between reality and the political view espoused by the fear-mongerers who hold the politicians and hence the government captive.

As far as I can tell the real focus of these nuclear fear-mongering efforts is a belief that Iran will attack Israel or give nukes to terrorists. There is zero evidence to support either misguided belief.

Although much gets made of the animosity between Israel and Iran, including alleged quotes about "wipe Israel off the map" and "death to Israel", all of this need to be put in the context of the fact that Israel is still not recognized by a number of countries in the region and heated rhetoric is rarely indicative of true intentions. Iran has indicated that they would intend to retaliate if attacked first by Israel, but that is hardly the same as a direct threat against Israel. The reference to wiping off the map is more a matter of who nominally occupies Jerusalem, which is a matter of international dispute even absent Iran. In short, the fear-mongerers are over-reading a few rhetorical flourishes. Absent their over-reading, there is zero evidence that Iran seeks to attack Israel in a forceful manner with or without nuclear weapons.

Fear-mongerers also make too big a deal of Iran's support for Hamas and Hezbollah and their lame efforts to attack Israel with rockets. Those attacks amount to little more than harassment, with damage to property and loss of life still rather limited compared to a vigorous military campaign. To suggest that they somehow represent what Iran would do if they had nuclear weapons is a very unwarranted extrapolation based on zero evidence. The fear of the fear-mongerers is nothing but conjecture, fiction, fantasy, and fabrication.

In truth, Iran is a sovereign nation and every sovereign nation has the right to decide for itself whether it wishes to develop a nuclear weapons capability. That includes Iran. They do have a right to develop nuclear weapons if they should so choose. They do have various international treaty obligations, but those are essentially technical details rather than an obstacle in principle.

Even if Iran did pursue and fulfill a full-blown nuclear weapons development program, there is still little in the way of hard evidence that Iran would use those weapons. That is no accident since nuclear weapons are primarily a deterrent. The fear-mongerers have no significant evidence on their side to support their claim that Iran would "use" nuclear weapons if they had them. Use as a deterrent, yes, but use to strike at Israel or the U.S. or whoever, no. But, as the lack of evidence shows, we are not even remotely closely to being there yet.

I am still waiting for the fear-mongerers to drag out the Goldwater/Rice argument that we shouldn't wait for the evidence of a mushroom cloud. That is fear-mongering and paranoia at its worst. Emotion rarely leads to a rational decision. Stick with facts, evidence, and reason.

In short, there is no good reason for any American citizen to lose even a single moment of sleep worrying about Iran and nuclear weapons. Just say No to the fearmongerers.

-- Jack Krupansky

Time: The Protester as Person of the Year for 2011

Okay, yeah, I guess I can see the "logic" that TIME's editors used to pick "The Protester" as the TIME Person of the Year for 2011, but still, it seems rather off-key and slightly off-base. I do see that the protesters in the Middle East are very deserving of such recognition; if TIME had endorsed them, that would seem quite reasonable indeed, but to lump the Occupy Wall Street (et al) protesters into the same boat seems far too much of a stretch, almost as much as Obama getting the Nobel Peace prize for imagined future actions rather than actual accomplishment.

 

The TIME Cover Story does give a little background on the Occupy Wall Street (et al) movement, but no significant new detail and maybe simply a little different color. For example, they mention that organizer/anarchist David Graeber coined the phrase "We are the 99%!" The writer of the article also chronicles his own nephew's involvement in the movement in NYC. The article notes that Graeber "nudged the group to a fresh vision: a long-term encampment in a public space, an improvised democratic protest village without preappointed leaders, committed to a general critique — the U.S. economy is broken, politics is corrupted by big money — but with no immediate call for specific legislative or executive action." Kind of lame for a self-professed "anarchist", but hardly a vision worthy of "Person of the Year." Well, even though Graeber and the other "organizers" weren't selected as "Person of the Year" themselves for their instigation, the results to date for the OWS protesters who followed them hardly seem noteworthy enough for such a nomination.

 

Maybe the best I can say is that the editors were "stuck" and even though the accomplishments of OWS in terms of "real change" were hardly noteworthy, they were "protesters" and that somehow magically entitled them to sit in the back of the same bus as the Middle East guys who actually did achieve some real change.

-- Jack Krupansky

Unclear outcome of the Occupy West Coast Port Shutdown action

Although the protesters at the various Occupy West Coast Port Shutdown actions seemed to be at least moderately successful in terms of media attention, noise, and disruptions, I would said that the overall outcome is still a bit fuzzy.

 

In some cases (e.g., Oakland) they seemed to have a moderate turnout, but overall the turnout seemed a bit light to me, given the supposed maturity of the "movement." The police (and rain) seemed to frighten them away in Long Beach. At other ports there was either only a moderate, temporary shutdown or "picket" lines and other protest activities that were not at all what one would consider a hard-core, massive shutdown of the entire west coast.

 

It is still not clear how much, if any, of this action will continue in the coming days. There may be some lingering activity in Oakland, but there is little in the way of evidence that that "action" will continue, let alone grow in strength.

 

So far, I would grade them a "B" for the protest, a "C-" for the shutdown, and an "incomplete" for whether this "action" has any longer-term ramifications, other than an irreverent "Is that all you've got?" I'm sure they could have done better, but for whatever reasons they didn't.

 

The "solidarity action" here in New York City was basically a joke. They huffed and puffed and talked about "storming" Goldman Sachs, but only around 100 or so activists held a so-so rally in front of the new Goldman Sachs building across from the World Trade Center site (diagonally-opposite corner from Zuccotti Park) and then lamely attempted to stage an impromptu "dance party" in the Winter Garden of the World Financial Center where their boisterous behavior quickly drew the attention of security and the cops. I doubt that the operation of Goldman Sachs was disrupted in the slightest. The only people who might have been disrupted probably were a few tourists or tenants who expected to enjoy a few quiet moments in the palm-treed atrium, a privately-owned public space that nonetheless is subject to the rules and whim of the property owner and manager. The cops did roughly handle a New York Times photographer and a few of the activist "media", but overall it was simply little more than a scuffle.

-- Jack Krupansky

Another good backgrounder on the Occupy movement

There is another good background article on the Occupy (Wall Street) movement in The New Yorker by Mattathias Schwartz entitled "Pre-Occupied - The origins and future of Occupy Wall Street." I found the link on the Adbusters web site, so that is about as close to an official endorsement by the movement itself as you could possibly get.

 

Adbusters also links to an opinion piece on Al Jazeera by David Graeber, the self-described "anarchist" who was instrumental in getting Occupy Wall Street underway on the ground in New York City, entitled "Occupy Wall Street's anarchist roots."

 

The New Yorker article highlights an interesting perspective on this so-called "leaderless movement":

After the August 2nd gathering, the movement's center of gravity shifted from Vancouver to New York. The protesters planning the September occupation met again, on August 9th, at the Irish Hunger Memorial, near Battery Park; all subsequent meetings were held on the south side of Tompkins Square Park. Early on, they decided to call the organization the New York City General Assembly.

 

In theory, the job of facilitating the meetings rotated among the eighty or so attendees. In practice, facilitation fell to a much smaller set of people who had experience with the general-assembly process. The leaderless movement was developing leaders. Graeber was among this first rank of equals, as was Marisa Holmes, a twenty-five-year-old anarchist and filmmaker. Holmes is dark-haired and eloquent; she has the parliamentarian's trick of making harsh ultimatums sound palatable, even breezy.

Interesting reading to complement the mind-numbing "We are the 99%!" propaganda-rhetoric of the "protesters" themselves.

-- Jack Krupansky

Future of the occupy movement - 12/11/2011

Although the Occupy movement can certainly be readily sustained as a mere protest movement, its ability to expand beyond mere protest is now seriously in doubt. The whole "tent thing", seeming to be the heart and soul of the movement is clearly losing momentum at an accelerating pace. Rather than seriously attempting to build long-term sustainable communities, the tents now appear to have been more of a mere statement of protest. Although remnants of the tent communities remain, they don't appear to be growing in any dramatic manner. The movement is still able to pull together pop-up protests and disruptions of various sorts, but mostly very modest in size and effect.

 

Tomorrow, Monday, October 12, 2011, will be a moment of truth for Occupy as they literally attempt to shut down all ports on the west coast of North America. Further, they threaten that "If there is ANY police violence on #D12 we will extend the port shutdown." "#D12" is the Twitter tag for the "operation" and "D12" is the same "operation" naming convention used by the anti-globalization movement for naming their "operations" – "D" is for December and "12" is for the 12th of the month.

 

The open question is how many activists can be mustered in each port locale, how many average Americans join the activists in their port shutdown, as well as how various unions respond, and finally how the police and other law enforcement responds.

 

I'm sure the protesters can disrupt and maybe even shut down port operations to some limited extent, which qualifies them as a protest movement, the real question is whether they will actually succeed in moving beyond a mere protest movement to accomplishing anything substantial or graduating into a full-blown "insurrection" or even "revolution." So far, most of what they have been about is simply idealistic protest and no real substance. They can probably get away with a fair bit more "mere protest" before people get tired of the disruptions and distractions.

 

I think the general attitude of the average American is "show us some results or... we change the channel to something more interesting." Occupy still retains some novelty and interest of non-participants, but the clock is ticking for them. After all, Americans have shown a powerful penchant for a limited attention span.

 

The bar is fairly high for "results" from this port shutdown. Unless the movement comes through with absolutely stunning and sustained success, their days will be numbered. If they do last into the spring and summer, it will be interesting to see them compete for attention with the 2012 elections.

 

Meanwhile, this past week the Occupy movement has managed to divert attention to themselves that might otherwise have been focused on the big UN global warming talks that were also having trouble getting results.

-- Jack Krupansky

Payroll tax cut may be more of a political football than an economic godsend

During a recession the idea of economic stimulus such as a payroll tax cut makes sense, but in truth it is more of a political salve to show that politicians are "doing something" even though the actual, real, practical effect of the alleged stimulus may be quite meager at best. Right now, I am ambivalent about the economic value of the payroll tax cut. If it happens, fine, I'm okay with it, but if it doesn't happen this time around I'm okay with that too. Either way, I won't lose any sleep, nor will I jump with joy.

 

The U.S. economic outlook is weak enough that the payroll tax cut may make a (barely) noticeable difference in 2012, but I can't say that I am fully convinced of its efficacy. I think I would rather see a narrowing of the budget deficit and a strengthening of Social Security than a meager, one-time only gain in GDP.

 

The political value of the payroll tax cut is much more significant. Democrats want it so they can claim that they are "helping the middle class." On the flip side, Democrats would also like to see passage of the payroll tax cut fail so that they can use it as a club to convince the electorate how "mean-spirited" and "out of touch" Republicans are.

 

Republicans are lukewarm about the payroll tax cut. Many of them do see political value with being seen as "helping the middle class", but a significant fraction of them see greater value with being "fiscally responsible."

 

In short, Republicans could go along with a payroll tax cut deal that both costs them little and even gives them something in return, but since they gain political bonus points for being fiscally responsible (which includes refraining from excessive taxation) they stand to gain from failure to reach a deal.

 

So, ultimately, it comes down to how badly the Democrats want the payroll tax cut. They can have it if they want to pay for it politically, but they may decide that it simply isn't worth the price and that the economy will limp along well enough and that the "club" value of Republican "obstinacy" is worth its cost in terms of failing to "help the middle class."

 

Me? Right now, I'd prefer to see the "gimmick" of a payroll tax cut go away. If anything, I would rather see both an increase in the payroll tax rate and an increase in Social Security benefits. I think the latter would provide an economic stimulus as well as being "good for society."

-- Jack Krupansky

A make or break moment for the middle class

I agree with President Obama when in today's economic speech in Kansas he said that "This is a make or break moment for the middle class..." It certainly is, but maybe not the way he wanted it to be. The middle class of our parents is plain and simply "over." Gone. Kaput. RIP. And, it is not coming back, at least in its old form.

 

We are in the process of recovering from the collapse of what I will call "The Middle Class Bubble" that dates back to the 1960's (if not earlier) as unions coerced or connived with corporate management and politicians to artificially boost so-called "middle class" incomes and benefits in a grossly unsustainable manner.

 

That bubble started to deflate/burst in the late 1970's and early 1980's and the recent housing bubble and debt/financial crisis was simply the final nail in the coffin of that old, unsustainable model of the "middle class" of the late 20th century.

 

So, to answer the President, yes, this is that defining moment, and we now need to formally acknowledge that the old middle class simply is no more, and is now being replaced with a newer and more sustainable middle class, with lower pay and benefits to be sure, but more sustainable, which is the important thing.

 

Also, we need to acknowledge that there really is still a separate "working class" and that past misguided economic policies improperly boosted members of the working class into the middle class bubble in an unsustainable manner and now many of those workers need to formally acknowledge that they really are "working class" and not "middle class."

 

In short, this is literally a "make or break" moment, or actually a "break and make" moment, where we break from the old, unsustainable economic model of a bloated middle class and make a new and much more sustainable economic model with a leaner middle class and a thriving working class.

-- Jack Krupansky

The need for regional infrastructure consortiums

There is an article in The Washington Post entitled "Experts struggle to express direness of infrastructure problem to a wary public" which clearly expresses that there are looming (if not current) problems with our infrastructure, but then does quite a poor job of explaining the true financing aspects. These "experts" somehow misguidedly presume that only the federal government should be taking the lead in financing of infrastructure. I would submit that the primary burden of planning and financing of infrastructure should be at the state and regional level, with emphasis on regional consortiums such as the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.

 

Sure, the federal government should have a role, such as in setting standards for quality and safety, but there is no good reason for the extremely inefficient mechanism of taking money out of states up to the federal government and then parceling that money back to the states. Let the states, or those regional consortiums, handle the financing, whether through state and local taxes, bonds, or user fees.

 

In some cases, the federal government may have national interests beyond the interests of the states and regions, so in some few cases maybe the federal government may need to take the lead in financing, but those would be exceptions and not the bulk of the cases.

 

There might also be a need for a federal bond guarantee program, but that should be based on standards and having financial standards and financial reviews for states and regional consortiums issuing infrastructure debt that must be met in order to secure such a debt guarantee before it is granted.

-- Jack Krupansky

Is the Occupy movement really just a front for communism?

There is an interesting essay on Adbusters.com, the mother ship and puppet masters for the Occupy movement, by Jessica Whyte entitled "Awakening the Giant - Is the long night of the left drawing to a close?" which basically reveals that the true goal of the whole Occupy movement (not no much the rank and file foot soldiers, but the theorists behind the curtain) is to supplant Western-style democracy and capitalism ("neoliberal democracy") with... no, not socialism, but... communism. As the essay ends:

Libya provided the opportunity for the Western powers, who had reacted with fear to the revolts in Egypt and Tunisia, to use a humanitarian cover to reinsert the numerous possibilities opened up by the Arab Spring into the familiar narrative of neoliberal democracy. ... what is at stake today... the isolation of the communist idea may yet give rise to a new collective subject finally capable of realizing communism.

That is the significance of the many tent "communities" with their leaderless structures and "general assemblies" and "working groups", to more closely approximate true "communes" suitable for a "communist collective."

 

Ultimately, the Occupy movement is doomed to fail, precisely because it has a conflict of interests between its three main factions, the communist theorists, the militant anarchists who don't need or want the communist structures, and the vast masses of mere foot soldiers who actually never really signed up for either the communist or anarchist agendas and really do simply want to engage in truly non-violent, truly peaceful protest to pursue "change we can believe in", but well short of actual revolution that the first two factions seek. This is why the movement is currently so indifferent to being explicit about goals – to hide from the true goal of communism and to deny the inherent conflict between communism and anarchism. The current vagueness works for all parties, but eventually the conflicts of interest will surface.

-- Jack Krupansky

Background on the Occupy movement, Organizing World Revolution 2011

Here is some interesting background on the Occupy movement, straight from the horse's mouth, a post by former Yale Professor David Graeber, one of the "organizers" and promoters, on the Adbusters web site entitled "Situating Occupy - Lessons from the revolutionary past."

 

From the Wikipedia article for the author, David Graeber:

Graeber has a history of both direct and indirect involvement in political activism, including playing an organizing role in, and speaking in favor of the Occupy Wall Street protests. Comparing it to the Arab Spring, he claimed that this and other contemporary grassroots protests represent "the opening salvo in a wave of negotiations over the dissolution of the American Empire."

Ultimately, we are still left with the same question as before, namely, is the Occupy movement "just a protest movement" or is it "a revolution"? Protests can wax and wane and still contend that they have done their job, but a "revolution" ("the dissolution of the American Empire") either makes progress and achieves its goal or fizzles and dies. Or maybe Occupy will simply be a pseudo-revolution (revolutionary aspirations with lots of "big talk") that morphs into a protest movement and then claims "victory" in the sense of "we raised awareness of the issues."

 

The whole "occupy" meme is rather bizarre, with the tents and all. Were the tents supposed to be truly meaningful or just symbolic stage props? Now, after the "evictions", they talk as if they really didn't need the tents, but they still use the "occupy" meme.

 

Graeber is a self-admitted "anarchist", but it remains to be seen what his real motives are, as well as to what extent they are shared by the rank and file "membership" of the movement. What are participants in "Occupy" really signing up for? Do they know? Do they care?

 

-- Jack Krupansky

Barney Frank, Steve Jobs, brash bosses, and over-the-top petulance vs. accomplishment

There was an interesting commentary by Jena McGregor on Barney Frank's management/leadership style in The Washington Post entitled "Barney Frank and the cult of brash bosses."

Must leaders be nice to be noteworthy?

 

We don't have to look much further than Steve Jobs to see they don't have to. The former Apple CEO could be, as we all know by now, a grade-A jerk who threw tantrums, parked in handicapped spots, and was fully capable of so-called gratuitous nastiness. Some are even worried that "with the death and canonization of Steve Jobs and the emergence of the Jobs biography as a kind of sacred text for managers," writes Tom McNichol over at the Atlantic, "the ranks of bosses who see Bad Steve's nastier traits as something to imitate is liable to swell." Jobs, he writes, is considered by too many people in Silicon Valley to be "living proof" that being an ass was a big part of leading a good company.

 

Of course, Steve Jobs was not a phenomenal innovator because of his leadership style; he was wildly successful in spite of it. And no, I'm not going to draw some pained parallel between the brilliance of Steve Jobs and the ornery intelligence of Barney Frank. But it's worth considering when being a nasty boss can help and when it hurts. In a world in which extreme attention to detail is needed—like, say, technology development—or when there's a real need for motivation, there could be some virtues to having a controlling jerk in the top chair. Because many such managers are equally good at turning on the charm when needed, McNichol writes, their salesmanship could outweigh their bad sides. And occasionally, brash thinking (and unfortunately, brash behavior) goes hand-in-hand with an appetite for innovation and risk that other more measured leaders can't really summon from themselves.

 

But in most cases, it's obvious that over-the-top petulance stands in the way of accomplishment. That's especially so in a place like Congress where negotiating skills and relationship building are supposedly the keys to success. Sure, a combative and abrasive style might win leaders points in the highly polarized dysfunction that is today's Congress. But it could also cause them to lose the most accomplished legacy possible.

Maybe bosses are like (removing) band-aids, "fast or slow", choose your style of pain.

 

-- Jack Krupansky

Helloo

Helloo

My suggestion for the White House economic recovery web site: blog and Twitter

The White House has an "okay" web site for the stimulus package, www.recovery.gov, but it needs a blog and they need to exploit Twitter. I sent them the following suggestion:

The web site needs a blog and Twitter feeds to provide us with more timely information.

See the NY Fed site for Twitter examples:
http://www.newyorkfed.org/
http://twitter.com/NYFed_news
http://twitter.com/NYFed_data

Thanks.

-- Jack Krupansky

They do have a blog on the main White House web site, so it is not an unnatural request.

Somehow, I find it amusing that the New York Federal Reserve Bank is on Twitter!

In any case, I at least gave them some useful feedback. Have you??

-- Jack Krupansky

My suggestion for the White House economic recovery web site

It is all well and good that the White House has a web site for the stimulus package, www.recovery.gov, but I did not find it immediately helpful in terms of how much money is actually flowing into the U.S. economy. I sent them the following suggestion:

What is missing and really needed is a classic thermometer that shows the amount of stimulus funding that has actually been disbursed or spent by each agency and is actually out there in the economy.

There should be a daily log listing the agency, specific program, and amounts for daily disbursements and expenditures into the economy above the agency/program baseline budget that is directly attributable to the ARRA stimulus spending.

Thanks.

-- Jack Krupansky

It will be interesting to see if they actually can tell when each dollar of ARRA money is disbursed or spent.

In any case, I at least gave them some useful feedback.

-- Jack Krupansky

Is the nation at the brink of a depression?

What a great name for someone alleging that we are on the "brink of a depression": Specter. According to an Associated Press article entitled "Specter says nation on 'brink of a depression'":

The nation is on the "brink of a depression," but there's a "reasonable chance" that the $787 billion economic stimulus package will help ease the situation, Sen. Arlen Specter said Monday.

Specter, R-Pa., said the nation's economic situation is more dire than the public has been told, but did not elaborate.

"Our economic problems are enormously serious - more serious than is publicly disclosed. And I think we're on the brink of a depression," he told reporters at the state Capitol.

...

"Had there been no stimulus, I think we'd have gone right off the edge," he said. "I think we're pretty close to the edge anyway, to be very brutally blunt about it."

This is the same Arlen Specter who concocted the infamous Single-Bullet Theory of the JFK assassination and here he is concocting a conspiracy theory about the U.S. government allegedly withholding information about the economy. Yeah, right.

In truth, there is no "edge" or single trigger event for a depression. A true depression is a very long, very slow downward slide. Sure, people worry about whether our current slide might have that lasting potential, but there is no evidence of that yet -- even if the dear senator might have fearmongered himself into believing so.

It may not feel like the government actions are having much of an effect, but that is because the Federal Reserve, Treasury, et al are still busy putting all of the elements into place and it will take more than just a few months to see fruit borne of those efforts.

My theory is simply that we need to finish burning off the excess "growth" of the past several years which was fueled by super-cheap credit and exotic financial instruments. That might mean a net hit of 5% to 10% to GDP, employment, income, and spending, but this is not a long-term depressionary process. Sure, such a "structural contraction" is much worse than a garden-variety inventory-based recession, but we already have enough structural supports in place to effectively preclude a true depression.

If we are at a brink, it is a brink of starting to see the positive impact of the stimulus and the Federal Reserve efforts to restart non-bank lending (what was called the "shadow banking system.")

The simple reality is that politicians love to peddle one of two things: sunny-day fantasies or deep, dark gloom. The latter gets a lot of traction these days regardless of what reality might be.

-- Jack Krupansky

Has the economy really fallen off a cliff?

Colorful metaphors are great fun, but never terribly enlightening. Warren Buffet is an endless source of colorful metaphors, the latest of which is his allusion that the U.S. economy has "fallen off a cliff." He uttered this odd characterization in an interview on CNBC [but... but... but... I thought their credibility had "fallen off a cliff" after Jon Stewart's "takendown"!!! Have they rehabilitated themselves already?!?!] that is summarized in a Reuters article by Jonathan Stempel entitled "Buffett says economy fell off cliff, fears inflation."

Now, to be fair, maybe Mr. Buffett considers any recession to be a "cliff." Sure, any contraction of economic activity is not to be desired, but the simple fact is that the "fall" to date of the U.S. economy has been only a "few" percent, which is hardly a cliff.

Now, the stock market can be legitimating characterized as having "fallen off a cliff", but there has been no comparable decline in the overall real economy, whether you look at GDP, employment, income, or spending.

To be clear, yes, the U.S. is experienced a severe "structural contraction", that may leave the U.S. economy 5% to 10% smaller over the next year or two, but that hardly constitutes a "cliff."

A fall from a cliff is not something that you survive. The U.S. economy is surely going to survive.

Mr. Buffett enjoys being colorful, something that CNBC is well-positioned to promote, but not for any socially useful purpose.

-- Jack Krupansky