Too Evil to Live

Everyone should watch "Too Big to Fail" on HBO, the movie version of The Time's writer Andrew Sorkin's book. Then everyone should read "The Big Short" by Michael Lewis. In both, grotesque, self-centered, destructive but good hearted politicians confront grotesque, self-centered, destructive and rapacious money changers. If there are any two books that are more discouraging about the future of western liberalism, they must have been burned by politico-economic censors.

In "Too Big to Fail" a compelling Henry Paulson walks through the carnage created by these politico-economic vandals like a stricken benumbed survivor of some huge natural disaster. But it is not natural. No natural force is as evil and dismissive of its damage as the combined effort of a superficial, posturing politician and a percentage-hungry financial predator. In "The Big Short" petty, stupid well educated people in both government and finance make error after error to aggrandize or enrich themselves at the expense of every possible innocent they can find. These two works are as profound an argument for benign dictatorship as has been made. It is astonishing that the financiers and politicians from New York to Malibu are not hanging from lampposts from sea to shining sea.

Paulson won an extraordinary victory against overwhelming self-interest but the battle is still is an early round. If the politicians and their incestuous financiers have anything to say about it, this battle will have no time limit.

Strangely we, the noncombatants, will be the eventual knockout victim.

What Israel Means 2

Western efforts in the Middle East has been a triumph of hope over experience. The basic concern for the West--indeed for all the developed world--is stability. True, the motive is the predictability of oil production and the maintenance of cheap power throughout the world, but the policy to achieve that is simple stability. To that end the West--and the rest of the developed world tacitly--has aligned itself with thugs, tinhorn dictators, religious posers and the leader-du-jour to suppress/smooth/inspire the Middle East populous to accept the status quo and, above all, maintain production. With the apparent understanding of this area's importance and fragility and despite the cynical need to maintain the oil flow, the world inserted into this region Israel, a newly minted nation made up of foreigners and infidels, displaced the people who had lived there for two millennium and then watched, amazed, as the region deteriorated. The U.N. peacekeeping troops were meaningless, the posturing ineffective but the hope flowed unstaunched.

We now have a new flag in the Middle East: The Arab Spring. We know it's new because we have never heard of it before but if it's new, it must be good. The West will now hang its stability hat on this new hook. Obama apparently in an effort to inspire this new Arab Spring has change American policy to insist Israel roll its borders back to 1967. What will happen is any one's guess.

What is not a guess is the astonishing mishandling of the world's most important resource site. If treason had been on the minds of the people involved it is doubtful we would be facing a worse problem. The arrogance of the U.S., the British and the U.N. in believing they could control this complex land, in inserting unsuspecting Jews into this cauldron with the belief we could and would always help them, the cynicism of their coddling despotic psychopaths and religious maniacs, their pompous periodic rewriting of policy should serve as a caution for anyone optimistic about our bathetic leadership.

What Israel Means

For much of the last several centuries, Jews have wandered back, disorganized but hopeful, to Palestine and the land of the Old Testament. As part of the settlement after the first world war the British, still locked in their fading struggle with France, took control of this area called the British Mandate and, in July of 1922, divided Palestine into two administrative sections, east and west, where Jews were allowed only in the west. (The Balfour Declaration in November 2, 1917 to "establish a national home for the Jewish people" was a hope, not a policy.) November 29, 1947 the General Assembly of The United Nations voted 66% to partition western Palestine into two separate states, one Jewish and one Arab. (The Arabs rejected it.) Israel became a recognized separate state and Egypt, Iraq, Jordan Syria and Lebanon invaded it, fought a war, and lost. About 600,000 Jews left Arab lands for Israel, 720,000 Arabs left Israel for Arab lands. An armistice was signed in 1949.

In 1966-67 Syria began shelling Israel from parts of the Golan Heights, Egypt expelled the UN peacekeepers from the Israel border and attacked in the "Six Day War' and lost again. When the dust cleared Israel held the Gaza Strip, The Sinai Desert, Judea and Samaria and the Golan Heights.

In 1970 a civil war broke out between Arafat and King Hussein in Jordan. Arafat ended up with better control of the West Bank but no control over the rest of Jordan.

In October 6, 1973, Syria and Egypt again attacked Israel and lost. To get peace, Israel returned the Sinai to Egypt and signed an agreement with Jordan.

What are we to conclude from this history? Debate continues over the Arab handling of Arab refugees, of Hamas and Hezbollah, of bombing schools and strapping bombs to children. But as important as these points are individually there are some overwhelming truths here. One, Israel was created out of whole cloth; there were people there whom the British displaced to create the state. Britain can claim the land was gained as a spoil of war but the circumstances are still the same. Two, the Arabs will continue to throw themselves at Israel forever. They are not deterred by defeat--regardless how humiliating. They will come back. And each time they are better armed and better prepared. Two Arab states have nuclear capability. Three, Israel will, with its last breath, destroy all her enemies. There will be no TKO with Israel led bleeding to the side to decline in a new Palestine state; Israel, at its end, will take all of its tormentors to hell with her.

This brings us to the fourth point: This nightmare--which could easily blow the industrialized world back to the steam age--is a direct result of political arrogance and stupidity. The political leaders--from the British to the U.N. to the Americans now--have guided this area through one devastating, homicidal period to another without any apparent second thoughts or guilt about the destruction and death they have unleashed or the clear danger to all the world that lies ahead. This homicidal fine-tuning, this murderous good will, this apocalyptic optimism is repeated and repeated by administration after administration, state after state, until now we are faced with real Arab power staring back at the West and their feckless leaders while we poor souls wait and wonder how much the dead and wounded will be expanded this time and whether we will be included.

What Was Volunteered Is Now Demanded

The notion of the "right to health care" contains a number of implications. First is the "right" of the individual to make demands upon his neighbors; his neighbors must financially underwrite his neighbor's health costs. Second, this demand on his neighbor's income contains--at least for the present--no demands upon the recipient for this largess. He may drink excessively, smoke, take drugs, weigh 600 pounds without any consequence to his health care coverage. Third, this "right" for health care demands the physician to acquiesce. This "right" constricts the rights of the physician who is now legally required to respond to the patient's demand. The physician is bound, indentured without his approval.

People are worn out by taxes. Taxes are unjust, inefficient, misdirected, misspent, skewered by influence--all of these and more--but the small necessary taxes somehow justify the larger unnecessary ones. Taxation in the average citizen's mind is a huge slush fund that sometimes is of benefit to the payer, sometimes not. It is the physician in this relationship that is of interest here. To take a free man, a physician, and bind him in a relationship without his consent--that accepts an infringement on personal freedom and that is new. Some jobs are created as indentured--like policemen or firemen--, some are created as jobs for the common good--like utilities--, but to take independent individuals and absorb them into a system and require thenm to serve without their consent--like eminent domain or a military draft--that is new in this free country.

And the thoughtless attitude towards the physician's liberty should chill everyone, even the most devoted who have entered the subsidized life.

Political Aphorisms

Observations on the two warring tribes on the left and right.

The right sees individuals, the left sees groups. The right seems obsessed with growth, the left with security. The right sees process, the left sees endpoint. The right sees the world as a process with growth a crucial enzyme, the left sees security as the crucial endpoint and sees a government mediated insurance as necessary. The right is willing to allow growth to evolve, to change and adapt as it matures and believes safety is a likely endpoint with many others, the left sees government as the enzyme today but has embraced revolution and science in the past when they seemed promising. The right sees institutions as depositories of the social values, the left sees institutions as ossified obstructions to progress. The right hates centralized power, the left trusts power. The right sees chaos without structure and effort, the left believes man and history have a positive direction and structure is an anchor. The right sees potential and progress in risk, the left sees only heartache.

Neither the left nor the right know they are only part of the current dialectic and neither will emerge intact for the next.

Snookie Summarized

An objection has been made about the Snookie Question, that it is little more than an attempt to justify rich people having less taxes.

The basic point about the Snookie Question is that in addition to raising money, taxes have motives. Alcohol and cigarettes are taxed because they are felt to be harmful, short term gains are taxed more than long term gains because they are felt to be less advantageous to the economy, import taxes are thought to protect domestic industries. There was a recent Senate hearing where general business exemptions for oil companies were specifically targeted for removal because oil prices were rising and politicians wanted to hurt somebody associated with them. There will always be arguments over the accuracy of these policies--for example, many think import tariffs are bad for everyone--but, nonetheless, governments approach taxation as more than a revenue source; they think taxes a tool.

Snookie only takes the next step. In a world where the ability of the government to make a good "investment" is questioned, why not tax and distribute income based on how the money of the taxed and the tax recipients would benefit society. In that light, the debate over Snookie's investment/social value versus Bill Gates' doesn't seem that difficult.

Sometimes They Are More Than Stupid

The real question that the theory of psychological homogeneity raises is this: Is someone clearly pathological in one area of his life capable in other areas? Can a man like Ted Bundy be trusted driving a car or baking bread? Is a serial rapist otherwise a good neighbor?

Is it dangerous to have a sexually depraved man like the IMF chief in control of international money decisions? Is the financial chaos in the world a function of the underlying pathology of the decision makers?

More, do you become a faithless, arrogant, bullying creep when you become rich and powerful or do those traits help you become rich and powerful? If women become rich and powerful, do they act the same?

How Do You Say"Psychological Homogeneity" in French?

Here, a major French political leader and the head of the International Monetary Fund, a man of some importance and influence on the lives of the work-a-day man, chases a young woman naked down the hallway of an exclusive hotel and rapes her.

Apparently if you are the head of the IMF you expect that a room as expensive as $3000 a night comes with a girl. No one with any financial experience would think such an expensive room came without amenities.

How is it possible that a man like this gets to influence anything other than the TV channel in the halfway house? Do these people think they are so separate from us that our rules don't apply? Is he, like President Johnson who used to urinate in front of female reporters, simply unhinged by power?

Does this guy violate the sacred law of psychological homogeneity or is this a total madman whose facade has sprung a leak?

Reflections on the Heroes of Beslan

A group claiming to be Taliban/El-Qaida claims to be responsible for the bombing death of eighty Pakistanis several days ago. The reason stated was the attack was in retaliation for the death of Osama bin Laden.

Perhaps now would be a good time to start clarifying these muddled problems, first with better definitions.

A murderous attack on strangers is an atrocity. "Atrocity." The 911 event was not an "attack" or "terrorism." It was an atrocity and should be referred as such. There is no other explanation for such an event. It may also be pathological, the result of some illness, but group pathology is both rare and complex; such a designation would require some considerable debate. But it is, at least, an atrocity.

One can not claim credit for an atrocity. One can confess to it, be blamed for it, be held responsible for it but one cannot claim credit for an atrocity unless one is insane.

A random act perpetrated against random people does not have a "reason". Blowing up total strangers because someone you like was killed is a disconnected, vicious atrocity. It has only one rational purpose: Satisfying blood lust. Creating reciprocal pain. This is not the personal or symbolic retaliation of the Hatfields and the McCoys aimed at inflicting pain on a stated enemy or opponent; it is a howl or a sneeze made flesh. It is a malignant twitch.

There is only one possible explanation that might make such an atrocity reasonable: If the perpetrators were at war with life.

Taking the Black 2

A few years ago a woman was conversing about her two children, one was healthy and the other had very poor vision. Of the latter she mused, "He was so close, so close." It was a moment before her meaning was clear: He was not quite impaired enough to qualify for disability. Apparently with just a bit more luck, he could have been officially blind.

Three healthy people I know personally have applied for disability this week. They have diagnoses, they see physicians for them but they are functionally healthy. What they want is to stop working and to have someone else work for them. They want to "take the black" and enter the subsidized life.

A few years ago the religious life was an excellent escape for those who were overwhelmed by the world and its responsibilities. Deep devotion was not required, only a mild personality and an inclination towards doing good. The life was structured, safe--as long as you did not do missionary work--and rewarding. It had the respect of the laity and the assurance of regular meals. The bureaucracy had limited aims so corruption was personal, not on a grand scale. And it provided something special: Community.

Recent numbers show that 8.5 million people are on federal disability rolls, up from 5 million ten years ago. It is gradually becoming a lifestyle, albeit not as rewarding as the old religious life. Like so many of these special subsets in the modern world, it is scheduled to go broke in seven years.

It must be difficult for these government people as they try to replace entities that have evolved over centuries only to atrophy now when they are most needed.

Perhaps faith-based subsidies for monasteries and nunneries?

A Formula Dangerously Easy for Politicians

gdp=consumer spending+investments+government spending+(exports-imports)

What about this formula is peculiar? This formula is how we judge our economic success yet it has a strange quality: Aside from exports, it measures spending, not production. Any money spent is inherently positive for the sacred GDP. So if the consumer or the government just borrows like crazy and spends the money on doughnuts, that raises GDP. Not to disparage doughnuts; they are wonderful. And certainly the money spent on them will percolate down through the doughnut industry for the betterment of all. But this does raise a point: Is some spending better than others? Is money saved and spent better than money borrowed and spent? Is money spent on small start up companies better than money spent on swampland in Florida? Is the money spent raising a building the same as money spent razing one?

Are all money and all spending created equal?

Taking the Black

The willingness of the government to support financially institutions it feels are "too big to fail" is said to create a "moral hazard;" by indirectly underwriting the errors of these corporations the government may be supporting those very errors. This might encourage people in those corporations to behave recklessly with the knowledge that the government will support them regardless of the outcome. Thus the government might be subsidizing the corporation's errors and indirectly supporting irresponsible behavior.

It is interesting to hear the judgmental "moral" used as it is a rare bird indeed in this culture. But its exclusiveness is more interesting. So many people in this country have "taken the black" and gone into subsidized life. Social security, disability, welfare have all become a secular retreat, like monasteries, away from the work-a-day troubles of the world. Certainly these supports are well intentioned and probably usually well deserved but they are certainly well abused too.

Are they a social moral hazard?

Illusion Busting

An interesting computer that takes future principal and earnings estimates and compares them to all historical time sets. So one can state a amount of principal and compare what all similar principals have done in every comparable time in history. You can change one component at a time and see how it works. (Sorry I couldn't link it.)

http://www.moneychimp.com/articles/randomness/retirement_odds.htm

The Frontiers of Violence

So...the United States flies military personnel from an airfield in a foreign nation that we have been fighting in for years without a declaration of war, across an international border without permission, lands on foreign soil and kills several unarmed people--two of the killed are citizens of the country and one is not--and leaves, returning back across the border to the foreign country they originally came from.

And in The United States there is a debate over the morality of how the information was obtained to target this raid?

The main argument seems to be torture doesn't work, it doesn't give good information. (A terrible argument--it must work on some people. And the Nazis refined it; they tortured the suspect's family. That worked.) But Panetta and Tenet and Rumsfeld say it does work. If it works, does that make it O.K.? Another technique that worked for the Third Reich was killing all the family members of anyone involved in partisan activities. Would that be O.K.?

It is reminiscent of the old ecclesiastical argument: If committing a venial sin would save all the souls in hell, would it be right to do?

We are exploring serious boundaries here. The terrorists are not really at war. War has objectives. War has people you can negotiate with. War has combatants on both sides. The terrorists have not declared war, they have issued a declaration of hate. There is no obvious circumstance under which they would stop. Their targets are specifically people who are not combatants and who do not think of themselves as involved in any conflict. These people cannot surrender nor can they sue for peace. The terrorists are always looking for more ways to do damage; they never look for a solution. There is no solution: "From hell's heart I stab at thee."

What has emerged here is a self contained engine of destruction. It is not a predator, not a partisan, not a revolutionary. It is closest to a rogue animal that resembles his fellows but has lost its purpose and hunts and kills without hunger or competition. And he has stimulated a terrible reaction, a terrible hunter. This new hunter recognises no national borders, no mitigating circumstance and experiences no remorse. Of all the industry the United States has offloaded, none will influence the culture the way this new hunter will, a calculating hard-wired killer acting as the agent for a culture that sits at home and dissects interrogation techniques.

Identifying the Enemy

The Politico reported today that intelligence officials met with Congress members at a classified meeting yesterday to discuss the bin Laden attack where it was revealed that bin Laden had 500 dollars in Euros and two phone numbers sewn in his clothing. The analysis concludes he expected to have warning of any attack with enough time to escape with a reasonable escape route. Not all the invited members heard this because they left early.

The focus of the article was on the suspicion of his assumed warning and what this implies about Pakistan. It seems to be believed that Pakistan has little concern about secrets or confidential information--perhaps as little as Congress. How could the information from a "classified meeting" be so available to the press and why would they print it?

It seems as if bin Laden was a burnt out threat--much like the dissipated "Jackal" when he was caught; the real significance is the information. It would be hoped that every available individual would be combing through the information retrieved and sending flint-eyed men out to discuss international terrorism intensely with the suspects. Any information that helps these sadistic killers make a good decision should be closely guarded. Having the congress reveal any information--and have the press print it--would be treason in any other place or time. But what can one expect from a group who were not interested enough to hear the whole story?

Then again, maybe there is no information and the announcement that there is a lot is nothing but a ruse to send the terrorists into early hidden retirement.

bin Laden and El-Qaida

Obama's decision on how to kill bin Laden was a brave one. He has been accused of fecklessness, indecision and diffidence--his friends say he "leads from behind"--so any public failure in this attack on the house in Pakistan would have significant negative consequences. The symbolic position was worse for Obama. He has been compared to Carter frequently and Carter had a significant bad moment during his presidency that served to characterize his term, although the events were essentially beyond his control. In desperation he sent special forces into Iran to rescue the people taken hostage from the embassy there. They attacked by helicopter and it was more than a disaster, it was a fiasco and it tarred Carter forever. One can just imagine Obama's advisors urging him to attack with bombs or drones; at least a failure would be less obvious, perhaps even overlooked. A failure with helicopters and special troops would remind everyone of Carter.

But Obama braved it out. He wanted proof of who was there and wanted proof he was dead when we left. He took a great risk, was successful and deserves credit for it.

Now what?

When al-Qaida emerged on the American radar Clinton thought they should be fought like criminals. The problem with that approach is there is no way of coordinating anticriminal activities across borders. The Americans have had no success with Mexico with real drug criminals. Indeed, Pakistan proves that cooperation for an antiterrorist purpose is impossible; the government sympathizes with the enemy. Moreover, an attack on bin Laden would have been impossible had the Americans not taken a beachhead in Afganistan. There was another problem for Clinton; any successful attack on terrorists as criminals demands infiltration and Clinton was cool on using the type of person necessary for that assignment.

George Will wrote recently: "Jim Lacey of the Marine Corps War College notes that Gen. David Petraeus has said there are perhaps about 100 al-Qaida fighters in Afghanistan. 'Did anyone,' Lacey asks, 'do the math?' There are, he says, more than 140,000 coalition soldiers in Afghanistan, or 1,400 for every al-Qaida fighter. It costs about $1 million a year to deploy and support every soldier — or up to $140 billion, or close to $1.5 billion a year, for each al-Qaida fighter.
'In what universe do we find strategists to whom this makes sense?'"


Now that bin Laden is dead, perhaps we can revisit our overall approach to these terrible people.

bin Laden

bin Laden is dead but he has changed the world. Discussions will work around the edges--Was it the CIA's fault originally for supporting him against the Russians? Is he really dead? What is the role of Pakistan in all this? Should he have been buried? Was he a real military leader or was he an armed dilettante?--but his real contribution is to the world of violence and this contribution will go long remembered.

Savagery against the innocent has always been the trademark of the warlord or the criminal. Kidnapping, symbolic murder, extortion has always used leverage against the innocent to make the dominant but reflective and socially concerned weak. But their motives have always been booty; money and women. It has been until now a tool exclusive to the criminal (drug cartels), the stone aged warrior (Apache), the dark ages horseman (Attila).

There will always be examples of this behavior--The Lionheart at Acre, Jackson and the Creeks--but these terrible exceptions are remembered as exactly that: Exceptions. There is only one man in modern times who has generated violence pointedly at innocents under a banner of righteousness as a matter of policy: Hitler. He has now been joined by bin Laden who has refined this barbarism and put it in the hands of the individual.

bin Laden has downsized and made personal the atavistic savagery that peaks out now and then in our history and made it modern. For him there is a new circle in hell.