Was it Worth it?

On the radio, they were talking about the post-mortem of this election, and what needs to be done going forward. One thing that was mentioned was something I've spent some time thinking about, and that is how we vote our priorities. One woman was saying exactly what I've experienced. Things that are absolute show stoppers for some people, such as being undoubtedly racist, are not show stoppers for others. In essence they are willing to tolerate certain shortcomings for other benefits. For example, when I mentioned Trump is absolutely a racist, after some dodging, my CEO began to counter with tax benefits for business... so trading civil rights for tax breaks. In my mind that doesn't compute, and I think framed in that way, it probably wouldn't compute to most independents either.

Yesterday, I listened as the mayor of a small town in Pennsylvania was talking about Trump. He supported Trump, even though he knew he was blowing smoke, and couldn't revive the town through steel manufacturing again. He said the mill used to employ 8000 people, but with modern technology can now produce the same amount of steel with only 400 people, and there just isn't a market for 20x as much steel without crashing the price. But he argued that trump could bring other manufacturing into the town, for example have some of the suits and ties Trump manufactures in Mexico manufactured in his town... So he is voting to elect this person who has been an active and willing participant in outsourcing American manufacturing, under hollow promises of the unachievable, in order to maybe get manufacturing contracts that certainly do not require the authority of the Oval Office to be had. Trump the business man could make that happen immediately if he wanted to. Why would he need to be president to make that happen? In exchange for what is readily attainable from any civic-minded businessman, he is ready to risk the rest of the US economy.

These tradeoffs don't make sense, and it's not just those who voted for Trump. My fellow wannabe revolutionaries who voted third party are not going to get a vibrant third party from this. The DNC who pushed their candidate to the front clearly didn't win from this. Anyway, to get back to the title of this post, what I think is important, regardless of who's in office, is the measurement of success. In a perfect world, candidates would make promises, tell you how success of that promise ought to be judged, and the next time they're running, they should be judged based on that success or failure. That is WAY too boring to be impactful, but I was thinking it's time to plan ahead for an ad campaign along those lines. What I envision is a documenting of the state of the country before and after Trump's first term. Show me how many of these little rust-belt towns look like before and after. Show me agriculture towns, show me energy towns, show me border towns, show me the border, show me homeless encampments, show me highways and infrastructure, show me Detroit, Chicago, Pittsburg, etc. Then juxtapose the promises with the realities. Show me the statistics of our debt/deficit, unemployment, median income, stocks, value of the dollar, credit rating, health care coverage/costs, terrorist attacks, police shootings, prison populations, foreign relations, foreign trade. Maybe some things go right, and some things don't, but before we wait and see, let's start documenting, and knowing what to look for. And who knows, maybe everyone will be pleasantly surprised, and all we will have given up in exchange was the dignity of the POTUS twitter account.

Whose Fault is this?

Now more than 24hrs past the Trump election, and all my Bernie people are blowing up the internet with accusations blaming the DNC for pushing Hillary to the front. I'm pretty sure that is scapegoating. I seem to recall a lot of very doubtful liberals who thought Bernie was a risk, and considering the clowns the Republicans were running, were very risk averse. People played it safe and voted for the status quo candidate. Obama is the first president leaving office in a good enough position to help his successor since Reagan, the economy has been steadily improving, so why not, right? The DNC may have chosen its side, but so did the Democratic voters as a whole, and I firmly believe it was the wrong choice. Even if Hillary WON I'd probably say it was the wrong choice, just 4 years later.

We officially reached a tipping point this year, where the disconnect between Democrats and its blue collar working class was too great. The maps tell the story, where all the Dems in the big cities were happy to vote for the status quo, while the blue collar workers had clearly had enough. It reminds me of Israel and Palestine, where the status quo is comfortable for the guys in charge, but means the steady degradation of life as they know it for the subjugated. It's a bit extreme, but is that where we are now? Did the blue collar labor unions vote for someone who himself ships jobs overseas and circumvents unions, just because they don't know any better? Or were they willing to take their chances on someone who was at least making the promises they wanted to hear? If that's where they are, I don't blame the red states for going Trump any more than I blame Palestinians for fighting back against Netanyahu. I have no doubt at all that things would have been a hell of a lot worse than they are now if the conservatives had control during the recession, and I can certainly support that claim. But how disparate are the metrics we use to measure our success from the reality of towns where the median income is maybe only $30k? People living in poverty probably don't care about your positive GDP and unemployment rates.

I've been sharing this Robert Reich talk, because it's a great insight on where we were just before the election, but in it he talks about this divide, and how to cross it. He recommends starting the dialogue, but how do you even have an intelligent conversation like this? I had this conversation with my CEO, and among the responses was, "what about the 40 people Hillary killed?" And she wasn't talking about Benghazi or any less direct deaths. I had to look it up later, she meant the conspiracy theory that literally anyone who's died in the last 30 years who had any connection with Hillary was killed BY Hillary... stunning. How do you even have that conversation?

The conservative outlets have been stoking fear and racism, and reinforcing ignorance and stupidity, ushering in the post-factual era in which we apparently now live. Trump is the very pinnacle of this post-factual era. There are countless examples, my most recent favorite is not a poignant or meaningful one (of which there are many), but it is entertaining. This video is of Donald Trump's account of Obama handling a heckler at a Clinton rally, side by side with what actually happened. My first reaction was that maybe this was a fake video, and Trump was referring to a separate incident... I could find no evidence to support that. But it can't be real, right? Why even go out of your way to make up such a lie? Especially if people are actually going to "take a look" as he suggests, only to find POTUS handling a situation unbelievably generously. It just doesn't make sense... until you read the comments. Apparently Trump supporters, even when seeing the evidence side by side, eat up the lies. It could've also been played side by side with a video of Trump's response to hecklers at his own rallies, especially the one where he kicked out one of his own supporters, whom he mistook for a heckler. I see these things and wonder, "what fucking planet do I live on?"

Anyway, I digress, and will wrap this up. I think the points I was trying/failing to make were that 1) the DNC is a convenient scapegoat, 2) maybe Trump is not simply the product of ignorance and racism, but rather desperation against the status quo... and ignorance, and 3) the post-factual era probably needs to be ended before the gap can be bridged.

Tribal Thinking

I was listening to a radio show about Latino voters, and one line about appealing to Latinos really stuck with me. On how second and third generation immigrants tend to lean conservative, but find many of the priorities of the party are not necessarily that important to them, the guest said something to the extent of, "A reduction of the capital gains tax is not why immigrants come here." Very simple, but it made me think.

That simple statement suggests that if you want to appeal to immigrants, or anybody else for that matter, your agenda should prioritize that which they love about America. I believe immigrants come here to escape corruption, to find opportunity, to earn a living, and for a safe place to raise their families. Furthermore, their conviction on these matters has caused them to leave behind everything they once knew, and take a chance on the idea that it exists here. That is powerful. The speaker made a good point, that those values should be within the wheel house of a conservative party, but they get bogged down in special interests, or more dangerously, in the nationalistic alt right agenda. If the Republican party could stick to the values that really make America great, that would be a huge step forward.

The corollary to the statement, "politicians should appeal to the reasons why we love America," would be that citizens should champion the causes that they love about America. Again, an obvious statement, but it brings me back to another prominent idea -- that of tribal thinking, where you believe everything your particular tribe believes. For example, if your tribe happens to be the Christian tribe, maybe you are against abortion, in favor of public prayer and references to God, and resistant to the LGBT movement. The natural party alignment might be to Republicans, and you might "tribe think"  your way into believing in trickle down economics, that global warming is a hoax, that Mexicans are stealing your jobs, etc.

Being a liberal, I have my own set of tribal beliefs -- an unbiased justice system, defense of the constitution, rehabilitation over punishment, quality education, getting money out of politics, protecting the environment, pushing back against corporate pseudo monopolies, and playing a less aggressive role in global politics, etc. But what are the things that I "tribe think"? It's a little harder to identify, because I have to ask myself, "of the things I really do believe, which are the ones that come from the inside out, and which come from the outside in." It's tough, and maybe a little scary.

I believe in having social safety nets, but do I really believe they are too weak right now? Probably not. The LGBT agenda seems completely foreign to me upon inspection. I believe people have the right to live the lifestyle they choose, but I do think it's a choice, or at least a learned behavior, and the science seems to back up that position. Sure, I have friends that I would say I knew were going to be gay, who had the same upbringing as a straight kid, but we are not computers which you can plug in a program and expect a particular outcome. Same inputs do get different outputs, which is not to say the output is in some way not a function of the input. Then the co-existence of transgender and gender equality beliefs makes no sense to me at all. If two things are equal, and you are one, why insist that you are really the other? Transgender to me is an interpretation of gender roles in society making the distinction, and deciding you are the other, rather than accepting that those attributes can belong to either gender. What's wrong with just being a feminine man or a masculine woman? Isn't deciding to be the other gender an act of reinforcing social stereotypes about a gender? I have these thoughts,  yet would gladly vote to support their rights, I think because that's what my tribe does.

There are other examples, but in the off chance someone actually reads this, I'll spare myself the further shame of putting all my private thoughts on the internet for the sake of illustrating this one point. It is an interesting exercise I'd encourage everyone to try. A good place to start is to ask yourself which of your beliefs come directly from meaningful personal experience. I would argue that if you agree with everything your political party believes in, and don't think any of it is tribe think, you're not thinking hard enough. Be aware of the causes people are really championing, not just tagging along on, and align yourself accordingly. And if these causes are truly important to you, you owe it to yourself to ask whether the person you vote for is genuinely pursuing policies that reflect your innate beliefs.

Quote of the Day: My CTO, Shuming, said something to the extent of, "Everything is a gift, your whole existence is a gift. Believing this will make you more patient and happier"

Citizens United

At the SVGOP meeting on Wednesday, the topic of Citizen's United came up. A person in the audience asked for an explanation of it, and a gentleman named Charles gave a brief history of it which made it sound far more reasonable than I'd ever heard it explained before. He said basically that regulations had been put into place to limit campaign contributions, which spawned the creation of PACs and Super PACs. Because these groups were independent of the campaigns, there was no limit on how much money could be donated that way. The Citizens United decision basically reaffirmed the legal right for those groups, corporations, unions, etc. to spend as much they wanted, and to be vehicles for unlimited donations.

Being an Occupy/Bernie Sanders guy, I lean strongly the other way, and had to re-examine my beliefs. You could make an argument that PACs should be made illegal, then it would be up to individuals to spend and say what they'd like directly. I don't think limiting the privilege to outrageously wealthy individuals is preferable to limiting the privilege to unions and corporations; then it would just be the Kochs making ads. You could try to limit contributions based on the type of ads produced, but where is the line between political ads and public awareness campaign? You could say money is not free speech, but then the only wealthy people who do the brainwashing would be Rupert Murdoch and Ariana Huffington who do it as a business; is that any better? Could go the way of the alcohol industry, which doesn't allow consumption of the alcohol to occur on tv. It's a bit absurd, but you could make it illegal for non-campaign groups to mention or show specific bills or candidates, limiting them instead to conceptual descriptions and allowing voters to decide for themselves. That idea's maybe not terrible, but seems mighty heavy handed, and would lead to some probably absurd and confusing ads.

I'm used to arguing that money shouldn't be equated to free speech, and I still believe that not all things should be for sale, but that too could be re-examined. It is unfair that the average person is unable to have the same influence as a wealthy person, but does that mean the wealthy should be handicapped to the level of the poor? It's also unfair that mute people can't physically speak at all, but does that mean we should all be handicapped to the vocal powers of a def person? We're not all educated, should we be limited to the vocabulary and sentence making ability of a Donald Trump? Life isn't fair, and never will be. Maybe focusing on freedoms rather than fairness is the right way to think about it. If that's the case, at this time, the only thing I can think to do is to outlaw the purchase of specific things, and maybe types of ads should be one of those things. How effective are those anyway? I would imagine it's mostly the ground game of a campaign that makes a difference.

What do other countries do? I know some countries only allow campaigning and advertising in a single month. I really like the sound of that, but I have no idea how they enforce the rule. It seems incumbents would really be handicapped in that case.

Democratic Fascism

Need to do WAY more research to support these ideas, but wanted to scratch some down while they're fresh in my mind.

I've been watching my KPFA gift DVDs (Capitalism and Untold History of the United States), and now have a reading list about a mile long. Right at the top are Adam Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments, and Karl Marx's Das Kapital. From what I gather, Adam Smith's faith in capitalism's ability to succeed was in the context of certain moral values that would ensure that as capital accumulates to the rich, they would in turn use it in a way to benefit society. Marx apparently believed capitalism would lead to massive inequality and collapse on itself once it came to a breaking point.

I'm coming to believe that the pre-requisites for Smith's beliefs are untenable. The more mature an industry, the fewer competitors there will be, the larger the companies at the top will be, and the richer the men at the top will be. This much seems inevitable. So then what? In America, those with money buy power, and use that power to expand business all over the world. So the prevailing system of government in the US seems to be democratic, imperialistic fascism. But doesn't that seem the most probable outcome? What are the odds of having some sort of absurdly benevolent and altruistic upper crust of society that has a deep understanding of the needs of those beneath them? Why would we expect anything other than what we currently have?

It would seem Marx's answer to capitalism has been destroyed by history by those who did not really implement "true communism" -- Mao and Stalin. But as much as they did not adhere to Marx's beliefs, neither did our leaders adhere to Smith's, and we got fascism. So obviously, strict adherence to ideals cannot be the answer, because there will always be greed, corruption, and barbarism to tear these ideals down.

The answer to corruption in our formerly capitalist society was to have democratic checks on power. But as the rich get richer, their influence over those checks grow. Major corporations own the media, own the politicians, own the justices, and own our money. The system of checks and balances is broken. And it again seems improbable to expect any other outcome. To go one step further, there were never any checks for those on the other end of our military conflicts. Attrocities commited overseas can only be stopped by a critical mass of us at home a) knowing about it, b) caring about it, c) doing something about it, and finally d) successfully stopping it. EXTREMELY difficult and slow --  ie:Vietnam and Iraq.

What to conclude? We need to either create another answer to capitalism, as Marx did, or find a way to make fascism livable. If we go the route of the former, there would have to be a revolution here, which I do not think will happen so long as we're the dominant country. So I think it's time to explore how to put checks on fascism to make it livable... ?

What goes into the sausage

So this morning I saw the headline, "botched execution results in inmate's accidental death," and my first thought was, "Huh?...did they accidentally kill the wrong guy??" No, the story is a little stranger, and disturbingly highlights the peculiarities of human sensitivities. They got the right guy, but the reported horror of this story is that the man died in 40mins rather than 6mins, and reportedly suffered for that time. Sure, I can understand how that would be horrific... but is it really that much more horrific than when things go right? I really have very little opinion on the death penalty, because what would I know? But here's my general impression of what we as a society have accepted is a reasonable practice: some 6-12 people, who've never met the guy (could be a gal, but I'm going to keep writing in the masculine form), decide whether he is to be killed, based on the arguments presented by two parties whose sole responsibilities are to win, regardless of their own moral apprehensions. Then if found guilty, the man is strapped to a table in front of a live audience, for which there is a specific guest list, and murdered... gently.

I can understand thinking the whole thing is horrific, and I can understand thinking it's all very well justified, but what I can't understand is how those who find the whole practice to be generally acceptable would find it SO much less justifiable for the man, who is apparently too evil to live, to suffer before dying. I listened to a reporter who was present at the execution give her sanctimoniously appalled account of events, and the only thing I could think was, "...and your chosen career path is to watch people be murdered...?" Then some other expert came on talking about how offensive it is that in some executions the prisoner dies from excessive anesthesia, and rather than just throwing away the extra chemicals, they are disposed of into the body for which they were intended. To clarify, injecting lethal chemicals into an already dead body = offensive, injecting lethal chemicals into a living body = totally ok.

We joke about the horrors of knowing what goes into the sausage, but it never occurred to me to ask what goes on in the minds of those who make the sausage... and what do they find to be offensive?

Self-Rent

Would this work?

1) Make enough money to start a business that will buy an apartment complex, and hold cash on hand
2) I rent it out to people, and give them the option to buy their portion of the building over time (eg: $1M property with 10 renters, each with the chance to buy up to $100k)
3) Return an approximate real estate market rate with a minimum and maximum to flatten out bubbles and return a portion of rental income less property upkeep expenses.
4) All money goes into a savings account that the renter is able to withdraw from at any time as long as they live there, and they receive in total, less the cost of repairs, upon moving out.
5) As property is bought back from business, buy another apartment complex and repeat.

Net effect:
1) Company operates like a bank, and would have to hold reserves appropriate to what they could expect renters to withdraw at any given time
2) Company's revenue would be keeping a portion of the total value of the home.
3) Renters have an incentive to keep the building and neighborhood in good shape
4) Renters effectively have the opportunity to purchase a condo with no interest payments, but always chasing the total property value. The faster they buy it, the less they chase, and the less rent they pay.
5) Means that if the renter could buy a condo, they should do that instead so they don't always have to chase the property value. That ensures that this program will continue to reach the target market - renters who have a desire and ability to own something. Should screen for this with applicants (non-paycheck to paycheck, but savers)
6) Could the business file as a bank so it is able to lend itself money to expand? No, because then it would have to cover interest on borrowed money. Just need to make enough to eventually start a lending portfolio as well.
7) Could the business file as a non-profit? Make enough to pay employees and to expand to new properties, and that is all.
8) Could this business be started by the government? Probably shouldn't be, but maybe there are some grants available.