DaveHolman

Palin Quits Job - Earns 11 Maverick Points

2009-07-04T12:58:00.000-07:00

Sarah Palin decided to quit her job as governor of Alaska "to effect change from outside" two years before her term expired! Her explanation was that someone, when she bounced the idea off of them said, "HELL YEAH"! By totally blowing off the kinda-important job of being an elected official, indeed the governor of a state, to focus on her self serving run for president that is a mere four years away Palin has once again proved herself "an everyman", "a commoner" "a pleeb" and "total moronic dunce" garnering major maverick points in the process. What could be more American than a provider for a large family suddenly a quitting a secure, high paying job during the height of the worst recession in 3 generations because someone told her "HELL YEAH", I mean if that isn't apple pie what is! It is rumored that the dude who said hell yeah was a snow-mobiling friend of Todd's named Ricky, but Republican insiders speculate that it could also have been Darrel, their next door neighbor who comes to oogle their daughters or even Joe Sixpack who was photographed drunk and passed out on the Palin lawn the day before, his legs covered by empty bud cans.

In quitting she has gained 11 Maverick points putting her at 64 just 19 maverick points away from ultra-maverick and estranged father figure John McCain. McCain got a lot of Maverick points back in the Vietnam War. Most notably he scored a PR 23 Maverick Points for escaping from a high security torture facility naked with nothing more than a smooth wooden spoon and killed fourteen guards and held back a major offensive with no reincforcement. McCain's response was "Damnit, of course! Nervously quit your job to which you were elected by thousands of voters who believed in you during the height of a recession- Those 11 points would've been mine were it not for the dry heat of Arizona which preserves my bones." Arnold Swarzenegger's comment was "If she thinks she can get near my maverick score of 119 she better think again. That ***** will never touch my maverick score until she makes a movie wearing less cloths than I did in Pumping Iron."

Capital Hill Republicans were shocked. Former senator Trent Lott commented, "Well Land ****ing sakes what a ***-**** Mavericky move!" Other Republicans was astounded by her mavricality. Former President George W. Bush commented, "That lady definitely deeserves the 11 Maverick points today. I totally wish I just walked after 2 years in office, I would've been a hero." Palin's maverocity has the right stunned, everybody thought that Palin wouldn't try to touch McCain's Maverick score, or that she's do it by challening old men to walk-a-thons. Insiders debate whether the small prop plane in the background of Palin's announcement was indeed full of cocaine as Joe Sixpack was heard stuttering or if it was merely Palin's get-away vehicle.

Automate All Trains

2009-06-22T20:28:00.000-07:00

Today a DC train crash killed 6 people...There is absolutely no excuse for this in the information age. We have bionic limbs, satellites orbiting the Earth, supercomputers capable of beating the best chess champions and calculating billions of possibilities per second yet our trains are all still "driven" by humans who can actually crash them. Is this a union problem? A political problem? Even in the industrial era, before GPS, auto-pilot, and radar I don't see much excuse for crashing two trains that are on fixed rails and cannot turn. I must humbly submit that the software required to guide modern trains on tracks without crashing into each other must be somewhat less technologically demanding than writing an iphone app yet we continue to pay people to sit in the "driver's" seat of a machine that would clearly be better off without a human conductor whose momentary inattention can lead to fatal errors. Locomotives are not new, in fact they're approaching their 200th annevarsary and the idea of programming them not to hit things has somehow not caught on in our enlightened society.

The basic parameters of this genius software would be as follows: Smoothly accelerate and decelerrate from station to station along a fixed and unchanging track without crashing into anything. Tricky, I know, especially the not-crashing part. I mean, you'd need some kind of crazy technological device that allowed you to magically know where other trains or obstructions on the tracks were and stop before hitting them...Like some kind of sensor linked to some kind of computing machine linked to the brakes and- by jove I've got it! I suggest GPS (provide relays to function in tunnels) backed up by radar, backed up by an optical sensor, back up by pre-planned time schedule program, and finally backed up by a human attendant who is trained in the use of manual controls should all electrical systems fail. Each train could simply have an independently powered radio emittor in its front and rear than when it sensed another approaching signal would force a slow down and avoid a collision. I stubbornly refuse to believe that the math required to program trains to run by themselves is even remotely difficult compared to what is regularly being done in the tech field today. The danger would be in avoiding hackers, viruses and human errors in the software and hardware of this system itself, but all of these are possible to solve with a very closed circuit, secure system with enough fail-safe redundancies built into it that a distracted train conductor doesn't have the option of slaughtering their passengers. The high tech jobs created by automation would balance out losing many of the mind-numbing jobs associated with "driving" a train on a fixed route day after day after day over and over and over...

I think that a car programmed to paralell park itself is more technologically sophisticated that making a train that doesn't crash into anything in front of it, or switch onto a track with an incoming train. And we have those. In many airports the trams have no human pilots and I will venture a guess that they have never had a fatal crash with another tram. I do not advocate that machines entirely replace conductors in trains or other vehicles like ships or aircraft, simply that the job of driving a from one station to another in a train is so blindingly simple and mundane that we'd save lives by implementing technology to cut out human error. Each train could still have a conductor capable of manually driving the train but their main duty would now be ensuring passenger comfort, safety, checking tickets etc. For conductors this might be hard to swallow but I doubt a poll of the relatives of train crash victims would reveal much sympathy for their obsolete profession.

The job of flying an airplane or piloting a ship involves more variables but might also be rendered safer by automation in the future, again always backed by trained personnel with access to full manual (non-electric) controls. Creating self-driving cars is probably the furthest from reality because the variables involved in driving a car are absolutely staggering compared to the relatively simple routes and procedures of ships and planes (to say nothing of trains). Plus, when people board a plane, train or ship, they expect to have no control and do not want to be involved in the vehicle's route, speed etc in any way, yet when driving in a car most people want total control over speed, route etc. While I doubt we'll ever totally automate the experience of driving a personal vehicle, I could see a mandatory accident prevention system in the next 20 years.

Most people wouldn't mind cars that automatically don't allow you to drive the wrong way on the turn pike or automatically stop if you were about to rear-end someone by accident. I would feel a lot safer knowing that drunks, lunatics and simple human error were less likely to send me to the hospital or morgue on any given drive. Indeed the insurance industry rates would plummet by physically preventing cars from submitting to the most fatal of human errors. Some cars now come with a breathalizer unit that doesn't allow you to drive is your blood alcohol content is above a certain level. I'm not sure how many thousands of beautiful lives would be saved every month by implementing this as a standard in all new vehicles but I don't think it's "socialist" to physically require drivers not to be drunk. Heartrate or brainwave monitors might allow future cars to wake up a sleeping driver, or even pull them off into their nearest parking lot for a snooze. Call me a socialist but maybe we should follow the crazy Germans and physically prevent cars from achieving ludicris speeds (say anything over 130 MPH). All of these options are technologically feasible and are already starting to make their debut, yet our 200 year old locomotives continue to crash and kill people.

Peru President Must Resign

2009-06-19T11:27:00.000-07:00

The recent confrontation between Peru's right wing government and Amazonian Indigenous people who live in Peru is a rare example of a clear moral and tactical victory for Amazonian indigenous groups. Today Peru's congress voted to overturn the 2 laws that indigenous protestors had taken to the streets to prevent, striking a sound defeat for discredited president Alan Garcia.

Garcia was President of Peru over a decade ago and was considered a total failure because his economic policies caused rampant hyper-inflation that ruined Peru's economy and failed to control the Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path) terrorists. Investigations into his supervision with military extra-judicial killing squads have been suppressed. For a total lack of credible candidates, Peruvians re-elected him three years ago and he's back at his disasterous old game.

The recent confrontations occured because Garcia granted of oil and gas rights to indigenous lands that were not his or Peru's to give, and indigenous people initiated road blocks to protest the unfair laws. Hundreds of riot police were ordered to disperse the indigenous protestors and they used *live ammunition* to murder at least 30 of the protestors who fought back bitterly against the attacking police killing 23 policemen. No road is worth unblocking with bullets. It's incredible that Native Americans (or anyone for that matter) are still ordered to be shot by the police for peaceful protests, and Alan Garcia should resign as President of Peru. Garcia had it in his power to order the police not to use lethal force on the Indigenous protestors and he should be tried in an international court for mass murder. Interestingly, Garcia pushed for these 2 controversial laws in order to meet US demands and obtain a preferential free trade agreement with the US. If Obama or any other democratic world leader ordered the police to fire at will into protestors and over 30 deaths resulted, their political career would end and jailtime would begin.

Manual Labor and Podcasts

2009-06-16T20:49:00.000-07:00

Nothing like manual labor with an ipod shuffle. The two were made for each other! I love working outside on earthy projects and designs but I get bored with manual labor where my mind is not really at work. I also love listening to the news, NPR, and assorted programs discussing everything from technology and finance to history and art. Thus I spend long hours picking apples at the local orchard, stacking wood or wrastling with my garden while learning about the inner workings of credit default swaps, when Robin Hood really may have lived, and how we can make cars using compressed air.
This combination of aural satisfaction with outdoor work may occasionally prevent me from appreciating the full, quiet, solitude and presence of nature around me, but I figure I soak up enough with my other 4 senses to allow one be blocked by technology. Yet that one sense blocked from bird twitterings (better I think than electronic twitters) allows me to open up to a whole world of information as I sink my fingers into dirt and pop seeds into the ground.

America Creates Universal Healthcare!

2009-06-14T19:05:00.000-07:00

That's the headline I hope we'll be reading about a month from now.

Both Obama and Bush's bandaid bailouts will have virtually no lasting effect but all that may be forgiven if Obama is actually able to give America what is so blindingly obviously the right thing: a public health care plan.

The problem: Corporate health care fails us in two ways. First it fails the unisured. 50 million Americans are uninsured, or roughly 15% of the population. This means that these people effectively receive far less medical treatment than insured people. They have shorter lives on average. I'd be curious to see how many people die early each year from problems related to lack of insurance, I suspect it would rival auto accidents, yet we effectively say that poor people can't have seatbelts, airbags, or anti-lock breaks when it comes to healthcare.
Second, corporate health care fails the insured because they operate on the perverse incentive that the more care they can delay and deny, the more money they earn. This means that millions of man-hours are wasted both by insurance companies and by the sick bickering over the validity of their claims. The end result is the the insured in America has to fight for compensation while it is considered a human right in other developed nations.

Public health care would drastically reduce both of these problems and I suspect that it would enroll more than just the 50 million uninsured. Many people paying for overpriced private insurance would instantly jump ship if cheaper coverage were offered. That is why the sold-out Republicans don't like it, it hurts the massive for-profit insurance corporations who lobby (bribe) them day and night (many Democrats fit this category as well). The Republican critics whine about the march towards socialism but those very people voted overwhelmingly for the socialist bank bailouts, and approve of socialist things like unemployment coverage and social security.

People on an individual level in America care mightily for the sick, just look at communities outpouring support for those who suffer with cancer and other diseases, YET we as a political body have allowed ourselves to be cajolled into believing that doing the same thing in an organized way is socialism (and we know that's a bad thing because the Russians liked it). Caring for our sick should be a national priority just like it is for veterans and the eldery, nobody calls veterans hospitals socialist even though they are exactly that; an organized publically sponsored effort to care for our veterans.

If Obama accomplishes nothing else in his next 8 years (Palin-Romney will lose '12 handily) let him establish a good government sponsored, non-profit, healthcare plan for all Americans and he will have been a success. We are led to believe that doing so is like moving a mountain but in reality once it passes people will look back on our times as barbarous and almost unthinkable just like we do now imagining American without social security and unemployment.

Spain Claims Slave-Labor Treasure

2009-06-07T14:46:00.000-07:00

A few of you may have heard that in 2007 a treasure hunting company called Odyssey Marine Exploration listed on NASDAQ founded the wreck of a (likely) Spanish treasure galleon in an undisclosed location off of Europe and made an incredible haul of gold and silver worth an estimated half a BILLION dollars. The company quickly flew the treasure back to Miami and both Britain and Spain were outraged, claiming that the treasure was theirs because it was (likely) a Spanish galleon called the Mercedes that the British sank in 1804. Spain recently won an important legal victory when a US court declared that it has no jurisdiction because Spain has a sovereign right to the treasure. The BBC News and others have reported on this as an interesting story but failed to examine where the treasure came from.

This Spanish claim is about as legitimate to me as if Germany would now claim all their art and gold stolen from the Jews during the Holocaust. These silver coins were made with forced slave labor most likely in Bolivia or Mexico and are the product of the Spanish genocide against the indigenous people of the Americas. They do not belong to Spain unless the modern world wants to legally uphold treasure gained from a Holocaust. Sadly, none of the countries whose murdered and enslaved ancestors produced this vast horde are entering the legal fray for the sunken riches. It saddens me that not a peep of complaint is heard from the governments of the nations from where this gold and silver were stolen, yet the British are claiming it based on the fact that they sunk the ship in a naval engagement.

In an ideal world I think that the following solution would be most equitable. Spain and Britain get nothing but shame for master-minding the enslavement and genocide of indigenous (and African) people for 500 years in their American Colonies, and the enterprising company that recovered this lost treasure donates 30% of their haul to schools in the impoverished mining areas where the descendants of the Spanish slaves now continue to live in grinding poverty despite having died to produce treasure such as this.

Euros Are Up

2009-01-04T21:26:00.000-08:00

I believe that one of the long-term effects of the current global economic spasm will be that the dollar and euro emerge in five to ten years roughly on par with each other no so much in terms of value but in global desirability as a personal and national savings currency.

In 2006 the first Bolivian banks began offering account in Euros, owning to the high rate of remittances sent by Bolivians working in Spain and other parts of Europe. Now almost all the major Bolivian banks (a contradiction in terms I know) do so, yet in 2007 I begged my Bank of America branch to help me start an account in Euros but it was a no-can-do, not unless I opened an actual account in Europe they told me. Bolivian friends would often ask me (as if I know) whether they should keep their savings in Dollars, Euros or the local currency Bolivianos. The two incredible things about my friends' question is that a country that fifty years ago had no real banking system is now ahead of the US in terms of available consumer currencies and that the Euro has entered into remote corners of the globe as a truly international consumer savings currency like the yen and yuan never have.

These are personal anecdotes that show the growing importance of the Euro in consumer savings in Bolivia, but that trend is growing quickly across Latin America, Africa and Asia, the dollar is no longer king. As international consumers diversify their savings currencies into Euros, so too their stodgey national banks will follow. The crisis teaches us the importance of the diversification adage in our investments and savings, and as the option to own physical Euros presents itself many consumers and governments will jump on it to provide extra stability against an unpredictable dollar. This presents the real danger for the dollar; the potential for foreign governmens to put their giant vaults of dollars on sale to buy euros. Will the Frankfurt T-Note soon rival it's long dominant Washington counterpart? I think so, and this will represent a catastrophic shift for the US, wrenching us from economic superpower to a multi-polar playing field. I'm afraid we've proven inept and corrupt as a the only global superpower and like our currency we will slip to semi-supremacy as other region blocks and industrializing nations ramp up their economies. However....

In some ways the coming catharsis of confidence in the US and its once-allmighty dollar will do us good. We are a nation that thrives in the hardest of times and our best only comes out under incredible adversity. As reality sinks in that we've exported almost all productive capacity and we face a growing brain and muscle drain we'll have the get creative and roll up our sleeves. Obama will abide by the catch-phrase: necessity is the mother of all invention.

The European economic zone may become more stable than the US by simple function of its relative dysfunctionality. The US, which its efficient central controls, was able to totally de-regulate its economy and essentially put all its eggs in one basket; buying Chinese goods with credit and hoping that the Chinese would keep investing their dollar-income in US T-bills. The European Union, now with 27 sovereign members surpasses the US in population, productive capacity, and social welfare capacity yet this beast with 27 heads cannot help but move slowly. And while they got off to a slow start, by virtue of their great diversity they also have more inherent stability than the US which was supposed to run on checks and balances until Cheney-Bush shot the balance and wrote bouncing checks. This stability and well established social welfare state aparatuses will help see them through the crisis with their international reputation less tarnished than that of the US. Yes, we emerge with Obama as a social and political figurehead, but international confidence in the US as a good place to invest will not recover to its former peaks.

I think that Obama will steer the US into a new era of green-energy and efficiency, but it's a game that the Europeans have a 20 year head-start in; much like the EurAsian advantage over our car companies. European vehicles, mass transit, buildings, renewable energy infrastructure, food systems are all at least a decade ahead of the US in development, thanks in no small part to Bush V Gore in 2000. I believe that we'll play the green neo-industrialization game harder, smarter and faster than anyone else once Obama unleashes the power of American ingenuity and hard work, however at a 20 year headstart Europe will be pulling ahead for a while.

Israel to Muslims: "Kick Me"

2008-12-29T13:45:00.000-08:00

I want to begin this article by stating that I am not pro-Palestinian. I am not pro-Israel. I am pro-peace. I am a Quaker of 50/50 Jewish and Christian descent.

These recent attacks by Israel in response for the death of 1 civilians and the wounding of 7 have killed close to 320 and wounded around 1400 (These numbers are from the United Nations via BBC news and may have changed). This turkey shoot is pure vengeance, will vastly increase terrorist and suicide bomber recruitment, and is tragically counter-productive. Israelis deserve a homeland and I deeply want them to be able to live in peace in The Holy Land side by side with people of all faiths. However this dream recedes further into the distance with every bomb that explodes on Gaza. This attack is so utterly indefensible from a human rights perspective that the entire Muslim world will be impelled to more action and hatred than ever before against Israel and its one constant ally, us. Europe and the US mildly chat about avoiding civilian casualties and will continue to send relief aid to the Palestinians while doing nothing to address the roots of the problems.

From a purely nativist perspective these Israeli attacks put American lives needlessly at risk; the fact that these are American-made F-16s bombing Gaza with Bush's approval is not lost on Muslims. Do democracies need to respond to terrorism? Yes. Can this reponse be bombing them, their families, their neighbors etc. into the stone age? No. Democracies need to respond to terrorism with the greatest and most powerful weapon they have ever developed; law. Only law and the equality it brings can undermine the root causes of terrorism which I believe are more socio-economic than religious. Israel was provoked by rockets for 10 days before they launched this counter-attack but the ridiculous severity of this response ensures its own failure; this will not bring them the peace they seek. Hamas can't be bombed out of existence and much less bombed out of popularity; indeed it derives its popularity from Israeli heavey handedness.

We most certainly should support Israel as a fellow democracy, but to do so with no-strings-attached commitment has been and remains foolish both for the US and for Israel itself. By giving Israel our unflinching support while it bombs children and civilians along with Hamas police stations, "government" offices and security buildings we become accomplices to these totally asymmetric massacres whereas if our support was contingent on a clearly defined peace process they might think twice before lashing out like this. These new attacks guarantee one thing; more violence. More suicide attacks. More rockets. More danger for Israelis and Jews in foreign cities like Mumbai. More vengeance. Israel has proverbally put a giant blinking "Kick Me" sign on its back (replacing its former non-blinking one) and on the back of its one staunch ally, the US.

The ball is and has been in Israel's court. Israel will never have peace while it prevents Palestinians from developing a dignified state of their own, no matter how many people they kill. They must make a massive sacrifice for peace, if they really want it. They must create a unified Palestinian nation connecting Gaza and the West Bank. I don't pretend to know the first thing about how to do this, but only that it can and must be done for peace to have a chance. This nation needs to be able to develop its own economy that terminates the need for UN handouts. The Palestinians are under permanent lock-down and they can't do this for themselves without Israel's cooperation. It's silly for Israel to deprive the Palestinians of the necessary conditions for stability and then blame them for lashing out violently. The cycle repeats itself.

It's like blaming someone you've had in a headlock for 50 years for constantly trying to hit you; you have to let them go eventually. When you let them out of the headlock, you're gonna take some punches before things settle down. I believe that Palestinians, with good land and the opportunity to develop their own legitimate nation will slowly leave suicide bombings and rocket attacks to focus on their own affairs. Israel needs to have the courage the take some punches for peace because the Palestinians remain in a headlock that needs to end.

If Israel wants peace it must cut off a limb to save the body; it must give up enough territory for the Palestinians to create a viable nation. The world needs to help with this process because it's in everybody's best interest that this conflict simmers down and slowly ends (there is no fast ending that works). The ravages of this conflict have spread far beyond Israel to Munich and Mumbai and beyond. Israel needs to make the hardest choice of all; to turn the other cheek. Only by consigning itself to enduring both the internal Zionist fury at withdrawal and legitimization of the Palestinians, and the external continuation of low intensity attacks for several years (until the new Palestinian state can assuage enough of the misery and desperation that leads to violence) will the conflict begin to end.

Using F-16s to bomb Hamas targets is relatively easy. Responding, knee-jerk style, to provocation is easy. Creating a nation is hard. Turning the other cheek is hard. Giving up conquered and wrongfully bequeathed territory is hard. But for Israelis to live in a non-paranoid state of mind and stop the generational hemorrhage they need to do these things. A deep and profound hatred and mistrust runs between the two sides and that will not change quickly but violence is simply counter-productive. It just doesn't work. Firing rockets and dropping bombs to solve political problems is morally wrong and un-conscionable. Israel has the tools and ability to solve this problem, it needs not only outside pressure from its allies but most importantly political willpower from within Israel to say enough is enough.

America is fundamental to the creation and viability of a Palestinian State. We must both insist that Israel take this necessary step in forming a Palestinian nation but also assure them of their national safety & sovereignty. Israel is even more unlikely to do this if they think they're alone and vunerable to attack by their neighbors. Giving up territory both conquered and legitimate is a tough thing to do but it's in the best interest of both Israel and the US whose desireability as terrorist targets will slowly decrease if we help ensure that the new Palestine becomes a democratic place where people can build lives. America, Europe and the UN must work not just with Israel but with neighboring states like Egypt in bringing this about in a logical and just way as refugees return and colonists leave. It will take years of cheek turning and relatively thankless labor, but ultimately when Palestine begins to develope its own economy, sovereingty, institutions and dignity, the terror for both sides will end.

Bail Outs are Band Aids: We need Bretton Woods # 2

2008-12-21T01:08:00.000-08:00

THE PROBLEM: As evidence of corporate fiasco and fraud come to light because the global economic tide "goes out", bailouts are simply a protectionist knee-jerk. A Band Aid. The proper reaction must not simply be bailouts and national reforms, but a new set international corporate, investment and banking laws that are unified across the globe. Authorities in various nations must develope cohesive protocols to collaborate on investigations and new transparency requirements that do not vary nation to nation.

So called "tax havens" and off-shore banking must come to an end once and for all. Switzerland, Lichtenstein, and most of the Caribbean, long the haven for international crime, drugs, mafia, bribery, and fraud money must be brought into a new regime of transparency and international cooperation or placed under a Cuban-style embargo.

The litany of failure and fraud grows longer every day: Siemens, AIG, Bernie Madoff, GM, Lehman Bros, Citi Bank, Merill Lynch, GE, Goldman Sachs...All waiver on the brink or hav plunged not so much because of their own greed (which I believe is inherent in corporations and humans) but because of the lack of uniform laws regulating the actions and accounting requirements of these entities. We cannot regulate away greed and fraud, but we can control excesses and marginalize its ravages.

The problem is obvious: businesses are multi-national but laws are national. Europe has made some gestures at creating pan-European accounting and banking regulations (which are necessary) but the problem is global not just European. The WTO, originally intended to promote international trade has long been totally morally bankrupt and toothless to fight the wealthiest international corporations. It serves more as a promotor of mutli-national corporate rights than its intended role as a regulator. Only in the rarest of cases has the WTO functioned like an actual international corporate regulator and transparently arbitrated cases of fraud and unfair practices. The WTO, or rather lack of a real WTO, is more at fault here than all the varying examples of national hubris which Bush has raised to an art form.

THE SOLUTION: I think that another global economic emergency summit should be declared by Obama and all nations, not just filthy rich ones like this ridiculous G-20 concept should be invited. The goal should be a follow-up on the Bretton Woods conference that created (among other things) the UN and WTO. It's abundantly clear that we now need a international banking and investment regulations and regulatoratory entity. Obama should herald in a new century of American leadership by convening the G-195 and beginning the process of creating truly global accounting, banking and investment standards that promote transparency and stability.

Two new and powerful international bodies should be formed, one regulating the banking sector, and one regulating investment, that work in conjunction with the International Criminal Court (ICC) and national courts. Basic international legal standards need to be agreed upon such as a uniform and conservative minimum capital requirement for banks. Maximum bank and investment company leverage limits. We need harmonization of investment accounting requirements such that all legal investment entities from the exotic Hedge Funds, Sovereign Wealt Funds, to boring old Banks and Credit Unions must disclose every penny of their investments. Harmonized ethics and transparency laws need to be agreed upon and enforced to stem the culture of corruption that predominates world wide.

Already we are seeing collaboration between national regulators for multi-national corporations (such as the Siemens bribery scandal which reaches every continent) and an official body needs to be established that can conduct these collaborate and oversee these investigations. As international entities clamour for their money invested with Bernie Madoff through proxy American law firms, the need for an international regulatory body is poignantly obvious. If he had not been able to operate under such a fantastic shroud of secrecy this would not have been possible. One national court or banking/investment entity (like the SEC) cannot handle or much less prevent a truly global scandal. Capitalism and corporations have globalized; the rule of law needs to catch up or 2008 will repeat itself.

American Cars

2008-12-19T02:13:00.001-08:00

The Bush administration has implied that it may let GM (and Chrysler) go into bankruptcy. That is a horrible idea that would have far longer lasting and more serious consequences than letting Lehman go belly up. Beyond the staggering downsides, the government would also be overlooking the enormous opportunity for radical change in the American car industry that could return it to visionary and innovative leadership.

Economists estimate that between 2 and 3 million US jobs depend on the big 3 (of which only Ford may survive, and questionably at that). Dropping the ball on these companies would erase any gains Obama hopes to make in the clean energy sector and would bring the little American manufacturing base we have left to a grinding halt. They have failed because of their stubborn refusal to face reality, obey the laws of supply and demand, and have generally become bloated machines for environmental destruction and corporate beaurocracy. They do not deserve to exist, but nor is it prudent for the government to ensure the collapse of an entire industry in a time of crisis. Their collapse would likely change this recession into a full blown depression with food lines and bank runs.

Rather than filing for bankruptcy and abruptly destroying their entire manufacturing capacity and supply chain the US should either directly buy or orchastrate a sale of these companies. Sadly I trust the Bush administration to do this about as much as I trust a wolf to shepard sheep, nobody loves oil guzzlers like Dubya and Co. I can see two possible scenarios:

If nationalized like AIG, their current CEOs should be fired and forced to repay all their bonuses. The US should infuse captial and recruite a visionary industrial leader (not a government regulator) like Ray Anderson (or even a politician like Al Gore) to oversee the retooling of the company to create the cars of the future. Frankly buying GM can become a much better deal than the Citi and AIG bailouts which basically gambled in a ficticious dirivatives market and are wildly unprofitable. GM actually produces physical goods whereas the financial giants gamble with papers. AIG's operating profit margin is -83% and Citi's is -135% whereas GM's is just -6%. GM can be retooled and brought back into the black relatively easily whereas the financial giants are basically a giant hole into which the government is throwing money in hopes of plugging it, rather than changing regulation to avoid such sinkholes. GM needs to eliminate its dividend immediately in either scenario.

If the government orchastrates a sale of GM by loaning a US company money it should not be sold to another incompetant US car company like Ford or even a competant foreign one like Toyota. GM needs competitive and visionary leadership that seeks to leapfrog ahead of foreign competitors. Why not sell GM to Google or Apple, American companies that have actually shown the drive to innovate. Sure, they don't know the first thing about making cars, but they can learn new things incredibly quickly and can look at the problem with totally different vision. I bet with GM's vast resources and established manufacturing base they could make better vehicles in 2 years than GM could in 20. Imagine an icar.

We need to look at this as an opportunity. When faced with the collapse of GM the kind of radical change required for its survival may actually be possible whereas for the past ten years GM refused to listen to the reality of global supply and demand. Radical change in the auto industry means quickly producing safe, stylish cars that run on limitless, 0 emissions fuel. I think that instead of plug in hybrids GM should totally align itself to produce fully electric vehicles immediately. Several US companies have been doing this for years (Zap, Tesla) and just like GM radically converted to making tanks in WWII they need to radically convert to making competitive, positive, visionary, American cars today.

Lessons from Made-Off

2008-12-16T13:42:00.000-08:00

Despite being in Finland I've been able to follow this most recent economic disaster of Bernie Madoff organizing a giant Ponzi scheme closely and feel compelled to make a few comments that I don't see in the press.

REACTION: Madoff is facing up to twenty years in prison and a fine of up to five million dollars. He was released on a 10 million dollar bail almost immediately after being arrested and confessing to have basically stolen about $50,000,000,000.00 more money than most countries earn in GDP. Yet he could face a fine of up to five million dollars....five million. This monster probably has five million dollars worth of socks for god's sake. I think a more appropriate legal reaction to the crime of de-frauding charities, banks, and citizens of roughly the entire budget of California, might be for instance seizing all his assets, freezing all his bank accounts, and sentencing him and any knowing collaborators to serve life without parole. To fine such a man just five million when he has stolen fifty billion simply defies any logic of justice. Furthermore, upon being released he explained that his top priority was to pay all his remaining money to family and friends....HELLLLOOOO, maybe this money should be seized and partitioned among his victims.

REASONING: Second of all this goes to show once again in gleaming clarity that everyone should look after their own savings rather than entrusting them to people who they presume to be smarter then they are. Nobody has a crystal ball and learning to invest is relatively easy compared to paying your taxes. Hedge Funds, Investment Banks, Private Wealth Management, even Mutual Funds, all of these are both lazy, under-performing, and risky investments compared to simple DIY investing directly in companies' stock. Many of these investment instruments charge high fees to people who pay them thinking that because the professionals have their money they can now rest easy. Nobody was more professional than Madoff. This scandal has shown that multitudes of people, institutions, and even banks were deeply invested in him without even knowing it. This is the height of ignorence and shows the suicidal complexity of our current financial "system". Banks like Santander would investment money with financial advisory firms who then invested it with Madoff. One hedge fund basically just charged people fees for their expertise and then invested 100% of their money in Madoff. This all breaks one of the most fundamental rules of investing and life in general, only invest in what you can understand and monitor.

REFORM: Lastly, I think that this scandal will join the chorus of other falling financial skyscrapers that will dramatically reshape the world economy. Wall Street as we know it is done, that is to say that all the big investment banks have converted into holding companies (more regulated, less risky). We may see hedge funds similarly lassoed and constrained by the pesky laws and institutions like the SEC that occasionally serve to keep the robber barrons from robbing. Hedge Funds, which are basically grandiose investment clubs designed to avoid laws governing financial disclosure and accounting, have always struck me as a sign of our sick financial system where secrecy trumps transparency.

Why Not to Violate Pakistani Sovreignty or Martyr Bin Laden

2008-11-24T23:33:00.000-08:00

We need to stop invading Pakistan & we need to capture Bin Laden alive have the ICC legally sentence him to life imprisonment. His death, especially if it comes through illegal invasions of Pakistani sovreignty will only martyre him and do virtually nothing to curb extremism.Click on this photo for CNN's recent interview with Pakistan's Prime Minister

Virtually every week US forces make an aerial or ground incursion into Pakistan in search of Taliban or Al Qaida militants. We strike not just bunkers and hideouts but madrassas -also known as CHURCHES for Christ's sake where we recently killed several women and children. The few militants we kill and civilians we murder do not begin to justify these foolish violations of sovreignty. Pakistan Defense Minister has vowed to "defend Pakistani sovreignty" against such incursions as any defense minister would be expected to do. Pakistan's Prime Minister replied unequivocally that these US attacks are causing more suicide bombs attacks in Pakistan. With every incursion we breed hatred and ill-will among the populace of a country that we desperately need as a staunch ally against extremism.
Pakistan is just on the cusp of becoming exactly what America claims to want; a real muslim democracy. They just ousted US-ally and military dictator Pervez Musharraf and held democratic elections so you'd think that the LAST thing we'd want to be doing would be infuriating them with border incursions by CIA and US Army. With 173 million people and a professional, all-volunteer military that is the world's seventh largest, they are very capable of both consolidating their democracy and pacifying extremists if the government has the political will and popular support to do so. Every US bomb and bullet shot inside Pakistan errodes this political will and popular support for progressive democratic consolidation. Any threat to the stability of Pakistan's government carries with it the further danger of their estimated 24-48 nuclear weapons falling into the wrong hands. Imagine a fanatical religious Taliban-like government taking power, would they hesitate to use nuclear weapons in self defense or "pre-emptive self defense" Bush style?

Pakistan recently changed governments from a pro-US military dictator to a shaky and unstable democracy. The emergence of a consolidated democracy in Pakistan is of overwhelming importance not just to the US but to it's smaller neighbor Afganistan, to India its larger neighbor. With every American bomb that explodes and bullet that strikes inside Pakistan's sovreign national territory we are discrediting our good intentions and needlessly angering a potential powderkeg of Balkan proportions.

Worst of all, much of our illegal unauthorized bloodshed inside of Pakistan is done by flying killer robots called drones that are piloted remotely by soldiers cum video game assasins in California. Surely this is featured in Bin's Laden's recruiting material. We are waging a totally counterproductive war against a ragtag group of militants on the borders of a massive nation (Afganistan) whose institutional development and democratic consolidation is the only real weapon we have against the Taliban. There is simply no legitimate justification for US strikes in Pakistan short of proof positive of Bin Laden himself. All we're doing is galvanizing extremists in Pakistan and destabilizing our biggest potential ally and fledgling democracy.
There never was nor can there BE a war on terror because terror is a human emotion. There never was nor can there be a war on terrorism because terrorism is a tactic; a tactic that both the CIA and Al Qaida use to great effect. The "War on Terror" is really on muslim extremists but in such a war, actual weapons should play only a minor role. We've basically degenerated into a "kill everyone who tries to kill our soldiers" strategy which dooms our reconstruction and development efforts.
I contend that the only way to defeat extremists led by Osama Bin Laden would be to capture him alive and judge him in a *civil* court of law using real evidence. Let him hire a Saudi lawyer to defend himself and let the whole world watch the bloody evidence put against him. I think that the most symbolic defeat of Bin Laden and his extremists would be a successful trial in the International Criminal Court ICC that sentenced him to life imprisonment in solitary confinement. If we simply lob missles indiscriminately at Bin Laden and his deputies, accepting civilian deaths as necessary, our tactics do not differ sufficiently from his own to curtail his recruitement. Indeed his death would only mean his martyrdom while legally sentencing him for his courts in a real court and sparing his life would show that the democratic ideology is stronger and more appealing than violent extremism. By embracing relatively unrestricted war on militants and any civilians near them regardless of national boundaries and potential fall-out, we are waging a hypocritical fight. Terrorists, mass murderers and the movements they generate are far more effectively banished from the earth by democratic consolidation and civil courts than through military force and martyrdom. You can't defeat any enemy's ideology unless yours significantly differs from it.
The best way to consolidate Afgan democracy is for American and the world to help consolidate Pakistani democracy in a non-militaristic way.

The 2nd Depression & Buyout not Bailout

2008-11-23T10:07:00.000-08:00

Everyone agrees that some companies are too big to fail. Citi Group (Formlerly Citicorp), Ford, GM, and Chrysler are currently nearing bankruptcy after a combined 492 years of profitable operation. Think about that, all of them expect Chrysler (a whipper-snapper at 83 years old) are over 100 years old. Lehman Brothers was celebrating its 150th anniversary, Bear Sterns its 85th and AIG its 83rd. Few people are alive that remember the beginnings of these behemoths of 20th century capitalism, and Americans are just beginning to feel the tinges of panic as the once mighty oak trees of our economic system, now rotten form inside, collapse under their own weight.
These were the solid financial rocks for the past century and they are now about to go belly up. I don't think people realize the significance of what's happening in our economy; systemic failure. The biggest danger we may face has yet to rear its head; federal government bankruptcy. Bush has put us in a perfect position for this to actually happen; we now support much of our government spending with loans (treasury bonds) not with actual cash flow from taxes and revenues. We pay loans that come due with yet more borrowed money, but what if Asian, European and American demand for Treasury Bonds goes down as everybody looks to keep their few assets in cash or spend them on their own development? We then have a collossal problem.
Economists and politicians barely dare mention the word depression because this can create a self-fulfilling prophecy by "scaring" investors who make markets go even lower. So the economists and politicians now prefer to use the word recession, but I'm afraid bread and bank lines will start forming soon in America once again and before the winter is over we may indeed revert to the D word. I think that there is now a 50% chance that within a year we will see times as troubled and turbulent as during the first modern depression that began in 1929. So how can the US federal government act to keep things from totally bottoming out?

First rule: Buyout not Bailout.
Corporate leaders that don't have the judgement to avoid overexposure to any market, let alone one like the subprime market don't deserve loans, they deserve to be fired. One of the few Bush administration decisions I agree with was their choice to take over AIG (The 18th largest corporation in the world) and immediately fire its CEO Robert Willumstad. Thus the American government has both control and equity in AIG instead of making a bad loan to a badly run company. Not only do we have equity in AIG but we got it at a bargain basment price because AIG had nowhere else to go. Despite the structure of the AIG takeover being better than a simple bailout, there are many other problems with the Bush administration's handling of AIG noteably a total lack of transparency as to how AIG is spending its buyout money and providing collateral.
Let's do the same with the so called "Big Three". Buy them out, fire their leaders, and let them be restructured according to the transportation needs of the American people who are now the shareholders and owners of these once private companies. As the economy returns to relative health in time for Obama's re-election in 2012 (it will take that long I believe), the US government should sell off its shares in big nationalized corporations little by little and use the proceeds to pay down our national debt.
Imagine President Obama (God that sound good to say) appointing Al Gore the CEO of Ford or GM and putting these companies on track to produce the plug-in hybrids and electric vehicles of the future. We might see a muscular green revolution that would begin to rival Asian car makers.

Second Rule: Austerity and Tax Hikes for the Rich
Obama needs to cut our federal government spending radically or we'll be begging Chinese Communists for a bailout. Military spending for 2009 will be $651 BILLION, makes up over 50% of the federal budget, and is almost as large as the rest of the world combined. This way beyond where it logically needs to be to keep American safe and even to "police" the planet. Obama needs to halve military spending which is almost impossible for a Democrat to accomplish. Obama will likely also pull out of Iraq in 2009 and hopefully soon hand Afganistan over to the UN who are infinitely less-incompetent at nation building (though still no experts), decreasing our over-extension in Asia.
I think he can pull it off under the guise of doubling the US Special Forces and declaring private military contractors illegal (thus re-capturing many of the best soldiers we trained for free and then left earn better pay as mercenaries). Thus we retire conventional tank bridgades, 1000s of unneccessary nuclear armaments and trade them for flexible elite global warriors ready to deal with American security in the 21st century at an enormous cost savings. He can avoid the negative press of disbanding of entire divisions of unnecessary forces by doubling the size (and salaries) of new elite anti-terrorist special forces.
So we've slashed the federal budget without touching anything besides our bloated military aperatus. Now we have to raise cash. Obama plans to return the estate tax to pre-Bush era levels. That's still not enough. I propose a progressive estate tax on all inheritances upwards of say $300,000. This was part of Jefferson's vision of avoiding the establishment of an aristocracy in the US and with wealth more polarized than in the Gilded Age, we need to heed his vision. Obama's idea of increasing taxes on those earning over $200,000 will help and he also needs to roll back Bush's absurd cuts to capital gains tax, these only help the rich, period. He needs to create progressive dis-incentives for short term, un-diversified investment across the financial spectrum.

Assassination

2008-11-07T09:33:00.000-08:00

(Photo of the probable new armored Presidential Cadillac, see link below)

Let's get this out in the open, I am 100% positive that in the next 4 years people are going to make very well planned assassination attempts on President Obama. At Obama's victory speech I was greatly relieved when I saw that they had erected bullet proof glass on two sides of the lectern. The mother of my German friend's first reaction to my joy at Obama's election was to mention her fears that he will be assassinated. Almost all of the Europeans here mention this after just a short conversation about Obama. The constant comparisons of Obama with JFK cannot help but conjure up thoughts about how JFK's presidency ended. So let's get it out in the open, is Obama going to be assasinated?

I don't think so. I think that several people will try but they will fail. I believe this for two reasons. One, the Secret Service has been protecting him for the past 18 months and his personal detail has now been vastly enlarged. Obama, Michelle, and everyone around them are aware of the enormous danger to Obama's life by white supremecists, wackos, terrorists etc. and will take overwhelming measures to prevent such attempts from succeeding.
Frankly, I hope that Obama, for the good of the nation submits to what will seem like total overkill on his security. Never speak to the public without bullet proof glass or make unscheduled stops where security has not has time to set up, never go jogging or for God's sake never ride in an unprotected motorcade. Obama needs to stop pressing the flesh and start accepting the duties of being the most targeted president in history since Lincoln. The secret service agents protecting Obama need to be exactly what he claims they are; the best in the world and those agents need to spent every second of every day expecting the attempts on his life that will come.
I believe that the combination of the Secret Service's vastly increased sense of urgency combined with high technology and common sense will keep the bullets, bombs or other means from achieving their target. The NSA is listening in on every cell phone call and thanks to Bush other agencies can do this too without a warrant. Bush's 2005 presidential cars can stop military assault weapons and the bullet-proof windows are five inches thick. See the recent article about the mysterious Presidential Cadillac being readied for Obama.
The Klu Klux Klan has already posted a video on their website warning of a "backlash" as whites "awaken" and two men were already arrested for planning to assassinate Obama and posession of illegal firearms. Granted, I think their general killing spree plan never would've worked, but the stakes are so high that every threat needs to be treated as if it could succeed. I think that the Secret Service is up to the task and I also think that most Americans would sound the alarm or eve intervene if they saw anything like a possible assassination attempt underway.
The second reason that I don't believe Obama will be assassinated is admittedly not based on antyhing logical; I just feel that it's not going to happen. It's too obvious. Everyone, myself included is going to worry, especially when the well planned plots get carried out, but I just feel in my gut that he's not going to get killed by an assassin. Instead I think that he faces far greater challenges than assassination and if he fails it will not be on his own security but in guiding America out of the morass that the Republicans have thrown us in.

Here are a few interesting articles regarding Obama's new security:

http://www.todayonline.com/articles/285764.asp

http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5jiAFhkBgT-4gscycbegPPpvkDGXA

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/02/automobiles/02LIMO.html?pagewanted=2&sq=secret%20service&st=cse&scp=6

Obama's All Star Team

2008-11-06T15:57:00.000-08:00

Like Kennedy and his Brain Trust Obama needs an All Star Team.

I believe that if Obama is to tap one Republican it should be Colin Powell. Powell proved himself in so many ways to me recently and in some ways redeemed the dirty work he did for Bush. The most important thing for me was not his endorsement of Obama but his affirmation of Muslims in America. Powell's words honestly affected me more than anything Obama has said recently. Powell dared say what Obama dared not, that he supports Muslims and that the Republican implication -that being Muslim would somehow be bad or a disqualifier for the Presidency- is prejudiced and un-American.

For this Powell has earned my respect. He had a unique moment to speak to the American people and make everybody listen and in that moment he really stood up for the kind of equality that America is based on by standing up for an unfairly slandered minority.
Powell's sense of timing was impeccable and I think that his words had the maximum possible effect arriving just two weeks before the election, close but not too close as to be lost in the electoral melee. Furthermore Powell clearly likes and respects Obama and they would work well together.
On a lighter note Powell's dancing in Britain proves that he is both limber, healthy and young at heart and heart is something that our government has had in very short supply. So Mr Obama, when you think about offering some post to Republicans like Dick Lugar or or Chuck Hagel, weigh them against Powell. Mr Obama, don't be afraid to appoint another African American to your cabinet, as if fearing that this might unnerve an already tentative electorate. We want the best people to govern this country and frankly Colin Powell had proven that he has what it takes. I think that State or perhaps National Security Advisor would be good again (For God's sake give Condy a pink slip!). I doubt Powell would enjoy something like CIA which is too dirty for him.

For Secretary of the Treasury I think Obama should tap the smartest and wisest financial sage of the century, the sage himself, Warren Buffet. Buffet is a well known democrat, reknowned philanthropist, and hands down the reigning economic genius on the planet. Forget Volker and Summers, if you want to avoid the 2nd Great Depression you need the absolute best mind in economics and that's Buffet. The only problem is that Buffet, 78, may be too old and too ensconsed in his beloved role as the Sage of Omaha and CEO of his Berkshire Hathaway to answer the call. If Buffet refuses the call then Obama needs to continue meeting with him as an advisor and bringing him to the White House to help out the team.

I think McCain would've made a smarter choice with R-Olympia Snow from the great state of Maine as his running mate (I'm glad he choose Palin; a virtual punching bag). Obama, if he is looking to extend an olive branch by appointing Republicans might be well served by Snow who is a distinctly moderate Republica, whose husband is a Democrat, and who has vast domestic and foreign policy experience.

I think Obama would've made a much smarter choice for Vice President in Madeline Albright. She might have the same problem as Buffet, being 71 and now a professor, thus semi-retired from politics. Albright would've energized Clinton's supporters like none other and would've commanded more respect on foreign policy than even gaff-prone Biden. If I were Obama I would try to tap Albright for a role in the new government.

The Clintons are a thorny issue for Obama. I believe Hillary would rather be the New York senator than serve at any level for Obama. It would be too humbling for her to accept a gift position from her former opponent and I doubt she would be inclined to be involved. Bill Clinton would perhaps feel torn if offered something but again is almost too qualified for any position Obama would tag him for. Plus Obama really can't appoint a Clinton and maintain his mantra of change. If he's thinking about a Clinton I would pick Chelsea.

Al Gore for Director of the EPA. This is an all-star pick for an all-star team. Nobody in American is better positioned than Gore to totally reshape our nation as a green dynamo. Gore has had a political re-birth and his newfound authenticity and passion would make him an asset to anything he touches. Gore would not just put teeth into the EPA but he would jump-start America's transition to becoming a green economic powerhouse and God knows that our American cars need a jump start! Despite Gore's ties to the old school Clinton era Democratic Party I think that he might answer Obama call if he was given a real mandate to reshape American environment and industry.

Secretary of the Interior: Amory Lovins. You may not know Amory Lovins, he directs the Rocky Mountain Insitute but he is a hands-down genius regarding green energy and transforming our nation to be a clean green machine! He is so smart and articulate that just listening to him talk is an experience. He's not exactly a sexy man, but he is a transformational figure unlike any of these Clinton hacks Obama is turning to. He has experience working with major corporations and running a major ecological research and consulting institution.

Obama needs to put someone revolutionary in as Secretary of Education. I don't know who this should be, but it needs to be a big big deal. Likewise the FDA needs a total overhaul and needs t regain its respectability. Needless to say FEMA needs to be utterly purged of Bush appointees.

For UN Ambassador I would choose Jimmy Carter! I know this sounds like a joke but hear me out. Carter at 84 has more energy than I do at 25, and he continues his shuttle diplomacy for world peace. He is widely loved and respected throughout the world and today's oil and climate problems have proven that he was a visionary ahead of his time. If I were Obama I would at least turn to Carter frequently for advice in forming his government as he is the only living non-Clinton Democratic president and he has four years of experience where Obama has two days. A more realistic UN Ambassador would be Andrew J. Bacevich. Who is that you ask? I challenge you to watch this video interview of Bacevich with Bill Moyers and not stand open jawed at the man's raw intelligence, honesty, and vision. This guy has enormous energy, integrity, non jingo-istic patriotism, and credibility and Obama would be very smart to include him in the government.

Another interesting Republican pick by Obama would be Swartzneggar. Yes, this would add to Obama's cliche of celebrity but frankly the Terminator is a very left-wing Republican, is married to a Democrat, is a strong environmentalist, and is a Buffet friend.

For Joe Leiberman I think a post like Senate Page is appropriate.

A new Revolution

2008-11-05T04:13:00.000-08:00

Today is SUBLIME. Today is a gorgeous, beautiful, wonderful day here in Munich! I am somewhat bleery, having stayed up until 6:30AM to watch Obama’s acceptance speech amidst the evidence the night before’s intense partying and the heady emotion of last night is still coursing through me. For everyone today has been a long time coming.
I am brought back to three years ago Cochabamba, Bolivia in November of 2005. I wrote Barack a postcard with an ornery-looking llama on the front and put it in the mail to Barack’s office in Chicago. In this card I begged him to throw in his hat and run for President, and promised to come back and help him should he choose to run. I had not met Rommy so I fully intended to travel to Chicago and present myself for volunteer service until today, however love had other plans for me.
As I sat huddled in front of CNN World at 5AM reading the victorious headline I wasn’t sure if I would get emotional or not, if I would surge with joy or choke up or simply feel nothing because I had been promising this headline for the past two years. I choked up and tears came to my eyes as I felt the collective joy that spread across America, swept over the oceans and lifted hearts across the world. CNN could scarcely find a commentator that wasn’t crying as we all realized that America, after years of chaotic sins and turmoil, had done something sublime and poetic. I felt so touched by the momentum of the moment and all the joy across the faces of cheering bespoke not a victory for the Democrats but a truly new day for our nation. If 9-11 was the lowest point of the 21st century so far, this is undoubtedly the highest; our nation has chosen diversity over division, hope over fear.
I cried as I felt the barriers and chains of our past dropping and a faith in the ideals of our constitution and triumphing over the shackles of racism and bigotry for which we have been so infamous. Americans have proved that we still remember our revolution and the revolutionary principles of equality which we have sometimes failed to uphold and other times kindled into a shining beacon that has inspired civil and human rights leaders across the globe. Last night during Obama’s victory speech I beamed with joy seeing his daughters a wife; our new national family. This family will inspire America like Bush’s never could, and their authenticity and intelligence gleams out from them.
Another moment that stands out in my mind is volunteering for Obama in the summer of 2007. I would drive to New Hampshire with a woman from Brunswick and we’d go knocking on doors in and around Portsmouth. It’s satisfying to think that perhaps a lot of those people ended up voting for Obama in this state that could’ve played a key role in an eventual McCain scenario last night. Back in 2007 not many people had heard about Obama and the primary concerns I heard were health care and Iraq. I took part in Maine’s first day of canvassing for Obama that summer and along with about twelve other Mainers walked through the streets of Portland spreading the good word about Obama to people somewhat aghast that an electoral campaign was already underway and their daily lives were going to be intruded upon by door-knockers like us.
The 2007 season of volunteering culminated in attending an Obama rally in Portland, Maine. I volunteered before the event, signing up donors and got to sit in the front row to watch him take the small stage in this large auditorium. To perhaps 1000 Mainers Obama gave a rousing speech and despite a slight cough conveyed an energy and conviction that stood out from cut and dried political stump speeches. I shook Obama’s hand and asked him to return to Maine when he was President. I think my words blended in to a kind of general cheer of applause but I felt very lucky to shake the hand of a politician who I admired more than the current President. I had a strong feeling that I had just shook the hand of our next President and spent the next year trying to convince folks that this was truly possible.
When I spoke with people about the Hillary-Obama race the cynical echoes that once stated Obama would never run now repeated the idea that Clinton was simply unbeatable and the Democratic establishment would hand the nomination to the obvious front runner. I was far more worried about beating Clinton that beating McCain, I strongly felt that once nominated Obama would trounce whichever Republican was put in front of him. I think in retrospect that the Obama-Clinton race was perhaps more meaningful for American, where Americans rejected politics as usual and big corporate party politics for a breathe of fresh air.
I returned in 2008 to Maine in early July and immediately began volunteering for Obama again, this time in Maine where I was also working feverishly to save money. I kept thinking back to my Llama postcard of 2005 and the promise I had made to Obama to work for him. I’m not sure if he ever read the post card and I’m sure he never worried about my commitment there-in but I did and I knew I had to try to help him with all my spare time. In the summer of 2008 I volunteered every week at night phone banking in a tiny hot office space in Yarmouth. I learned in 2004 that the real beauty of participating in a political campaign is not so much the outcome but the people you meet on the way and this proved true in Yarmouth where I connected with many local residents, old teachers and friends to discuss the excitement of an Obama Presidency. To be honest I often didn’t enjoy cold calling random people to “survey” them about their views for 2 hours at night but I forced myself to do it, knowing that a victory would feel hollow if I could not save I had lived up to my commitment to Obama.
During this summer of 2008 I never encountered anyone as sure of Obama’s victory as myself, Democrats were worried and frightened, cynical and depressed by Palin’s ditsy surge. I had moments of doubt but overall I can honestly say that I’ve felt confident in my heart since 2005 that Obama would win the Presidency in 2008. In the Yarmouth office I was usually the youngest volunteer except for Jamie who did a vast amount of work as the local Democratic Party organizer, and many older democrats seemed guarded in daring to believe that success was possible after eight years of an un-elected president.
I now find myself in Europe for Obama’s victory, strangely removed from the collective euphoria of friends, family, and fellow citizens. However, bell tones of freedom are echoing here in Germany. Obama mentioned Germany twice in his victory speech last night and the German story parallels our own; from a terrible past to a bright future from the fences of dentention camps to the crumbling of walls that divided a nation. Both of our nations have gone from profound and lethal racism to profound integration and tolerance that is more than skin deep.
My European friends here are encouraged but skeptical also, ready to respect Obama and America as a leader once again but untouched by the passion and eurphoria that only Americans can feel today. Happily and content but not wild and passionate. They all fear for Obama’s safety, imagining an assasin’s bullet ending this new dawn early. I don’t think this will happen, Obama will far greater challengers than the misguided wackos or terrorists who may try and fail to kill him. Obama’s mandate is to create a healthy society, healthy economy, and healthy planet.
On October 13nd I wrote about the incredibly difficult situation Obama now inherits and some ideas for his first 100 days to turn American around, here is a link.

Russians, Cruise Ship, & Race Car Drivers

2008-11-01T04:19:00.000-07:00

Rommy and I were looking for ways to get back to Germany for November and stumbled across an international ferry service Tallink that takes people from Helsinki to Rostock, a 27 hour journey on a super fast cruise liner for just 73 Euros. After finding train tickets from Rostock to Munich for just 29 Euros each we decided to go ahead and buy the ferry tickets thinking that it was the same price and flying and would be more interesting. It has proven to be so thus far.
Rommy’s brother Wilber drove us to the ferry terminal at night an hour before our boat left at 7PM on the 31st. A long line of cars waited to check in at a series of toll booths and we pulled into this line. We asked a worker if this was where we needed to drop off passengers and he said no, this was in fact the check in for cars going to Germany. Wilber, not wanting to go to Germany that particular night needed to back out of the line.
Just then an SUV of Russians rammed us from behind. This was quickly arranged because neither party had sustained any real damage and Rommy and I remained inside the car, deciding that not speaking either Russian or Finnish we’d be useful only for moral support, and not much at that. This proved fortuitous because we’ve been seeing these Russians on board the cruise ship.
We parked and entered the passenger terminal, a large airport-like affair that was surprisingly deserted considering that a massive 11 story cruise liner to Germany was leaving in 45 minutes. We got into line and a sleep deprived employee looked at our reservation and told us that we couldn’t check in yet and had to wait ten or fifteen minutes. No further explanation followed so we waited in the lobby, quickly observing that everyone here appeared to be Russian. I knew this from watching movies and Wilber knew it from living next door to Russia for the past 5 years.
We entered another line and this time we were simply issued tickets without comment. We passed through a row of eight totally deserted turnstyles, save for one belligerent Russia arguing with a giant blond Finnish Tallink employee. I heard the man explain that the boat was delayed for a minor mechanical issue. The Russian, a chubby alcholic-looking man in his forties wearing a skull-and-cross-bones bandana with greasy hair kept arguing with this state of affairs in broken English. Wilber decided to go ask about this situation and indeed the whole state of affairs in this terminal bespoke nothing like what I had been expecting of the departure of a big international cruise line. The employees assured us that the boat was just delayed for a short time and soon all 20 of the passengers in the enormous waiting area were allowed to enter the gangplank. We waived Wilber goodbye and began following a large amalgam of Russians.
The gangplank lasted for almost a half-mile. We passed the huge ship I had thought we were going to board and continued through this elevated glass walkway in the night surrounded on all sides by all the cranes, containers, warehouses, and engines of international sea commerce in a major world port. At last, after navigating many deserted silent corridors, two escalators and many turns, we came to the real gangplank of our ship. A uniformed young woman promptly explained the state of affairs in German and then Russian and the passengers proceded off to other parts of the boat. I asked her in English and she confirmed what we already knew; that the boat was delayed and would leave probably in a few hours, and that we should of course enjoy ourselves at the bar.
We found two small “conference rooms” with airplane seats where we were to be lodged for the duration of the voyage. We shared these dim quarters with a few other men. Rommy and I, nervous about our laptop and other valuables decided to always carry these around with us. We explored the ship and found it to be large but not insanely so because the first 6 levels were dedicated to cars and freight and the top levels to cabins. The cabins had cost 150 euros per person so we had not entertained such thoughts. The public areas consisted of a large restaurant, large 1970s style bar completed with blue neon lighting and small plaid chairs. There were several stores, a children’s room, health club with a Jacuzzi and sauna (not free sadly), reception desk and a small video gambling area. Rommy and I got settled in the conference room and cracked open a dark Czech beer contrary to the no outside drinks policy and quickly began feeling a tad woozy from the subtle rocking motion of the ship. Soon a Russian in a sweat wind suit approached me and began asking me a question. After explaining in English and German that I didn’t know his language he patted me and left.
After our beer we decided to leave our things and go explore the ship some more. We saw a group of men outside on deck smoking and tried to join them. Opening the door was difficult because of a strong pressure differencial but Rommy forced it open and we emerged from the warmth of the ship outside to howling wind and darkness. The lights of cranks, docks, and warehouses surrounded us. The engines of the ship boomed and we began moving, a large black tub boat visible behind us. I felt like I was on the set of James Bond movie, Rommy felt like it was more Titantic than James Bond. The motion proved short lived and we soon settled back to the dock and tied up again. As Rommy returned to the room an loud speaker announced that to apologize for the delays that the buffet dinner would be offered to all for free and so would breakfast the next day. On the way to dinner a further announcement told us that each passenger would also be given a free drink voucher.
Dinner was fabulous. There were at least 10 different kinds of fish, only 30% of which I could identify. Smoked salmon, raw salmon, cooked salmon, sushi, fish in exotic sauces, fish eggs, shirp, steamed muscles, fine meats, artichoke hearts, brie cheese, and all manner of international cuisine awaited our startled eyes. We loaded up and went to town. The dessert buffet was also superb. The dining area was vaguely deserted. As we went to fill up our plates the belligerent bandana-wearing man looked Rommy up and down like a starving man eyeing a big mac and almost fell over from starring despite my glaring presence. Rommy was upset but said that she’d had much worse in Bolivia. True enough. When I went up for a fourth helping I found this lout practically drooling on one of the Finnish waitresses and trying in to chat her up. I imagined that the crew would soon set him sailing off in a life raft.
Much satisfied from our dinner we strolled to the bar where the program promised us entertainment by a “troubadour”. Imagining a man in tights with a lute and feathered cap I was pleasantly surprised by a Finnish Lebowski-looking man who sang some great Johnny Cash covers. Rommy and I settled on drinking a white Russian. That was only after I tried to order a drink only to have it explained that I was looking at the tobacco list.
After the troubadour finished it was 11PM and we still had not left the dock because of this “minor technical issue”. We decided that we might as well try to get a free cabin seeing as how the boat was almost deserted and they were giving away free perks left and right. We approached the Finnish receptionist and I made a very innocent plea to see if this would be possible. Rommy to my surprise added that she was to be sleeping alone in a conference room full of strange men and felt a tad uncomfortable with them. I could sense the pretty blond receptionist immediately sympathizing with Rommy as intoxicated old man waited to flirt with her. “Hmm, let me call and ask”. There was no answer so she told us to come back a little later and ask again.
We retired to the floor of the conference room, took some motion sickness pills to calm our headaches and waited. When we returned she promptly informed us that we could move to a cabin! I kept a very straight face. She explained that we were going to be delayed longer and would probably leave the next morning. At this rate I was thinking it might be OK to just stay at port in Helsinki for a month or two. She took our paper tickets and re-programmed their magnetic strip to open cabin 9206. EUREEKA! We settled into the cabin, infinitely relieved that we didn’t have to sleep on a hard floor for two nights with strangers constantly worrying about our possessions. We slept very soundly that night and were awakened at 9AM by an announcement for the breakfast buffet. At breakfast a slim Finnish youth gestured if he could sit with us and we soon struck up a conversation. He explained that he was just graduating a vocational high school as a mechanic. I surmised that this would be a good career in Finland and Europe where people are rather enamored with their rides. This blond young man broke a smile and explained “I specialize in racing cars.” It turns out that he is none other than the infamous Jesse Krohn, an 18-year old Finnish race car prodigy who had just won the Finnish, Estonian and Scandinavian 2008 Formula 2 championships. He was headed to Germany and France to try out some 600 Horse Power Formula 1 cars and then to Australia for a month of backpacking.
Furthermore Jesse’s father had somehow ascertained yesterday that the “minor technical issue” was in fact a hole in the hull of the ship that had to be welded shut and pumped out. Charming.
The ship has internet and as I write this I’m seated at a window on the bow listening to some 70s groove in the bar.

Dave Interviews Greenspan

2008-10-24T07:37:00.000-07:00

DH “Mr. Greenspan, please put those cookies down, they are not yours.”
AG “Sorry, sorry, it’s a problem I have”
DH “So let’s get started. What has been your reaction to the past month’s credit crisis?”
AG: “Well, it’s been (expletive deleted) tough. When Lehman brothers went under so (expletive deleted) fast I literally (expletive deleted) my pants. Luckily I was in a private cab and my intern took care of it.”
DH: I see.
AG: Throughout my career I’ve always carried an extra pair of pants for times like this so I put them on but (expletive deleted) those as well when AIG went under and got bought by Bush.
DH: Why was Lehman such a shock to you?
AG: Well as you may know I was very close to Obediah Lehman, who lived close to my uncle Zebulon Greenspan in New Amsterdam. I’m pretty (expletive deleted) –ing sure that Obediah would’ve sold his children into prostitution and gone overland to seek prosperity in California had he lived to see this.
DH: Alan, put the cookie down, I can see you.
AG: (expletive deleted) Sorry.
DH: So what do you see happening in the next two quarters?
AG: Well Dave, I plan on carrying a lot of extra pants and perhaps even some adult diapers with me in case any more major investment banks fail. I see Europe being a bunch of (expletive deleted) little (expletive deleted) heads and blaming themselves when really we are at fault. I think Asian will do well because they can bury their woes in video games so effectively, and for the same reason the outlook is bleak in South America where people to have real lives and tend not play video games all day.
DH: And in the next four quarters?
AG: Well we really don’t know, optimistically we could be Stallone in Rocky 6 or the bad guys in Road Warrior 2.
DH: Any final words for the public?
AG: I’m out (expletive deleted) –es.

Obama's Benevolent Socialism Vs. Bush's Malevolent Socialism

2008-10-22T10:07:00.000-07:00

In the past week Mr. Obama has been slandered as a socialist because of his phrase "spread the wealth around". This charge is absurd and offers an insight into the core our American phyche.

America will be socialist as long as it has progressive taxes and capitalist as long as it has free markets & corporations, so we ought not to think of economic model in such narrow terms as socialist versus capitalist, we have been a mixed economy for our entire existence. From Jefferson to Bush, we've been a mixed economy using elements of socialism and capitalism to achieve our goals. What we need to understand is that Bush, Palin and McCain practice malevolent socialism, a reverse-Robin-Hood philosophy of wealth re-distribution from the poor to the rich. I must say that all the major Democrats since Carter, far from opposing this destructive and immoral style of socialism, have bought in, cashed in, clapped their hands and filled their pockets. Obama in even mentioning the idea of a benevolent socialism, of taxing the rich and aiding the poor raises the hackles of average hard working Americans who don't want to feel dependent on government handouts or feel like they're funding such programs with their tax money.

We know how the Republicans pay for their malevolent socialism, with debt rather than taxes. They don't have the courage to pay as they go, to live within their budget, they don't have the courage to ask people to pay their share, instead they max out the national credit cards. Obama plans to pay for the federal budget with American tax dollars while Bush pays for government largess with government bonds IE taking out loans from the Chinese Communists. How do Bush and Co. plan to resolve the financial crisis? God forbid we blaim Americans or expect Americans to pay to keep ourselves afloat, instead, let's put ourselves further in debt to Communist China and whoever else should buy bonds. We have yet to see any major problems with this model but I think that they will soon emerge as we realize that China has all the cash and we have nothing but debt. When we try to print more money China will cry foul and threaten to dump its US dollar reserves, permanently marginalizing our economy and causing rampant inflation.

Bush has recently nationalized some of the largest companies in America and Obama simultaneously plans to increase taxes on the wealthiest 5% of Americans and who is the socialist? Obama of course. And when I say nationalized, Bush again isn't using American tax money to do it, he's borrowing from Communist China, further selling us out to our ideological antithesis. Bush and Obama radical plans to re-distribute wealth; Obama's would help the middle class and Bush's has lined the pockets of America's super rich. So we have a choice between 2 socialists, the Republican fat-cat socialists or the Democrat Dunkin Doughnuts socialists.

So why do we Americans with our socialist education system, socialist agriculture subsidies, socialist medicare, socialist medicaid, social security etc. react with such anger against socialism? I think it's pride. We want to provide for ourselves, be self-made, be fundamentally independent and free. We don't want "the government" providing for us, we want to provide for ourselves. I think that this is an admirable sentiment in the American spirit and something to be valued. Other societies also hold these values, but we all can agree that Americans are particularly vociferious in our desire to be free of any outside control. However, we need to take off our blinders and look at reality, we can't be free and independent if we follow leaders like Bush who structure taxes to re-distribute more to the wealthy and less to average Americans and keep the engines running on borrowed money, selling us out to Communists.

Republican socialism is malevolent socialism, robbing from the poor and giving to the rich, borrowing from the devil and giving to those who deserve it least, hoping wealth trickles down. Even if the wealthy got their money through their own efforts and not off the backs of American tax payers and Chinese dictators, the trickle down theory is fundamentally immoral and undemocratic; it give all the wealth and power to an elite few and trusts this super-rich elite to "trickle down" this wealth however they please. Rome tried this in Nero's times. We need a bottom up economy, where millions of individuals invest parts of their hard earned savings to create the new dynamic American corporations of the future, not the other way around.

If we're going to have socialism in the US's mixed economy let it be Obama's benevolent socialism, where the more you get from America, the more you give.

The King Effect Will Overturn Bradley

2008-10-22T01:48:00.000-07:00

I believe that on November 4th we'll see an opposite "Bradley Effect" that I dub the "King Effect" after Martin Luther King Jr. I believe that in fact more Americans will vote for a black man as President than will admit publically to intending to vote for a black man. Our voting system is anonymous and this is a crucial factor in allowing people to vote their true beliefs. If racism stills exists as a major factor in this election, I believe that it will play in Obama's favor because secretly inside all American hearts we all hope that we have moved beyond racism. In racially divided towns and cities of America, I believe that large amounts of people will vote for Obama while these same people, fearful of neighbors' reactions and social stigma, would not publically support or even answer a phone poll on the subject.

Call me a starry-eyed idealist, but I really think that more Americans will support Barack in the anonymity of the voting booth than in the arena of public discourse. I base this in part on dozens of hours of conducting phone polls for Obama. I encountered all types of people on the other end of that phone-line; Obama lovers and Obama haters, Democrats, Greens, Libertarians, Republicans. I also encountered people who were guarded in their responses and clearly feared that answering a phone poll could in some way negatively affect them. It is these people who I believe will create the King Effect, people who don't want to talk abot their views on race or politics, but I believe are fundamentally optimistic and hopeful people who will vote in a majority for Obama.

As the dust settles on the night of November 4th I think we'll see the Bradley Effect turned on its head by the King Effect. I believe that instead of the race tightening or closing, Obama will win by a landslide of at least 10% probably closer to 15%.

Finally we have a black candidate who is not an overt civil rights cruesader, a candidate who the average white person really can identify with. Barack, far from stirring up racial tension, represents the ultimate unity ticket, a man who can really unite Americans on the issue of race. Obama will perhaps lose some votes to the Bradley's who publically support him but have rotten hearts, but I believe much more in the King effect, whereby voters will choose Obama in the voting booth who chose not to publically support him.

Ryanair, Finland and Kids!

2008-10-13T10:06:00.000-07:00

After a somewhat hectic walk across most of urban Frankfurt Rommy and I caught a shuttle to the Frankfurt-Hahn airport flew on Ryanair on Oct 7th to Finland. We were rather surprised to learn the day before that the so called "Frankfurt" Hahn airport actually lies some 124 kilometers from Frankfurt. This is typical of Ryanair which uses mainly small regional airports to save money.

After our 1.5 hour bus ride we arrived at the small airport and soon boarded the plane. We walked to the plane and were able to board from both the front and back, thus halving the time of the normally slow boarding process. Once in the plane you can sit where you want, so we found an empty row and sat down. Ryanair soon handed out food/drink menus to everyone and I choose a fantastic gourmet italian-looking pizza which when it arrived looked more like a baked slice of bread with spaghettios on top. We arrived at Ryanair's only Finnish destination in Tampere, some 2 hours from Helsinki the capital. I can only imagine the joy among Tampere's miniscule population when they learned that Europe's largest budget airline had chosen them over the vastly larger Helsinki greater area.

The next 2 weeks have been a bit of a blur for us, mostly because we've been playing with Rommy's 2 nieces and her nephew. Eva is just over one year old, Aura is 3 and we just celebrated Aatos' 5th birthday. Wilber (Rommy's bro) always speaks to the kids in Spanish while Lotta (his wife) always talks to them in Finnish. Thus little Aura already can communicate in 2 languages and Aatos is fluent in Spanish+Finnish as well as conversant in English which he learns in day care. All Finnish student in schools are required to learn English and Swedish so it seems that by age 10 the kids will all be fluent in 4 languages. Just like the US....

Rommy and I have recently moved to downtown Helsinki for a week because Lotta's mother is vacationing in Portugal and has offered us the keys to her apartment. We are finalizing our travel plans for Europe. We will take a cruise ship on Oct 31st to Rostock Germany (just 73 Euros for a reclinign seat on this 24 hour journey) and then take trains to Munich on NOV 3 in time to celebrate Obama's victory in style. We'll be in Munich for 5-6 weeks where Rommy is arranging an internship with the the Haufbrauhaus, a famous pub. We plan to travel to Italy for a week or two towards the end of November and then we fly from Munich back to Helsinki Dec 12th to spend Christmas with the family. After Christmas we peace out and Rommy flies directly back to Bolivia while I fly to the US for a week and then down to Lima, Peru to travel overland to Bolivia.

Obama Needs a New Deal

2008-10-13T04:26:00.000-07:00

The Context for Obama's first 100 days:

Bush is passing the torch to Obama soon. What kind of torch is he passing? Metaphorically...Bush inherited a strong American torch made out of sturdy Clintonian oak and after whittling it away for 8 years Obama is receiving a sputtering match. Like Roosevelt in 1933, Obama will find an empire in shambles, a house in disorder and a people desperate for practical solutions to abstracted problems that even the experts don't pretend to understand.

The American people have seen the Dow Jones drop from 14,000 to 8,000 this year and the subprime debacle spiral into a global credit crisis, that if mismanaged, could topple our banking system 150 years in the making. Other nations invested in the US, let their greed blind them to the risks of the Republican "No Rules Baby" financial policy and are now weeping over the results. As European leaders bumble their way into a semblance of cohesion, and Asian nations blink in shock, the world doesn't expect leadership from Bush, they know better. The world and the American people need leadership from Obama and fast.

No president since FDR in 1933 and Bush in 2001 has had as blank a slate for radical change of the American system and organization of American society as Obama. We are in the throes of crisis whose effects have yet to fully trickle down into this fabled "main street" and triple unemployment. This will come soon once major industries and companies radically downsize or outright fail as their net worth and product markets disappear. In a word, Obama is inheriting an American people ready to follow a strong executive leader who offers real programs to stem this crisis.

My ideas for Obama:

1. Stem the financial bleeding:
A. OUT of Iraq and OUT of Afganistan in the first 100 days. Neither is even vaguely important to US security and both are creating more enemies than we're killing.
B. Quietly reduce our conventional military forces by 50%, reduce our nuclear aresenal by 90%. The only new military spending should be in elite special forces and globally ready counter-terrorism squads. We need to be able to take out rouge individuals, not Russian divisions. Abandon the missle shield and any new nuclear research. Increase funding for anti-cyber warfare; as dependence on tech increases the stakes in cyber-war are higher.
C. Rip the rug out from under major corporate subsidies and double the federal budget by making big companies pay taxes. Companies will not flee the US if they believe Obama will restore American stability, regardless of new tax laws.
D. Cut ALL non-humanitarian foreign aid. Cutting unneccessary aid to Saudi Arabia, Israel, Colombia, Europe, Taiwan etc. promotes peace and saves money. Make any continued aid contingent on regional peace-making leadership.
E. Totally re-write American tax law to make our taxes progressive (you earn more, you pay more) and make the new tax system so simple that anyone could read it and understand it in one hour. Dramatically raise capital gains tax and CLOSE tax loopholes for the wealthy.
F. Re-write banking law to favor longterm stability over short term speculation. Increase mimimum bank reserves.

2. Green Apollo Program
A. Launch an extremely aggressive carbon trading regime that will have America 100% carbon neutral in 8 years. This means totally re-tooling industry and business to focus on EFFICIENCY. Shoot for the moon and you'll land amidst the stars.
B. ALL new power generation in the US must be renewable energy, 0% new coal, oil, gas, nuclear. All vehicles must be plug-in hyrbids or equally efficient, especially America's trucking fleet.
C. Am-track on steroids! Employ millions of Americans to lay new rail networks and revamp old lines. Rail is 2000% more efficient that wheeled transport! Create a safe network of high capacity, high speed bullet trains connecting directly to the center of all major cities. Warren Buffet has been investing billions in rail in the last few years.

3. Become Educational Mecca:
A. America is still where the elite of the world send their children to be educated and we need to reinforce our dominance in education by pouring savings from military funding into public education and research from pre-K to PhDs. Quintuple Americore and federal education funding with military savings.
B. Quintuple government research funding for green energy and efficiency rather than killer drones and missle shields.
C. CIVILIAN GI BILL: Offer unlimited free higher education to all in return for 2 or 4 years of government/community service on stipend budget. This again increases employment and helps American workers maintain their highly skilled competitive edge.

Oktoberfest, KLM, and Sausage Part 1

2008-10-04T04:09:00.000-07:00

Thursday I flew from Portland ME to Detroit with Northwest airlines. I made my usual move of asking for "a can of apple juice", thus ensuring I get an extra couple ounces of precious fluid. I recommend this.
The Northwest terminal of the Detroit airport seriously impressed me! It has an underground tunnel with shifting color panels that are choreographed to rather scary classical music, thus making for a fantastic and enjoyable ride on the long conveyor belt for anyone but those with a fear of flying. In the Northwest terminal there is a super slick lightrail tram that runs on an elevated track above the shops that line the terminal, thus allowing people in a rush to avoid long and tiring walks from one end of the 80+ gate terminal to the other. The only thing that this and other terminals lack is free wireless paid for by advertising, they still adhere to a payment based model. Bollocks. Airports should also provided more power outlets in the seating areas.

Once on board the KLM flight to Amsterdam I settled down next to a delightful older German couple whose English was only slightly better than my German, so communication was mono-syllabic at best. Each passenger had a small flexible screen on the back of the seat in front of them and a clicker that allowed me to view on demand any of over 1000 different TV shows, movies, documentaries etc. Free. They soon came around for drinks and I thought I was pretty clever ordering my can of apple juice. "I'm sorry sir but we don't have cans, would you like a glass of apple juice?"
"Eh sure" I replied. Everyone around me ordered wine and I marvelled at these international high rollers. But something was wrong....The stewardess moved up the aisle without having people pay! I suddenly realized what might be going on and pointed at the German couples' two small bottles of Terra Andina Chilean wine, "Free?" "You pay money??" "Nein, ist free"
!!!!!!!Dun Dun DUN!!!!
Thus began the best flight of my life. I hailed the waitress from several seats back, and double checked, "Excuse me, is the alcohol free?" "Yes of course." A cold Heineken was soon in my hands to wash down my roasted almonds, my apple juide sidelined.
I'm not so sure that this is a good thing, but KLM only seems to hire young and attractive stewardesses and stewards. I won't call it a complaint.
The dinner came in a gorgeously presented package, wrapped in the iconical delft blue pottery design. A video on my screen showed me how every single element of the on flight service is sorted and recycled afterwards. The meal came with METAL silverware and of course, more free wine and beer. No ID was asked for as I sipped contentedly. No sooner had I dozed off to a somewhat tipsy sleep and the lights dimmed than it was time for breakfast...and more wine.
Soon we landed at Amsterdam's shipenhol airport and for some reason had to pass through security again to go to other gates. The shipenhol airport is bustling with commerce like no US airport, featuring an in-house shopping center, grocery store, casino, several hotels, liquor stores, massage lounge, banks of free leather recliner chairs and all the usual restuarants and stores. On my last flight I sat next to a Canadian couple and had a final Heineken. The fight was largely loaded with college age folks revving for a big oktoberfest blowout. Before the plane was about to land everyone began asking the delightful stewardesses for an extra bottle of wine, so I got one as a little gift for my friends Ale and Francesca.
I was met by Sicilian friend Alessandro "Alle" Manno with whom I had shared an apartment in Cochabamba, Bolivia a year ago when he had come to visit his longtime girlfriend Francesca who was volunteering in Bolivia for a year. He was accompanied by our Danish friend Marcus who had also lived in the Cochabamba apartment and had just hitchiked in the day before from Denmark. As we drove from the outlying airport to the city I noticed that the autobahn (highway) had a large electronic screen held over the road by metal posts every kilometer and the speed limit was displayed for each lane. The left lane could go 130km while the other lanes the speed limit was set to 100km.Alle explained that the authorities change the speed limits in real time to reflect driving conditions and improve traffic flow. As we were flying along suddenly the sign overhead displayed 60km per hour and soon we ran into a brief traffic jam leading into the city. This electronic system seems ideal for helping control traffic flow, explain road work ahead, and avoid the necessity for people to sometimes slam on their breaks when encountering a hold up.
This system is appartly only found on a wide scale near larger cities in Germany but I believe that it is a far better way to control heavily trafficked area than posting a permanent meta signs with an inflexible speed. In the US we occasionally use mobil electronic signs but nothing on this scale.
A german friend Julia explained to me that when people die in car accidents the German authorities post their memorial photos on billboards visible from the roads and highways warning people to drive carefully.

After dropping my things at Ale's rather nice apartment, we took a stroll through a gorgeous series of wooded walking paths paralleling a river. Within only 80 seconds from Ale's enormous apartment complex we were passing a beautiful german beer garden in the woods with access from a spiderweb network of biking and walking trails. A wide patio overhung with giant old trees shaded the clusters of tables and chairs where locals imbide huge steins and munch on preztels. This is a good life. After following the trails for some time turned out of the woods and walked past the famous beer hall hofbrauhous. Soon we began seeing clusters of drunk and merry youth and we knew we were approaching oktoberfest by the absurdity of their yelling. People were stumbling to and fro, clinging to one another, hiking up their beer-stained lederhosen. As we entered the enormous circus of germanity and lights that is oktoberfest people from all over the world crowded around us from all sides, laughing and jostling. Enormous ferris wheels and rides stood on al sides along with gigantic drinking stadiums with tight lines outside waiting for a chance to belly up inside. The atmosphere was one notch down from total mayhem and anarchy. Odly enough very few police were to be seen as this drunken mass of humanity caroused and generally got so snoockered that any conceivable language or social barrier was broken. At this point I had been about 36 hours without sleep and was mildly hung over from my KLM holiday, so I felt like a strange on-looker and had little desire to spend $12 on a "mass" or the smallest unit of beer (1 liter) available after 4PM.

We ate some hearty brautwurst, weisswurst, and a pretzel before joining a throng of people entering the subway to head home. The Munich subways have no turnstyles and rely on the honor system (sporadically enforced by subway police) for people to buy tickets, so the flow of traffick in and out is very rapid. We boarded the train that pulled up and I was shocked to see that there were no individual cars, but one giant car with various flexible point, so I could walk back uninterrupted past hundreds of people. I had the feeling of being inside one giant moving room or catepillar zooming through the earth. These subway trains without individual cars are apparantly relatively new in Munich.

Palin on Thursday

2008-09-30T21:21:00.001-07:00

Sadly I will be on a KLM flight when Palin botches the debate with Biden but I want to make a few predictions.

1. That Biden will bite her like a rabid dog. He will come out all guns blaring and this debate will be way more aggressive than the McCain Obama debate because Palin will get nasty in return. She has to make this an emotional debate because she will overtly lose any actual debate of policies; the knowledge of which she is totally innocent. Biden needs to be careful to make his attacks purely on policy and not on personality. If he mentions her daughter's pregnancy he's screwed, and being a "loose cannon" I wouldn't put it past him.

2. Palin's ignorance now has nowhere to hide, it will be center stage for an hour and half with no one to coddle her. She can't hide from the cameras and chat with 4th estate champion Sean Hannity. Republicans like Hagel and columnists like David Brooks are going to gnash their teeth as she innocently piroets from verbal cowpatty to political camel dropping. Biden needs to make Palin's ignorance center stage. In the Obama McCain debte Obama at least put to rest any notions that he was ignorant of foreign policy. I believe on Thursday Palin will put to rest any lingering doubts anyone may harbor that she has a single clue what goes on outside of the arctic circle.

3. Biden needs to make this debate about the economy. This is the 9-11 of American capitalism and once again, the Republicans were asleep at the wheel (I don't give the dems much credit either). The Republicans don't care about catching Bin Laden and don't care about corporate crooks and lax regulation. Palin is bereft of any knowledge on these subjects and Biden needs to drive that home. Palin has Alaska locked up for McCain, Biden needs to lock up the heartland.

4. This debate will mark the official end of Palin's vpmilf honeymoon with America. We will realize that we need more than a maverick and a model to turn America around, we need to change administrations. McCain will be sitting backstage grinding his teeth and wondering why he made this maverick move of choosing someone just a tad too clueless. He will feel doubly frustrated because nobody cared that Bush was not an intellectual collusus or foreign policy giant (to put it mildly) but now, when the stakes are getting higher than a Wall St. corner office, people have this vague sense that maybe we need competent people in power.

5** As a side note: McCain, as a 72 year old US male, has a better than 50% chance to die in office (average life expectancy being 75.29 years in 2008 according to the CIA). Following averages he should be dead in about 1000 days. Considering he has a wife worth close to $100,000,000 and access to the best healthcare possible, his life expectancy may be higher, but having had melonoma, been exposed to the chemicals of Vietnam and living a high stress life may cancel the wealth factor.

6**As a super double side note Bosnia and Puerto Rico have longer life expectancies than the US. We rank 46th in national life expectancy placing less than a year ahead of Cuba, Libya, and Equador.

Creativity, Creation, the Creator

2008-09-30T19:51:00.000-07:00

I want to muse on three subjects:

Creativity: This is by no means inbred (people born of cousins are however) in the sense that I believe that anyone can be or become creative. I think that creativity is central to living a real life. Creativity is real, is the most fundamental expression of nature's beautiful evolutionary trend expressed through humans, and thus of humanity itself. Creativity is to is fundamental to controlling one's own destiny rather than being controlled by the machinations of life.

I often ponder what it means to lead a creative life, why it may matter, why it makes us happy, and what creativity is. Creativity is not be confused with originality, which I think is perhaps overrated as a concept. I don't care if an idea is original, as long as the process used to arrive at it was creative rather than derivative and plagueristic (not a word).

Creation: Creation is when we make something, when we build something we affirm the future. Creating is fundamentally hopeful, forward looking, an act not just of survival but of thrival (so not a word). By creating something we say to the world, you may suck but I love you anyway and my creation will now take on its own life. So make something and live!

The creation that is the Earth is the most complex and sacred of all. Why sacred? The scientific odds against life spontaneously forming from the organic soup of Earth force make either accepting or denying this hypothesis a faith-based decision.

The Creator: I know nothing about the Creator but we are all innately tied to a this magical creation that is not so much knowable as feelable (dictionaries stubbornly refute this existence of this word). I care not so much for proving or disproving such a thing as marvelling at life's moments which lift us up out of ourselves into sensing a larger reality, moments of extreme empathy, of chilling deja-vu, of profound discovery. Music charms to the beat of our hearts and life's ceremonies and memories combine to make us spiritual beings that we can neither prove nor deny so much as explore as mariners on a globe of pure water, ever learning, experiencing beauty but never finding the concrete and empiracally knowable.

Knowable apparantly is a word.

Emotion on Wall Street

2008-09-29T20:43:00.001-07:00

I have a question that perhaps you can answer.

Why, on days like today when the Dow fell 778 points losing 7% of its value, do we see photos of emotional brokers going nuts in a feverish delirium?

Obviously because they're losing money. But my question is more this; why is there is much emotion allowed into the actual actions of buying and selling stocks and why are human beings even remotely involved in these transactions? Stock brokering is supposed to be non-emotional and letting one's emotions take over is the classic sign of a poor investment strategy, yet we see it constantly on Wall St.

When things are good everyone is euphoric, clanging bells and acting as if this kind of success couldn't have happened without them. When the market is down traders go nuts as they watch weeks or years of gains erased and go into panic mode.
Why, in this day and age, are humans involved at all in the trading of stocks? Back when pieces of paper had to be handed back and forth I think it made sense to have a stockroom floor with all the hubbub of horse trading securities. Furthermore, why is the disgruntled face of the stockroom floor trader put on the news when Wall St. does badly rather than the people it really hurts, older folks who just saw their retirement savings drop 10% in value?
Call me naive but I really can't imagine why the actual human traders in the "pit" so to speak have not become totally obsolete. When individuals or institutions want to buy stock why not place that order electronically with NYSE and likewise when they want to sell, be it a market sale, limit order, short sale or otherwise. I've never understood why these companies can make insanely complex algorithms to predict market trends and adjust their portfolios, yet they seem to rely on sleepless, greasy, pit bosses and stock jockeys from the 1930s in the digital age. Are these men (no women allowed mind you) really performing some kind of vital task in the buying and selling of stock that computers couldn't do?
Ahh the paradoxes of the digital age.

Mexico is #1

2008-09-29T20:15:00.000-07:00

For Kidnappings. According to a BBC article today, Mexico has overtaken COLOMBIA AND IRAQ, for the most kidnappings per annum of any country ON EARTH. Yes our siesta-happy neighbor to the south is now the most dangerous country for kidnappings on Earth, ahead of Iraq, Colombia and anywhere in Africa, even anarchic regions like Somalia.

In Mexico more than 3,000 people have died in the 10 months of 2008 from drug-related violence. That's roughly the population of my town in Maine. So next time you do that line or smoke that joint, just remember that over 3,000 people have died and many more been kipnapped and countless families torn apart so that you can get you your fix.

Many of us think, "gee those Mexicans have problems" but in reality US demand drives the drug trade and it's not something we want to admit, much less address. Yes, the "war on drugs" was never fought in the US and never will be, because we don't want to deal with the consequences of our rampant drug consumption.

I guess you could also interpret this news as a plug for locally grown drugs or legalization. The merits of both seem worth discussing when the blood or over 3,000 people and the kidnapping of many more gets injected into America's veins and incinerated in America's lips every addicted day.

A Bike Company is Born!

2008-09-29T17:41:00.000-07:00

A Bike Company is Born!

After much deliberation and debate a dream is born! Eric Fitz and I have decided to launch a bike-touring company together!

Our vision is to start small, planning one trip for 2009. This trip will be a two week mountain biking adventure "From the Andes to the Amazon" in Bolivia. Riders will be taken from the snow capped Andes and crystaline blues of lake Titicaca down to the lush vegetable and verdant greens of the Amazon.

Bikers will get the thrills of insane 8,000 descents on dirt roads, challening climbs to soaring summits, eat fresh organic food every day, pass over 30 waterfalls, some several hundred feet in length, and see all kinds of exotic wildlife from condors and blue iridescent butterflies to monkeys and pink river dolphins. However our trip will be radically different from the typical bike tour; our will feature lectures and activities every day designed to educate about local culture and ecology. We will investigate problems of gold mining, rural poverty, language loss and deforestation by meeting with locals leaders involve in these issues. Our goal is for this trip to not just have no ecological footprint (by contributing $ to Amazonian conservation groups we meet) but to help restore and revitalize the economy and ecology of the places we visit and most importantly to educate and inspire our riders.

We are just beginning the planning stages now of this venture but I am more excited than a pack of coyotes when the electric fence loses power.

In the next three weeks we'll be thrashing out a business plan so devilishly intelligent that it may self destruct! After that we'll work on launching a website so fiendishly clever that the google will not be cool anymore. If Somali pirates haven't captured and ransomed us by that point I think we'll be doing very well.

2008-09-26T21:34:00.000-07:00

I finally got my act together and have filmed a brief sketch! Far from the quality of old, this at least gets some creativity flowing and brings me together with the man I love to hate; Bush.

How Obama Should Debate

2008-09-26T19:41:00.000-07:00

I was very disappointed in Obama's debate against McCain tonight and here's why:

The first rule of debate: attack your opponent where they are weakest and focus on your strengths. Kerry failed to understand this in 2004 when he choose to constantly harp on the only issue on which he couldn't beat Bush; war.

John McCain's greatest weakness in this election is the fact the he is a Republican and the Republicans have failed in astronomical proportions in virtually every area that had room for failure. Obama rarely mentioned Bush and McCain in the same breath and didn't do much to target McCain's mile wide weakness: he belongs to and believes in the party that has brought America an 8 year string of un-interrupted greed, corruption, mistakes. They have failed so spectacularly to properly administer the country that both sides acknowledge that we now stand on the brink of total economic collapse. Frankly, Obama needs to remind America that Bush and McCain belong to the same corrupt party and speak their names together in the same breath whenever possible.

Obama also utterly failed to paint McCain as old. This has less to do with McCain's age than with his association with old ideas and policies. Obama needs to consistently refer to the Bush-McCain Repbulicans as "old thinking" "old and tired policies" etc. This is one of McCain's weakest areas and Obama totally failed to associate McCain with the "old ways" "old regime" etc. Debate and campaigning is like chess-boxing you must find the opponent's weakness and keep hammering away at that point.

Barak constantly said "you're absolutely right John" when he needs to be sayings "you're absolutely wrong John." It's all well and good to show respect for one's opponent and show that you can "reach across the aisle" but you have to stand up to attacks and not simply make your debate a string of agreements with your opponent. Obama needs to stand up and rail against Bush-McCain, not simply "talk about" some of McCain's "points" or "issues." Furthermore, I see no point in calling McCain "John," there's nothing worse you can call him than "my Republican party opponent".

Obama needs to associate himself with the Clinton administration's financial savvy. He needs to remind America of the good old days when we had government surpluses, unemployment was low, and America was dominating the global high tech industry. He also needs to mention Kennedy frequently because frankly, the similarities are striking between himself and the figure of Kennedy. McCain was remarkably good at staying on message and repeating some key lines over and over (pork barrel spending etc) while Obama seemed to have no clear message to stay on. He never once mentioned "hope" and rarely talked about "change". He seemed to be verbally juggling much of the time, and latching onto minor points rather than attacking McCain in general. Obama was on the defensive.

Obama made some extremely insightful and intelligent remarks but he needs to think of the debate like a tough game of basketball not like a law school debate. Obama needs to throw some elbows and paint McCain in the worst possible light; a Republican. That is one name brand a a historic low-point and Obama did not capitalize on that tonight.

The most important issue on everyone's mind in America today is not Iran, Afghanistan or even Bin Laden, it's the economy (stupid). Obama needed to refocus this economic mayhem as a Bush-McCain Republican failure. Cutting capital gains tax favors the rich, encourages rampant speculation and day trading, the Bush-McCain-Chaney Republicans have placed cronies in charge of once legitimate regulatory bodies and given these corporate CEOs their every wish and desire.

Obama is not going to win by being more hawkish than McCain and he needs to re-focus the debate on the catastrophic failures of the Republicans rather than their one area of semi-competence; national security.

Obama was too downbeat on America's future. He CANNOT do this. He is the candidate of Hope and Change and in being so needs to uplift and inspire America not drag us down. While McCain was quoting Regan on America's best days being ahead of us, Obama was bemoaning our loss of, well, everything. It's one thing to lambast Bush-McCain Republican failures, but quite another to use depressing langauge about America's future.

Obama needs to cloth himself in the economic mantle of Clinton, the ecological passion of Gore and and the idealistic mantle of Kennedy, he needs to show America that the Democrats are ready to lead and will guide the country though some of its darkest times. He also needs to place the blame for these dark times on the Bush-McCain Repubicans and stop treating McCain like the "Maverick" he wants to be called.

When McCain mentioned the idea of building 45 new nuclear power plants I practically gasped at the opportunity this provided Obama to show how McCain totally fails to grasp the kind of new alternative energy economy that America needs to rejuvenate its industry and energy. He let the chance slip away and instead quibbled about storage of nuclear waste versus building new plants. Obama needs to take a page from Boon Pickens' playbook and show how the "Old Bush-McCain Republicans" have always cow-towed to big oil and opposed massive investment in renewable energy. But no, in fact McCain was the first one to spout out a brief phrase about the subject.

While not a total rout, this was a defeat for Obama. Where can he turn for some much needed passion and aggression in his debate strategy? Look at Biden, the man is like the Muhammad Ali of political theater. I admit he has a penchant to shoot his mouth off, but he loves lambasting his opponents and goes straight for the jugular. I am excited about the Biden Palin debate and hopefully we'll at last see the real reason Obama tapped Biden; because he can throw some heavy punches.

These are all subtle but real issues that disturbed me; Obama was really off tonight. I hate to sound like an advocate of waging the sound byte war, but Obama needs to use smart debate tactics. He even looked more tired than McCain, his eyes rarely opening wide and angrily like McCain's. Where was the lion-hearted Obama of the Democratic Convention so clear and articulate in his delivery? Tonight we saw Obama stuttering constantly and tripping over his words. At times he rose up and really bested McCain but anyone watching the debate knows that these were few and far between.

Abolish Tolls

2008-09-24T20:49:00.001-07:00

ABOLISH TOLLS!

Tolls rhyme with trolls and we are similar to trolls in that we collect our tolls under the bridge for no reason and generally make life horrible for ourselves and others.

Tolls are totally unnecessary in modern society in their current form. They are bad for toll workers health, bad for the environment, bad for drivers’ time, waste gasoline, often cause lethal accidents, and provide one of the least satisfying forms of employment I can imagine.

The only, and I mean only, good thing about tolls is that they are a user tax, as in the people who degrade our highways most pay the most IE heavey truckers and frequent drivers.

I envision a totally different toll booth system that is entirely automated. Congress needs to pass a bill mandating that for any road vehicle in the US to pass inspection in say 2011, it must have a functioning EZ Pass compatible device. Perhaps Uncle Sam could even offer this service free to everyone or at least lower income folks. For those people uncomfortable with linking electronic gadgets to credit cards or bank accounts, the system could simply send them a paper bill at the end of each month.

People screaming about invasion of privacy can do so on their mandatory 911-GPS locator enabled cell phones.

We should offer a sort of GI bill to current tollbooth workers across the nation, helping them find new jobs (ideally with the government to continue their pension) or pay for education. The money we save from their salaries will more than pay for making this transition realistic.

All tolls will now be assessed electronically and photos will be taken of license plates by high speed cameras of vehicles that do not have the mandated EZ passes. We bulldoze and repave all toll booths everywhere, allowing drivers to always go the speed limit. This has already been done successfully in Ontario, Germany and Israel. Texas, the most progressive state on Earth, was the first in the US to use electronic toll collection and is now instating a fully automated radio signal based toll-less highway system.

Wikipedia tells me that tolls were first paid in the notorious Susa-Babylon highway by vehicles of the subjects of the mighty Ashurbanipal. I imagine it was only like $.50 back then.

The amount of Co2 pollution released into the atmosphere by endless braking and accelerating is daunting to imagine. Several ice caps would surely still be hanging on if we had switched to electronic tolls 30 years ago, polar bears and all.

I can only imagine that career toll booth workers develop serious ailments at a high rate from inhaling a constant exhaust cocktail. Delicious. A good statistician could calculate with some accuracy how many toll booth workers on average we are killing per year and how many fewer years they can expect to live on average. Plus, lets face it, the job must get boring as hell. You’re permanently stuck in traffic and asked the same questions all day every day. This is inhumane and unnecessary.

Sleepy truckers who might normally veer off the road and jackknife instead sometimes pile over the unsuspecting bodies of families in small cars. Surely 50-100 people per year or more must die in toll booth related accidents. The US government is knowingly murdering these people when off the shelf technology exists to save these lives.

Tolls are inefficient and often eat up 30% of revenue just to maintain the tolls themselves. Not so for robots. (Until they rise up against us. I believe Swarzennegger is the only elected official with a serious plan to combat this scenario).

The fuel wasted in tolls is preposterous and probably adds a penny or two to gas prices nationwide, throwing yet another anchor upon our economy.

Worst of all, the potentially creative, vivacious, productive hours of peoples’ lives are wasted sitting in ridiculous lines. People get stressed, enraged, irritated, pouty, weepy, bloated, maimed, molested, autoeroticallyasphyxiated etc. waiting in long toll booth lines when they could be doing a host of other things. That’s always what pops into everyone’s mind when they hit serious toll booth traffic jams. I don’t want to speculate mathematically on the damage to our GPD done by tolls over time but the billions of lost hours of productivity are dizzying to contemplate. Especially on the Susa-Babylon where toll booth delays can last for days and drivers are sometimes forced out of their cars and into work gangs for several years if they can’t pay the toll. New York is also this way.

Healthcare

2008-09-24T20:04:00.000-07:00

Preface: This is a short essay I wrote for the New York Times.

PS I actually wrote this for the Falmouth Forecaster and their Op Ed Editor, a Mr. "Mo", says he "might fit it in".

Thank God for Dirigo!

For me Dirigo health care means the difference between success and failure. I pay very little for health care each month yet over 2 years I’ve actually paid more into the system than I’ve used. I am from North Yarmouth, 25 years old, self-employed and in great health. When I graduated college and began freelancing, my healthcare options were stark; go broke paying $600 a month or be uninsured and literally risk my life. Thank God for Dirigo!
I believe that not just low income folks but all Mainers should have access to Dirigo for two reasons: it is morally correct, and good for Maine’s economy.
Dirigo is a tangible moral commitment to help people in need. Christianity and the great faiths are exquisitely clear; we must help heal the sick, especially the most needy. I am very proud to live in one of the only states that honor this spiritual mandate and puts people over profit. Sponsoring Dirigo means the humble are worthy of dignified preventative healthcare, not just late night emergency room visits, and we know that this is the right thing to do. Period.
Dirigo is not just morally correct; it also makes economic sense. Expanding Dirigo provides the chance for Mainers to collectively bargain for healthcare. Imagine the leverage we would have if half a million Mainers purchased together! This would lower premiums for everyone without raising taxes, regardless of what plan or coverage individuals choose. If a healthcare plan through Dirigo costs 30% less than the same plan directly from corporate insurers, most Mainers would want Dirigo.
Maine businesses would save massive amounts of money when employees would no longer need a company plan. Maine would attract scores of business that seek to streamline their labor costs. The goal of business is not to become a health care provider, frankly this distracts from their mission. Plus, Maine businesses that currently employ uninsured workers would suddenly have employees with healthcare, and with healthier workers Maine’s productivity multiplies.
We all know that many people work jobs they dislike just to get health care. Imagine how Maine’s economy would re-structure itself and become more efficient as people began following their true passion in life. If everyone has the option of affordable Dirigo healthcare, people will not fear following their dreams and we will see more innovative business start-ups as a direct result.
Uninsured people are a bigger drain on Maine’s economy than those using Dirigo. Uninsured folks fear going to see doctors for regular checkups and screenings. They deny themselves adequate care because of high costs. So when an untreated issue becomes an emergency, the ambulance, hospitals and doctors get stiffed for the bill on expensive unnecessary procedures. Dirigo literally saves lives by allowing hard working Mainers to receive regular checkups and screenings that otherwise wouldn’t dare see a doctor until it’s too late. Everyone (except insurance companies) knows that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.
As my income slowly increases, so do my premiums and this sliding scale is a system that can work for all Mainers. Evolving and expanding the Dirigo program intelligently is good for Maine’s economy, families, and saves lives. Most of us aren’t doctors and we work full time, so following the spiritual path of healing the sick means supporting programs like Dirigo. As a motivated Mainer fresh out of college I want to thank everyone involved in the Dirigo health plan for helping me get my start in the state I love.

A BLOG!!!

2008-09-24T19:45:00.000-07:00

A BLOG!!!!!!

So here we go, a blog. This blog is to get me writing. I need to feel beholden and obligated to something in some way to write. And writing seems important and rather neglected in my life as of late.
Here is my goal for the next 2 months: write a novel.

dun dun dun!

This blog may serve as a scratchpad for said work, or perhaps a place to write down a number of short essays and stories I've wanted to amorphously share with "the world". I am now also part of the "blogosphere" which I think is something that Al Gore is worried about. It's increasingly alarmingly in size and threatens all humanity.

I've registered for international novel writing month as a way to kick my own ass into writing.

I want to thank Megan Fitz and probably also Tay Wiles for putting me onto this idea of the novel writing month. Or was it all Tay and not Megan? Suspicious.

I also want to thank Oscar Boyson for being an inspiration to me. Oscar exudes a contageous creative energy that I like to suck off. Did that sound homo-erotic? Because it sure did to me.

So this novel seems to be taking shape as a humorous memoir of starting a business and life in Bolivia. Somewhat travelogue, somewhat social commentary, and mostly goofy tales of mustachioed officials. I want to write this primarily because of two main urges within me:

1.This spiraling desire to teach, to educate, to create knowledge, to inspire.
2. To make dirty jokes, vomit jokes, fart jokes, and make people laugh.

I am up against one of the most difficult obstacles I will ever face; my own lazines

To combat this laziness I have a secret weapon of immense proportions; Rommy.

She is not lazy and will brutalize me into writing every day she says. I said on the phone to her recently "I'm planning to write a novel while we're in Europe" and she said "Nooo, you ARE going to write a novel while we're in Europe." It struck me that I was already setting myself up for failure by using weasely words like "planning" and in this she is right; I'm GOING to do it.