US Treasury to restrict lobbying on bailout funds

The rules restrict lobbyist contacts in connection with applications for or disbursement of the Treasury’s $700 billion bailout program, the Treasury said in a statement.

This is a great start.  Notice there is no restriction on OTHER lobbying though, such as lobbying for the relaxation of regulations, against the regulations that might have prevented this nonsense in the first place, lobbying for more mergers, against antitrust action…..

Obama Signals New Tone in Relations With Islamic World

So uhm, I guess we are moving away from the Richard the Lionheart policy of crusading through the middle east?

One of the things I have always had trouble with is realizing the things I had.

I grew up in a reasonably stable home for the first part of my life. Sure, it went a bit awry as I approached my 14th year, but before that, things from my perspective anyway were pretty good. I have never had a time when I worried about having food, or shelter, or basic necessities. I have never really wondered how I would get by.

Unfortunately, I don’t seem to have ever realized that. Some part of me keeps focusing on what is missing, or what I wish I had. That Buddha guy had it right: The problem with life is wants. You can have everything you need, but still have unfulfilled wants that make you miserable. It is even worse in my case because I have no idea what it is exactly that I want, I just know I haven’t found it.

I need to spend more time looking around at what I have and the good things in my life, rather than wondering what else might be.

The Fourth Commandment: Be Thankful

I have a lot of things in my life that I don’t accept. I don’t accept that I am a good person. I don’t accept that I do a good job. I don’t accept myself, in short. As I wrote before, I have never felt like I “liked” myself. There is no doubt I have severe self-esteem issues.

I need to learn to accept these things. Some part of me, not the everyday in control part, but somewhere in there, recognizes that I am not a bad person. That part recognizes that I do a good job, I am valued at work, I can be creative and imaginative. I just need the rest of my brain to come to the idea of acceptance.

Commandment III: Accept

On the day after writing my rant about how money has come to be equated with speech in this country, I watched Bill Moyer’s Journal.  Bill gave a very moving monologue regarding the current violence in Gaza.  During this monologue, he brought up the fact that flag draped coffins of American soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan are not allowed to be photographed or filmed when they return here.

It seems money is more important as speech than other things that might make people rethink their positions.

It’s all about the money in this society any more.  Money has taken over from pretty much everything else that might have once been important.

I think this is born out in the ways money has come to represent various things in our society.

Money has always equated to power, and likely always will.  If you have it, you are powerful.  if you don’t, you aren’t.  It’s just that easy.  The money guys are the power guys.  This will likely never change.

Eventually, money came to represent quality as well.  Rich folks were considered the cream of the crop.  If you happened to be born poor, it didn’t matter how good a person you were, you were one of the unwashed masses, the “lesser” people, in the terminology of the day.  To refer to a “man of quality” meant a man with money, even if he was an arrogant bastard who ate children.

I suppose it was inevitable that at some point, money would also come to be equated with speech.  When the McCain/Feingold campaign finance reform law was passed, it put strict regulations on the amount of “hard” and “soft” money contributions a campaign could receive.  The supreme court struck down some of the restrictions as a violation of “free speech”.  Apparently, in addition to being better than me, more powerful than me, a rich person has more speech than I do.  Why does someone with money have more right to speak to his representatives than anyone else?  Why do they have more right to give to campaigns, more right to anything?  Have we really fallen so far that money is more important than people?

Continuing with my personal happiness project, we come to commandment number 2.

I am a person who takes quite a while to get angry.  I do not, however, take long at all to get annoyed.  I am annoyed constantly.  From the stupid questions I get asked as a support analyst, to drivers on the road, to news items, people who feel entitled, unfairness…  Well, you get the idea.  I think I live in a constant state of annoyance, and I know it isn’t good for my health, physical or mental.

This needs to change.  I need to learn to let go, to stop letting things get to me.  I need to learn not to carry that aggravation everywhere.

Commandment II:  Be Tolerant

I have been following Gretchen Rubin’s The Happiness Project for some time, and as someone who has trouble finding happiness myself, I have decided to start my own for the new year.

One of the main components of her project are her “twelve commandments”.  Things to live by, keep in mind, and focus on at any time.  That seems like a good place to start, creating my own set of commandments. 

Her first commandment is “Be Gretchen”.  I have decided that my first commandment will be “Be Mark”.  Original, I know. 

The thing is, I don’t think you can ever be happy until you learn to be yourself.  I have said before that I don’t like myself.  I can’t even explain why (although some recent research may point to some causes).  I have a low self-esteem.  I likely also have what psychologists would call a “false self-impression”.

I have in the past, and especially during my school years, tried to be someone else.  I have tried to pretend like someone else so others would like me.  I have acted contrary to my nature to fit in.  I need to learn to just accept myself, flaws and all.  I think, like most people, I am thoroughly average, but my brain assures me I am way below that.  I doubt that is true.  I need to learn to find the joy in just being ME.  I need to worry less about what other people think, and more about what *I* think.

Commandment I:  Be Mark

So Citibank will be getting its HUGE bailout.  Still nothing set for the auto industry.  I don’t know why this should surprise me.  I think the issue here comes down to Rich vs. the Commoners.

All the way back to the founding of our country, and well beyond that, those in the elite classes have always looked down on the “lower ones”, that is you and me.  Reading speeches and letters of the day you often see them sprinkled with words like “low”, “mean”, “debased”, “lessers” and the like.  Those are some of the more pleasant words they have used to talk about the common people.  these sons of the elites, who often were born into money and never had to work themselves, always looked down on those that did the actual labor that allowed them to live in leisure.

And so it is today.  The elites in power look around at two failing institutions.  One is concerned with wealth and investment, and is populated by money people.  In other words, good people. 

The other institution is populated by manual laborers.  Commoners.  The “mean peasantry”. 

One is deemed worthy of a massive bailout with little or no oversight.  The other must come up with a plan to change its ways, prove they can be profitable again, and beg properly.  It is once again time for the commoners to learn their place and beg for what they need.

The moneyed elites in control in Washington will take care of the moneyed elites of Citibank.  The auto industry will be allowed to fail.  It can only work out better for them anyway, since there will suddenly be a pool of desperate laborers willing to work for less.

When greed and stupidity combine with the jet stream and humidity from the gulf of mexico and form a giant “broke cloud” over the Citibank building, they get a guaranteed government handout.  Cause, you know, wasn’t their fault at all…

When the same weather pattern forms over Detroit though, the cry goes out “Let them die!”

For all the talk of ours being a classless society, it sure seems to me, from down here in the trenches, that the moneyed elite get their mistakes forgiven, and the poor and lowly are supposed to take “personal responsibility”.  As though somehow what happened at Citibank wasn’t related to anything management did, it was just a sad coincidence.  Same with Fannie and Freddie.  Oops!  Now those boys in Detroit, on the other hand, engaged in some serious negligence!

You might wonder what powers this double standard.  Lets have George Will explain it, shall we?  This is his proposed solution:

The answer? Do nothing that will delay bankrupt companies from filing
for bankruptcy protection, so that improvident labor contracts can be
unraveled, allowing the companies to try to devise plausible business
models.

So you might ask yourself, what does he mean by “improvident labor contracts”?  That’s right.  Unions.  George Will, whose wife happens to be a PR consultant for the Japan Automobile Manufacturing Association, thinks we ought to get rid of those pesky union contracts that have so hobbled Detroit!  Except that Japanese car companies that build plants here pay essentially the same amount, and do fine!

Even Henry Ford, antisemitic wacko he was, understood that if his employees could not afford to buy his cars, he couln’t make it.  He paid above the prevailing wage so his employees could by things.  What does everyone think will happen if the big three automakers close down, taking with them hundreds of thousands of jobs in the auto industry?  Will a bailout of Citibank help if a couple hundred thousand folks default on morgages and car loans?  Will taking 300,000 people from 25$ an hour to $10 an hour help grown the economy?  Get us out of our mess?  Increase consumer confidence?

What about national security?  Should we give up our manufacturing base completely?  What if we need to suddenly kick into gear and build a massive amount of supplies again?  We ask the Japanese to build it for us in their plants?

The fact is, the auto companies made stupid mistakes.  So did Citibank, AIG, Lehmann Brothers, Fannie, Freddie, et al.  Why would we punish autoworkers for the stupidity of their management, but reward others for it?