How do you keep someone from using what he knows? The Los Angeles Times describes a warning by Neal Barofsky, the special inspector general for the banking rescue program, who says the government bank rescue package can wind up enriching the very people who put it into effect.
A controversial $40-billion government program to buy toxic securities from ailing banks has a flaw that law enforcement and financial experts say could allow traders to illegally profit from inside information. … The danger is that traders in the government program could wield enormous influence in the market — and there are no explicit restrictions on how they could use that influence to profit inside deals of their own.
For example, a trader could privately buy up groups of toxic mortgages on the cheap then later drive up the price by purchasing similar mortgages using government money. The practice, known as “front running,” could be technically illegal, but the firms are not barred from coming into the program with such securities and then trading them, Barofsky said.
The Treasury says it will be on the alert for any sign of hanky-panky, but Barofsky was skeptical that Treasury could beat Wall Street at its own game. “It is a conflict by design,” he said. “The Treasury cannot possibly match wits with the innovation and aggressiveness of Wall Street … If you give them a set of rules and there are technicalities and legal loopholes and things we haven’t thought of, they are going to find that out, not because they are bad, but because that is what they are supposed to do. They are supposed to seek out profits at all costs.” But in the past Wall Street had to seek out profits with their own, or their investor’s money. With government intervention on the rise they now have the taxpayer’s dollar effectively at their disposal. On Wall Street information is worth millions. Insider trading can make you rich.
But the value of information depends on its position in a transaction chain. The newspapers for instance, aren’t able to get anywhere near the return on the information that they sell. Things are getting desperate, recently the Australian government proposed to potentially monitor network traffic to make sure its use was in compliance with copyright, according to the Register. It is being opposed by ISPs and other groups. Dan Rather recently wrote an article in the Philaldelphia Inquirer arguing that a Presidential Commission should be convened to save the mass media. Rather denies that he wants the government to bail out the media companies, saying he only wants “recommendations for improving and stabilizing it”. Well he can have that for free from universities and think tanks. Ultimately the mass media isn’t going to be saved unless it can find a source of dollars for what it does. So Dan goes fishing in the government waters. After all, if they make them an offer, then they might be tempted to accept.
You don’t have to care about media companies or reporters to care about the state of the news, because if it’s in trouble – and it surely is – this country is in trouble. That’s why I recently called on President Obama to form a commission to address the perilous state of America’s news media. … I am not calling for any government bailout for media companies. Nor am I encouraging any government control over them. I want the president to convene a nonpartisan, blue-ribbon commission to assess the state of the news as an institution and an industry, and to make recommendations for improving and stabilizing it.
In marked contrast is the situation of Bill Roggio, at the Long War Journal, which operates on private donations at a level that would probably have been petty cash back in the salad days of the big networks. Eight grand a month is spent on overhead. The cost of a single embed in a war zone is $10,000. The Long War Journal needs money, and are asking for donations. “We need your help today. We will spend your money prudently, as we always have. One hundred percent of your donation will go to support operations at The Long War Journal.”
Our fixed costs are $8,000 per month. This includes salary, health insurance, web hosting and site maintenance, communications, and other expenses. One fully sponsored reporter embedded for one month in Iraq or Afghanistan costs us $10,000. One major topical report, analyzing one topic with continuity over time and space with accompanying multimedia presentation, costs an estimated $20,000. We have three reports we wish to do this year: a marching map of the Taliban control in Pakistan; a mapping of US Predator strikes in Pakistan’s northwest; and an Afghanistan red map. Every one of our extensive reports to date, such as Iran’s ratlines into Iraq, Observations on the US airstrikes in Pakistan, and Inside Iraqi Politics, has received favorable recognition in the media and in the blogosphere.
So the way I figure it, anything over $96K a year is pure hard news because that will cover fixed plus correspondents. It would be interesting to figure out how much a traditional news agency would pay for an equivalent service. Those who support what the Long War Journal does might want to go over to Bill’s and help out. They’ve been doing a good job. One other effort that has recently been in the news is Journalism Online, whose website describes their business model.
Each publisher’s website is powered with the Journalism Online e-commerce engine, which allows customers to have one easy-to-use account common to all the publishers’ websites. This allows consumers to sign up just once to purchase annual or monthly subscriptions, day passes, and single articles from multiple publishers. The password-enabled payment system is integrated into all of the member-publishers’ websites, and the publishers have sole discretion over which content to charge for, how much to charge, and the manner of charge.
The two pieces of technology it seems to employ are a registration/ID system and a method for billing. Presumably the idea is to capture the traditional newspaper subscription dollar and distribute the proceeds to those who join the pool. The interesting question is what value the participating publishers will bring to the pool and what mechanisms exist to reap the rewards in proportion to that contribution. One would think that Long War Journal would fill a definite niche capability in the “Long Tail” of Internet business that many a regular newspaper doesn’t have. At any rate, the replacement for the current and dying news model will probably be another business model; and nothing that will come out of any Presidential Commission.
Update
JD Johannes, who produces video documentaries, describes life among the “unilaterals” in Afghanistan; that group of people who aren’t working directly in the sphere of Coalition Forces. To some small extent, he’s proof that an alternative world to the Dan Rather universe exists. And maybe it’s needed.
embedded by Embedded VideoYouTube Direkt
“Both these parties are in real trouble”
Wrtechard says “Rather denies that he wants the government to bail out the media companies, saying he only wants “recommendations for improving and stabilizing it”. Well he can have that for free from universities and think tanks.”
Three thoughts spring immediately to mind. (1) Mr. Rather could have that for free by reading this and other PJM blogs, esp. Roger Simon. (2) Mr. Rather doesn’t speak on behalf of the media en masse, but even assuming he does, even he can’t be so dumb as to think that the same people running the post office and the DMV could also manage the MSM. What he does want, I strongly suspect, is for the government to use its power to write new rules that would tilt the playing field in favor of the losing side. He wants the “stability” and “improvement” that comes from high and government-enforced barriers to entry coupled with the ability to retaliate with impunity against start-ups, new entrants, smart-ass bloggers, and anybody else who doesn’t know their place and who needs to be taught a lesson about who makes the news and whose opinions count. (3) I’m heading over to LWJ right now to give Bill Roggio some more money.
Off Topic just for a moment. Pardon the Pink Rhinoceros, Wretch.
ROUGHCOAT; IF YOU HAVE NOT DONE SO ALREADY CHECK #199 ON PREVIOUS THREAD FOR INFO.
Interruption now over;
Right On, Starling!
I am shocked! Shocked, that there is gambling in the casino!. Not.
For those interested in exploring the machinations in the market, take a peak at the Zero Hedge blog. Some of it is quite arcane – even with an MBA in finance, I find it takes lots of ancillary research to tease out the points being made in the original posts. The comments are a good read for helping address some of the issues and elucidating the points made. It appears to be a refuge on the net for folks on Wall Street who see reality for what it is, not for the propaganda sham the media presents with ‘green shoots’.
Recent discussions were regarding just how much behind the scenes manipulation of the markets is going on by the Fed and Treasury and the big banks. For example, why is the Fed hiring hundreds of new traders – is trading a function at the Fed?
All these guys should be supported: Roggio, Totten, Yon, Fernandez. There are more. In a sensible world they would be on a retainer from a worthwhile media group, but left to do their job as they see fit.
“In a letter to the inspector general, Treasury officials said that investment firms privately told the department that they would not get involved in the program if there was an attempt to wall it off.
“The Times asked all nine firms about their current trading practices in mortgage-backed securities and their plans for internal controls once trading begins using taxpayer money.
“The firms declined to answer all of the questions, including identifying who would lead their trading teams.”
How many former Congressional staffers and or members of any of Jamie Gorelick’s many ventures are currently traders (junior or otherwise) at these firms. Has Jamie Gorelick been retained as counsel for any of these firms? Is Jamie Gorelick’s law firm involved in any of the firms or is Gorelick’s office of National Government Relations (Lobbyist) involved in any government office that would have oversight on any of the matters the firms refused to discuss.
I really think that it would be unfair and unusual to subject WilmerHale to such scruteny, but I might just be a blast of fun.
Are there any Union Pensions associated with any of the firms in question? Or with any of the investments in the firms in question. With all the investigative journalists out of work there has to be a way to pay for such an investigation. Maybe Jamie Gorelick is associated with a firm that provides grant monies for such activity, or a philanthropic endeavor that would pay to not have any activity.
Of course the 80/20 rule applies to the newpaper industry here. Most of the revenue for most of the newspapers comes from advertising. Subscription base dollars are used up by costs associated with delivery and fixed costs of running the plant. I don’t know that they stretch much further.
But anyone who knows differently please feel free to correct my thinking here.
wretchard,
So Dan goes fishing in the government waters. After all, if they make them an offer, then they might be tempted to accept.
Both sides should low ball the offers under the following reasonable standard.
I have already determined what you are. Now we are just dickering over the price.
Both sides would raise the offers under the following time tested standard.
Other people’s money.
The problem with the Internet is that it was designed as a piggy-back or parasite on other communications systems. The money should be in the provider not in the content. That was historically true for most communications. The railroads were worth more then the grain and cattle they shipped and they shipped people for almost nothing. Merchant shipping at sea was worth more then the bulk that got moved around. Otherwise Onassis wouldn’t have gotten near Jacqueline Kennedy. The Internet does not offer similar opportunities. If it did then the operators of the infrastructure would subsidize the content providers, the same way that Onassis made money shipping oil with Panamanian flagged tankers.
Sometimes the profit is in a surprising corner of a business. Before the havoc wrought by the anti-trust judgement in the 1940s the multi billion dollar American movie studio industry was really just a shill for a popcorn and candy counter operation. The New York Times has been described as a money losing front for a profitable Canadian logging business.
Dave — Just now fired up my computer. Thanks for your note. Will now check your note in previous thread. I’ll get back to you either later today or tomorrow–I’m out of pocket most of today, heading out the door in a few minutes, and will not be able to use my computer for most of that time. Thanks again. Talk to you soon.
Dan Blather wants the president to examine the state of the media. He already has ,Dan, and he’s convinced you’re a bunch of amoral, lying, boot licking sycophants. He is just fine with that. Now shut up and get busy labeling Granny on the picket line a Nazi.
Dan is bucking for the czar of Fairness doctrine/Ministry of truth position…that and a MicroSoft font capable typewriter. He has his ear to the shaking ground and instinctively realizes that there are slop buckets full of tainted liberal water yet to be carried. Just a couple of days ago Gibbs urged the White House press corp get out there and counter the “misinformation”, to which one reporter responded; “what more can we do?”. What more, in-nefarious-deed.
One big problem the news industry has is that you may have multiple sources to learn about something but in reality you rarely have multiple viewpoints. Most of the MSM seem to read the New York Times and then parrot that same line.
It is almost unheard of for a reporter to dismantle another one’s story or to review and contrast multiple different reports on the same subject and then conclude who is lying, has been misled, or has an agenda to push.
Back during the early days of the war in Iraq we had some notable examples of misreporting but very little attempt to figure out why. The US takeover of the Baghdad airport was one example. I believe it was a BBC reporter that said he was at the airport and that sure enough, Baghdad Bob the Information Minister was right, the Americans were no where to be seen. Very shortly thereafter we had a report from another non-US reporter who said he was at the airport with the US military and they had the place sewed up tight. Isn’t it funny that no one ever seemed to ask the first guy where he got his info?
The only place you seem to have things like this brought up is in blogs like this one.
I guess there is honor among thieves and among reporters, too. If there is one thing the MSM needs it is a “Consumer Reports” that looks at the quality of the product.
Never mind “fairness” – that is an artificial construct that only works in beauty pageants. Who has the good product?
tossing this in as an aside;
i saw a mind-boggle yest w/ Glenn Beck & Democratic pollster Pat Cadell. Wanting to link to it, i found a transcript on a website. Here below that is, plus the link to the video:
(open quote)
Glenn Beck Exposes Rahm Emanuel’s Root and Corruption in the Obama Administration
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oAkePgf8hkA
So, I took pity on those of you who have dial-up, and sat there with DVR remote in hand and painstakingly played, rewound, and wrote over and over again. Here goes:
Glenn has on Pat Caddell – former Democratic Pollster and Fox News contributor.
Pat tells Glenn- Rahm, after leaving the Clinton administration as their “bag man,” Bill Clinton gets him a job – puts him on the board of Freddie Mac. Salary $250K.
Glenn asks what qualifications did Rahm have for this job.
Pat says, he had no qualifications for this – he studied BALLET in college.
(You can see Glenn holding back a wise-crack on this). Pat says, “Rahm was there when they were cooking the books at Freddie Mac.”
His second job was with Wasserman-(Pearl or Perla ??) (I couldn’t understand the last half of the name), in their Chicago office and made $16M in less than 2 years.
He made the $16M on one large deal. He was advising SBC (which Edmund Whiteacre was the Chairman) which later grew into the new AT&T. The guy who helped make the SBC deal, took a loss. (They had to sell because they bought another phone company – Ameritech. They had to get rid of a security company called Security Link – it was a billion-billion and a half dollar investment.) He sold it to an investment group being led by Emanuel for about $500M. 6 months later, the investment bank that bought it, sold it for a billion dollars.
The current administration appointed Edmund Whiteacre as the new Chairman of GM – who announced the day of his appointment, “I know nothing about the car business.”
Bill Daley, brother of the Mayor of Chicago, was the person pulling the strings in the Obama campaign. One of Bill’s closest firends/enemies is a person named Jim Johnson. Jim Johnson was the Chairman of Fannie Mae. His qualifications to manage one of the largest mortgage companies in the world was that he was Walter Mondale’s campaign manager.
Glenn asks: WHY IS NO ONE CONNECTING THESE DOTS?
Pat says: That’s what drives me crazy. Corruption is killing this country. There is corruption on the Republican side and there is corruption on my side of the aisle with the Democrats. It is a cancer on society. NO ONE WILL TOUCH THIS STORY! Nobody has made this connection in the media because they’ve decided they have a new role. Both these parties are in deep trouble.
End
Kudos to Glenn for having the kahonas – amid threats to him and his family, as well as having sponsors bullied into pulling their advertising from his show, – to shine a light on the gutter rats that helped layer on corruption.
(end quote from tree of liberty)
The corruption of the deals between the large corporations and banks and Wall Street barons and key politicians of both parties is out of control. Also the rich Arab states are buying important DC policy types.
Discovered, The Inspector General, with Health Care. Obama’s Magic Elixer.
Lawyerly loopholes for the “special” amongst us, and hard tack biscuits for the rest of you.
this just gets crazier and crazier.
Gibbs is now warning the press corps to go out there and fight and correct “misinformation” about health scare/deathcare and Axelrod is running e-mail phishing expeditions, to help out w/ the backlog.
I presume he means about “death panel” type slander of the congress’s’ bill plan proposals.
I take it the “or else” part is now implicit and goes without saying.
I’ll bet every decent reporter is kicking himself for thinking only after the nanosecond opportunity to respond to Gibbs’ microsecond pause during his blistering obfuscations and dodging is that the obvious answer to his admonishments is: “That’s why we are attending this press conference briefing”
Book ‘em nano
What once served as metaphor turns into understatement in less than 90 minutes these days.
‘good cop/bad cop’ is now mutated into a combination of Orwell/Huxley conflict resolution:
In Jonah Goldbergs ‘Liberal Fascism’ he points out that in Orwell’s version of the totalitarian state, Orwell’s model serves as the masculine form of the paradigm, very harsh and aggressive, where the Huxley model is caring, nurturing: in fact the problem with Huxley’s version is one might ask– what’s so unappealing or repulsive about it? The nurturing mother promises to protect and shield (us) the child, from all the bad wicked things out there, that threaten to spoil the shangri-La nutopia the government works so hard to provide. And if any microscopic pathogens make their way in, they’ve got a band aid bigger than you are, soaked with medicine, lest you become infected with outside, western “capitalist” ideas, and if it does, and that band aid won’t hold you down, that means we are going to have to quarantine you.
We’re all in the dilemma Ivan Denisovich faced when he and a couple other soldiers became estranged from their battalion during battle, and had to decide which is worse, being captured by the Wehrmacht, or stumbling back on his battalion only to be declared “infected’ (by those “westernisation ideas”) simply because his group had ‘strayed’ from the hidden nurturing hand of the motherland, and be quarantined for ‘re-education’ and bound for shipment to an isolation camp in Siberia? Which is exactly what happened to Ivan and his fellow compatriots next. (In the dead of winter I might add).
So the government is our parent and when they say “its for the children” they mean all of us children.
Meanwhile they behave like some out-of-control mutant Frat House, with an ad hoc bio-weapons lab in the basement. for reinforcements.
Well I’m just glad those bank fixer-uppers are going to get a shot a recouping the money they never lost in the first place, tipped off as they were to the ‘start selling off discreetly…’ plan begun in 2006 for ‘insiders’ in preparation for the Soros’ $500,000,000 mass investment portfolio sell off that tumbled down on the morning of Sept 18, 2008.
Surprise! October came early that year.
Clermont police interview suspect in Obama ‘Joker’ posters. “…investigators suspect others were involved and their investigation is continuing.” Orlando Sentinel
Since when does political art generate investigations and “suspects”? First Amendment anyone?
Obama, Pelosi and Reid, the Progressive Triumvirate, are immoral. Together, and individually, they are intentionally fostering a climate of fear and chilling the right of free citizens to petition their government.
Interference with the finanical system, the destruction of wealth, and the impoverishment of citizens through taxation are not just unseemly and improper. They are immoral acts.
We all have an inalienable right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. The Constitution provides the institutional framework of the proper order under which citizens can responsibly exercise their inalienable rights. Any action by government officials done to benefit themselves or their cohorts that negatively affects the ability of citizens to pursue life, liberty or happiness is an immoral act.
An immoral government is not a legitimate government.
gaffe, if you missed this, it’s still excellent.
An update would include that among the vulture investors who bought up shattered Wachovia assets (and have already scored fat on ‘em) was George Soros, friend of the Sandlers at Golden West, the designers of the worst of the garbage mortgages.
Another update would be that the Wachovia CEO who made the wacovia-suicidal 2006 (‘top o the market’) deal with Golden West was sent packing as soon as the shareholders caught on to what had been done to their property. Soros has always made his big scores by placing, or recruiting, “moles at the controls” of his targets.
This Wachovia swindle is small potatoes now as far larger government/corporate attacks upon the resources of the middle class begin to emerge –but it is instructive on several levels:
One, it’s tight enough to understand, and small enough to see whole. Two, that these crimes –the dreams of investigative journalism as recently as, uh, the previous admin –have been simply buried if there’s any hint at connection with the Obama admin.
the MSM ignoring a story like this (and the dozens of other stories like this) is far worse than a naughty party-line shenanigan.
on the basis of the MSM’s ‘understood’ deal with the people, it amounts to a conspiracy to defraud the entire nation –and world. An immorality almost too massive to comprehend. A financial demi-Holocaust.
http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/09/how_allies_of_george_soros_hel.html
The funny thing is, George Soros will probably die of old age.
“It is a conflict by design,”
No, Duh.
This has been true of much of modern America’s large, “comprehensive” legislation. Medicare, for instance, was practically designed for fraud.
If you haven’t already caught the scent of revolution in the air I recommend an immediate nasal irrigation.
When the government and the MSM told us we were in immediate peril of total financial collaspe that was total baloney.
All of the major players had previous Goldman Sachs ties and they knew best of all that “fear and greed” rule WS. They put the nation on a fear carosel that they just kept running. It worked.
The world lost half of it’s monetary value, the bailout program had NO oversight, and billions simply vanished.
Like bloody hell it vanished. Those who know which levers to pull, pulled them and now are as rich as Croesus. The FED is a giant fraud, a stock company where stock is never traded and controlled by a very few. Hoi polloi go sit down and eat your porridge, we’ll have the filet on the Cote d’Azure.
This gem from the article is priceless…..” The Treasury says it will be on the alert for any sign of hanky-panky..”
It makes me want to vomit. It is a prelude to the coda in Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture …complete with canon fire.
“”"”Clermont police interview suspect in Obama ‘Joker’ posters. “…investigators suspect others were involved and their investigation is continuing.”"”"”
What the Hell? Seriously?
I got a theory. Pure hypothetical.
What if soros and the shadow backers of O were playin pinochle and tossin back a few brewskis one night in Mayor Daley’s private conference room, and somebody says, “Ya know, if it looked like the pres was fixing to really go ahead and make good on all the Democratic threats to confiscate people’s guns, you can be sure ammo sales will be like WWII all over again.”
“Hmmmm. Which stocks should we buy up?”
Also, jjredfan, anybody ‘short’ the private healthcares has made out like a bandit off Obamacare. There was a reason for the (violated now) taboo on government & business combines –and it far predates that Italian feller that ended ‘upside down’ on his investments.
***
habu, Aug 14 entry, the Stimulus …a ‘thomas paine’ vid.
I saw a piece on the Joker posters in Clermont last night.
Supposedly the problem is that they posted them all over the place – including across the street from the Police station – on public property.
And they used a good glue so getting them off is a lot of work.
All I could think of was that when they were putting up those posters of Obama with a halo nobody said squat.
The news items cited in this post and many of the comments are really part of a single story, not a random collection of incidents. Finance, mass media, accepted “myths”: these are but three pillars of the old order that are now under attack. Add to that the rumor of faraway war — except that it is faraway only in the geographical sense — politically the war on terror goes right to one of the accepted myths, the idea of cultural relativism. Visible too, are the reactions to the cracks in the old order. The independent attempts at journalistic correspondence; the accusations of corruption at the highest levels; a fractious electorate.
The reason its important to understand the crisis is that otherwise, that strange but perfectly predictable event, the crackdown on the Obama ‘joker’ posters, makes no sense. Dan Rather really performs his last perfect service in this context because his article basically explains it all: help, the sky is falling. The barbarians are at the gates. Except the barbarians in this case aren’t led by Osama bin Laden, but by those awful Bible clinging, gun-toting, NASCAR watching guys who back in the day wouldn’t dare question us. That’s why the Townhalls have been so traumatic for the political establishment. The peasants are answering back.
When the history of this period is written, President Obama’s remark that he was all that was standing between the elite and the pitchforks will be classed with Antoinette’s remark about letting them eat cake. Both are amazing, tone deaf examples of people who don’t get it. The peasants were no longer reproved by Antoinette’s remark and Barack did not realize that the pitchforks were no longer wielded on signal from Time Magazine. The bottom line is that things are slipping out of control. Gibb’s nervousness, I think, stems from a realization that this has actually happened. The White House is already a blog-free zone; Twitter is already prohibited; thugs are already screening Town Hall participants and still it doesn’t stop? What kind of garlic bullet does it take to kill these zombies if even the massed fires of their contacts in the media couldn’t put it down?
But he still doesn’t get it. It’s not just the Democratic party’s system that’s broke. It’s the Republican’s too. If all the Wall Street insiders can do is rip off the toxic assets program, well that’s pathetic. It’s a carrion strategy; it’s vultures pecking on a dying animal. What will they do for an encore? What happens when the carcass is picked clean? A lot of the guys who didn’t think about the meltdown then, saying to themselves it would never happen, are still thinking in the same fuzzy way. The music’s got to keep playing because it always has. Uh-uh.
I’m not one of those who thinks that people are going to don their tricorn hats and march out to fife and drum. But I do think that it is no longer business as usual; that institutional change will happen with an unaccustomed speed. I believe we don’t know what will happen in the coming months and years; but it’s important for people to stay connected; to organize themselves because they’re going to have to react to changing events which cannot yet be predicted. We’ve seen the tip of the Black Swan’s beak rounding the riverbend. We haven’t seen the rest of it.
in fact the problem with Huxley’s version is one might ask– what’s so unappealing or repulsive about it?
What’s appealing is that people always imagine themselves as one of the Alphas, and never as a Delta or Epsilon.
#17 nichevo:
“The funny thing is, George Soros will probably die of old age”
Yeah, like Pol Pot did.
The Register reports that so many emails on the health issue are being sent to Congress their servers are bogging down. Incidentally, note that the Register did not quote the AP verbatim. By and by maybe nobody will quote them verbatim and a subscription to them will simply amount to the privilege of citing their sometimes badly written prose.
With all due respect (and a great deal is due) to Bill Roggio, after watching that Beck-Caddell exchange, I think we need to invest some money in outfits sending reporters into the swamps of government corruption. How much does it cost to embedd a reporter in Chicago?
Death Panels
Our elite want to be like Europe, look to European law and customs in deciding legal disputes. Euthanasia and physician assisted suicide are legal in Belgium, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands.
“Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg recently gave a speech defending the Supreme Court’s increasing use of foreign law in support of its rulings on the meaning of the Constitution. The title of her speech — “‘A decent Respect to the Opinions of [Human]kind’: the Value of a Comparative Perspective in Constitutional Adjudication”
Alien Justice
Ruth Bader Ginsburg vs. the Declaration of Independence.
By Edward Whelan
http://tinyurl.com/o3ms3j
See also: Courting Abroad, The use and abuse of foreign law by the U.S. Supreme Court.
by Jeremy Rabkin, 04/10/2006, Volume 011, Issue 28
http://tinyurl.com/orkgyb
Inconvenient lives
We have the certainty that inconvenient lives are deemed expendable by the liberal elite, consider abortion.
The case for infanticide has been made by Peter Singer:
“In Chapter 4 we saw that the fact that a being is a human being, in the sense of a member of the species Homo sapiens, is not relevant to the wrongness of killing it; it is, rather, characteristics like rationality, autonomy, and self-consciousness that make a difference. Infants lack these characteristics. Killing them, therefore, cannot be equated with killing normal human beings, or any other self-conscious beings.” (I stand aghast.)
http://tinyurl.com/ow6cur
Do we really want to see cases like this in our courts?
“Murder Assisted Suicide Case Continues, Wife Wanted Money”
May 12, 2008
http://tinyurl.com/olhe6h
Context, the above are part of our context. Is some heat surprising? Especially when un-pierced, un-tattooed, middle aged and elderly, veterans, housewives, (citizens all) have their motives impugned and are branded a mob.
onesimsu
onesimus/29; “Bereaved New World” ?
Wretchard #24:
Going back to the example of Mig Pilot and Lt. Belenko again, a Soviet diplomat admitted quietly that what really shook them about the defection was not the temporary loss of a Mig-25 – which in any case in technological terms merely proved to us that the USSR was really not so hot.
What shook and frightened the Soviet elites was that Lt Belenko was “one of theirs”, a person fully indoctrinated in the Soviet system, and quite privileged by their standards. And even he could see that The System was so flawed that it could not be fixed.
When he lit those afterburners and lit out for the USA he forced them to face just how bad things really were. The natives were restless, even the ones they thought were “theirs.”
buddy at 11
Thanks for all of that work. Somehow the message has to get out.
Ralph Miller, quoted from the website “www.whatismetaphysics.com” says of the black swan we’re seeing referenced so often of late:
The impossibility of a black swan in Western culture was due to the simple fact that nobody had ever seen anything but white swans. The existence of a black swan would require the world to accommodate its existence; a world where there are both white and black swans. The 17th [sic] Century discovery of black swans in Australia transformed the meaning of the concept. What was thought of as utterly impossible actually did come to pass.
The black swan is the harbinger of ‘things’ and/or events that will have monumental ‘culture changing’ potential! It’s the answer to the notion that ‘something’s got to give’. Or, ‘that something big is bound to happen.’ ”
[back to Mad Fiddler's musings...]
In these hallowed precincts I’ve seen a number of invocations of the black swan, and a few quotes from some acutely insightful political writer or other, whose name escapes me now.
Is we all talkin bout the same rara avis metaphoricus?
* Australia’s first European settlements were actually started about 1788 – 18th Century, not 17th. There are references and evidence that various adventurers & navigators had glimpsed the land mass as early as about 1522, but I haven’t been able to find a clear reference to the discovery of the Australian black swans… I’m lookin’!
Okay, it appears there was a report by a Dutch explorer name of Willem de Vlamingh dating from about 1697…
onesimus@ #29
Ruth B.G. citing the in crease in using foreign law in our courts.
I haven’t seen American’s laws lately, have you or anyone else..oh yeah Orlando has an APB out on poster people, dastardly Sans-culottes messing with our pround, hip, with it President.
But just go down the Bill of Rights and count the number of ways that come to mind on how distorted they’ve become.
Governments, as Aristotle and almost all other political philosophers throughout history have warned, their “takings” from the people whenever they choose to take become a legislative “right” once they have achieved police power sufficient to subdue the population…they are attempting the coup de grace at this time.
So I say carpe testicle them!
I’ve just visited the highly interesting website for the Southern Poverty Law Center.
(Link takes you to http://www.splcenter.org/index.jsp)
Great stuff. Lots of entertainment value, if only that were the intention.
Take a look.
It helps put some of the current hysterical Leftist brazen lies into a context.
habu:
You wrote:
So I say carpe testicle them!
Now I am almost sure you are referring here somehow to Horace’s famous line:
Carpe diem, quam minimum credula postero.
But I’m darned if I clearly “get” what you mean, unless it is to “pluck” (a decent rendering of carpe in Horace’s line) the “fruit” of said testes!
Jamie Irons
Just sent this to my representative…
Honorable Congressman [...],
I am requesting that you reject the entirety of HR 3200. After long searching I found a .pdf of the proposed legislation on the website of the Government Printing Office, and I have been trying to read through it over the last ten days.
Immediately, it’s clear from the parts that CAN be read that it creates an entirely NEW set of sprawling bureaucracies, most of which appear to be in no way answerable or accountable to the PEOPLE of the US.
Next, it does not address at all the question of WHERE we might find people who are remotely qualified to be making such sweeping decisions on medical treatments to fill the thousands and thousands of new positions that will govern the administration of care. (We are already stretched very thin in the number of doctors, nurses, technicians, etc.)
Third, this document is opaque in a disturbing number of details, with definitions, references, citations, and un-explained terms. It suggests strongly that this is a deliberate obscurantism to defeat any possible rational discussion of the merits and demerits.
The Congressional Budget Office issued a report indicating that the costs as outlined publicly by the executive branch were counter-factual. After that report was issued, the president called the director of the CBO to the White House for a “conference” in a thoroughly inappropriate act of intimidation that sadly is no longer unprecedented in this presidency.
The country is experiencing a vast awakening of alarm and rejection at the brazen attempts by some to impose collectivization and socialist solutions that are in no way justified by circumstances, and nor do they on analysis hold any prospect for accomplishing any good result as claimed.
Please vote against this profoundly bad legislation.
Thank you.
[I don't expect they read these things - just have some harried staffer do tallies for & against. But it's one more exercise of trying to organize my thoughts and be as concise as possible. I've NEVER added my name to a pre-composed form letter. Just seems like it would aggravate the heck out of anyone receiving it.]
Wretchard, Habu, and friends,
When it comes to breadth and depth of knowledge, I cannot hold a candle to most of you. The above post was sent as an offering for the defense of limited government. It was prompted by Sarah Palin’s mention of the context of Section 1233 within the whole of HR 3200. I believe context is extremely important. Does my previous post help put the “Death Panel” debate in a wider context? It was an attempt to put forth a perspective that might be helpful to other Belmonters as you engage in your spheres of influence.
I appreciate Wretchard, and all the serious (non-troll)commenters. Some of what I have learned here has been transmitted along to my like-minded friends. I have also written my Senators and Representative. The troika; Obama, Reid, and Pelosi is a mortal threat.
onesimus
Onesimus,
I’ve found your posts to contribute to the general fund of perspective- they’re readable, coherent, direct, to the point. I think if I let myself be intimidated to silence by my betters, I wouldn’t have made hardly no conterbutions at all.
Sorry, I lapse into weirdness sometimes, meant as a sorta mock humility.
I think a lot of folks have some contribution to make. Every once in a while, a single sentence from someone can bring everything into focus in a way that the most elegantly balanced 10-paragraphy essay didn’t.
To coin a phrase, clever is as clever does.
This just came to my attention:
Monty Python, Bring out your dead.
http://tinyurl.com/re49kp
Meanwhile, we visit a couple of pillars from a Gov/finance/media Foundation taking a break from the wearying work of mollycoddling the accepted “myth’s” to take a look at the new fashions- Let’s watch:
“Just look, I’ve got this new albatross around my neck and now I’m convinced it doesn’t do a thing for me-
“Can’t you send it back?”
“No its illegal, a pirated faux copy of a Paris original I got in Asia from a shady chinese connection for one thing, and I’ve got enough trouble with my expense account as it is-
Looks like I’ll just have to keep it on and pretend nothings wrong and hope that the whole thing catches on over here and everyone feels as compelled to wear it as I do.”
“That’s probably the best course, you’ll probably end a up trendsetter!
Jay [#12]–while I have NO admiration for the quishy repubs, I’m not inclined to let careless ‘brush-strokes’ go unremarked upon. If you have specific info on key repubs profiting from the ‘chicagoization’ of our Republic [other than the ones who've defected to the administration], I’d love to hear it.
I too have have been following this matter. As far as I can tell, all of the key players being ‘slotted’ into positions of CONSIDERABLE power [and stand to become VERY wealthy...] are major allies of Obama and Soros. In addition, many of the players are also ex-Clinton cronies who integrated themselves into the framework of the Beltway ‘entitlement machine’ before the end of Clinton’s second term.
Make no mistake, I have no further tolerance for this nonsense from any party, but I’m not blind. Nor stupid.
The crew currently taking a ‘treasure bath’ in our tax money [and siphoning off their 'share' of the GDP...] all seem to sporting the same party ‘colors’.
And they aren’t even bothering to hide it.
Cpt. Charles, you make me think of O’s pals dog-paddling around in a huge vault of coins, like Uncle Scrooge from the old Carl Barks Disney comics.
I was thinking Mel Brooks, but Scrooge McDuck was one of my favorite comics when I was a kid.
I can live with the visual.
O’s pals dog-paddling around in a huge vault of coins …and they’re wearing number tags on they black n white striped joiseys, opera masks, black caps, and they look like beagles!
Color me extremely skeptical of the “Long Tail” as anything useful economically. Not even Amazon or Itunes makes money on that Long Tail. It’s the 20% of the content that makes 90% of the revenue.
What the internet does, is allow an end-run through cheap distribution networks, for alternative MASS providers. Instapundit and Drudge give you aggregated links, with a conservative slant, that’s as good as CNN or MSNBC, but appeals to a larger base.
TV networks BEFORE Fox and Cable lost viewers. In the mid 1960′s — the Beverly Hillbillies pulled 60 million viewers. By the 1980′s, top-rated A-Team only pulled 20 million, in 1984 it’s peak, before Fox (1986) or cable/satellite. Men had started fleeing TV (along with older viewers) by the 1970′s. Same with newspapers — the LAT peaked in circulation in 1988, and declined thereafter. CBS and NBC news were in trouble long before the 2000′s.
My guess is that “free” beats everything else, and we will see “free” mass-advertisers supported online media replacing newspapers. With original reporting, and competition to provide less left-biased news which appeals to elites but is a tiny demographic slice of the market. That demo can probably support the Daily Show. Not MSNBC, NBC, CBS, ABC, CNN etc. as well. It’s just too small.
My take is we will see through the Internet “re-massification” of culture and media. In culture, “free” serial and movie content, downloadable (demo registration required) for Ipods, phones, computers, and burn to DVD, with the “ads baked in” to the content. Super-product placement. “Ken Ridgley: Farmer’s Insurance Investigator” with the lead character each week responding to a disaster, accident, what have you and uncovering evil-doing, with Farmer’s Insurance looking good. Or a workplace comedy set in Sara Lee’s food kitchen. Or what have you. Do it good enough, broad enough, and FREE beats pay every day. Particularly in scarce consumer dollar global recession. The internet just being a very cheap (anyone can play) 1930′s radio network, with the advantage that content can play any time.
With media, why not FREE with ads baked in? On your Kindle, your Ipod, your Iphone, or other phone, as well as the Web. With interactive stuff so advertisers know your demo specifics (you viewed an ad, or clicked it) and like I said above, much, much broader outlook and appeal.
The NYT is the SWPL Bible. That’s OK, but it’s niche. Not even USA-Today is broad enough, it’s very female-oriented as is most of the newspaper/media, and dismissive of the older readers which is endemic to the media.
The Black Swans are not happening “just because.” Technology makes distribution cheap and easy, with the internet and 3/4G cell phone networks. You don’t need nationwide printing plants, or scarce TV stations to assemble a national network, and so on. Internationally, nuclear proliferation plus global trade + tribal politics in proliferators = dead Western (probably US) cities. Simple as that.
Obama bet it all on the ability to operate just like he did in Chicago: illegal shakedowns backed by playing the race card and sticking it to the Middle Class Whites. That’s a losing bet, obviously, regardless if he passes ObamaCare or not. People are angry, they won’t forget it, and they don’t want, they MUST have Obama and Dems gone — because the latter are an existential threat to their lives. They can’t just flee “Chicago for the suburbs.” There’s no where else to go, and no margin to make a payoff. Not with “death boards” rationing and cutting Medicare half a trillion and so on. Obama picked a fight with opponents who cannot back down, won’t back down, and will go down politically fighting and even if defeated, respond only with the venom of those made suddenly poor.
My guess is Obama wants an attack, so he can gain dictatorial powers like Castro and Chavez, and rule for life, passing the office and rule to his wife and kids. He’s an African Big Man type (or Indonesian) philosophically. Said dictator crushing “insults to Islam” and other stuff, like being non-Obama worshipping, not any actual defense of the Nation.
Yes, he’s that stupid.
It makes no sense to me that people pay for cable TV when they can get 90% or more for free on the internet. If the Left was relying on the MSM as a meme injector then the shift to digital was an act of self destruction. How many are now disconnected and learning to live with it?
Whiskey @ 48:
Be patient, it is coming. The form is still up for guesses. Mine was some sort of agitation from this months health care debates.
Information should be free. The internet was supposed to be the media that made it so. But just count on someone trying to harness the wind and make a buck. The smart ones made things freely available and depended on people paying what they could. Some made a killing and large businesses from small.
@ whiskey (48): “Super-product placement. “Ken Ridgley: Farmer’s Insurance Investigator” with the lead character each week responding to a disaster, accident, what have you and uncovering evil-doing, with Farmer’s Insurance looking good. Or a workplace comedy set in Sara Lee’s food kitchen. Or what have you.”
This is already happening in China. Their version of the American show “Ugly Betty”, which is itself an adaptation of a Colombian show entitled “Betty La Fea”, is exactly what you describe, i.e. super product placement for cosmetics and fashion items. Amazing how popular that show has been, there are 19 versions of it on TV worldwide.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betty_la_fea#Other_versions
Whiskey, in your post #48 you said, “Instapundit and Drudge give you aggregated links, with a conservative slant, that’s as good as CNN or MSNBC, but appeals to a larger base.”
I would suggest only a slight modification to that: “Instapundit and Drudge give you aggregated links, without excluding all conservative links…”
When Drudge’s site became notorious for mentioning that Newsweek was withholding a well-researched story about Bill Clinton’s affair with a White House intern, I had to see why the talking heads were turning themselves inside out with anger and loathing.
Checking the website, I found links to scores of credentialed news agencies from around the world, and to opinion writers on all sides of the political sphere.
Un-filtered.
You could read stuff from France, Algiers, Manchester Guardian, without some arrogant peckerwood pre-sifting and telling you what was important and what it meant.
Dangerous? Yup, to the peckerwoods.
Anticipating O’s intentions, we targets need to find legal ways to counter potential executive abuse of, say, the legitimate functions of the census data-gathering.
Wretchard says: “The barbarians are at the gates. Except the barbarians in this case aren’t led by Osama bin Laden, but by those awful Bible clinging, gun-toting, NASCAR watching guys who back in the day wouldn’t dare question us. That’s why the Townhalls have been so traumatic for the political establishment. The peasants are answering back.”
But are we the revolutionaries, or the kulaks?
Things didn’t work out too well for the kulaks in the USSR, as I recall. Lenin and Stalin killed millions and impoverished the rest.
Mad Fiddler,
A difference between then and now.
Then, the MSM was caught by surprise and when NewsWeek tried to bury the story thousands of writers, editors, producers and reporters, most of whom were liberals, clung to memories of watching The Front Page and followed the story. It wasn’t only broken by the minions of the extreme right. The damage control on the Left came late, after the facts got out.
Now (or at least a year ago), the MSM was well prepared and when word got out that the Los Angelas Times was sitting on a video of candidate Barack Obama at a party for Palestinian activist Khalid Rashidi that could blow his entire campaign right out of the water they clung together and helped bury the story. That video is in the same incinerator as his college files and passport records.
Beverly, one of those middle class small business families ruined and hounded out of the country was Ayn Rand’s.
re: #4 -
” All these people should be supported: Roggio, Totten, Yon, Fernandez. There are more. ”
as a scion of a small newspaper family – i understand very well – the power, and lack of power, of – the press.
to all of you readers, and all of you regular com-mentors
please support these people – they are doing yeoman’s work.
these people are doing the best analysis, and best field reporting, that has ever been done – i don’t slight those who have done equal in the past, but we are here now.
and that goes for the majority of the comments, and links, too –
personally, it makes me sad that the linotypists, copy boys, typewriters, and those great big gigantic fabulously noisy presses, are gone now – but news and editorials will always be.
please support them.
ref: yeoman – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yeoman
” A freeman, or man born free ”
ref: scion – http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/scion
“A detached shoot or twig containing buds from a woody plant”
a long time ago, i was a copy-boy, and my dream job was to run a linotype –
alas, they went extinct before i had the opportunity – but i sure do remember them, and i used to carry the lead.
ref: linotype – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linotype_machine
to : the wm, I stand vindicated- http://tiny.cc/BrNxf
I’m sorry, that’s bm, as in “EXEDRIN BM: because when you’re constipated, the last thing you need is a headache“.