Contraception Controversy

          I had a piece written on the contraception brouhaha some weeks ago, but I’m not sure I understand the implications of the Administration position yet. Sebelius seemed to loose cannon a HHS decision that forces all insurance companies to pay for contraceptive services for women. Cue the protests from religious groups and libertarians outraged at Government intrusion into the free market.

          After all, Sebelius did loose cannon back in December and had to be reigned in. Would the Administration retract or moderate her decision? The longer they took the worse it would be for them, right? The Administration did moderate the decision after a fashion two weeks later. Sebelius framed the HHS decision as a national health issue. Opponents framed the decision as a religious liberty issue. Obama framed the decision in terms of personal choice. To me, the HHS & Obama’s decisions provided a different look at the same outcome. Women had access to paid preventive care, regardless of who they worked for. I don’t see a concerted attack on religion here, but probably over-reach by Government into the private sector.

          The problem is there isn’t much precedent for such mandates. Auto manufacturers had to install seat belts in all cars, but wearing seat belts is regulated by the states. Kids get mandatory immunizations to improve public health but they can opt out of them. So the “rights” questions and implications are murky to me at this point.

          Less murky is why the Administration took two weeks to speak up and permitted a firestorm of protest to ensue. Framing the decision in terms of choice and public health is favored by many women. Opposing choice on ideological grounds feels a bit regressive and repressive.

          This is a bit like campaigning in Michigan and saying nothing should have been done to save the auto industry. This is at a time when Ford is the number one car company in the world and has the record profit in their corporate history. We’ll call that position counterproductive. The auto bailouts and the contraception controversy demonstrates clearly the implications of being ideologically driven. The ideologue says because they are “right” success will come. The pragmatist says that was is successful is “right”. The Administration has positioned itself along populist lines and will probably reap the benefits thereof.

          The Administration allowed the two week period to stir up culture war fever and ensuing extremism. Regardless of culture warrior Santorum’s current partisan favor, social conservative issues don’t play well with moderates and independents, the majority of actual voters. So if a social conservative issue (s) could be stirred up, it benefits the Administration chances in November. The opposition appeared to cast themselves as paternalists clinging to vanishing values. The Administration decision was smart politics, if not smart policy.

Coming and Going

          Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Citi Group, JP Morgan Chase, and Ally Financial offered to "help" distressed homeowners by refinancing $25 billion in underwater mortgages. This noble gesture was prompted by a deal cut with State Attorney Generals across the country. The banks would be not be liable in civil, Federal or class action lawsuits and would pay a fine of $2,000 to 750,000 households who experienced "improper" foreclosure. Over 1 million households will benefit from the refinancing.

          Who wins from this deal? One million people get to stay in their homes. The lenders get mucho lawsuits off their backs. The economy benefits. The President looks better.

          However, lenders are "caught" but not chastened. Main Street remains the loser in all this. The two grand might be of little comfort to someone who has lost their home. Refinancing $25 billion might not seem like much in a housing market which has lost $700 billion in asset value. There is still $300 billion of principle in the pipeline which needs to be refinanced.

          Since 2007, 4 million households experienced foreclosure. These households may have experienced both predatory and fraudulent lending AND foreclosure practices. The deal and compromise by the banks are in essence an admission of guilt. The deal clarifies how banks drove homeowners into foreclosure, creating short term profits while pushing real estate asset values through the floor. Deflated real estate values are one major source of the down pressure keeping us in recession.

          Such practices continued until the deal was cut, but these have now been "reformed". Please forgive me if I don't trust the bankers charity or integrity. Banks paid into a pool to provide legal resources and defense for people undergoing foreclosure. That's what we need, more lawyers. In addition, banks are required to contact and offer to refinance remaining underwater household....I remain skeptical. 

          While the deal keeps the banks from liability against most civil litigation, individuals can sue the banks for specific maltreatment experienced. Task forces continue to work at both the State and Federal levels to make life unpleasant for the guys who caused and then leveraged the Crash. They soaked us both coming and going.

Only in America

          So I was watching Larry the Cable Guy the other night, which is the custom of my people, and they had an interesting diversion. A castle is being built in Arkansas…a real castle. Must be to defend Little Rock from looting and pillaging.

          The guy footing the bill for the construction had the stipulation that everything be built as it was in the 12th Century. So tools are forged by hand and stone is cut by hand. I think the emerging theme here is….by hand. The project has a blacksmith, lumberjacks, a horse crew and a bunch of masons, who some might say are the power brokers behind the one world government, but look to me more like the old road crew from Foghat. They even have knights with swords and chain mail to protect the workers. I guess from looters and pillagers. But no electricity or bathrooms….for the next twenty years And you thought your workplace sucked.

          It can take more than five days to cut one block. Guess Rome wasn’t built in a day (but all roads do lead there). The workers are committed to seeing the twenty year construction project to fruition. Guess this would not be a good time to mention that rush cathedral project. At least they have job security.

          Turns out the guy paying for everything is a rich French dude who wants to show Americans what it was like to build medieval French castles. Perhaps he can’t get the internet. Only in America do we attract foreign wing nuts intent on enriching the lives of average folk like us with twenty year object lessons. We’ll check on these guy’s progress in 2030. I’ll take the flying car.

Out of Touch

          Tis the season for primaries. How do I see things politically at the moment? Republicans are attempting to coalesce around a fiscally or ideologically pure candidate. Democrats have Obama. The only thing the Republican candidates agree on is that Obama needs a good bashing. He’s the one that bailed out banks, AIG, the auto companies, and Freddie & Fannie and  wasted a bunch of taxpayer money, right? All those things were done in 2008 by Bush the Junior. How quickly they forget. Obama was inaugurated in 2009. We have sown the seeds of our discontent for many years.

          Congress, rather than Obama, wasted the money. Presidents can’t spend money. Civics 101. Obama appears to have had little influence on our national course. We’ve been headed down the same road for years. The slope we’re going down just got steeper and we’re moving faster into the dark unknown.

          Obama’s inability to change our national course is apparently due to incompetence and lack of leadership rather than a grand nefarious plan. In many ways, Obama looks like Bush Lite, letting our course drift along business as usual. The Washington bureaucracy seems as unrestrained and free wheeling as the free market was before the crash. They continue to spew regulations out of their little silos without rhyme or reason. Meanwhile, Obama blithely carries on Republican fiscal and international policies. He does, however, utilize special operation pretty well.

          For all the radical scaremongering about Obama, two years in I still don’t see it. He is mild, tepid, centrist and very cautious when our nation NEEDS REVOLUTIONARY and decisive action. Obama’s election implied radical change. We just got more of the same. These seem to me to be the obvious facts of the matter concerning our political landscape. But our current situation shouldn’t focus on blame. It should focus on fixing.

          The purpose of this blog is not to attempt to blame or defend Obama or Bush the Junior. It doesn't attack or defend liberals or conservatives, Democrats or Republicans. Such adversarial framing is obsolete and inadequate to solve our collective challenges. The purpose of this blog is to align our thinking with harsh realities and push back against prevalent intellectual ecologies.

          Our political dialogue is framed within a two-Party dialectic. I point out that while the media is fixated on Republican caucusi (plural of caucus?) and framers of political realities are framing a blue/ red adversarial bout, most of the country doesn't give a flip. For all their sound and fury, Republicans are ¼ of the US population. Persons making that sound and fury are a considerably  smaller percentage than that, but they seem to be wagging the Party dog at the moment. Democrats are ¼ of the US population. The other half of the US population is not “independent”, deciding into which ring to throw their hat. Half the US population is deeply disenfranchised from politics and all the jokeamos running for office. The media is out of touch with reality. The political reality spinners are out of touch with reality. The notion of a two Party system is out of touch with reality.

          In my view, none of the "candidates" have the leadership, boldness, vision, or solutions required in this dark hour. Leadership rises to the challenge of the day, or not. We have serious national threats, foreign and domestic. We have major structural erosions that threaten our very sustainability.  We are a nation in decline which  denies this reality. We keep trying  to tweak and “restore” our way back into former greatness through extreme ideological solutions, such as cutting Government spending enough to jump start a mired economy, which is bogged in the middle of a mired global economy. By the way Tea Party, that’s not how you jump start an economy.

          Our concept of our place in the world and our importance is out of touch with reality. Our thinking and models of risk, opportunity, and scale of the challenges facing us are out of touch with reality. Our policies are reactive rather than proactive and are out of touch with reality. Of course our second-verse-same-as-the-first "solutions", based on assumptions that the future will resemble the present and that the present resembles the past, are out of touch with reality.

          Our national challenges won't be solved with an "anybody but Obama" attitude. The sources for our declining national state are STRUCTURAL. Regardless of what yahoo is at the helm, the STRUCTURE must be renewed for our situation to reverse. You can change the course of the ship, but you have to plug up the holes before the ship sinks.

          No politician is currently talking about structural renewal and building strategic capability. Obama dabbles in Green tech & infrastructure renewal. Newt is grandiose but unrealistic.

          Leadership changes discourse, gets people to think in new ways and look in new directions. It enables people to dream new dreams and achieve new aspirations. Structural renewal requires SPENDING A LOT OF MONEY as a nation. China will spend $3 trillion in the next five years to renew its strategic capabilities and infrastructure. Of course that’s $3 trillion of our WalMart money. Leadership PRIORITIZES the monumental investments we need to make and then fights/ bargains like hell to get them. Leadership answers the “why” questions. Leadership brings people from point A to point B in their thinking. Leadership is able to make a compelling case for change. Leadership makes the benefits of change concrete and achievable for others.

          Leadership crafts detailed realistic plans in advance of action. Leadership has clear objectives. What are our national objectives? What do we specifically need to renew and achieve within the next ten years and do we commit to doing so as a people? How about the next five years? How about this year? If you don’t know what you’re shooting at, you should be relegated to the Nerf zone where others won’t be injured. Do you hear our national “leaders” discussing future capabilities, priorities, and action plans? It seems the reason our nation was founded on has eroded into a pit of raw emotion. Maybe we should elect Dr. Phil.

          So when somebody asks me about the “candidates” and the primaries, these are the things I think about. Probably people will learn not to ask me things. So the Obama bashing and 20th Century business as usual rhetoric is mind-numbingly boring to me at this point. I already cringe at the sound of Romney’s voice. Four more years…I would turn on, tune in and drop out if our nation were not at a crossroads of crisis and NEED FOR LEADERSHIP.

          I never want to hear “anybody but Obama” ever again. We need leaders who have clear objectives which build national strategic capabilities. Objectives….if you want to drive to California, you have to have to know how to get there. You can't just jump on any old road because it’s not “the road we were on” and expect to get there. You at least have to know which direction is West. With this lot, we’ll be cruising back roads in the dark for some time, I fear.

          We need to harness the discontent, frustration and ambivalence of the majority of Americans and move our country in a different direction. We have to up our game when it comes to fielding leaders. We can’t let “the System” pick and choose who is next in line or gives the best butt kisses. We know the qualities and capabilities needed in a national leader, and the areas of substantive strategic focus needed to renew our prosperity. The murmuring majority would do well to tell the two-Party machine and all their institutional perpetuators to go to blazes, put in office some actually capable leadership, and rebuild a firm structural foundation to ensure the prosperity of future generations. Next question.