Musings on economic philosophy

 This piece is in response to a friend's sending me an e-mail discussion among her family members. I will not mention who that is because I haven't asked her permission to do so. I must say the back in forth was vigorous, but respectful. Would it were so that all families and communities could have such debate. As a reader you will be at a disadvantage from not having read the earlier opinions and definitions set out, but I think you can get the gist off it.

 This is my reply to her:

If I were responding to your family members, I would say that the U.S. economy does not conform to the definition of capitalism, and has not for at least since the Reagan era. What we have is more of a global oligarchy, or what I would call corporatism or corporate socialism. In the examples of the businesses of human services you cite, a free market because cannot exist because there is no free choice. The buyer cannot beware, for the reasons you cited and because government has established rules for conduct in those markets that preclude competition. Obama is not in philosophy a socialist, however he has been branded. Reading his book, "Audacity of Hope" brings one a much clearer idea of just how much of a free market person he is. Even his health care proposals are market based. As a person who could most accurately described as a Democratic Socialist, I find Obama to the right of my beliefs. He espouses the notion corporations should be allowed profit, but that the value of those on the factory floor should be compensated a little closer (than 1:286) to what those in the board room earn. Such was a proposal in AT&T's stockholder meeting several years ago. The problem is that the way corporations work, and the amazingly entertwined nature of corpoarte boards and officers, preclude sanity and morality arising from individual stockholders. Ever more concentrated ownership of corporations globally move capital and labor in ways that no mere mortals can grasp. Witness the recent $700 billion bailout of an industry with up to $57 trillion in exposure. To the vast majority of us, saying those numbers is like a 3-year-old saying 40-11, nonsensical. Even Greenspan admits to being clueless. Profit in a truly free-market economy rewards risk. Salaries and bonuses reward competence and success. What we have done more and more since the mid-1980s is socialize risk and reward. Now they are both meaningless. We keep hearing that such and such a business is too big to fail. I wonder if they are not too big to succeed. The labor side of the free market equation has held up its side of the bargain: productivity has increased steadily as corporations and other economic entities have become more profitable. However, labor has not shared in this benefit. The disparity between the median salary in corporations and executive compensation has grown, literally, exponentially. Because of the global nature of the economy, we have our best educated workers losing engineering and technology jobs to overseas workers and reduced to selling pizzas or finding telemarketing jobs. To replace the high salaries in fueling the ecomonic engine, we loosened credit, over and over. We produced "commodities" out of air, then traded that air, combined it with other air, and traded that. We know now what happens when that house of cards collapses. We are engaged in the first set of wars, ever, in which we did not raise taxes to pay for our defense. Even in the conduct of this war, we are stoking the coffers of global corporations, paying private contractors' employees 10 times more than our soldiers in combat. Instead of hiring out of work Iraqis or U.S. citizens, those contractors are bringing in workers from Sri Lanka, Nepal, the Phillipines. Lots of government money, our money, goes out to benefit no one here but those who fill the corporate boardrooms. During World War II, Frank Sinatra paid 90 percent of his salary in taxes. He thrived financially, and talked with pride about his support of the war effort (Paying taxes is patriotic.) And I believe he thrived opulently in the years after the war. Because of the corporate and governmental excess and waist, stupidity and greed, failure to refree the game, particularly in the past eight years, we face the future with almost no resources, unthinkable debt and foreign challenges. Why anyone would even want to be president to inherit this mess is beyond me. In probably too simplistic terms: We face a future of either tax and spend or borrow and spend. So when we start tossing around philosophical tags like "socialism" and "capitalism" we need to decide if those are concepts that even apply to today's world. We must figure out how we can capture our brightest minds to invest whatever resources remain to produce a future for ourselves and our children. Who offers that kind of hope?

My Sunday column, extension of Palin blog

What did Sarah Palin accomplish in VP debate

Exceeded expectations. Really?

Exactly whose expectations for what did Sarah Palin exceed in Thursday night's vice presidential debate?

"She stanched the bleeding of the McCain-Palin ticket," GOP spin meisters said. "She has re-energized the base."

Liberal pundits said she made no huge gaffes, and neither did Joe Biden and gave the win to Biden.

Associated Press presidential campaign correspondent Liz Sidoti wrote in vapid analysis after the debate: "Joe Biden's job was to attack. Sarah Palin's job was to attack, connect and stick to her folksy script.

"While both vice presidential candidates succeeded in their only debate of the campaign Thursday night, the stakes were much higher and the bar was much lower for Palin. So, in the contest of low expectations, Palin won."

Really?

Let me get this straight: We are in the middle of a recession, which could turn into a full-blown depression. We just spent $700 billion as a down payment on who knows how much to keep the economy from totally imploding. We are fighting two active wars and are in precarious relationships with Iran, North Korea and Pakistan. We have a nearly $11 trillion national debt.

We face a global hunger crisis; genocidal campaigns in Sudan; insecure relationships with Western Hemisphere democracies many Americans don't like; global climate change; recovery from massive flooding along the Mississippi and three hurricanes; 45 million Americans without health care insurance; no consensus on immigration issues or border control; crumbling and inadequate infrastructure; an energy crises. Need I go on?

Given that five of the last 12 presidents first served as vice president and this will be the only time we see these two candidates together before one becomes a heartbeat away from the presidency, I think the American people had the right to expect more than "a contest of low expectations."

What I saw Palin demonstrate was that she could be on a stage without swooning or throwing up, she can read note cards, memorize some lines and cute (if fakey,) folksy lines, and deliver a stinging, rehearsed jab. And "ya betcha" she can smile, flash her dimples, bat her eyes and wink at every cute line as if it's an inside joke between her and the audience. I guess that is a step up from not knowing the titles of magazines or newspapers she reads or knowing what the Bush Doctrine entails. It beats having to come back later with an answer. But she did not debate.

She learned the tactic from her debate coaches of taking any question she didn't like and turning it to a quote from an earlier sound bite about energy independence or tax cuts. But she couldn't think on her feet, at all. She charged that Obama voted against funding for the troops and that was un-American. Biden came back with his charge that John McCain had voted against $1.6 billion in funding for up-armoring vehicles for the soldiers because McCain said the bill involved a timeline. Perhaps there was an explanation of why McCain voted against troop funding, but she didn't give it.

In his strongest moment of the debate, Biden refuted her charge that for a "change" ticket Obama-Biden certainly looked to the past a lot, talking about the failures of the Bush Administration. "Past is prologue," Biden said, and launched into a series of requests to learn of any plans McCain and she had advanced that differed from the Bush-Cheney line, "I haven't heard anything yet," he said. She flashed that deer-in-the headlights look, paused a long time and waited for Ifill to change the subject.

That brings up another point of reduced expectations for this debate. The trend over the past 12 years has been for more and more scripted debates, with more restricted formats every election cycle. Two days before the debate, McCain charged that Ifill was biased because she has just written a book about Obama. Perhaps she should have recused herself. She had a perfect out because she fell and broke her ankle a day or so before the event. Instead Ifill seemed to bend over backward not to confront Palin on failing to answer questions.

In fact, Palin looked directly into the camera and said that she might not answer questions like the moderator and her opponent wanted, but she would speak directly to the people -- an obvious tactic.

The McCain team has so "worked the refs" during this campaign that they have produced the most insipid and opaque vice presidential run in recent history. First they refuse to allow the press access to her. Then they negotiated the "scripted press conference" style for the vice presidential debate. Then they grant recorded, private interviews with selected commentators.

Fortunately for America, Katie Couric stood her ground and although she was polite and asked questions that any relatively bright high school graduate could have answered, she stumped Palin again and again. Will we ever see an actual press conference in public? We deserve to.

Biden's coaches, too afraid he would offend supporters of the gun-totin', wolf-shootin', Cutie Pie of the North, bound him to smile knowingly when he could have pressed points on which he had an obvious advantage, like how the economy works or the stakes of international diplomacy.

I think their job was to tell us how they would run the country and to explain to us how they would solve our real problems. Silly me, I expected substance.

KATHY WILLIAMS is assistant city editor of the Herald Democrat.

Lame, lame, lame

I am totally frustrated with the high-sounding analysis of this ridiculous debate. I say ridiculous because it was engineered into pablum by the format and, as was the case with last week's debate, the weak moderators. I really like both Jim Lehrer and Gwen Ifill, but they seem to have been completely restrained. I don't know if Ifill got threatened because of the way the spin teams struck an offensive blow over a possible conflict of interest with her book, but jeeze, nobody got called on anything.
Why did Ifill not stand up for her questions?
And the talking heads, for the most part actually gave Palin points. With so much on the line with this election — so much that I can't believe anyone really wants to win it — we have a debate between the two seconds that probably drew the largest audience in history — and the big deal among so called journalists (including the AP's presidential campaign reporter Liz Sidoti) is that Palin won or at least didn't lose because she did not fall on her face or cry. Sidoti actually used the phrases "defended McCain's policy" or "drove a wedge between Obama and Biden." That assumes that she was successful. Evidently, it makes no difference that she had no argument, either logical or factual. Others have said that she did what she had to do; she staunched the bleeding; she reassured the right wing of the party. How is this not just the most embarassing prospect that this is the best candidate the Republicans could come up with.
Biden was terrific I thought, if perhaps too laid back. But I thought he gave enough detail to be credible but didn't sound too professorial. I wish there had been someone on the stage with him that he could have laid into a bit.
How has it come to pass that we accept as debate that someone says something; not that they prove it, or present a case for it, just say the words. Incredible. Literally incredible.
This is what I tried to post on Newsvine in response to AP's Liz Sidoti's analysis, but for some reason couldn't get the post buttons to work:
This article purports to be analysis, but there seems to be little understanding of the issues involved. Sarah Palin might have attempted to defend McCain, but she had no facts at her command in order to successfully defend his record. Palin seems to subscribe to the disturbing recent trend among Republican candidates that people should believe what they say just because they say it.
There not only were no details from Palin on any plans that her ticket has to fix any one of the many, complex and horrifying problems the nation faces, she was unable to articulate the issues. She demonstrated a veneer of talking points that obviously had been drilled into her.
This is far too important a moment, this one debate between the vice presidential candidates, to slough off her complete lack of comprehension. She didn't answer questions she didn't want to. She directed everything back to the sound bites and cute, folksy flotsam her trainers have filled her head with. If that didn't work, she bullied the moderator and Biden. They shouldn't have let her, but that was their coaching too, I believe.
I thought Biden, while perhaps not as peppy as Palin, seriously has considered the nightmare that faces whoever wins this election. I do not find it comforting that the person who covers the presidential campaign for the Associated Press, thus most of the newspapers in the United States, has presented us with such a vapid, shallow analysis of this debate. His job was to attack? Her job was to attack, connect and stick to her folksy script? Really?
I think their job was to tell us how they would run the country and to explain to us how they would solve these real problems. Silly me, I expect substance out of the vice presidential candidates and the Associated Press.