Category: Rants

The holiday shopping season is upon us, which means it is now incumbent upon you, the American consumer, to rescue the economy by spending like a PCP-addled Powerball winner. Don't have the money? Well of course you don't. But you DO still have those credit cards, right?

One of your hardest tasks on "Black Friday", aside from maintaining a high state of situational awareness (keep those heads on swivels to avoid being trampled like a Peruvian soccer fan), will be to find the perfect gift for that special wingnut in your life. You know, the Uncle who forwards dozens of weekly emails about our President's uncanny resemblance to the Biblical antichrist, the circumstances of his birth, or his impending plan to beat 10 Marines to death with a Koran every day for the next 2 years. Or maybe you have a little one in your life who you're trying to nudge down the correct ideological path; the gifts you give today can pay huge dividends down the road. When little Billy is in college 15 years from now, snorting drugs off his john's naked back, you'll be sorry you wasted the 2010 gifting season on Sonic the Hedgehog's return. Instead, why not give him a gift that he'll love now and benefit from later?

I'm big on shopping, of course, so I'm here to help you with some tips for the shopping season that I guarantee you will not find elsewhere. Shh! Keep these to yourself. Other shoppers are your competitors, and you want to keep your edge! First, a few general Black Friday shopping tips.

1. For the best 5:00 A.M. sales, anxious bargain hunters will begin lining up Thursday evening. Get the jump on your fellow shoppers by burglarizing the store a few days in advance. Better yet, conduct careful reconnaissance of the store's delivery schedules and hijack the truck en route. Trucking companies are heavily insured and drivers are instructed to offer no resistance.

2. It's too late to bone up on your Krav Maga skills, but advance planning is the key to prevailing in violent encounters in the toy department. Remember that there are no rules in a street fight; an effective tactic is to politely allow a competing shopper to cut ahead of you in line and follow up with a sharp, debilitating hook to the kidneys when his or her back is turned. Sure, they might get that limited edition Barbie, but they'll have to celebrate that victory while pissing Hawaiian Punch for a week.

3. Ignore the fallacious argument that things are cheaper and easier to find on the internet. Let the suckers fall for that. You should be in line at Best Buy no later than 2:00 AM on Friday morning if you want to get this year's hard-to-find electronic items like the Droid or Nintendo Wii. Likewise, the only way to get this year's hot toys is to exchange elbows Charles Oakley-style with suburban cow people in a dimly lit Wal-Mart parking lot in the middle of the night.

That's all well and good, but it leaves open the most important question: what to get? Here are a few trending items to keep an eye on. If you hope to land these popular gifts you need to formulate a shopping strategy now!

Mike hits one so far out of the park that it can only be compared to an old Comiskey Park roofshot from the likes of Greg Luzinski. I can add nothing to it.

Michael Mandel handed glibertarians some first-class wanking material when he wrote a paper arguing that the real problem with the post-millennium economy has been…drum roll… too much regulation. Of course, common sense tells us that the banking/lending industries were, if anything, almost totally unregulated. But it's hard to dispute the hard facts, which Mr. Mandel happily provides:

Wow! Hard to argue with that. Unless, of course, one bothers to peer a little more deeply into those Dudley & Warren BEA numbers Mandel cites:

After all these years of writing, I find few things less useful than pointing out that right-wingers are hypocrites. Sometimes it's fun or instructive depending on the context, but overall it adds little to the public discourse. Pointing out Teabaggers on Medicare, red states dependent on Federal tax dollars, and other similar examples is about as necessary as pointing out that the sun comes up daily. All of conservatism is built on a fundamental hypocrisy: that government is Bad, except for all of the things I want it to do for me. Which I don't want to pay for, incidentally.

Any argument that begins with a caveat like the preceding is bound to have a ", but…" So, that said, this whole Let's Revolt Against the TSA / Don't Touch My Junk thing is so far beyond ridiculous that I'll suffer my own statement of the obvious for a day.

Charles Krauthammer is one of many columnists banging this drum in the last few days, trying mightily to turn irritation at airport security procedures into some combination of the Montgomery bus boycott and the Salt March – not to mention a total validation of Teabagger Doctrine:

Don't touch my junk is the anthem of the modern man, the Tea Party patriot, the late-life libertarian, the midterm election voter. Don't touch my junk, Obamacare – get out of my doctor's examining room, I'm wearing a paper-thin gown slit down the back. Don't touch my junk, Google – Street View is cool, but get off my street. Don't touch my junk, you airport security goon – my package belongs to no one but me, and do you really think I'm a Nigerian nut job preparing for my 72-virgin orgy by blowing my johnson to kingdom come?

WOLVERINES!

Other rants bear overblown titles like "TSA has met the enemy – and they are us" and other such faux-populist nonsense. This is so far beyond stupid that I am not sure where to begin. So let's begin at the beginning.

Look. The TSA was created by these same people who now find themselves in vocal opposition to it. It was born of the post-9/11 fear and paranoia of America's business travelers, crotchety grandparents, and mothers burdened with strollers. Soccer Moms. Late Life Libertarians (?). Knee-jerk suburban reactionaries.

Xenophobic hicks. Whining Baby Boomers. They demanded that Big Government protect them from their fears and brown people (to the extent that the two diverge in their minds). Washington responded with the greatest display of bureaucratic firepower and security theater the world has ever seen. The TSA is everything that the 2002 Yellowcake-from-Niger obsessed American public demanded: a big, expensive show, the primary and perhaps only purpose of which was to make people feel better.

Let's be frank. Any remotely clever person who cared to do so could think of about a dozen ways to sneak dangerous or banned items onto an airplane.
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We know goddamn well that a walk through a metal detector and a quick pass of our baggage through a screening device aren't really going to "protect" us. Sure, it will catch some portion of the potential terrorists, namely the really dumb ones.

But come on. If security is really the goal here, it is not only logical but necessary that passengers be screened – either visually or by hand – for items taped to their bodies. Now that we're at that point, people get pissed.
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This is what you wanted. You wanted security. You demanded it. You wanted someone with a uniform and a badge to reassure your imagination that Osama bin Laden was not going to blow up your 12:35 nonstop from Chattanooga to BWI.

Then again, maybe all we really wanted was the Theater. Or maybe the TSA has always been a huge pain in the ass of the American traveler, but for some strange reason no one felt much like lashing out at Washington over it until their was a CommieFascioMarxist black guy in the White House. Maybe talking about our rights – which we essentially punted on between 2001 and 2008 – is just the lamest, most transparent kind of excuse for people like Krauthammer to grind a political ax. People are irritated because of a new security procedure at the airport? My word, how unprecedented. It must be because everyone hates the government.

I don't dispute that most of what the TSA does is silly and marginally effective at best, nor do I question the sincerity of travelers who say they're annoyed. I guess I just question their timing.

I am not the least bit ashamed to admit, as longtime readers know, that I respect the hell out of a good crook.
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Thieves, burglars, con artists, grifters…I believe that they deserve the punishments they get if caught and convicted, but like many people (judging by the ratings and box office receipts) I admire a good heist. I'm not talking about people mugging old ladies and doing drive-bys.
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I'm talking about Great Train Robbery type stuff. The dude who stole the goddamn Mona Lisa. The Hitler Diaries. Those Brazilians who robbed a bank by digging a 260-foot tunnel into its underground vault while posing as a construction crew at the neighboring building. And despite how disgusting and symptomatic of the decay of our governing institutions it may be, I even have to admire the sheer balls required to pull off fraud on the scale of an Enron.

That said, I am unable to find any art in the lending/housing crisis of the past two-plus years. Rather than being the work of flashy con men with schemes that require as much luck as talent, the great mortgage ripoff is largely the work of sociopathic, overgrown fratboys with no morals (Even the crooks we tend to love on film live by some sort of code, even if only the norms of the underworld) and bloodless Russian and Chinese mathematicians programming the catastrophe as dispassionately as would do their taxes. It's just sad. From every possible angle. In a dream world in which the perpetrators would be arrested and held accountable for their actions we couldn't even fake an "I have to hand it to you, kid, that was one hell of a plan." It's as though we were robbed by a computer.

That's how I have felt since this all began.
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It was not until today that I paused to reconsider my position.

Matt Taibbi's latest, which is lengthy but mandatory reading, focuses on how eager our nation's courts are to help insolvent or federally bailed-out banks fuck homeowners with laughably fake documents standing in for long-ago lost paper trails. In it he briefly mentions a new example of kind of thievery indicative of a born thief – simple, brilliant, and requiring little more than enormous balls to pull it off.

First, a short aside. In my three years in the collection industry, I became well-acquainted with a little known profession called process serving. When someone is sued (for example) they must be served with legal documents that summon them to court and so on. I'll spare you the details, but generally speaking an individual must be served in person by a process server acting within the laws of his state and county. This means that people who can't be found – either by design or by the transient, off-the-grid nature of their lifestyle – cannot have a judgment made against them in court in most cases. Cops serve process (for a set fee) but, shockingly, do a half-assed job of it. Basically they knock on the door, and if no one answers they say the person can't be found.

This is where the private process servers come in. For a fee they can find just about anyone. They are similar to bounty hunters in their persistence and often checkered backgrounds (lots of ex-cops, disbarred attorneys, and so on). The important fact is that they are expensive and the individual who is being served is responsible for the fees. So, in my previous job I always told individuals with whom I spoke, "Look, you can accept this summons voluntarily, or we can have Jeff (our server) serve you. He will find you, and you'll owe us the $300-500 he costs." It wasn't a bluff. Jeff was ex-Special Forces, had a little drug problem, and could find Judge Crater if you paid him enough. Even though engaged in a soulless profession, I tried to be honest with people: trying to avoid service would just end up costing them more.
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Defendants must pay service fees even if they win the lawsuit; that will become important in a second.

Taibbi uncovered an ongoing scam in Florida – probably elsewhere, too – in which banks were making up attempts at process service to stick mortgage holders with a big bill they had to pay even if the bank's suit was unsuccessful. They were telling judges (and the courts were more than happy to buy it) "We tried to serve Joe Blow on ten occasions, and we just couldn't find him. Never home. He was really trying hard to hide from us, the bastard. Here's the bill for $1500." And none of it ever happened.

With all the robo-signing and whatnot, take note of what was happening here: our major lending institutions were using fake process servers to serve fake mortgage documents. That's…incredible. It is so absurd it circles back around to brilliance.

I have a deviant mind, experience with a seedy industry, and a pretty thorough understanding of how hard the law allows financial institutions to ream people who owe them money. Despite all of that, I never would have thought of this in a million years. The people at JP Morgan, Bank of America, et al who concocted this have truly impressive minds for larceny. They are born thieves. My first thought is that it's too bad they chose to waste such criminal brilliance on an industry as dull as finance. Or maybe they recognized their unique gifts at a young age and naturally gravitated toward the industry where they would be in high demand.

Being in political science and watching Election Night coverage makes me feel how I imagine doctors must feel when they watch ER. The temptation to yell, "That's not how it works at all! This is ridiculous!" at the TV is occasionally overwhelming.
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In the end we have to remind ourselves that the viewing public doesn't care if what they are seeing is realistic or accurate, only that it is entertaining. They only care that House comes up with a mystery diagnosis or that Sam Waterston wins over the jury or that the barking pundits explain the election results in unfathomably simplistic terms that happen to coincide with our own beliefs.

Watching CNN's gaggle of idiots – and I do mean gaggle, as there were at least 15 of them rotating through an archipelago of tables while Anderson Cooper was forced to play ringmaster – "explain" the election last Tuesday was enough to drive me to drink. They were absolutely obsessed with thematic explanations and sweeping claims of mandates and referendums.
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A referendum on health care reform. On Obama. On government spending. A mandate for Change. For the Tea Party. For John Boehner. A sign of voters' anger. Or their fears. Or their desperation. Or their impatience. Basically they did what the media do best – vomit a dozen explanations at the camera and let viewers pick whichever they most prefer.

Of course this simple chart by political scientist John Sides provides a more satisfying explanation of the results than any lame (and inevitably inaccurate) attempt to read the minds of voters could:

So here's your explanation. Democratic House candidates in districts where Obama received less than 55% of the vote in 2008 were more likely than not to be defeated in 2010. In districts in which Obama got more than 55% in 2008, Democratic candidates were almost unanimously safe this year. Why? Most likely because turnout fell 18-20% compared to 2008. Some people who showed up just to vote for Obama did not show up again, and some people who voted for him decided to vote Republican this time. How hard is that to explain?

Oh, I forgot. We need a "mandate" or some dreck about voters "sending a message to Washington.
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" I am reminded of my mentor who once said that elections are to Americans what the Oracles were to the ancient Greeks; everyone agreed that the Oracle was the voice of a god, but only some admitted that its messages were not as intelligible as might be desired. Rather than admitting that we don't really know what was on the minds of the 100,000,000 people who voted or sticking to an analysis of the numbers, our brave media insist that they alone possess the power to read the Oracle clearly.

Personally, I believe that the argument in Sides' data is an adequate explanation of the outcome inasmuch as one is necessary. But for those who need the grand explanation, the sweeping conclusions drawn from limited data, the themes that allow us to boil elections down to slogans, I humbly submit the following. The 2010 midterm elections were a mandate for the new GOP sorta-but-not-really majority in Washington. The American voter has clearly demanded:

1. Social Security reform that guarantees my current level of benefits, alters someone else's, and cuts everyone's Social Security taxes to boot.

2. A world-class national infrastructure that can be built and maintained without tax dollars.

3. A balanced budget that doesn't sacrifice any of the government programs – especially the sacred military-industrial complex and the various old age benefits – that we like.

4. Clean air without pollution controls, clean water with a neutered and underfunded EPA, and businesses that do socially responsible things without any regulation whatsoever.

5. Consumer goods at Made in China prices that create high-paying jobs in America.

6. Giant trucks and SUVs that drive like Formula One race cars, look cool, fit into small parking spaces, cost under $18,000, and get the fuel economy of a Toyota Prius.

7. Complete freedom and complete security at the same time.

8. An America that acts like a swaggering, sociopathic asshole on the global stage yet is beloved by all the nations of the world.

9. Wars against every enemy, real or imagined, all of the time, with no U.S. casualties and no effect on the budget.

10. Incredibly rich and rewarding professional lives while supporting our employers' right to do whatever they want to us without recourse.

11. A vibrant, consumption-based U.S. economy with good jobs for anyone willing to look for one resulting from free trade policies that encourage money and capital flows to cheap labor markets.

12. A highly educated workforce produced by a school system that requires no tax dollars to achieve excellence, students who have no interest in learning, and a virulently anti-intellectual society.

13. Closed borders and an endless supply of cheap labor to keep prices low.

14. To buy whatever we want irrespective of what we can afford while maintaining the drumbeat of personal responsibility.

15. Health care that is cheap, superior, and readily available to me without the danger of the same being enjoyed by anyone I deem undeserving.

It couldn't be any clearer: we want a government that will resolve every problem we currently face with solutions that require no effort, no sacrifices, and no money. And I have no doubt that we have elected a group of people brave enough to promise exactly that.
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The tiny flame of optimism deep within my bitter core is kept alive by the infrequent occasions on which common ground can be found between people of radically different ideological bents. This is rare, even though in a functioning democracy it should not be. We should all be able to agree on the basic principles of our system; that the law should be applied to everyone fairly, that elected officials should be held accountable regularly, and, perhaps most importantly, that we are a nation of laws and not mob rule.

I struggle to think of an idea responsible for more historical wrongs than the half-assed populist assertion that the distribution of rights (i.e., the application of written law) should be carried out by a show of hands. In other words, courts should make decisions based on what a majority of the country wants. Thus if segregation is sufficiently popular, its blatant unconstitutionality should be overlooked. If gay marriage is unpopular, the role of judges should be to construct legal rationalizations against it. If abortion contradicts your moral code, the Supreme Court should be stuffed with ideologues until the relevant laws are struck down. If everyone is afraid of brown people in turbans, the legal system is obligated to agree that anyone caught up in the ensuing witch hunt has "no rights which the white man (is) bound to respect."

Only partisan hacks subscribe to this kind of logic. That is, only people whose principles are limited to agreeing with whatever their ideology or party says on a given issue are willing to advocate for such a system irrespective of the fact that any remotely educated understanding of the Constitution, our government, or the attitudes of the sainted Founders precludes it. Oddly enough, a correct understanding of civil libertarianism – not Glenn Reynolds/Megan McArdle "libertarianism" that provides a glib echo chamber for GOP talking points – brings the far left and right together in opposition to this kind of nonsense.

You can imagine how rarely I find myself in agreement with someone named Allahpundit, but the former Michelle Malkin employee has, to his credit, actually read enough to understand the traditional conservative position on the role of the courts. So rather than making this a left-right issue, it appears that this is an issue dividing people according to their ability to distinguish their asses from a hole in the ground. He states, regarding the failed retention bid of three Iowa state Supreme Court justices who allegedly were "pro" gay marriage:

Everyone wants courts to be independent enough to issue unfavorable rulings that the majority might not like; it’s the only way to protect minority rights, after all. But then, everyone (or almost everyone) also wants courts to be accountable somehow so that they’re not tying the majority’s hands with nutty extraconstitutional rulings. Iowa’s solution: Let the governor appoint supreme court justices but put each one to a “retention” vote every eight years. That’s a nice long period of time during which they can rule however they want without worrying too much about elections, followed by a referendum by the public on how they did. A happy compromise! Or … not so happy? (…)

One potential problem with the “retention” framework is that it doesn’t insulate judges from popular referendums as well as it purports to. For instance, the gay marriage ruling that got these three tossed was actually endorsed by all seven justices; the next one will be up for election in 2012, and may well be looking to “atone” somehow in his rulings before then if he gets the opportunity.

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That’s inevitable in a system where judges have to face the electorate at any point, but like I said up top, it comes at the price of total independence. (Imagine how desegregation rulings in the 50s might have differed if federal judges couldn’t rest easy in knowing that they had lifetime tenure.)

He is even astute enough to point out that any system that elects judges outright – as many states do for local, appellate, and state Supreme courts – might as well not even have a court if voters' criterion is, "Do I agree with the outcomes of the cases he/she decided?" At that point it would be cheaper, easier, and more efficient to simply decide how the law will be interpreted and applied via internet polls and AM radio call-in shows. The Founders were smart enough to insulate Federal judges from the whims of public opinion once in office; unfortunately few states followed their example.

Electing a judiciary works if we assume the best of voters, assuming that they will choose judges based on competence and fairness rather than ideological or single-issue litmus tests.

In reality, it cheapens the law and causes our system of checks and balances to collapse.

Legislatures are conduits of public opinion. Courts exist to apply the brakes when public opinion demands things that contradict the basic legal principles of our system.

The still-anonymous (after all these years, no less) Allahpundit is probably against gay marriage while I am for it. But he/she understands that we are not supposed to be choosing judges based on whether they agree with us. Americans believe (or claim to believe) that justice should be blind, impartial, and consistent, yet they elect and reject judges using crude and uneducated opinions as a litmus test. It is to some extent a slippery slope argument, but one does not have to be a full-fledged alarmist to see the dangers of a judiciary that panders to the preferences of people fervently committed to a strange, imagined version of the Constitution and totally ignorant of the real one.

Clint McCance, an elected board member of the Midland School District in the Arkansas Ozarks, does not like the gays. Thanks to some timely screen caps forwarded to The Advocate, the whole world is now aware of his colorful opinions on the subject. I'll quote him at length in just a moment.

I am but one of hundreds of bloggers who will express outrage at his opinions, although I will say little in terms of his "argument" because it is so self-evidently stupid.
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You do not need me or anyone else to tell you that this guy is a bigot and a dickhead.

What is not likely to be discussed, and what bothers me almost as much as his anti-gay ranting, is the fact that someone who is on a school board (and thus making decisions relevant to the education of our next generation of adults) writes at something approximating a 6th grade level. Here, Clint, let me grade this for you:

Seriously (sic; missing comma) they want me to wear purple because five queers killed themselves. The only way im wearin (sic) it for them is if they all commit suicide. I cant (sic) believe the people of this world have gotten this stupid. We are honoring the fact that they sinned and killed thereselves (sic) because of their sin. REALLY PEOPLE. (…)

No because being a fag doesn't give you the right to ruin the rest of our lives (sic). If you get easily offended by being called a fag then dont (sic) tell anyone you are a fag. Keep that shit to yourself. I dont (sic) care how people decide to live their lives. They dont (sic) bother me if they keep it to thereselves (sic). It pisses me off though that we make a special purple fag day for them. I like that fags cant (sic) procreate. I also enjoy the fact that they often give each other aids (sic) and die. If you arent (sic) against it, you might as well be for it. (…)

I would disown my kids they were gay (sic). They will not be welcome at my home or in my vicinity. I will absolutely run them off.
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Of course my kids will know better. My kids will have solid christian (sic) beliefs. See it (sic) infects everyone. (???)

Yep.

When did it become acceptable for adults to communicate with one another like this?
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I don't suppose we should be surprised that someone with attitudes like this would turn out to be…
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well, not that bright, but no matter the content of one's message it continues to shock me how much difficulty we have making ourselves understood in some approximation of English these days. I realize that the average Northern Arkansan is unlikely to take great offense to McCance's remarks – hell, the majority probably agree with him but are smart enough to keep it off the internet. Nonetheless, I think we can raise the bar just a little and find someone who can construct a profane, ignorant rant that does not read like a 14 year old's YouTube comment.

(Again, not to downplay the offensiveness of his opinions. I just can't believe how stupid we sound irrespective of the substance and content.)

Not known for its hard-hitting reporting these days, 60 Minutes actually has quite a heartbreaking piece up about people who have been on unemployment for 99 weeks with benefits set to expire soon (aka "99ers"). It introduces us to the usual cast of Great Recession characters – the former six-figure management type reduced to trips to the soup kitchen, the comfortable middle class people foreclosed and living in cars, etc.
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– but takes the extra step of pointing out the amount of education and supposedly relevant skills possessed by some of these long-term unemployed. People who have Ph.Ds or Master's Degrees in high-tech fields are exactly the kind of people who aren't supposed to be unemployed. In fact, the less educated unemployed are lectured at length about how they would not be unemployed if only they had acquired in-demand skills in high-tech fields. Yet they're standing next to one another in the same unemployment line.

The jarring part about their shared story is the long, painful process of adjusting their expectations downward.

People who are gainfully employed and/or highly educated, when laid off, are likely to feel as the interviewees do: "Six months, tops, and I'll have a new job." The idea that 99 weeks – two years – and five hundred applications could pass without a job offer is difficult for people to grasp when they have done All the Right Things for their entire professional life. They've worked hard, they've been flexible, they've continued to acquire training and education, and they've been some approximation of responsible with their financial decisions. Surely, given 99 weeks, something will come up.

Well, no. Something won't. More accurately, when something does come up there will be 500 applicants for every open position, causing the odds of even the highly qualified to approach zero. I empathize with their plight, although I am terribly fortunate to have gainful employment (temporarily) while I search for a job relevant to my education. If I could go back three years and tell myself I would be on the job market for three years – and hey, let's just assume there will be a fourth – without a job offer I wouldn't believe it. Not that I think I'm hot shit (on the contrary, I understand that I am ordinary, unheated shit) but the odds that something wouldn't come up in three years? Implausible. Yet here we are. Like the 99ers, I am faced with the mathematical reality that every position for which I apply is getting 200-300 other applicants, all reasonably to supremely qualified.
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At absolute random my odds would be about 0.3%, and given the fact that the process is not truly random – surely the Harvard and Stanford folks have better odds – my chances aren't even that good.

What can one do in this situation except continue to apply and get used to the reality that we'll soon be working service industry jobs that barely require a GED? My "99" will be up soon enough when my current position expires next year. I'd like to think I won't be picking up groceries from a food bank or cleaning the bathroom at Target, but I bet the college graduates doing that all over the country these days felt the same way right up to the moment when reality won out.

I understand the urge to blame the unemployed for unemployment. It's easy, and in some cases it even makes a sliver of sense. What I don't understand is how we can continue limping along in a system that turns employment into a PowerBall-like crapshoot irrespective of how many whiz-bangs and postgraduate degrees our demoralized workforce manages to acquire. The longstanding goal of conservative politics and economics is to create an America in which the top 5% of the population has phenomenal wealth while everyone else makes $9/hr with no benefits. They've been waiting patiently for their utopia since the 1970s, so I don't suppose that making them wait an extra 99 weeks is a big deal.