first 100 days

Yale e360 is a fantastic site, for those who have never visited it. This week they have gathered some of the best minds to address what Obama should do in his first 100 days.

Although the respondents — including entrepreneur Paul Hawken, Rajendra Pachauri of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, activist Van Jones, and green investing leader Mindy Lubber — represent a broad range of interests, they were largely in agreement on how best to solve the current economic and environmental challenges. Basically, they agree that weaning the country off fossil fuels and onto renewable sources of energy is the single best way to rebuild the U.S. economy; that Obama must use all the tools at his disposal — from invoking the Clean Air Act for regulating greenhouse gas emissions to persuading the new Congress to put a price on carbon — to tackle climate change and spur the move to alternative energy; that under an Obama administration the United States must lead in forging a new global climate change treaty; and that, given the rapidity of global warming, Obama must be made fully aware of the “scary” scientific facts — as environmentalist Bill McKibben puts it — and move with a sense of urgency.

You can go HERE for the full article. It will be interesting to see if he follows any of the advice.

sneaky, aren’t they?

So there are two types of positions in the White House… appointed and career positions. If you are an appointed employee, you leave with the exiting administration. If you are in a career position, you get to stay.

so…..

Between March 1 and Nov. 3, according to numbers released by the OPM, the Bush administration allowed 20 political appointees to become career civil servants. Six appointees to the Senior Executive Service, the government’s most prestigious and highly paid employees, have received approval to take career jobs at the same level. Fourteen other political, or “Schedule C,” appointees have also been approved to take career jobs.

It is a technique called “burrowing in”, and while many ex-presidents have had this happen during their administration, it seems that the Bush Administration has a special flare with theirs:

In its report, the GAO concluded that administration officials apparently did not follow appropriate procedures in 18 of these conversions and that some workers were not qualified.

The Washington Post has many articles about this phenomena, which are worth the read if you care about politics and our government. This is especially important if you are one of those that has high expectations of our President-Elect and start vilifying him for not getting things accomplished. By embedding a group of employees that honor the Bush Doctrine, it may be difficult to get things done at the speed the citizenry demands.

You can find the articles:
The Burrowing of the Bushies
Administration Moves to Protect Key Appointees
Senators Urge Bush To Halt Job Shifts

there’s a whole in my bucket, dear henry

I started writing this essay immediately after the defeat of the first Bailout Bill. I have since revised parts, but if there seems to be anything “old news”, understand that I may not have kept up with the hundreds of news items about this topic over the last few days. I still think this is a hugely important topic and essay. So, here it is… enjoy!

As I sit and watch the fallout of the defeat of the first Bailout Bill and the rise of the second, as described by the media, I can’t help but realize, once again, we the people are being cheated.

A few days ago, for the first time, in a long time, our elected officials voted to defeat the “bailout bill” because of the voice of the citizenry. For the week prior or so, their offices had been flooded with letters on a magnitude of 20 to one against the bailout bill. Whether the defeat was caused because of hurt feelings, or the “herd mentality” of freshman officials, by the sheer fact that it was defeated, the constitution seems to have been honored for the first time in eight years.

However as I watch the media cover this story, I can’t help but think that we, the citizens, now have to face a terrible, hurtful backlash. We are being told, outright, that we are unintelligent and naïve and didn’t understand what the bill was designed to do. We are being told that we are incapable of understanding the workings of Wall Street; therefore we should trust our leaders to make that decision for us.

I want to help you understand a simple fact. The defeat of this bill means that credit will be affected, i.e. it will not exist. But, please do not make any mistake about this, credit, despite what your “leaders” have told you, does NOT equal economy.

Credit is an extension of your purchasing power. And, hopefully the following will help to explain why your elected officials care so much about credit and why they are duping you into believing it is the same as economy.

Credit is essential to the survival of the upper class. They make things; cars, homes, clothing. Through marketing, they have made it desirable for you (the middle class) to own these things. Through supply and demand, the prices are inflated, therefore you can’t afford these items simply by working. Credit was created. You take a loan out to afford what you want to get. Since you have to pay this loan off with interest you have to keep working and working and working. The upper class has won because not only are they getting money from the inflated value of goods, but they are also getting money because of interest rates applied to the loan.

(A little side note: I do not believe that credit was created under malicious or conspiratory circumstances. Credit worked when you were going to the local mercantile to borrow seeds, which upon harvest, you would pay back. I think that it has evolved to be a plague on our society and a way to keep the lower classes separate and never equal to those “in charge”.)

So, going on…. because you are working, you pay taxes, often at an unfair rate as compared to that of the upper class. The upper class gets tax incentives and right-offs that you do not get, as well as the fact that there are more of “us” then “them”. Therefore, the influx of money going into our reserve is our money. Those taxes go towards the support of the lower class, our infrastructure, our programs, etc., etc. But once again, the upper class has effectively been relinquished of its responsibility to provide; they make what the middle class wants to buy, who works to afford those goods, which puts money into the system, which allows for the stipends given to the lower class. The middle class is, quite literally, the whole backbone keeping this country afloat.

Here is another thing that credit does… it falsely inflates the price of goods. The more “spending power” the middle class has, the more the price of things becomes artificially high. If everyone in this country could only pay for what they honestly could afford, which I do not think is a bad thing, then prices would reflect their true value. But, what good is that to the person who has made that item. They want an inflated value, so they can make more money. This is why they have an insatiable desire to keep credit in its place.

Credit and the all things associated with the economy have become a vicious circle. We buy things that we can’t afford, so we work and work and work, to pay those loans off that keep growing and growing because of interest rates, so we keep working and working and working. But without credit, we will still buy. We will still need food, we will still need clothing.

The reason the officials and Wall Street and others want you to panic is because, right now, the cost of goods will reflect their accurate value. This means, chances are, you will be able to afford them without taking out a loan. Without that loan, the banks and institutions won’t make money. Therefore the upper class won’t make as much money. This means, they will have to participate in the financial wherewithal of this country. They will not be able to sit under their golden umbrellas, oblivious to what is going on. This will disrupt their way of life and they want to hold on to that for as long as they can.

For the last eight years, our administration has been banking on our lack of attention to what is going on. They have been getting away, literally, with murder, based on the fact that we have been too busy to understand or care about anything other than ourselves. I do hold us, the citizenry, responsible for a portion of what is happening. And, I do not want this most recent condemnation to alter our new participation.

Ever since the bill was defeated, all I have heard on the news is that we don’t know what is going on; that we are ignorant. Do not fall for this trap. It is simply a way for us to stop paying attention again, so the elected officials can get away with more and keep their livelihood in place. This is the time when we are starting to pay attention again. This is a time when we are looking at our elected officials and reminding them that they are our employees after years of them being allowed to get away with whatever they wanted to. Of course they are going to fight us on this. Wouldn’t you? But don’t let that fool you into apathy, again. Let this be the light that let’s you see what is truly going on.

Probably today, the second bill will be passed in the Senate. In order to appease the Republicans, more tax right-offs have been written in for the big businesses. And, to appease the Democrats, more incentives for going green have been written in. I guess time will tell whether this bill is effective. In the meantime, the money we worked so hard for to fill the reserve is gone. There is no other “bailout” after this. In my opinion, the only thing that will save us, on a personal level, is to hold back on our desire to buy things. Or, if you are going to buy something, please consider only buying what you can afford.