To me, one of the paradoxes of true democracy is that it often results in sub-optimal solutions to problems (cf. Affordable Care Act), and occasionally results in absolutely regressive, knee-jerk responses to crisis that can actually do damage to other cherished values (cf. The Patriot Act, TARP).   Sometimes pleasing enough people to get a majority diminishes the effectiveness in reaching the described goal, sometimes vested interests take control of the process and corrupt it.  It takes stamina, and sometimes the patience of Job, to maintain a democracy and ensure that it serves the people well.

Americans Elect , which got a big boost from an appearance on The Colbert Report last night, is an ostensible ‘third party’ (although they reject this characterization, calling themselves an ‘open presidential nominating process’), inspired by the “Web 2.0” capability to ‘aggregate’ user input (at the heart of how Groupon works) and to ‘correlate’ that input in various ways (at the heart of internet polling like Zogby, or dating services like Match.com).

Unfortunately, while aggregation and correlation are useful tools, they are not an end in themselves, as anyone who’s familiar with Mark Twain can tell you.  Polling, which typically relies upon multiple-choice, mutually-exclusive answers, skews responses simply by phrasing the questions and limiting the answers, often creating false dichotomies (Zogby’s “do you consider yourself a citizen of the world or of the United States”? is a classic).

When taking Americans Elect’s voter-profiling opinion survey, I answered “unsure” many times, only because I felt that my answer to the question was not included.  Is “energy independence” necessarily at odds with “environmental protection”?  Is “energy independence” even an attainable goal?  I would argue that “sustainable development” is a more useful and productive goal than “energy independence”, although the ideas have susbstantial overlap in their goals, but the term I prefer was not offered anywhere in the survey questions.

So in the end, the survey simply asked my opinion on prevailing political memes, without asking anything about my values or goals.  Political parties by their nature represent goals and principles, which are epochal and value-based,  rather than policy proscriptions, which are ephemeral and sometimes reactive.

When designing a system, it’s important to ask open-ended questions, which are the most powerful, and will lead you to consider issues which you may have missed in your original formulation of ideas, or even of the goals of the system.  One of the precepts of good root-cause analysis is to ask the “5 levels of why” before arriving at a conclusion, and without those open-ended questions, you can’t ask why — there is no discussion, only a forced framework of choices that make assumptions which may be unwarranted.

So it’s a sort of magical thinking to surmise that making political participation as simple as using the web (which, of course, isn’t so simple for certain demographics, but more on that later) will result in better solutions to society’s ills.

As someone who’s helped design a lot of Information Systems, which is one way to describe voting processes, I can tell you that often a problem in designing a system that achieves positive goals is not a lack of participation by stakeholders, but a lack of informed discussion between stakeholders. For example, while streamlining or automating a process may provide positive benefits for stakeholder A, the same change may impact stakeholder B in a negative manner that is only apparent to her.  That’s why it’s important both to include all stakeholders in the discussion about change, but also to ensure that they explain to each other how changes will impact them, and more importantly, what each of them expects that system to achieve for them — that is, the definition of success needs to be the same for all stakeholders.  Not always easy, but worth the extra effort to avoid problems later.

As I see it, the problems with our democracy aren’t described by any of the stated goals of Americans Elect, some of which are even belied by its actual system design.  The root causes of our distress are not inherent in the tools of our present system, but inherent in ourselves.  Some of Americans Elect’s stated goals seem to be solutions in search of a problem; other elements so overstate their benefits that it would seem that they’re angling for an IPO.  I’ll address a few of the more troubling items found in the “about” slide show on the website.

“a 21st-century nominating system with state-of-the-art security at every step”

Technology can indeed address issues of voting fraud (think how secure online banking is these days), but this is a miniscule issue in party nomination processes, and still doesn’t rise to a major disruptor in general elections — which makes me wonder if this is simply some surreptitious demo for online voting systems that can be sold by someone like Diebold, to entirely replace polling booths.  And as an EDP Auditor, I would actually like to know what controls have been placed upon access to the database behind the voting system. While Americans Elect claims transparency as a value, none of the specifications for their state-of-the-art security are made public — and I’d like Black Box Voting to review it before I put confidence in their claim that “…an independent, publicly-identified panel of computer scientists, ballot security experts and citizens will examine the system.”  As for transparency, I’d really like to know who’s funding this expensive exercise, and why (there’s that word again).

 “Americans Elect will succeed by putting a nonpartisan ticket on the 2012 ballot in every state”

Need I point out the foolhardiness of creating a permanent ballot position in every state without the protections provided by having established party infrastructure?  Once the novelty of Americans Elect wears off, how many of its ‘delegates’ will continue to vigilantly populate that ballot position in future elections, and who will protect the collective online infrastructure from being usurped by others who do not represent the positions which were so painstakingly surveyed?  This is not a theoretical problem, and it’s exacerbated by the real problem, which is low-information voters.

This points out the greatest magical-thinking flaw in Americans Elect — much as we like to think of our President as the “most powerful leader in the world”, there are limits to what a President can do even with a base of support in Congress, much less without any base of party support.  Further, political party structures create a bi-directional channel for discussion of issues, all the way up from local governmental entities to the White House.  That discussion is an essential element of policy formation, and it’s simple-minded to think that Presidents can, by edict or other means, enforce policy without that base of support which extends all the way through the various levels of government.  It’s in part why parties run slates of candidates for various offices, it creates a team of implementers and policy supporters throughout levels of government.

Promoting the Presidency as a cure-all, who can act by fiat is the same kind of flawed thinking which proscribes “making federal budget decisions just like families do”; of course, husbands and wives never argue about the household budget, do they? Multiply that by 300 million people, or even 535 elected representatives, and you can see the simple-mindedness of that sort of argument, it contradicts the inherent nature of political discussion, which is an iterative, interactive, and often messy process.  If you want simple, direct government by fiat, try North Korea, no messy discussions there.

 “Our purpose is to make the nominating process more open and representative of the majority of voters.”

First of all, the idea that our elected officials are not representative of the majority of voters is a straw man — all the people who wish to participate are participating already, and those who are not either don’t care or are discouraged by the inefficacy of the results and shouldn’t give up so easily.  Further, the U.S. Constitution explicitly, and by design, protects minorities in many ways, and I’ll leave it to the reader to research the reasons for that;  but further, democracy is not simply the addition of votes cast for one of two mutually-exclusive options, it should involve thoughtful examination of issues and an agreed-upon definition of societal goals.

Secondly, the idea that an internet-only system can “better represent” our society is ludicrous, when not only internet access is limited in many parts of the country, but also limited to many persons based upon income, age, and disability.  I would be interested in how the Americans Elect designers intend to address this serious flaw in their methodology — although party nominating systems are not covered under the Voting Rights Act, it seems to be a severe limitation in achieving the high-minded goal of representing a majority of voters.  I would ask the question, “majority of which voters”? (Certainly, the concerns of the elderly or technophobic will be poorly represented by this process).

The real problem in our electoral system is not that the majority is somehow under-represented, it is that the majority is under-informed about how various policies will impact the greater society at large.  This is a failure of only one element in the system — the voters themselves, who fail to take their responsibilities as citizen-leaders seriously.   When election after election seems to be decided by so-called “low information voters” — i.e., people who rely upon rumor, innuendo, emotional appeals, and that soup of all of them, television commercials, to make their choice.

In other words, the main problem is not one of our voting turnout, or ballot access (although these are legitimate concerns and worthy of improvement) – our greater problem is that the average American has little understanding of the complexity of governmental actions today, and how those actions impact our greater goals as a society (confer the recent willingness to let the U.S. default on its debts for only the most recent example).  Contrary to popular opinion, there is considerable agreement on our goals as a society, what I would call ‘American values’ — there just isn’t cooperation on how to achieve them, and that, my friends, is not going to be solved by any presidential nominating process, even the ones currently in place.

Our economy, societal organization, and community structures have reached such a level of abstraction that it is difficult for most of us to understand how any of them relate to each other.  We’ve lost the sense of shared national purpose that is essential to democracy. It’s as if, as a nation, we’ve started to have a mid-life crisis, or worse yet, have sunk into dementia, behaving as if each one of us has all the answers, when on many issues, most of us, all by ourselves, can neither correctly identify the causes of problems nor the full impact of our “solutions”.  And we can’t solve that by some Yelp-like review system.

If you want to improve the political process in this country, become a part of it.  Talk to your neighbors, and talk to people from the next neighborhood over, the next town over, and the next state over. Especially talk to people with whom you disagree, until you can understand their viewpoint, and have asked “Why?” many times.

Turn off the TV, in particular cable news, which has failed to meet its promise for in-depth discussion and has only increased the repetition of television “journalism” shallowness — which was once blamed on lack of time, and which has been left unaddressed even with the adent of 24-hour news programming.

Start small.  Work with your neighbors to solve a small problem, then share your results with the people in the next neighborhood, and stay in touch to see how they modified your solution to fit their needs.  Ask the “5 levels of why” every time you encounter something or someone  that you don’t understand, and don’t stop until you DO understand the root cause.

Finally, beware the magical solution, especially when, like Americans Elect, its transparency is open to question.  You can learn all you need to know about democracy from one Frank Capra movie, but it’s not Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, it’s Meet John Doe, a lesser-known film than its Christian-metaphor counterpart It’s a Wonderful Life, but with a much more cynical core.

Organic movements are challenging to start but easy to corrupt, and faux-organic movements, which sidestep the hard work of democracy by conveniently spending large amounts of money to channel populist fervor, almost always have hidden agendas.  And it’s interesting that an organization touting its transparency fails to reveal who’s funding the petition drives required for its mission of ballot access, or how much has been spent, and by whom, on the considerable technology resources and infrastructure required for its website.

Beware shortcuts and magical thinking.  Democracy, and particularly a functional, governing democracy, is hard work.  When it doesn’t work, it’s easy to blame your tools, like a bad carpenter.  It’s much, much harder to look in the mirror and put the blame where it belongs.

The recent pissing match between those two icons of the small screen, Koppel and Olbermann, inspired my response. For reference, see:
Koppel:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/11/12/AR2010111202857.html
Olbermann:

I don’t think “objective” news has failed us, but false equivalency has, so Olbermann has one well-taken point. His ad-hominem criticism of Koppel’s failure to expose the propagandistic nature of the Iraq War arguments is beside the point (everyone, including MSNBC, largely blew that story), and that criticism ignores a larger failure of television news, including MSNBC and Olbermann.

To equate some of the inane ideas that have been proven wrong time and again (that we can raise more revenue by lowering taxes, etc.) with sensible policies is a disservice to the citizenry. And guess who pioneered that tactic? Ted Koppel, whose show was often cited for frequently skewing audience perceptions with their screen titles — for example, he’d put a government official, with full title, as the counterpoint to an activist, with no title, as opposed to an NGO president or something, who could make the same point and seem to have equal authority as someone from the gubmint. And 75% of Koppel’s guests were what could be called “establishment”, either government officials, or party leaders, or captains of industry — so, in a sense, Koppel’s “obejctive” reporting was partial in a more insidious way, in the same way that media only takes “third party” candidates seriously if they are self-financed millionaires (which to my viewpoint, makes them suspect representatives of an anti-establishment movement).

I would have expected Olbermann to make the point that newspapers were started in this country by people with a distinct point of view (and were explicitly protected by the First Amendment because of this), and that the “objective” reporter was a concoction of the 1950s, which would be true in a sense. I do think that, for example, a trained viewer knows to consider the source, and most MSNBC watchers are clever enough to do this. I’m not sure most Fox viewers, like Hearst newspaper readers of the previous century, have this same skeptical view of their source. I wouldn’t ever take Daily Kos as gospel, but there is some range of opinions there, while Rush Limbaugh listeners proudly proclaim themselves “ditto heads”.   It’s interesting in a different way, because it’s an almost counter-cultural social advocacy of  “anti-American” conformity and  establishmentarianism. (hee hee)

That  Tea Party tone of rebellious dissent (which is a theme prevalent among both right wing conservatives and left-wing zealots like me) is what makes me certain that we are NOT a “center-right country” as some like to proclaim. If you are really confident you are in the majority, you don’t get angry and frustrated, you are much calmer, which is why the corporate flacks that pass for pundits these days are always relatively calm. They know that the game is played mostly on their field, with their rules, and it’s hard for anyone to win but them — and this is equally true for Democrats as for Republicans. Think about how much intra-party outrage there was about someone as marginally outside the mainstream as Howard Dean, and you know their stance.

So I am somewhat ambivalent about the end of “objective journalism”, because I think it, too, was a sham that pretended to show THE truth, when what it generally showed was A truth, at least the corporate / establishment version of it, and in that respect, Olbermann is correct. It became clear to me when all the coverage of the 1999 WTO protest in Seattle was of a handful of people who broke windows of Starbucks, and not of the amazing diversity of the crowd, and any of the policy points they were making (and which are being once again echoed by the Tea Party, in a different meme).

That’s why my feeling is that anyone with any sense gets their information from a variety of sources, and also occasionally, for important things, gets unfiltered data (I read government reports and foundation reports quite frequently, last weekend I read several viewpoints about the deficit to try to determine what part of it is structural, and came to the conclusion that we need to let all the Bush tax cuts expire and get the fuck out of Iraq and Afghanistan if we ever want to balance the budget).

You also should note that all this gnashing of teeth about MSNBC is happening 12(?) years after Fox appeared on the scene. Where was the crying for objective journalism then? I didn’t hear Koppel complaining about Brit Hume moving to Fox and becoming a proto-fascist, or Glenn Beck staying at CNN and channeling Father Coughlin, years before he became Fox’s star du jour. These things existed long before now, why is it only being discussed when the cow is out of the barn?

Why now the deficit discussion, after we tried to run 2 wars without a tax increase or even a special bond issue, and suddenly NOW, after almost 8 years (and with Democrats in control) it’s suddenly a concern)?

Just like the disingenuous discussion of the deficit (which, for the record, I think is a worse problem than the Democrats purport, but not the major crisis that the Republicans decry), most “news” has to be considered thoughtfully rather than digested whole, with the sources fully acknowledged and considered.   For a corporatist like Koppel (who owes his entire career, frankly, to the Iran hostage crisis) to smear Olbermann, who is simply trying to counterweight the manure that Fox puts out, and in a much more thoughtful manner, is nonsense. If Koppel’s brand of reporting was so unbiased and based upon investigative research, he’d be working for Frontline or Now! on PBS right now, instead of on a channel right next to Animal Planet on cable.

Any time I’m tempted to take Koppel too seriously, I just imagine him without that (authority-implying) hairpiece. That usually does the trick, them he looks something like a slimmed-down Dom DeLuise, which is about how “serious” his journalism was. He had 22 minutes to talk to pundits, which was the only saving grace of his program — its brevity.    Now on cable, they talk to the same 2 guys through 3 different programs for 3 hours minus commercials, which means they repeat the same things for 132 minutes of air time instead of 22.

Real reporting, and I’ve said this time and again, would take advantage of the 24/7 capabilites of cable and do in-depth analysis and investigative journalism, provide context by showing the raw interview footage of stories that get edited down to 2 minutes on network news, and include charts and graphs that help explain the political arguments being made in terms of their policy impact instead of their horse-race political impact. Instead, what we get is something akin to propaganda, which is true even on network news, but at least it’s brief and doesn’t grind us down with repetition, and torture us into agreeing.

I’d love to see what Mother Jones could do with a cable network.  Just give them MSNBC for the weekends, instead of running stupid sensationalist “documentaries” about life in prison — we get it, it sucks and it’s brutal. It reminds me of when A&E was new, and didn’t have enough content, it ran World War II footage (including a lot of Nazi propaganda film), so much so that I started calling it “the Hitler channel”.

What we need now is less summarization and simplification for simple minds, and more presentation of complex ideas that aren’t as clear-cut as the pundits would have you believe. Fat chance in a world where “American Idol”, where contestants sing along to well-known songs, is considered an “entertainment” program instead of just a way for wealthy publishing companies to squeeze a few more dollars out of tired old pop hits.

Okay, so I’ve seen this weird commercial like a thousand times now (I watch a LOT of late night re-run TV), and there are a few questions I have.
1) did this guy really feel it was necessary to burn 3 loaves of bread so that he can feed his woman a sandwich? and couldn’t he find some, like, at least some whole-grain bread, not cheap grocery store bread if he’s going to use this as a seduction technique?
2) that house seems really big for a young couple that’s just starting a family — unless he’s a dot-com millionaire, and if so, would she be coming home from a needless job, or was she just out to run an errand?
3) does anyone find the second version (which I’ve only seen online), with the different soundtrack, a little bit creepy, like something very, very bad is going to be at the end of the bread trail?

Version 2:

Palmyra atoll, in 2000

I was watching the Clint Eastwood Iwo Jima film when I decided to look up where dad served during World War II, a tiny island that he referred to as something like  hell in a poem he dug out of his scrapbook and gave me some years ago (another story I won’t go into).

Found some interesting links, using the Google, and now I know why he generally does not speak highly of his time there.  You would think being stationed on a tropical island would be great, but one story talks about how the beaches are beautiful but useless because they are a breeding ground for sharks, and this story notes how remote the island is, even in modern times, not only because of location, but because its airport runway is coral and can only be used by certain types of planes:

http://military.rightpundits.com/2008/04/23/researchers-stranded-on-palmyra-island/

Apparently, a lot of the WW2 era buildings are still there and being used — it’s considered a “research outpost”, so being stationed there was kind of like being on Deep Space Nine back in 1943 or early 1944, which is when I think Dad first arrived (underage because he lied in order to volunteer for duty).  Imagine if you spent your high-school junior year in someplace that remote.  The whole island looks to be about as big as the Logan Square neighborhood in Chicago (literally), and I seem to remember dad saying that the Japanese were staked out on one side of the island and the U.S. on the other.  It is 6 feet above sea level at its highest point, although the trees get up to 15 feet at some points.

Another bit of interesting trivia at:
http://www.nola.com/news/index.ssf/2008/04/local_couples_stranded_on_paci.html

“Palmyra is, technically, an atoll, not an island, Martin said,
explaining that an atoll is a ring-shaped coral reef or a string of
closely spaced small coral islands. Generally, an atoll is what remains after the center of a volcanic island sinks, producing an interior lagoon. Palmyra has 56 islets, he said, and its highest point is 6 feet above sea level.
The journey to Palmyra was one of several the Nature Conservancy offers regularly to donors, board members and companies that support the private organization’s preservation work, Martin said.
The conservancy owns Palmyra, which no humans have inhabited except for sailors during World War II, Timmons said. Because it’s on the equator, he said, Palmyra is an ideal spot for studying global warming and the El Nino phenomenon.”

Seems like that would be a pretty cool trip to make, almost worth making the donation to the Nature Conservancy just to see where Dad served.  It’s 1,000 miles southwest of Honolulu, and would definitely be the farthest south I’ve ever been, despite trips to the southernmost points of Mexico (which is already sometimes unbearably hot).

Also found this:
http://www.janesoceania.com/palmyra_images/index.htm

I wondered if Dad knew any of these guys, there were only about 5000 guys who were stationed there during the whole war, and probably not nearly that

Marines on Palmyra, WWII

many at one time.   Not enough ground to stand ’em all on!

Also a brief history of the island, which apparently was “owned” by a family, who let the U.S. use it during the war, and then filed suit and got it back only after a Supreme Court ruling:

http://www.janeresture.com/palmyra/

It’s also surrounded by one of the few remaining pristine coral reefs in the world, due to its remote location, and has long had a reputation for being haunted or the location of strange paranormal activity.  Many planes have crashed there, and pirate ships wrecked there (not a surprise, due to the topology of the area and the fact that it is at the meeting point for the west and south jet streams, making it difficult to judge wind conditions).

You can only visit there with the approval of the Nature Conservancy, which now owns the island.  There apparently is a recent initiative to make this a protected national park akin to the Grand Canyon.

Quite an interesting diversion, meant to be a moment’s map check which turned into a little more than that, giving a little more life to the many war stories I’ve heard my dad tell over the years about his time there — stories which actually got better over the years, and which helped me as a writer learn how to tell stories in an engaging way.

I’ll have to ask him about some of this next time we talk, Palmyra always had a sort of mystical aura about it, the far-away place where Dad did his war duty, but now it has even more mysticism, now that I know it’s a legendarily obscure and isolated base — even by today’s always-connected standards — with a reputation to rival that of the Bermuda Triangle.

I have nearly lost all faith in your judgment, Mr. President. Your assertion that we are beginning the de-escalaton of our Afghan adventure by escalating it smacks of the same New World Order, Orwellian doublespeak that the previous administration was famous for. To say that in 18 months our troops will begin to come home is to reconfigure a troop replenishment as a withdrawal. 18 months from now, there will be MORE troops in Afghanistan than there are now, as there will be 24 months from now, and likely 30 months from now when you are running for re-election. The logistics of troop withdrawals (and escalations) do not allow an instantaneous move, and you are well aware of this while you make this disingenuous argument.

The “unending chain of sacrifice” that you bemoan could be ended, abruptly, right now, by your executive order. For you to insist that we don’t wish to occupy foreign nations does not erase the fact that we are occupiers, and not just in Iraq and Afghanistan, but in many other nations as well. Like the British a century ago, we are a fading empire that can literally no longer afford to project its power.

The British, who had a mercantilist economic system that was simply unsustainable, and so they had an excuse for decline. Our own nation has squandered its wealth and outsourced its cashflow in the name of corporations who have no national loyalty, and our military endeavors have enriched amoral military contractors who place obscene profits ahead of concern for the safety of soldiers, or even their own employees.

Mr. President, you frequently stated during your campaign that by entering Iraq we failed to achieve our goals in Afghanistan, which was true then, true during the campaign and true now. What is not true is to imply that the goals our country had in Afghanistan 8 years ago are either relevant or achievable at the current time. By escalating our involvement now, while at the same time promising to rectify the unprecedented unfunded war deficit handed to you by the previous administration, you guarantee that your presidency will feature all the drawbacks of LBJ’s without any of the social-service benefits, including those that will be needed for returning soldiers, many of whom will require extensive counseling after the unconsionable “stop-loss” re-deployments that put them in the traumatic heat of battle multiple times.

No, Mr. President, you are wrong, and you are failing us, and by doing so, you are betraying the legacy of progressive idealism that led to your ascendance. I hope that you are the luckiest man alive and we end up better off as a result of this decision, but my heart is heavy now.

My morning started with a jolt when I went to the mailbox and found a letter from Chase bank. Chase took over the 2 credit card accounts I had with Washington Mutual when the latter went bankrupt last year and the taxpayers gave Chase bailout money so they could buy WaMu lock, stock, and barrel. I had thought perhaps they had finally acquiesced to my request to consolidate the accounts, which irrationally had different terms (one had a 10% higher interest rate and a lower limit, despite the fact that both cards were in my name, and last I looked, I didn’t have two different credit ratings).

Instead, my jaw nearly hit the floor when Chase politely informed me that since

“In reviewing your account, we noticed that your account has been inactive for an extended period of time. We believe that this may indicate that the account no longer meets your financial needs. With this in mind, the account has been closed.”

How polite of them to decide for me what my needs were. Apparently, my needs were to close the lower-interest-rate / higher-credit-limit account, and leave open the one which had only a low limit and a 27% interest rate. Now, keep in mind, my credit rating is far higher than it was when the accounts were opened, primarily due to my very diligent efforts to pay down the balances, which were at or near the credit limits for several years, a practice which I was advised was keeping my credit rating lower than it could be.

So, I did the right thing, paid the cards down, and when Chase took the accounts over in the aftermath of last year’s collapse, I asked them why there was a discrepancy between the terms on the two cards, since I was, last I checked, the same person whether I was using one card or the other. I was told that they could not put the terms of both cards in sync, nor could they consolidate the total credit they were extending to me under the card with better terms, but they could migrate all but $500 of credit to the lower-interest-rate card.

This was done at my request early in 2009, and since I’ve continued to be diligent about finances, I haven’t had to use either card since.

I called Chase. 10 minute wait for customer service, service that is depicted in television commercials as so caring and assertive that they’ll call people who are mountain-climbing to tell them they are in danger of an overdraft. Hmmm, but they couldn’t be bothered to call me to tell me that if I don’t use the credit card, they would arbitrarily and unilaterally choose to close the card with better terms and leave me the shitty one. When I finally got customer service, and explained that I did not want this account closed, I was told that there was nothing that could be done. When I explained that by closing the account and not designating it “at customer request”, Chase was negatively impacting my credit score, the customer service person literally started reciting the terms of the agreement, and when I interrupted her to object that she wasn’t addressing my concern, she HUNG UP ON ME.

Second call, another 10 minute wait from those conscientious Chase Bank customer service reps. I asked for the highest-level supervisor I could talk to, and was transferred to “Wynna”, who asked how she could help me, but the ensuing conversation revealed that she really didn’t mean it. I recounted the previous call to her and asked her if she thought it was appropriate for a customer service rep to hang up on a customer, and she apologized without answering the question.

When I then recounted why I was angry with Chase for closing an account without any rationale, and without consulting me at all or considering the impact on my credit score, she AGAIN STARTED TO RECITE THE TERMS OF THE CREDIT AGREEMENT. At that point, I asked her if it was Chase’s policy to alienate customers by damaging their credit score, and also why they would close only ONE account — coincidentally, I”m sure, closing the account with much better terms, since BOTH ACCOUNTS had been inactive for the same amount of time. I was treated to another recital of terms of the agreement.

I then asked if she could look up the remaining account and review its terms, since the overall reduction in available credit should make me eligible for improved terms on the remaining account, something approximating the better terms that were on the other account which they had so conscientiously closed for me. Since in order to provide her with that account number, I would need to go locate the card, which was stored away, I asked if she could wait for me to go retrieve it AND SHE HAD THE NERVE TO TELL ME SHE COULD ONLY WAIT 2 MINUTES, after they had made me wait 10 to talk to her!

I found both cards, called back, waited 10 minutes again, and inquired on the bad-terms account, asking why they had chosen to keep that one open — and was treated again to a sing-songy recital of terms. When I indicated that I had no interest in retaining the bad-terms account if the good-terms account was not re-opened, I was told that was not possible, and that they could not give me any reason.

So apparently, it is now the policy of Chase Bank CEO Jamie Dimon to DRIVE AWAY CUSTOMERS, because even when I told them that I would never do business with Chase ever again, in any capacity, unless they re-opened the account, I was rebuffed. I closed my account and snipped up the cards, and Chase made an enemy for life.

These are the practices of banks whose very existence is based upon the generosity of the taxpayers, each of whom earlier this year ponied up something like $10,000 per person to keep these institutions, including Chase, afloat.

I am going to send a letter to Chase Bank’s marketing department, informing them that I do not ever wish to receive any marketing correspondence from them ever again, with their acceptance of the letter constituting their agreement to pay me back the $10,000 I loaned those deadbeats if they ever dare to send me any marketing letters again. I can do without the happy, smiling, mountain-climbing people on them, telling me how much Chase cares about me.

I guarantee you, these banks are not “too big to fail”. They are failing all of us, every day, by pretending that the “good customers” are those people who never pay down their balances, go over their credit limits, incur insurmountable debt, and consequently have lousy credit ratings that warrant sky-high interest rates. That is a telling business model, and it explains why, months after receiving billions of our dollars in order to “free up the credit markets”, the only ones whose credit is freer are the banks themselves, allowing them to continue the highly-leveraged practices that collapsed the system in the first place. I guess deadbeats just value other deadbeats.

I, for one, am researching local banks that are small enough to actually fail and not guaranteed survival by the taxpayers — they may value customers who pay their bills and are responsible with credit, which is what bankers are supposed to do.

Why Chicago didn’t want the Olympics | Salon News.

This article nails the objections — Daley’s connected contractors would get all the benefits, while the rest of us who live and work in the city would not only be on the hook for the inevitable cost overruns, we would have our access to the lakefront blocked for years during construction.

Anyone who has borne the burden of “slow zones” for the last 3 years on the CTA “L” lines knows that there are better uses for the money, including increasing transit service to a level that doesn’t mean SRO crowds on the rail cars all day, all night, every day. Fixing potholes would be a close second.

These are simple things that any “great American city” should be able to handle, WITHOUT the impetus of an impending Olympics. Daley is as corrupt as his dad was, but far more incompetent (or simply oblivious, I don’t know which is worse).

It does seem to me that every city resident who’s not a recent transplant or works in the suburbs is against this, because they know that’s it’s just a front for handing out pinstripe patronage to campaign contributors. Even that would be okay if the proposal somehow was building structures in underdeveloped neighborhoods with vacant land, but as always, the development would all be in areas that are already doing fine without the Olympic “stimulus”.

Everyone here is also well aware of the Tax Increment Financing (TIF) funds that have been diverted from city revenues and amount to a “slush fund” for Daley to spend without oversight. Most here were afraid that these supposed “community development” funds would be diverted from the communities they were meant to benefit and go toward paying for the Olympics in well-financed communities near the lakefront.

There is also no doubt that Daley wants to somehow top his father’s legacy — he’s probably already done that in terms of corruption — and that’s what I thought about as I stood in Grant Park on election night last November. Here we all were, standing in the same park where his dad’s cops beat the hell out of hippies, celebrating the elevating of the first black president, and by dint of fate (Daley had little to do with Obama’s rise to power, which was orchestrated by the same people who had elected Harold Washington mayor) Hizzoner was able to wash away all the bad karma that his father had created in 1968 during the MLK riots and the Democratic convention.

Richard M. will never top his father in terms of city services, however, which is ironic because it’s the backbone of Machine politics. The current Daley does things more like a Republican than a Democrat, handing out contracts and incorporating byzantine funding schemes to hide the money chain, while painting a ‘patriotic’ veneer over all of it. For all his faults, his father managed to fix the potholes, didn’t sell off publicly-funded resources to private interests, and most of all, didn’t leave behind a massive debtload that will cripple the city’s ability to provide services in the future. Corrupt as he was, the elder Daley made sure that working-class people in the city had decent-paying jobs as city workers, while his son has “privatized” many of those functions so that the tax dollars spent are distributed to far fewer people, and far less of those dollars get re-spent in the city.

At least now, Daley won’t have the cover of Olympic boosterism to protect him when the effects of his short-sighted policies come home to roost.

YouTube – “Pennies” Americans Against Food Taxes TV Ad.

I noticed this ad right away, primarily because of the main actress used, who has a very angry look on her face, and I wondered, “who is this supposed to appeal to?  Who wants to associate with a sourpuss?”  Then, of course, I realized its designed to stoke any anger or resentment that already exists among stressed working-class people (the exact people who would benefit from health care reform), to direct their anger at a very small tax on junk food that would help finance health care.

Apparently, it doesn’t matter that it’s just a few cents on each 2-liter bottle, because “that adds up” — uh, yeah, not if you’re buying just one bottle as the woman in this ad is carrying home.

But let’s say you buy one per day — and let’s put aside the fact that this would be way too much processed sugar to be feeding your kids each day — and it’s a nickel on each bottle.  That “adds up” to 35 cents a week, or $1.40 a month, 16.80 per year.

Is that really too much for the average family to bear for uninterrupted health care?  I don’t think so, and if it really is too much to bear, is soda really more of a necessity than health care?  That’s why it’s important to note that the industry shills who made this ad are  trying to frame this as a tax “on food and beverages” instead of on snacks.  The “food” we’re talking about here is potato chips — is that really “food”, or a snack?  Of course, calling it a tax on snack foods and soda would reduce the reasonable-sounding tenor of their objection.

The likely result, among those too poor to afford a “tax increase” of $20 per year, would be that they’d eat less corn syrup, sugar, and salty junk, and probably lose some weight.  Oh, but that would make the woman in this ad very, very angry.

Wouldn’t want somes sugar-deprived soccer mom going on a rampage…

Live Nation is a  nationwide mega-promoter which bought up many of the country’s largest music venus last year in a roll-up that didn’t seem to make sense to me then and still doesn’t make much sense now.  All show promotion is local, and while you can leverage ticketing agreements and perhaps logistics when it comes to promoting  nationally-touring acts, the idea that bigger is better never really won me over.  Now they’re touting the “Club Passport”, an all-you-can-eat “all-in” pass that mimics the value proposition of fests like Lollapalooza and Bonnaroo, but includes any LiveNation-owned club* in your area.

Live Nation's literally incredible offer

Note that asterisk there, it signifies a little caveat that really shows why “too good to be true” really is.  Of course, you expect that this will be a “participating venues only” exception, and certain major sold-out shows will be exempted, which already lowers the value, but take a look at the fine print, circled here in red at the bottom of the email ad I received today (the third time I’ve been notified about this in the last week, through various channels). That’s right, “does not guarantee entry“. So, um, because it also doesn’t include parking, you could show up, pay for parking (which, for example at Chicago’s House of Blues can set you back $25 to $30), and be told, oh, sorry, this show is sold out — they are essentially selling you excess capacity, which means you can pay and get in to any show that they’ve failed to promote well or any show by an artist that no one wants to see.

If they don’t abuse the exceptions, this could be a way for music fans in a tough economy to get to see more shows, and it’s obviously a ploy for an ill-timed roll-up to try an increase traffic during a slow economy, which hasn’t impacted the huge venues, but has had a devastating impact on mid-size to small venues. Nonetheless, my spider sense says that it’s going to be tough to use this as anything but a “something to do” pass, because especially in a tough economy, no venue is going to honor a no-revenue admission if they have people willing to pay to get in. Nice try at innovation, LiveNation, but it seems to be the kind of “innovation” we’ve experienced in the health-insurance industry, where denying service has become the business model, or the airline industry, where selling seats that don’t exist is now the norm. (Anyone been bumped from an oversold flight on Southwest lately?)

Try again, guys, and this time, put all the restrictions up front, in LARGE PRINT, instead of selling what amounts to music-industry vaporware.

You gotta love this discussion on the mouthpiece for the financial industry, CNBC. First, one of then panelists makes the ever-popular “there isn’t political will” argument regarding breaking up banks which are “too big to fail” — I’d like to see the polling data that he’s basing his opinion on (oh, sorry, there is none, he’s basing his opinion on the other bankers he’s been talking with over drinks). Then, as each of the panelists discusses their suggested regulatory schema (surprise, surprise, the banker wants no new regulations at all), the debate shifts to whether there should be a larger, all-ecompassing regulatory agency, similar to the one in the UK. This of course is a convenient way to frame the argument, because it puts the “blame” for the current — and, yes, it is a current crisis, despite the panel’s insistence that it’s all over now and the markets have stabilized — the blame is all on the regulators who somehow didn’t do enough to stop these companies from taking dangerous actions that were, and continue to be, entirely legal.

What is entirely missing from this discussion is that the crisis — and if you put the focus where it belongs, on balance sheets instead of the Dow Jones Average, it continues to be a crisis — the crisis was caused by innumerable actions by innumerable people who were simply doing what they were incentivized to do.

When briefly during the same discussion it is suggested that perhaps bonuses should be based upon the long-term equity of firms rather than short-term profits, this is dismissed as unworkable, with the nonsensical retort that Wall Street workers would flee to foreign firms, as if, in some Galtian revolt, people with homes and kids will just uproot their families and move en masse if they are asked to be responsible.

The discussion keeps circling around increasing capital requirements as the silver bullet that will solve everything, even though later in the same discussion, increasing capital requirements is derided as a move that would make most of those “too big to fail” financial behemoths unrprofitable.

So, let’s add this all up:

1. Reasonable capital requirements are the only way to fix the system;
2. Reasonable capital requirements would be enough to overwhelm the advantages of scale which are the reason for being of the largest banks;
3. Increasing the regulatory power of the government will not help;
4. Writing regulations which address the underlying causes of the current crisis will not prevent the next one, which is certain to be different;
5. Thus, there is no point in doing anything, including incentivizing safer investment practices through changing bonus structures.

So, essentially, CNBC just wasted your time by presenting a panel whose purpose was to determine how to do the impossible. The only solution is to just let businesses fail, because no one on Wall Street will really suffer, their huge bonuses already tucked away, and who really cares if the rest of the economy (and all those unimportant non-bankers) are thrown in financial ruin and economic chaos?

Let’s get real: one change, and one change only, would have more impact than any of those discussed here: change the tax policy applied to Wall St. bonuses. No need to limit the size of the bonuses legislatively or to regulate the structure. Simply tax the bonuses as income, not as capital gains, and use the funds generated as the basis for a “bailout” fund when banks crash again — i.e., let the people who are causing the problem pay for the problem, and directly assume the risk that they have passed on to all of us.

There are precedents for individual investors, who are disincentivized from “flipping” stocks rather than holding them, because short-term gains are taxed at a punitive rate. While this doesn’t stop all speculative behavior, it does slow the train down a bit.

Let the John Galts of the world take all the risks they want, in a truly “free market”, and let them also pay to clean up the mess that they create through foolhardy actions.