Current events

I read this article (you might do so, as well),
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20091019/kaufmann

Then I wrote this:

In a word? "Yes." Just as in the discussion (?) concerning healthcare reform, our elected officials have develpoed a deaf ear and are acting instead as the "chosen few." Instead of listening with any sensitivity to the opinions, desires and wishes of the consitutuents who elected them, with the exception of Barney Frank and handful of others, they have chosen to become aloof and unresponsive.

With respect to both healthcare and this credit regulation legislation, the "representatives" are failing to represent and choosing to ignore the will of the very people who entrusted them with this critical responsibility of oversight and shepherding.

The word that comes to mind is "arrogant," and if one takes a quick trip through the dictionary, you find that this word comes from the Latin, meaning "to claim." In these cases it would seem to mean to lay claim to a superiority of wisdom and intellect that they have conferred upon themselves. The definition also mentions "haughtiness," thereby implying (again) a self-imbued sense of a heightened ability to make value/judgement calls on behalf of others they seem to deem incapable of doing for themselves (us).

The sadness of this conundrum is that we seem to be facing the need to legislate fiscal morality, and the task has fallen to those who have no moral compass to guide them in their task.

To be regarded as a schmuck is to be regarded as inferior and stupid, and I am sorely offended. You should be, as well.

Relative Values

Yesterday, on ABC's "This Week", hosted by George Stepenopulence, the first guest was the venerable, beady- eyed, ex fed-chairholder/warmer, Alan Greenspan. (NOTE: he is not in anyway green, but has spanned much too much time in the pubic domain). Each time George pressed Mr. Not-Green-Spanned-too-long for an answer about the economy, the stimilus packages, the unemployment, the recession or the Fed's possible actions, he responded with either, " We don't know yet", "We will have to wait and see", "It is hard to project these things", "We will have to wait for the report from the GAO/CBO", "These things are hard to predict", or "We have never had a sustained period of unemployment/recession/imbalance of debt/etc. like this with which to compare it to" (that is, historcally speaking, by the way, a completel bald-faced lie...and very bad grammar).

It would seem that Mr. Greenspan would serve us all much better if he were to return to the relative obsurity of retirement, rather than muddy the airwaves and prove , once again, that he doesn't know anything. Since I am one now, I can excusably and with impunity therefore decry old, staid and stale men, with granite in their ass and noodles in their brains, who have moved way past their prime and should stay home and watch re-runs of "The Flintstones".

Last week, as I trudged down a rainy street in Austin, and pondered the weather forecast with my son, he reminded me of a quote from a wilderness book writer, who said that " weather forecasters were invented to make economists look good." Yesterday, on this same TV program, Cokie Roberts (NPR) reminded us that "economists were invented to make astrologers look good". I am guessing that Paul Krugman might somehow (at last partially) agree. I have also just become more trusting as regards my horoscope.

And my other guess (and I'm not waiting on a report from the CBO on this) is that the longer the President and Congress listen to the malarky we get from the likes of Alan Greenspan, the longer we will continue to drift towards becoming a third world country, economically.