MICHAEL VICK

I am not an Eagles season-ticket holder, and over the years, I’ve only been to a handful of games. I’ve been a fan, however. I watch every game on TV, and read all the stats in the paper, and I like to listen to the local sports-talk-radio station when Ray Didinger is on because he knows more about pro football, and the Eagles, than anyone on the planet. I have had long discussions with friends in anticipation of an Eagles playoff game.

That’s all over now. The Eagles are dead to me. I stopped caring last night about 9:00 when I learned they had signed Michael Vick. I don’t want to watch Michael Vick play football. I don’t even want to see him on the sidelines. The sight of Michael Vick makes my stomach churn.

Do you remember Peewee Herman (nee Paul Rubens)? He created two successful movies, and his Saturday-morning kids’ show, “Peewee’s Playhouse,” was so clever and innovative that it garnered a large adult audience, including me. Then, in 1991, he was caught performing an act of self-gratification in a porno theater in Florida.

Rubens was the same brilliant, creative guy the day after his arrest as he had been the day before, but his meteoric career came to an abrupt end. There was no blacklist or conspiracy involved, but it was immediately understood by everyone in show business that parents would no longer allow their children to be entertained by Peewee Herman. The idea of him doing another show for kids was just too creepy.

That’s pretty much the way I feel about Mr. Vick. I don’t doubt he can run fast and throw passes and even catch them, but I have zero desire to see him do it. In fact, I will go out of my way to avoid watching him play football.

Please understand me. I am not outrageously outraged. I am not engaged in a one-man boycott. I just can’t care about the team anymore. I have followed the Eagles, and their wins and losses, and their injuries, and the deals they made, and the internal team strife, and the travails of Andy Reid, and the saga of Terrell Owens, and I invested a fair amount of time and emotion in the team because it was entertaining. It was fun. That’s what sports are---entertainment---and the Eagles have entertained me for many years. Now, they simply can’t entertain me anymore, so I’m done.

There are many people who do not share my sense of revulsion, and I’ve heard some of them on radio and TV. Many fans will remain fans; some people even like the idea of signing Vick because they envision wonderful possibilities for the Eagles offense. And that’s fine with me. I’m used to being a minority voice. Some of the justifications offered for the Vick signing, however, are almost as offensive as Vick himself.

1) It’s time to move on.

Sorry, I can’t move on. I’m not ready. And why should I? For six years, the man made dogs kill each other in the fighting ring, then electrocuted some, or drowned them, or strangled them. These are the acts of a man steeped in evil, and I recoil at what he did. Decent people must condemn evil---when you refuse to embrace the moral relativism of our age, your view of evil doesn’t get any more complicated than that.

2) He has shown remorse, so we must forgive.

Has he? At his trial, he appeared to accept responsibility for his actions, including those he did with his own hands. Now, he says he was “naïve” and that he should have put a stop to things other people were doing. Well, which is it, Mike?

He also describes his behavior as “mistakes.” Are you as sick of this as I am? To me, leaving your car keys in the freezer is a “mistake.” Calling your intentional immoral acts “mistakes” is merely a pitiful attempt to blur the link between those acts and your responsibility for them. It’s a form of denial, a fashionable variety of denial, but denial nonetheless. Acknowledgement of one’s deeds is the first step toward rehabilitation, but there is scant evidence Vick has taken even that first step.

Besides, what if it’s true? What if he is truly remorseful? Well, that would be a good thing, but it’s really a matter between Vick and his God. It has nothing to do with me. I don’t have to forgive him, and I certainly have no obligation, moral or otherwise, to watch him play football. In addition, I reject the idea that even genuine remorse would entitle him to reinstatement. I don’t see the connection between the two. Remorse can be good for the soul, but it does not erase the crime.

3) Everybody should get a second chance.

Yes, of course. All men can be redeemed, and should have a chance to prove themselves. And I would be fine with Michael Vick getting a job selling cars or working at Wal-Mart or maybe running the Michael Vick Football Camp For Troubled Teens. But the NFL? What theory of redemption is it that requires us to place a man back in the same exalted position he once occupied when he has fallen from that perch because of his own disgraceful acts? In his later years, Nixon was reported to have many regrets about Watergate, but nobody wanted to make him President again. And if Bernie Madoff ever gets out of jail, do you think we should let him start a hedge fund? I sincerely hope Michael Vick becomes a decent human being, and I think it’s possible he can do that. But that will happen, or not, depending on the kind of person Vick is. IT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH HIM PLAYING FOOTBALL.

4) Three cops killed a black guy and didn’t get punished at all.

(I heard this argument at work today.) Of course, this can be used to excuse anything. There’s always somebody worse, unless you actually happen to be Joseph Stalin.

I don’t think you ever heard this argument thirty years ago, when it was accepted that justice resided in meting out punishment to an individual because of the deeds that individual committed. “Let the punishment fit the crime” was how it was expressed. Now, the argument goes, the act and the actor don’t matter so much. What matters is the background of the actor, or his nationality or skin color, or some other factor completely extraneous to the crime.

For example, there was a time, not long ago, when a man who broke into the home of an elderly couple, and robbed and killed them, would be convicted of murder and executed. Today, however, whenever such a criminal is a member of a minority group, the argument is made that it is unfair to execute him because at various times and in various places, a white man who committed a different heinous crime may not have been sentenced to death. The individual’s responsibility for monstrous acts, in other words, doesn’t matter nearly as much as his status as a representative of some demographic group. The act is the same, as is the depraved heart that committed it, and the elderly couple is still laying there in a pool of blood. And we are never told exactly why we must know the sex or race of the criminal before we can condemn his act.

The idea that justice resides somewhere other than in the relationship between the act and the actor is not really a new one---a thousand years ago, the crimes of noblemen were viewed very differently from the crimes of peasants---but it is odd that such an archaic, primitive notion can gain so much support in a modern Western democracy.

Down this road lies barbarism, a state in which no one can distinguish between right and wrong. As Natan Sharansky wrote, “The challenge in the Soviet Union was finding a way to fight evil; in the West, the challenge is to recognize it.”

5) It’s a cultural thing.

This is what the bad guys always say, isn’t it? It’s how white Southerners defended segregation. “It’s our culture; you just don’t understand.” In fact, it’s how slave-owners defended slavery; us Northerners just didn’t see how happy everybody was. “Culture” is why Muslims keep their women in bags, and why they mutilate the sex organs of little girls. It’s why the Bosnian War happened: “Hey, back off! We’ve been killing Muslims for 700 years---it’s our culture!”

Culture indeed! I think it was Blaise Cendrars who wrote, “When I hear the word ‘culture,’ I reach for my revolver.” If you paint Easter eggs with intricate patterns, that’s a cultural thing. If you drink a pint of Guiness on St. Patty’s Day, that’s a cultural thing. If you paint hex signs on your barn, that’s a cultural thing too. But if you torture dogs for pleasure, and you call it your culture, then there’s something seriously sick about your culture and maybe you need a different one.

Copyright2009MichaelKubacki

I'M SPARTACUS...I'M SPARTACUS...NO, I'M SPARTACUS

Apparently, there are a lot of us out here in America who don’t accept every word Obama says about his healthcare scheme as the absolute literal truth, and the White House has decided to do something about it. This week, Macon Phillips, Obama’s Director of New Media, told the American people that if they see anything “fishy” on the web, or even in “casual conversation,” they should drop an email to flag@whitehouse.gov

Imagine, just for fun, what the harvest would have been if George Bush had suggested something like this. (“Now if any of you out there have a friend or neighbor who you’ve heard misunderestimating the effectiveness of the ‘surge’ in Iraq, I want you all to send that person’s name to my pal at dickcheney@undisclosedlocation.com.”) Picture your favorite liberal commentators---Olberman, Matthews, Maddow…. Now picture the tops of their heads flying off in rage.

I assume most of you have already reported me for my July 23 article entitled HEALTHCARE NOW!!!! (which was full of rumors and innuendo and other fishy stuff), but if you haven’t yet, it’s OK because I reported it myself. I urge you to do the same. Turn yourself in. Even if you’ve never said anything fishy about Obamacare, confess anyway. Every decent American who remembers we were once governed by the Constitution belongs on that list.

Copyright2009MichaelKubacki

2. FEEDING THE MAW

Milton Friedman, the Nobel-Prize-winning economist, made a wonderful two-minute video (available here), in which he describes how the magic of the price system makes it possible to produce the pencil he holds in his hand. “No one individual could make this pencil,” he begins. The wood itself is cut in the state of Washington, but before that can happen, there must be a saw and someone has to make that saw from steel, and that steel must come from iron ore, which someone else will mine. Then there’s the eraser, which is made from rubber (probably from Malaysia), and the brass ferrule to hold the eraser, and the yellow paint and the black paint and the graphite from India. Thousands of people, he explains, are involved in the production of the pencil, though they don’t know each other, they speak different languages, they have different religions, and they might hate each other if they were ever to meet. Yet they all cooperate, without any commissar directing them, to produce a pencil that can then be purchased by anyone for a trifling sum.

My own capitalist epiphany occurred as I opened a case containing twelve one-pound bags of frozen brussel sprouts and began to arrange them neatly in a display case. This case had been delivered to our back room less than an hour before, one of dozens of cases of frozen food on a pallet rushed to us in a refrigerated trailer from a warehouse hundreds of miles away. Prior to that, the sprouts had been flash-frozen and bagged at a different facility before being transported, still frozen, to our warehouse. And before any of that happened, someone had to buy the seeds, plant them, water and cultivate the plants, harvest them at the proper time, and arrange for their shipment to the processing plant. There were dozens, perhaps hundreds, of people involved in some tiny way in getting these one-pound bags of brussel sprouts into a freezer case at Argus, where each bag sells for just $1.12.

And I thought it was wonderful. I was amazed, just imagining the process by which all these strangers cooperated in getting these bags into my hands and into the display cases. And we do it, we cooperate, not because any of us have a particular love of brussel sprouts or feeding the masses or serving society, but because each of us is getting a penny or two, or maybe a fraction of a penny, for each bag that someone will voluntarily choose to purchase. For me, it was Milton Friedman’s pencil all over again, only better, because unlike pencils, brussel sprouts can be sautéed with garlic.

These thoughts persist for a while. Then other, darker ones, begin to intrude.

Every big-box store gets products on the shelves in basically the same fashion. There is a computerized inventory system linking the cash registers, the backroom storage areas, managers on the sales floor, and the central (or regional) warehouse. The system tracks every item sold along with goods that are removed from the system because they are damaged or because nobody wants to buy them. When the backroom guys see that a product has been sold, they throw some more in a cart to replenish the shelves. When the warehouse sees the backroom is running low on something, it ships more. Some actual physical counting still occurs, but it is kept to a minimum.

I am a “pusher,” the last link in the chain that may start in a Peruvian mine or a factory in the Philippines. I take carts full of merchandise from the backroom, push them out onto the floor, and place each item in its proper location. When I have finished a cart, I get another one, and then another, and then another. There are always more carts, full of pillows, Milk Duds, bookcases, diapers, can openers and Advil. I am shoving a boulder up the mountain of American consumerism and I will never get to the top.

After a couple of shifts of this, you stop marveling at the magic of Milton Friedman’s pencil and you begin to wonder just how many different types of sippy cups America really needs. I mean, there’s Spongebob and Cars and Thumbelina, and every Sesame Street character you can remember and Mickey and the royal princesses Sleeping Beauty, Belle and Cinderella (either by themselves or shoulder-to-shoulder with the others) and an endless array of unnamed cartoon kitties and puppies and clams and bunnies and monkeys and fish and bears and squid, and each one is available in five or six or seven different colors. About the only thing you can’t get in a sippy cup is PBA because, well, I don’t know why and I don’t know what PBA is, but it’s obviously something you don’t want your baba sucking on because along the entire sippy cup aisle at Argus, you can’t find one that doesn’t say PBA FREE or CONTAINS NO PBA or some variation thereof.

Another thing you wonder about, given current trends, is how long it will be before every commercial food product, including Oscar Mayer Wieners, is flavored with either green tea or pomegranate.

Then there are the deodorants. Now I suppose I’m like most guys where such things are concerned. When the old one runs out, I stroll through the deodorant section and grab a Speed Stick or a Mennen product, figuring that this makes me about as debonair and hygienic as any guy who’s not named George Clooney really needs to be. If you spend an entire afternoon in the deodorant aisle at Argus, however, as I have, you find there are deodorants designed for the darkest corners of the human psyche, though you wonder whether even the most powerful roll-on, applied to the armpit, can penetrate that deeply.

A 1.7 ounce stick of Dove Clinical Protection, for example, sells for $8.39, as does the 1.6 ounce size of Secret Clinical Strength. I paused as I loaded them into their slots. Who buys these? Who would spend that kind of money, I wondered. The word “clinical,” though, is what really scared me, since it suggests there are people so smelly they require a doctor’s care rather than, say, a bath. Are there such people, with a stink rooted in pathology? Or Satan? And do they shop at Argus? Without orders from a physician, I think I would be afraid to use these products. I mean, what happens when Dove Clinical Protection gets applied to a normal sort of armpit? Is there an explosion?

Degree Absolute Protection is another high-end item, though since it is for men, and men will not spend eight bucks on deodorant, it was a bit cheaper. Again, the name seems unnecessarily intimidating, though I guess the “absolute” is really just a bit of sales puffery. It won’t protect you from an asteroid, for example. What troubled me more was the claim under the brand name; there, the customer is informed that Degree Absolute Protection “RESPONDS TO ADRENALIN.” Well, OK, I thought. Fine. It’s a scientific breakthrough and all. But to what end? Are there really people who are concerned that their deodorant will fail them as they are pursued by a lion across the veldt? Or, closer to home, when the mugger puts the barrel of a .38 behind your ear and cocks the hammer, is your first thought going to be, “Gosh, I wonder if my Right Guard can handle this.”?

And finally, let’s discuss Hannah Montana for a moment, because if you ever hear this humble, right-wing, free-market narrator say, “You know, that Noam Chomsky guy has some interesting ideas,” or “Maybe we should pay more attention to what Fidel has to say,” it will be because pushing Hannah Montana products (which I do every single day of my working life) has finally turned me into a communist. The last time I looked, there were over 200 Hannah Montana items at Argus, and there were more than 500 around Christmastime. Hannah Montana, the character played by Miley Cyrus on the most valuable TV show Disney has ever produced, is on shoes, drapes, chewing gum, tents, skateboards, TVs, guitar picks, fishing rods, shower curtains, waffles, washcloths, sleeping bags, chairs, DVD players, hats, toothbrush holders, body mist, folding stools, backpacks, dolls, dinnerware, video games, shirts, soap dishes, roller skates, dollhouses, sheets, handbags, camcorders, rain slickers, cosmetics, dance mats, board games, band-aids, towels, hair accessories, MP3 players, lunchboxes, karaoke machines, thermos bottles, white boards, bath gel, comforters, sandals, digital cameras, photo cubes, chairs, and swim floats, just to name a few. A pusher like me works alone, interrupted only by the occasional inquiry regarding the whereabouts of ironing board covers (answer: section B24), and there is plenty of time for an initial amusement and wonder at the Hannah phenomenon to morph into a spiritual malaise, and eventually into a festering madness and a world of fantasy in which Hannah, I, and a case of her signature Eggo frozen waffles are locked in a room from which only I, ultimately, emerge.

One entertains these thoughts and asks these questions as one feeds, endlessly, the gaping maw of the American consumer.

But of course, when the shift is over and sanity returns, I realize I wouldn’t have it any other way. The one thing we all must admit about Hannah Montana products and sippy cups and deodorants is that people want them. They really want them. They may not say they want them, they may even say they don’t want them, but in fact, they want them so much they drive to Argus, grab them, and take money out of their pockets to pay for them. If people did not want them, they would not be on the shelves because Argus is utterly heartless where non-selling products are concerned. We don’t sell lima beans, for example. I wondered about that for a while, suspecting that some Argus executive had a secret hatred of lima beans based in some horrific childhood incident. (We do sell brussel sprouts, which are far less popular, generally, than lima beans.) But when I asked about it, I was told we used to offer lima beans but they were pulled when nobody bought them. Other Argus stores sell lima beans. Philadelphians, however, don’t like lima beans very much. So they’re not on our shelves.

But we do sell dozens of sippy cups and dozens of deodorants and hundreds of Hannah products, and the only reason we do is that people want them. Don’t ask me why, but they do. They could spend their money on shrimp cocktails or tank tops or a high-priced prostitute, but instead they spend it on a Dora the Explorer sippy cup. And I say God bless them, and long may they wave. Because the alternative to having individuals choose what they buy is to have somebody else choose what they buy. Those are the only two alternatives, and I come down strongly in favor of the former.

People in our government are now engaged in deciding what kind of car you can drive, and they are using your money and mine to implement their choices. Why? Why can’t I pick the car I want, as I always have? And why, if somebody else is going to choose the car I drive, is it always the last person I would choose to make that decision? In the Soviet Union, it was some anonymous apparatchik in a gray suit who didn’t know much about cars and what people liked to do in them, and who didn’t care what anybody else thought. Here, it’s people like Joe Biden, who thinks we all watched TV in the 1920’s, and Nancy Pelosi, who thinks natural gas is a renewable resource, like wind. Or it’s Barney Frank, who---well, never mind. Even left-wingers view these people as little more than clowns. They don’t even drive cars very often; they usually get driven around by others.

If somebody gets to decide what kind of car we all have to drive, why can’t it be somebody cool? Why can’t it be Charles Barkley, or Eminem, or Sean Connery? I could accept any of them because all of them are way cooler than I am. Not that any of them would get it right, of course---nobody on earth can come up with a car that would satisfy everybody---but at least they drive cars and have probably used them for a variety of fun activities that do NOT include transport to the Select Subcommittee On Pacific Salmon Fisheries And Global Warming. But we never get cool people to make these decisions, do we? We never get Sean Connery. No, it’s always a bunch of power-drunk dullards who have never had a regular job and wouldn’t know how to fornicate in the back seat of a Malibu if you planted Pamela Anderson there with a bottle of tequila.

There are many theories about the fall of the Soviet communism, but I’ve always thought that, unlike at Argus, there just weren’t enough sippy cups. In a centrally-planned economy, there is simply no mechanism to determine what people want, and therefore, people never get what they want, and eventually they grow bitter about it. In a market economy that depends on a price system, the only things that are offered for sale are things that people seek and are willing to pay for. At Argus, if something sells, I put more of that item on the shelf; if it doesn’t, we throw that item in the dumpster. The information contained in the choices of consumers is what makes Argus money and gives me a job (and satisfies consumers). Without that information, there is no way to find out what people want.

The example I like to use comes from Bill James, noted sabermetrician and consultant to the Boston Red Sox. James points out that many people criticize the practice of paying millions or tens of millions to baseball players. Think what we could do with that money if we could devote it to cancer research instead, say the critics. All of us have heard some form of this argument at one time or another.

If you’re honest about it, there’s really only one explanation for this use of society’s resources---we want good baseball players more than we want a cure for cancer. It’s simply a fact. Personally, I think about cancer about once a month, or maybe a bit more frequently if I have some unexplained pain in my gut. But I think about the Phillies every day of my life. I think about them on January 8th and I think about them on Superbowl Sunday. I think about the Phillies on Christmas morning and on Cinco de Mayo, and I think about them constantly in late September. And there is nothing unusual about me. Overall, America wants good baseball more than it wants a cure for cancer, and we know that because baseball is where America spends its money.

This autonomic, amoral aspect of free markets is the central feature of capitalism. It gives people what they want, what they really want, rather than what they say they want or what they feel they should want or what some political group thinks would be best for all of us. And it is this feature, more than any other, that separates liberals from conservatives. For a right-winger like me, the price system is a wonder of nature in its ability, without any outside supervision, to provide happiness for millions of individuals who want millions of different things. This is especially so when you look at alternative systems, like communism, which fail so miserably to provide even the most basic goods. But what I love about it, that it gives people what they want, is exactly the same thing the left hates. For collectivists, a system that satisfies the multitudinous desires of individuals is wasteful, and selfish, and inefficient. They would prefer to settle on something that’s good for everybody and not worry so much about whether a particular individual gets exactly the sippy cup he wants.

And of course, I can’t make an argument that America needs all its sippy cups or deodorants or Hannah products. Nobody can make that argument. I don’t even know what “need” means in this context. What I can say is that if Sally really wants a box of Hannah Montana frozen waffles, I want Sally to get those waffles because I want a lot of things that other people disapprove of too, but I want them anyway. If Sally doesn’t get her Hannah waffles, I may not get my beer or my potato chips, and Barney Frank will certainly decide, in all his wisdom, that my 1992 Tercel just isn’t green enough to stay on the streets.

Copyright2009MichaelKubacki

1. IN WHICH OUR HERO TAKES A JOB IN A BIG-BOX STORE

I’ll spare you the embarrassing details of our financial demise, but against the backdrop of plummeting markets and a shrinking economy, wife and self had virtually no income for all of 2008. Toward the end of the year, her business showed a spark of life and a few dollars started appearing in the old bank account. Not like the old days, of course, but she had turned the corner.

And then there was me.

When you are 58 years old and you have not practiced law since you were 40, you discover there is a certain reluctance on the part of the legal community to welcome you back into the brotherhood. Perfectly understandable, of course---one can hardly blame them. Still, I grew weary of sending the resume and covering letter out into the ether and receiving no response. It’s like sitting in a restaurant for an hour and having no one offer you service. After a while, you begin to think you’re in one of those Twilight Zone episodes where you’re actually dead but you haven’t figured it out yet. It was time to do SOMETHING. Anything.

So it was I found myself in November, filling out an application for a minimum-wage job at the big-box store on the Main Line, one of the richest areas in America. It was close to my home. It was a part of corporate America that was actually making money (and as a capitalist, I respected that). Also, though I had had brushes with the retail world in the past, I had never worked for BIG RETAIL. I thought it would be interesting. I thought I might learn something. I thought there might be some potential for advancement.

The store, which I will call Argus, invited me in a couple of weeks later. My three interviews consisted of questions read to me from a printed pamphlet, with each interviewer making notes of my responses. (“Tell me about a job situation you had where you had to overcome an obstacle.”) They apparently liked me well enough to check my urine, which they also liked. I was in. I would be paid $8.00 for each and every hour I worked.

For the kind of work I’m doing, you don’t get a lot of training. One girl I talked to, who had worked at Wal-Mart for four years, summed it up this way: “In retail, they don’t tell you nothing.” At Argus, twelve of us newbies were summoned in for three hours one evening to fill out our W-4’s and watch some forgettable videos. I do remember that diversity is good and that Argus cherishes its commitment thereto. Sexual harassment, on the other hand, was treated with considerably less enthusiasm.

The longest video, with the most production values and the cutest models, was the one warning us about the dangers of trade unions and the various tactics organizers might use to seduce us. The highlight for me was an animated sequence in which dollars (my pay!) flew into the hands of union bosses who, it seemed clear, did not really care about me once they had tricked me into signing up with them. Glancing around the room during this video, I saw no hint of snickers or cynicism, only nodding heads. Of course, any union sympathizers would have kept their traps shut in that venue, but I have come to believe my buddies in the underclass really do not have much interest in unions. In my seven months at Argus, the subject has never come up in conversation.

Finally, after a brief chat with the undercover asset-protection specialist---“There are twelve of you here; three of you will steal, and I will catch you!”---we were sent off into the night to await a call for our first day of work. I was genuinely excited at the prospect, and curious about what my life would now be like. At least I knew it was a life, and not an episode of The Twilight Zone.

I do not disparage these types of jobs. They are excellent for someone just out of high school (or who maybe didn’t finish high school). A job like this is a way to start building a work history and to learn what adult responsibility is all about. And I need hardly add that honest labor is always worthy of respect.

For me, however, I confess that in addition to the excitement and curiosity about my new position, there was something else.

Maybe you’ve seen the movie “Lost in America,” starring Albert Brooks and Julie Hagerty. They play a yuppie couple who decide to sell everything, load up the car and “see America,” only to have Hagerty lose their entire nest egg in a few minutes at a Las Vegas casino. Forced to take menial jobs in a dusty, nondescript town in Arizona, Brooks winds up as a school crossing guard. He had been an executive in L.A., a player, and now, his first day on the job, he is harassed by a group of 12-year-olds on bikes who taunt him with calls of “Hey, retardo!”

My first day at Argus, I couldn’t help but think of that scene in the movie. Eager as I was to start this new phase in my life, to show them what I could do, to make the company a success(!), part of me expected to be taunted by children. I also had a nagging suspicion I would encounter, as shoppers, every person in my life who had ever disliked me and would be schadenfreuded to orgasm at the sight of me pushing a cart full of school supplies. I was 58 years old. I had once made a living as one of a handful of experts in an obscure area of environmental law, and I had run a successful business with Sandi for twenty years. Now I would be making $8.00/hour opening cases of Lean Cuisine products and aligning them neatly in freezers. I was a loser. I was the biggest loser I knew. Maybe this had always been true, but in the past, I had managed to keep it discretely hushed up. Now it was public. Now it was official.

Or as my son put it one day, “Hey, anybody can work at Argus. All you need is a law degree.”

Copyright2009MichaelKubacki

NATURAL BORN

The “birthers” are again much in the news, largely because of a recent lawsuit filed by a U.S. Army Reserve major who questions his deployment orders on the ground that Barack Obama is not constitutionally qualified to be president.

I can’t say I’ve followed the ins and outs of this story very closely, but I know there’s a theory he was born in Kenya and another theory he was born in British Columbia, and another theory he was born in Hawaii but then had his citizenship renounced by his parents when he moved to Indonesia. I haven’t paid much attention because I tend not to credit conspiracy theories held by small clots of fervent believers. I think Neil Armstrong walked on the moon. I think Elvis died on a toilet. I think 9-11 was the work of jihadists. I think JFK was killed by a communist named Lee Harvey Oswald. And I also think Barack Obama is a natural born citizen within the meaning of Article 2, Section 1 of the US Constitution.

However, there is a reason this one will not go away.

Facing more than a dozen lawsuits, Barack Obama might have decided to pay $5 to the Office of Public Records in Honolulu, obtain a copy of his birth certificate, and give it to Katie Couric. Instead, he has spent several hundred thousand bucks defending these lawsuits, largely on procedural grounds.

Why?

The standard explanation from Obama supporters (and conservatives who also want the controversy to disappear) is that producing the birth certificate would only lead to more demands from conspiracy nuts. “They’ll never stop” is the argument. Unfortunately, it’s not an argument that can withstand any scrutiny.

For starters, what could they demand? And what else could Obama possibly produce for them? In fact, the only thing that has ever been asked of him is that he obtain his birth certificate and make it public. If he were to produce it, he could fairly and truthfully say, “Here it is. Here’s everything you asked for. There’s nothing more I can do. Let’s move on.” Assuming (as I do) that it would indicate he was born in Hawaii, the “birther” movement would be over. Yet this one fairly simple request meets a flat refusal and a wall of silence.

The only reasonable conclusion is that his birth certificate would reveal something that would be extremely damaging to his image and his reputation. I have no clue what it might be, but what other reason could there be for spending all this money and letting the issue drag on like this?

Copyright2009MichaelKubacki

HEALTHCARE NOW!!!

There are two Democratic healthcare bills floating around Congress, and though neither Obama nor any other Democrat have actually read them, we are informed by the president it is essential a bill be passed by the end of July. The American people are demanding action, Obama tells us. We can’t wait.

There are two reasons for this urgency, both related to the steadily-declining support for Obama’s healthcare plans in public opinion polls.

First, Obama wants a bill passed before new numbers on the economy come out. It is becoming increasingly clear, even to Obama-lovers, that the $878 billion stimulus bill has been a colossal failure. Back in February, Obama told us THAT bill had to be enacted immediately in order to keep unemployment from rising above 8%. As of July, unemployment was 9.5%, and no one expects the new number to be lower when it is released in early August. From Obama’s perspective, it is important that the healthcare bill be passed before further evidence appears that his first massive program not only failed to solve the problem it addressed, but actually made matters quite a bit worse.

The second reason is the upcoming August recess for Congress. Obama’s problem is not merely that Congress will not meet for a month. More important is what members of Congress will be doing during that month. They will go home. They will go to town hall meetings. They will give speeches and interviews in their districts.

Within the Washington beltway, the primary source of information for members of Congress is the Obama-friendly mass media, and it is easy to ignore the public’s growing skepticism of the Democratic agenda. Any negative feedback is anecdotal, or it’s a number in a poll that’s reported on page 22. It’s a very different story when you go home and confront your constituents, in person, and they are screaming at you to stop wasting their money.

Copyright 2009MichaelKubacki

GREEN JOBS AND BROKEN WINDOWS

A couple weeks ago, the EPA published a report (that the Obama administration tried to suppress), confirming there had been no actual warming of our planet since about the time Donovan McNabb was drafted by the Eagles in 1999. Actually, it has been kind of gauche to even mention “global warming” for a while now since, well, there isn’t any. Instead, we must worry about “climate change,” and we have to be really, really worried about that, and even if we aren’t, we should still shut down all the mines and oil wells and build windmills instead because then we’ll all get lots of green jobs. That was Nancy Pelosi’s final speech on the floor of the House in support of the energy tax bill. “There are four reasons we must pass this bill,” she said. “Jobs, jobs, jobs, jobs.”

Undoubtedly, large government subsidies for windmills and whatnot, along with punitive taxes for the other 95% of the energy-production business, will create jobs in the windmill business. This will occur in the same way that, if the government were buying rabbits, we would all start raising bunnies in our bathtubs. Of course, there is a serious question about whether the jobs created will exceed those jobs lost in coal and oil and natural gas (and businesses that use those forms of energy), but we will assume Pelosi is right and there will be a net gain of jobs---green jobs. What will the overall effect of this be?

Back in 1850, a French economist named Frederic Bastiat wrote the story of a shopkeeper whose window was broken by a boy in the village. At first, his neighbors viewed it as an unfortunate incident for the shopkeeper, but then they noticed that the glazier benefited because he got the job of fixing the window. The glazier took the money he made and spent it at the bakery, and then the baker was able to afford a new pair of shoes, which put money in the cobbler’s pocket and enabled him to buy some new equipment. And so on. Ultimately, the neighbors concluded, the broken window was a great boon to the entire community.

To economists, this gag is known as the “broken windows fallacy,” and it’s a fallacy because it ignores what the shopkeeper might have done with his money if he hadn’t had to spend it on having his window fixed. For all we know, that money might have allowed him to send his son to the university where he would become a brilliant doctor and heal the multitudes. Instead, because of the broken window, the son had to spend his life doing menial labor.

Bastiat’s point was that every act with significant economic consequences has effects that are seen and effects that are unseen, and if we only examine the effects that are seen, we can easily arrive at the wrong conclusions.

Let’s make up some numbers in line with Pelosi’s vision. Let’s say that, as a nation, we spend $5 trillion each year for energy and employ 30 million people fulltime to give it to us. It’s a lot of money and a lot of labor, but we want the lights to go on when we flip that switch. Everything shuts down if we don’t spend that money and use those people.

But now, with Obama’s energy taxes and all the green jobs that are coming, let’s say the $5 trillion becomes $7 trillion and the 30 million people become 35 million people.

What are we getting for those extra expenditures?

Well, nothing. For an additional $2 trillion and an additional five million fulltime employees, we’re getting the same output. The lights will go on just as they did before and the key will still turn in the ignition. In terms of the availability of energy, and how we use it, the only thing that changes is the price we pay. It will be “nice” energy instead of the evil energy we use now---that’s the whole idea---but in the end, we’ll be getting the same thing.

Now, $2 trillion is not nothing. In fact, it used to be considered a lot of money. Instead of using it this way, we could give everybody in America all the free root canals and Viagra they wanted and still have enough left over to sign both Jason Werth and Shane Victorino to long-term contracts. There are a lot of things we could do with $2 trillion rather than spend it on an environmental idea with no effect we can actually see, and which will have no effect on the way we live our lives. In order to evaluate the energy bill, it’s only reasonable to consider what else you might do with the money you’re spending on it.

But more importantly, what about the “jobs, jobs, jobs, jobs?” Five million jobs! That’s a good thing, right? According to the Democrats who don’t really want to talk about global warming anymore, the green jobs are the primary benefit of the energy bill.

Remember the broken window? The green jobs are only the effect that we would see, but let’s think about the effects that are not seen. When you take five million people and put them to work installing solar panels and fixing windmills, what do you lose? Since we get the same amount of energy with 30 million people as we do with 35 million, the labor of those extra five million, in strictly economic terms, is being wasted. What else, as a society, might we use those five million people for?

Pelosi’s unstated assumption is that if we didn’t make these five million people do green jobs, they would do nothing. But that’s absurd, isn’t it? Some of them would be busy, and a few would be very busy and would do some very important things. What are we losing? What inventions won’t be invented, what businesses will never be built, what plays will not be written, how many gifted healers will never find their way to medical school and what diseases won’t they find cures for? Apart from the enormous cost of this program in dollars, the horror of the energy bill is the monumental waste of human resources.

The problem is that, as a society, as a prosperous Western democracy, we don’t want green jobs. They represent a step backward for all of us. Energy must be produced and wheat must be grown and cotton must be turned into clothing, but these are all things we must do, not what we want to do. What we want to do is write poetry and design skyscrapers and play volleyball and make movies and concoct delicious new dishes, but we can only pursue our various wants when the basics of survival (like energy and wheat and cotton) are in place. The measure of our success as a society is that historically, we have been able to devote less and less effort to mere survival. Yet Pelosi would have us spend more time and more resources on the fundamentals of existence, and she would like us to believe this is a good thing.

From the beginning of mankind until about 250 years ago, almost every person on earth had to work fourteen or sixteen hours a day simply to survive the night so he could wake up the next day to do it all over again. Even a hundred years ago, 60% of Americans worked on farms. Today, that number is 2%, but nobody laments the fact 58% of our people no longer have to operate threshing machines, pick cotton and castrate sheep. For some reason, those people (i.e., you) don’t complain about being stockbrokers, aerobics teachers, chemists and caterers.

Today, we live the lives we lead because wheat and cotton and energy are cheap, and we don’t have to spend every waking minute working to obtain them. It’s why we can sit in cafes and redecorate our living rooms and go to the beach---because survival costs us almost nothing.

Green jobs are not a benefit of the energy bill. They are a cost.

Copyright2009MichaelKubacki

THE FIRST PITCH

Tonight, Barack Obama threw out the first pitch at the All-Star Game, and yet the broadcast never showed where the pitch went. Neither I nor you have ever seen this before. Did he get it over the plate? Did he even get it to the plate? Just as we only watch the Star-Spangled Banner to see if the singer forgets the words, the only reason we watch the ceremonial first pitch is to see whether the honoree can throw a damn baseball.

Can there be any doubt that, as a condition of his appearing on the mound in St. Louis, Obama ordered that the end of the pitch not be televised? There can be only one reason for this bizarre bit of broadcasting---Obama’s demand that he be spared any possible embarrassment if he threw it in the dirt.

This is what happens when the state controls the media. And if you needed any further proof of the fascist bent of this imperial president, you saw it tonight.

Copyright2009MichaelKubacki

SOTOMAYOR AND THE RICCI CASE

Ricci v. DeStephano is the recent Supreme Court decision regarding the New Haven firefighters who took a test for promotions and had the test thrown out by the city when only white and Hispanic firefighters passed. When the guys who passed the test sued, the federal district court ruled (without a trial on the facts) that the city had acted properly. Judge Sonia Sotomayor, of the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals, summarily upheld the district court’s decision and adopted its reasoning.

I am writing this to clear up the misconception that, since the Supreme Court ruling was 5 – 4, there were four justices on the Supreme Court who agreed with Sonia Sotomayor. In fact, there were none. The dissent, written by Justice Ginsburg (joined by Stevens, Souter and Breyer), argued simply that a trial of the facts was necessary and that the case should be sent back to the district court for that trial. Thus, Sotomayor’s ruling that the firefighter tests could be rejected by the city as a matter of law (without a trial of the facts) was rejected by all nine members of the Supreme Court.

You can read the decision here.

MY NEW GIRLFRIEND

I spent about an hour today in the area of the 10th green at the Saucon Valley Country Club watching the third round of the 2009 Women’s Open Golf Championship. It’s a short par 4, listed at 332 yards. However, the green is significantly elevated above the fairway and surrounded by very deep sand traps and thick four-inch-high grass. In addition, the green itself is of a sinuous and undulating nature, with large swatches of it dripping with menace. There are places on the green that will not hold a golf ball. If you place a ball by hand in one of these Bermuda-trianglelike areas, it will roll completely off the green and come to rest somewhere in the vicinity of Bethesda, Maryland, though the Saucon Valley Country Club itself is located in Bethelem, Pennsylvania.

For an hour, golfer after golfer approached this challenge in exactly the same fashion. They would attempt to hit a ball in the middle of the fairway about 270 yards, avoiding all the evil bits close to the green and leaving them with a short wedge shot onto a forgiving part of the green. The successful ones managed to do this, make two putts for a par, and slink off to the 11th tee, mopping their troubled brows as they slunk.

But they were not always successful. Paula Creamer, the fourth-ranked female golfer in the world, required seven shots to accomplish her mission. Many others found the suggested four shots an insufficient number.

Then, toward the end of my hour at the 10th, a young lady with the unlikely name of Eun Hee Ji stepped to the tee 332 yards from the flag and knocked her ball 308 yards, depositing it neatly on the front part of the green. The multitudes (self included) were simply stunned. She drove the green! No one else had even attempted it. I think I had assumed it wasn’t possible, and I wasn’t the only one, because when she arrived at the green, the crowd went a bit wacky, cheering and hooting and screaming its welcome, which Ms. Ji acknowledged with such girlish modesty that it made me a bit embarrassed we had cheered so loud. With two putts, she claimed her birdie and walked calmly off to the next hole to another thunderous ovation.

With the sang-froid of a mob assassin, there is much to admire about Ms. Ji (or, as I like to call her, Eun). But she impressed me in another way as well.

On the LPGA tour, there are still a few women who look like refrigerators, but they are all in their late 30’s or 40’s and they don’t win a lot anymore. Virtually all the other players, including most of the stars, are 22 years old with rock-hard muscles in the arms and legs and not an ounce of fat anywhere. Regardless of their country of origin, they wear short, tight skirts (white or pastel), a polo shirt one size too small (with a couple of buttons undone), and color-coordinated caps, hair ribbons and the like. Until you’ve watched them for a while, it’s impossible to tell them apart since they all look like they are on their way to the mall to spend the afternoon hanging with their BFF’s.

Eun, however, doesn’t look like that. First of all, she can’t be bigger than 5’ 2”, and if she weighs 115 pounds, my name is Barack Obama. More importantly, she doesn’t look like much of a shopper. Yesterday, she wore sweat pants and a loose fitting top that provided no suggestion of her shape. A black baseball cap was tilted forward so it was difficult to get a clear look at her face. If you want perky and cute, Eun may not be the girl for you. If you want somebody to hit a golf ball 300 yards, however….

She was in second place after Saturday, and she has won only one tournament in her two years on the tour, so she’s not a lock in the 2009 Open. The wins will come, though, and I’ll be rooting for her.

Copyright 2009 Michael Kubacki

WHY OBAMACARE?

A couple weeks ago, I was chatting with a Scotsman who now lives in the Philly suburbs. He's politically conservative in many ways, and of course, he has lived under the UK's National Health Service regime, so I asked him his views on Obamacare.

His answer surprised me. "Well," he said, "here in America I can go to see my doctor any time I want, but I wonder if people don't go to the doctor a little too much. America might benefit from a little rationing. If your knee hurts, what's wrong with taking ibuprofen for a few weeks until you get a doctor to see you?"

Later, he surprised me again. We were discussing the Obama administration's plans (a la Europe) to mandate four weeks of paid vacation for all workers, and he said, "That's fine. I could use more vacation, couldn't you?"

One of the issues conservatives puzzle over regarding Obamacare (which is frequently the topic on talk radio) is simply this: "Why? Why are Obama and the Democrats doing this?" After all, they know what the results will be just from what has happened in other countries. They know that mammography has virtually disappeared for Swedish women and they know about the armed guards (to keep order) at the doors of Swedish hospitals. They know that dying Brits can wait hours for an ambulance and they know that National Health Service hospitals in the UK look like nothing so much as Dickensian-era work-houses. They know British cancer patients over the age of seventy each get an allotment for palliative care and hospice, but nothing for treatment. They've seen the clinics in New England with big signs that say "Canadian Checks Accepted" (in Canada, the waiting lists are long and private health care is illegal). Maybe the American people are not all that familiar with what government health care looks like around the world, but Obama knows and Pelosi knows and Reid knows, so why are they doing this? Why are they going down this path?

And I think my Scottish ex-pat pal provides the answer. Though he can be bitterly sardonic about political correctness and though he has no illusions about the jihadists, he nevertheless grew up in the UK. Despite his free-market, conservative political bent, the entitlement mindset is burned into his consciousness. Any conservative raised in the US would instantly realize that federally-mandated vacations would put millions of people out of work, but no one raised in a welfare state as pervasive as that of the UK can ever look at it that way.

And that's the reason Obama and the Democrats are pushing Obamacare, regardless of the consequences. Once there is national health care, a tipping point is reached, and the relationship of the citizen to his government is changed fundamentally. The primary issue in all future political campaigns becomes entitlements, rather than national security or free speech or abortion or anything relating to our values or philosophy. In England, in Belgium, in Canada, the main issue in every election is "how many weeks of vacation will you give me?" or "will I get a free root canal?" Once the individual becomes dependent on the government for health care, for life itself, everything else fades into the background.

When this happens, and the political playing field is altered, Democrats will have a permanent advantage over Republicans, since no one can beat Democrats in the what-will-you-give-me-now sweepstakes. And that is why Democrats are pushing so hard for Obamacare, regardless of its merits.

Ten days ago, the House passed the largest tax increase in American history. If it gets through the Senate and becomes law, every industry that can move to another country will do so, unemployment will soar, and not many of us will be able to afford to turn on the thermostat in January. But though the energy bill would be a nightmare if it passes, it could also be (with great difficulty), repealed. Once Obamacare becomes law, however, it will almost impossible to put the cork back in the bottle. America will be changed forever. At that point, we become just another dying European welfare state.

Copyright 2009 Michael Kubacki

MICHAEL JACKSON

I’m willing to cut Michael Jackson a lot of slack. He was a talented person, and talented people sometimes have demons that would not be there if they were not so talented.

People who are celebrities as children, and who never have a proper childhood, have an additional burden. Some grow up and become responsible adults, but some don’t. When you look at Lindsay Lohan today, you see the hard face of a 22-year-old who is going on 50, and it’s sad. Maybe she will find herself, but it’s not certain. And Michael Jackson’s childhood was far worse than hers. Apparently, he was never able to have any sort of adult relationship; he was an emotional cripple. And it wasn’t really his fault.

I’ll go further. I was pleased by his acquittal in the child molestation case. I viewed it as just another high-profile case by a prosecutor who wanted some headlines, like those involving Martha Stewart, Rush Limbaugh and the Duke lacrosse team. The payoff to the kid who had some questionable overnights at Neverland was more troubling, but I can’t say I condemned him for that either. For MJ, $20 million at that time was like me paying somebody a buck. He had a reputation to protect. It’s Hollywood. None of us really know what happened.

However, there is a place where sympathy must end. One can have pity for a madman, but the pity ends when he begins to use other people’s lives to slake his personal demons.

I’m talking, of course, about “the children.”

Who are these kids? They were not his biological children, we now learn, and there is a serious question about whether they are the children of his “wife,” Debbie Rowe, who is alleged to have been merely a surrogate. What were they to Michael Jackson? Pets? Human versions of his famous chimp? Perhaps that explains why they have never been educated. In any event, the purpose they served in his twisted psyche is now clear.

First, they were evidence he was “normal,” a heterosexual and a dad. Worse, however, is that he created them and used them to assuage his own self-hatred, his loathing for his black skin. There is no reason to think he could not have had children of his own. Even if the thought of sex with a female was nauseating to him, he could easily have arranged for an in vitro coupling. But that child would have been black, wouldn’t it? And that wouldn’t do at all. That would give the lie to the fantasy he had created for himself in all his skin-lightening procedures and plastic surgeries. And that fantasy had to be served, apparently, at all costs. Even at the cost of others’ lives.

Copyright 2009 Michael Kubacki

MORAL HAZARD, AIG AND THE INSURANCE BUSINESS

The insurance business has always been viewed with some suspicion by the law, governments and the moral arbiters of society. This is because there are obvious dangers in insulating people from the consequences of their actions, or even providing financial incentives to do the wrong thing. Insurance contracts have always been subject to the thorough scrutiny of law courts, and certain types of insurance arrangements have long been illegal.

Perhaps the best-known example is the “Slayer’s Bounty” doctrine of the Common Law, which provides that a killer cannot benefit financially from his actions. A husband who murders his wife thus will not inherit her wealth, and will not be permitted to collect proceeds of a life insurance policy naming him as beneficiary. For similar reasons, you are not allowed to take out a life insurance policy on another person without that person’s knowledge and consent. Other dangers arising out of insurance contracts are more subtle, giving rise to complex arguments about “moral hazard,” the creation of disincentives for responsible behavior.

Over the centuries of our jurisprudence, we have determined that insurance is appropriate if it protects us against random catastrophic events (“acts of God”) for which the holder of the policy cannot be held responsible. A certain number of ships are going to be caught in horrendous storms, a certain number of people are going to be hit by lightening, a certain number of buildings are going to burn down---all these are legitimate subjects of insurance. Even here, there may be some element of human responsibility, of course, and then there will be arguments about whether the insurance company will have to pay on the policy. If you intentionally burn down your house, you can’t collect. But what if you were merely negligent in keeping that bucket of oily rags in the garage? Well, that might be something for a court to decide. We might view the danger of oily rags as something a reasonable person might overlook, but only if we do not encourage carelessness in the process. This is where public policy and the courts become involved in a private insurance contract. It is important to everyone that people take fire prevention seriously, so insurance that might reduce the financial burden of negligent behavior becomes a matter of public interest.

There are many risks where society insists that the risk-taker not be permitted to reduce his exposure through insurance. Suppose John Doe opens a shoe store, for example. John knows the shoe business, he is sufficiently capitalized, he has studied the local traffic patterns and competition, he knows what his expenses are likely to be, and he rationally projects his business will make $100,000 profit its first year. Based upon his projections and all the homework he has done, John goes to his insurance agent and tries to buy an insurance policy guaranteeing him a $100,000 profit in the event fate should intervene in some fashion and limit his success.

Spend a minute thinking about this, and you begin to see the problems. John may well have all the tools in place to succeed in the shoe business, but what is his motivation to do so? Without such an insurance policy, with his savings and his dreams and his livelihood on the line, he might well make his $100,000 profit. But with such a policy, how long will it be before John begins to wonder why he is working 16-hour days and haggling with suppliers and chasing shoplifters and sweeping the backroom and smiling at rude customers and shoveling snow off the sidewalk? What’s the point? He’s getting his $100,000 at the end of the year whether he succeeds or not.

There was a time, and it wasn’t that long ago, when the insurance business was run by crusty old guys who smoked cigars in downtown office buildings and called their secretaries “Hon.” (Think Edward G. Robinson in Double Indemnity.) Back then, before insurance became just one piece of a globalized “Financial Services” industry with tens of thousands of computer-generated investment products that even financially-sophisticated people struggle to understand, the very idea that John Doe was seeking such an insurance policy would have produced only laughter. Now, I’m not so sure.

When someone opens a shoe business, what is the fundamental risk he is undertaking? It’s that he won’t make any money at it. Maybe he doesn’t manage employees well, maybe he doesn’t schmooze well with other businessmen, maybe customers just don’t like him---there are a thousand reasons he may fail, and the crusty old guys in the downtown office buildings wouldn’t insure against any of them. They would insure against fire and flood and slips on the sidewalk and theft and hurricanes---random disasters that could devastate John’s business but which he can’t really plan for---but they wouldn’t insure against the fundamental risk he is undertaking, that John himself is not up to the job.

The crusty old guys would have realized instinctively that such a thing is antithetical to the very idea of insurance. In addition, they may have assumed that such insurance was illegal. This brings us to the public policy argument.

You and I, and society in general, want a shoe store that provides us with the latest styles at competitive prices in a situation where the people selling us shoes care what we want. They don’t care about us “as people,” of course; they just want to get us to exchange our money for their shoes. But that’s fine. That’s all I want from them. I’m not looking for a marriage partner. I want them to care enough about my shoe needs that they are willing to go to the trouble to find out what I want and offer it to me at a price I’m willing to pay. It takes real effort to do that, but shoe-sellers are motivated to do it by prospect of making money. The desire to accommodate us is what makes shopping a relatively pleasant experience for most people. It’s why most of us would rather go shopping for shoes than visit the Department of Motor Vehicles, where the desire to please us is conspicuous by its absence.

And how does the shoe-seller find out what I really want? It’s not necessarily going to be what I say I want, or what I think I should want, or what some politician feels would be best for me. Throughout human history, only one method has been found: the pricing system, because of the information it conveys. If I am willing to take money out of my pocket and exchange it for a pair of shoes, it means that the shoes are worth more to me than the money is, and this is critical information for the shoe-seller. And since he’s charging me more than the shoes are worth to him (ensuring a profit), he’s happy too. The pricing system, and the lure of profit, is what makes the whole system work, and where it is absent, there is no mechanism to identify what consumers really want, and thus no way for producers to provide it. There are many reasons for the fall of the Soviet Union, but this is certainly one of them.

There’s another reason we don’t (or didn’t used to) allow insurance for the risk that a capitalist will fail. At any given moment, there is a finite amount of capital in the world, and it hurts all of us when some of it just sits around doing nothing. If John Doe can get insurance for his projected $100,000 profit, his shoe store may sit there indefinitely, performing no real function in society. Not only will customers be displeased with it, but John’s capital will be locked into a venture that is producing no wealth and no growth. John gets his $100,000, of course, but if he were truly successful, he might open another store, or he might sponsor a little league team, or he might give some of his money to charity. We, as a society, want John Doe to succeed. And if he doesn’t succeed, we want him to fail. We want somebody else to get John’s storefront and put a tire store in it, or a Starbucks---some place where we can happily exchange our money for a product or service we desire.

Failure is arguable better for John Doe, too. If he shuts down and salvages whatever money he can from his failure, he may learn from his mistakes and come back with a successful business in the future.

This is why the crusty old insurance guys would never insure against the fundamental risk of an enterprise. They would insure against a ship sinking in a storm, but not against the possibility that the cargo could not be sold for a profit. They wouldn’t insure against someone failing a bar exam. They wouldn’t insure a casino against losses at the baccarat table. It’s bad for everyone to insure people against their own failure. Human nature being what it is, insurance like that only makes failure more likely.

All of which brings us to AIG, which used to be run by a quintessential crusty old insurance guy named Hank Greenberg until he was forced out in a moral crusade waged by famed moral-crusader Eliot Spitzer. It was only after Greenberg’s departure that the more modern (and less crusty) financial geniuses who took over AIG figured out a way to lose a bazillion dollars.

The selling and reselling (and re-reselling) of sub-prime mortgages featured two mechanisms designed to insulate the investor from any knowledge of underlying facts relating to any specific mortgage or any specific borrower. The first was “bundling,” where thousands of such mortgages would be joined in a single package for investment purposes. This was supposed to provide a measure of safety for financial firms that bought the bundles. Buying one mortgage is always a risk because it might go into default, but if you buy thousands, and your data and assumptions are correct, the default percentage is quite predictable. Theoretically.

The second mechanism was “securitization,” which is where derivatives were created. Instead of buying a share of all the mortgages, you would buy a slice (a “tranche”) of each mortgage. For example, you might buy a security representing the income to be generated only in the seventh year of thousands of 30-year mortgages.

Some of our largest financial institutions were major participants in the market for these derivatives. However, the two mechanisms of bundling and securitization meant it was extremely difficult for a buyer of these securities to determine the real value of any of the underlying mortgages. Performing any sort of due diligence on such a security would mean personally investigating thousands of individual borrowers and then attempting to determine a value for the particular slice of that person’s mortgage you were buying (along with thousands of other slices). Instead, the institutions that bought them relied on the assumptions of those marketing the securities.

What happened next was inevitable. Since there was a large appetite in the markets for these mortgage instruments, and it was next to impossible to independently verify their value, unscrupulous mortgage brokers and real estate agents began to arrange mortgages for people who did not qualify for them, even under the lowered standards of the sub-prime mortgage market. In addition to outright fraud, there was simply no incentive to investigate whether a borrower who said he made $40,000 a year actually made $40,000 a year. If a mortgage could be written, it was written, and immediately re-sold to the derivatives market where it would disappear in a sea of other mortgages. It worked as long as real estate values were increasing at unsustainable levels, but when that bubble burst, defaults and foreclosures sky-rocketed.

In the derivatives market, AIG’s slice of all these questionable mortgages was the risk of default. AIG is, after all, an insurance company, so they sold insurance against default and foreclosure, collecting premiums in the process. For those marketing these derivatives, AIG’s role was a godsend, since it enabled all the other slices of the mortgages to be sold “risk-free.”

What’s wrong with this picture? Well, I would say the risk of default is the fundamental risk a lender faces when writing a mortgage. What AIG did here was the equivalent of insuring Joe Doe against the possibility he wouldn’t make money in the shoe business, and thereby encouraging Joe Doe not to make money in the shoe business. And this is just not something an insurance company run by crusty old insurance guys would ever have done. You want to write a mortgage? Fine. In days gone by, AIG would insure every risk related to that mortgage except the risk that you used poor judgment in extending the funds in the first place. Their decision to change that policy is the reason for their downfall.

But, of course, they never really saw it coming, and that is because many financial instruments today are created by computer programs and are so complex that even professionals cannot properly evaluate them. More importantly, issues of moral hazard and other basic tenets of the insurance business get lost in the confusion. Insuring against foreclosure for thousands of mortgages you know nothing about is simply a stupid thing to do, and you don’t need an MBA to figure that out. It’s a matter of common sense. Unfortunately, the nature of these investments is so convoluted that common sense can gain no purchase.

The complexity of even the most basic sorts of investments is such that no human being can account for all the variables involved. We all know what wheat is and what it is used for and how it is grown, but no one knows what wheat will cost a year from now. The mechanics of a standard 30-year mortgage is also within our comprehension, but that doesn’t mean anyone on earth can tell you what interest rates will be in 2015. Nevertheless, if you spend your entire career studying wheat or mortgages, you can arrive at educated guesses that may enable you to make money in those complex worlds.

But the bundling and securitizing of investments that already challenge our understanding makes one wonder whether they are purposely designed to defy analysis (and create incentives for fraud). Whether purposeful or not, that is the effect. The complexity of modern financial instruments is an extremely dangerous design flaw in our markets, especially since the dangers are multiplied by the globalization of finance. Now, instead of destroying a single company, the proliferation of these financial instruments can bring down nations.

Copyright 2009 Michael Kubacki

BARACK OBAMA: AN ALTERNATE VIEW

A couple of years ago, I witnessed an altercation in a Rite-Aid between two large women over the question of which one had been first in line to the cash register. As often happens in these impromptu urban contretemps, there were no preliminary remarks or introductory material. Rather, my first inkling there was any problem at all was a 110-decibel blast, issued by the party of the first part, the shock wave from which knocked me half a fathom leeward. “WHAT’S YOUR FUCKING HURRY, BITCH?” she inquired.

Then the situation deteriorated.

They didn’t know each other, and they were both young and strongly built. There never seemed to be any danger the pair would actually grapple, but they stood about fifteen feet apart, arms akimbo, and discussed their differences, loudly and firmly, at considerable length. It was surprising, to me at least, that they were able to maintain their level of invective and their volume for as long as they did. The cashiers and the other customers and I were dumbstruck. We watched silently, our heads turning from one to the other as if at a tennis match.

The original dispute, precedence at the register, was quickly abandoned as the pair moved on to more pressing issues: the shoes they were wearing, their respective hairstyles, the likelihood that the other had unsightly hair sprouting from her nipples, whether they were paying for their purchases with earned money or welfare benefits, and the nature of the odor emanating from the other’s feminine area. It was very educational. It was a tour-de-force, in fact. I have been in many bars and locker rooms and other male enclaves, and while I will freely admit that men can be crude, there are certain things we will not say about even the most loathsome woman. There in Rite-Aid, on a sunny Tuesday afternoon, I learned that women recognize no such limits.

One was white and one was black, and while this in itself did not create any particular friction, the beautiful multicultural diversity of it all led to a colloquy where all of us learned that each of the combatants lived with a black man. This realization framed what became the ultimate issue in the debate: to wit, whether white women or black women were better equipped to satisfy black men sexually. Jaws dropped in the peanut gallery as we listened to the ladies express their strongly-held views on the subject. While I won’t describe for you the activities that each of them felt was essential (and which a woman of the other color was incapable of providing), I will say this: “being there emotionally” was not one of the activities mentioned. They were talking about other stuff.

And then the party of the first part showed other stuff. Lifting her tee-shirt and cupping her breasts in her hands, she screamed, “AND WHAT ABOUT THESE? YOU CAN’T SHOW YOUR MAN TITTIES LIKE THESE, CAN YOU, BITCH?” And lowering her shirt, she stomped out of the store. Triumphant, I guess.

* I‘ve told this story at parties, and it’s certainly good for a few laughs, but the truth is that I find this kind of behavior vulgar rather than amusing, and I don’t much like the amount of vulgarity I see around me. I don’t listen to Howard Stern and I don’t think there is anything cute about Paris Hilton. I also don’t like movies where angelic, grandmotherly women say bad words for comedic reasons. South Park annoys me. And it makes me sad when I hear kids in junior high school swearing, in loud voices, on a bus or a train. I can be a fuddy-duddy about such things.

There is more of this than there used to be. Now, I know that every generation says the younger generation is going to hell, but I’m not really talking about the younger generation, I’m talking about my own. Certainly, the crudeness has trickled down to kids today, but it started with my peers. All this comes from baby boomers.

This is not an original observation, of course. You can fill a library with everything that has been written about the cultural changes in the 60’s and 70’s and whether they were caused by the JFK assassination or Woodstock or the invention of birth control pills or the spread of nuclear weapons or the international communist conspiracy or Nixon or the Beatles or twenty other things. I don’t know. I don’t have a theory on that. I just know it happened. Something changed. And I don’t think it was altogether a good thing.

I am not simply talking about vulgarity in the public square. That is only the most obvious manifestation of what happened, which was that our shared idea of what constitutes a “good person” changed. At one time, there was only one generally accepted definition. A good person was truthful, respectful of others, loyal to God and family and country, self-reliant and optimistic. All of these virtues are derived from the Bible, of course, but they were not religious values so much as American values, and they developed because it’s simply not possible to separate the American experience from its Judeo-Christian roots.

There are many places in America where these qualities continue to define what is thought of as goodness, and there are many parents who are dedicated to instilling them in their children. What has changed is there is now an alternate definition that dominates the public sphere and our educational system, and it comes directly from the “Me Generation.” Behavior that once would be viewed as disgraceful is excused (or even praised) as being “honest.”

Spouting a string of expletives at a store clerk? “Hey, I gotta be me. I was PISSED!” Flipping off another driver? “Well, I HAD to. That’s how I really felt.” Expressing what one is feeling, or doing what one is tempted to do, is always defensible because it is deemed real and authentic. The real sin, for those in this alternate moral universe, lies in espousing traditional values and then falling short of one’s ideals. This is called (for no apparent reason) “hypocrisy.” So it is that a Republican like Mark Foley can be pilloried for sending flirtatious emails while his successor (Tim Mahoney) is excused for multiple incidents of adultery, sexual harassment, payment of hush money, etc.

But there is more to being a good person under this alternate definition. In addition, a good person is one who believes and promotes certain positions on an array of social issues. Global warming is the result of human activity, gay people should be allowed to marry each other, smoking is wrong, affirmative action is the right thing to do, men and women are exactly the same except for anatomy, abortion is always a woman’s choice, etc. There are many more. These are not political views or scientific conclusions, they are moral absolutes. To those who have rejected our traditional values and adopted the Me Generation ethos, you are a good person if you believe all these things. If you don’t, you’re not simply wrong, you’re evil. (Note: I speak here from personal experience.)

My son was taught this new morality in the public schools he attended, and to his credit, it only persuaded him that most adults are fools. But most kids subjected to this type of indoctrination simply accept it, just as previous generations accepted the values of truthfulness, respect for others, loyalty, and so on. In college, where the stakes are higher, the situation is worse. At universities large and small across this country, students are routinely disciplined for speech protected by the First Amendment if that speech questions affirmative action policies or offends feminist sensibilities. (Browse www.thefire.org for a while if you have any doubts about this aspect of academia.) Lawrence Summers was fired as President of Harvard University solely for suggesting (gently) that differences in scientific achievement between men and women might have something to do with how their brains work. Such wicked thoughts may no longer be spoken in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

And this new ethical system is not an addition to the traditional rules; it is a substitute. What used to be thought of as virtues are gone, or at least are regarded as deeply suspect. Every year Tex was in public school, he was given “contracts” by his teachers that he was required to sign. In these, he typically agreed to “respect the property of others,” “refrain from foul language,” “not cheat on tests or plagiarize material for papers,” and a long list of other rules. When I went to school, the very idea that a student would have to agree to such things would have been preposterous. These were simply the minimum requirements of civilized behavior, and we all knew what would happen if you swore at a teacher or cheated on a test. Students broke the rules, of course, but no one questioned their underlying ethical basis. Now, however, for teachers and principals, there is a sense that moral condemnation for behavior is wrong, and that passing judgment on another’s actions can never be justified. We’re all flawed, of course, so who are we to demand adherence to some arbitrary code of proper behavior? Perhaps Johnny has a disability of some kind. Or maybe his cultural heritage is such that certain expectations are unfair.

Students get the message, or the lack of one. Over the past few years, there has been much in the news about file-sharing, piracy of copyrighted music, movies and the like. If you talk to an 18-year-old about this, as I have, you are likely to find he does not understand there could be any moral issue involved. “It’s there on the internet, so I take it.” The idea it can be viewed as theft is met not with disagreement, but with a blank stare. “But it’s just a big corporation,” is another explanation, shifting the focus to the identity of the victim (“big corporations are evil” is another moral absolute), and away from any responsibility for one’s actions. The belief that big corporations are evil makes you a good person, and once you’re a good person, it doesn’t matter what you do.

For their baby boomer parents too, the rules have changed, and to illustrate this, I’ll give one example. A recent study found that when parents are asked whether they would rather their child were caught smoking a cigarette or cheating on a test, a large majority of them answer they would rather their child be caught cheating. Perhaps you would agree with them, and that’s fine. My point here is simply that American morality has changed. When I was a teenager, my parents and every parent I knew would have answered this question differently. Today, smoking is a serious moral lapse, but bearing false witness would be called merely a “behavioral issue.”

All of which brings us to the American presidency, which used to be held by men whose personal lives were probably never beyond reproach, but who respected the office and at least tried to project the image of rectitude and honesty that was expected of them. And when they failed, they were held to account. When Nixon lied, it mattered. When Jimmy Carter waffled in the face of an aggressive bunny rabbit, he was mocked. Reagan, no matter what you thought of his politics, was a courtly gent in public, and his foes gave him credit for it. Even Lyndon Johnson, a very coarse and unsophisticated man, did his best to project himself as a Southern gentleman.

And then came Bill Clinton, our first Boomer president, and none of that old, tired morality was relevant anymore. When he lied, it didn’t matter. Investigating women he had harassed or toyed with, and then releasing disparaging information about them to the press---well, that didn’t matter either. That was simply his personal behavior, and according to Boomer morality, it is wrong to judge someone on that basis. That’s the old morality, you see. That’s what the bible-thumpers do. The only thing that matters is whether he believes the right things, and like all libertines, Clinton was a staunch supporter of abortion-on-demand, so he was OK. And thus it was that NOW and other feminists rallied to his support, even as foreign political cartoonists depicted him strutting pantless, waggling his penis at cheering crowds, with discarded women littering the street in his wake.

I found this disturbing. I disapproved, and it had nothing to do with Clinton’s politics. That was a separate issue. And now we are faced with the possibility that Barack Obama, a far nastier, far cruder man, will be elected president. And again his personal behavior won’t matter, because Obama believes all the “right things.”

No one in the media has connected the dots on Obama’s personality (or on anything else about him, for that matter), so that’s what I’m going to do. This is my November 2nd pre-election special report for all my friends and relatives who are planning to vote for Obama on Tuesday. I want you to reconsider.

*For me, the first red flag was the bizarre announcement of his choice for vice president. A text message to his supporters at 3 A.M.? “Why?” asked the dimmer reporters who didn’t get the nasty little joke behind it. This was a 3 A.M. phone call that Hillary would NOT receive. Get it? Pretty clever, huh? It was a smarmy little shot at the woman who fought him tooth-and-nail (but fairly) throughout the primaries, and whom he had come to hate for her failure to concede defeat. Like all of Obama’s meanest digs, it was completely unnecessary and completely deniable. “A shot at Hillary? Who, me?” And as always, there is a wink and a nod to the other smart kids in the class.

There are women who will not vote for Obama because of his treatment of Hillary (or rather, his campaign’s treatment---it’s never Obama himself). And while I am not a Hillary fan or terribly sympathetic to feminist sensibilities, the misogyny on display has been of the crudest possible nature. For months, Hillary endured the “Bros Before Hos” crowd, heckling her in state after state. No one claims that Obama organized this activity, but neither did he condemn it. Always, he can disclaim responsibility, but his campaign set a tone where this sort of insulting behavior was acceptable. You may have seen the YouTube video (it’s easy to find) where Obama pauses on stage after making a reference to Hillary, and thoughtfully (with a deadpan expression) scratches his temple with his middle finger. Watch it, and you will remember that kid who sat in the last row in seventh grade and did the same thing, with his head turned slightly so the teacher couldn’t see.

More recently, Sarah Palin was confronted at a rally in Philadelphia by four protesters in tee-shirts proclaiming “SARAH PALIN IS A CUNT.” Again, Barack Obama did not print the shirts, but his reaction to this type of nastiness throughout the campaign suggests he thinks it’s kind of cute.

His “lipstick on a pig” remark also fits the pattern---completely deniable (“Who, me?”), but understood perfectly by everyone on both sides of the aisle. Just as “old” means McCain, “Messiah” means Obama, and “hair plugs” means Biden, “lipstick” means Palin. And everyone knows it. On websites hawking Palin tee-shirts and bumper stickers and such, fully a third of the items make some reference to lipstick. In terms of the campaign, she “owns” the word. Personally, I don’t want a president, regardless of his politics, who will publicly call a woman a pig. Even Bill Clinton wouldn’t do that. He always had his surrogates do it.

And speaking of Bill, his speech at the Democratic Convention made it clear that for Obama, it’s never enough to win, it’s also essential to humiliate those who opposed you. We all know that some bad blood had developed between Bill Clinton and Barack Obama during the primaries, and that was in everyone’s mind as the moment approached for Bill’s speech. He had to deliver one, of course, because he’s a Democratic president, but what kind of speech would it be?

If you saw it, I think you will agree it was a classic Clinton performance---folksy, generous and funny. There was no hint of the bickering that had dogged their relationship. At one point he even compared Barack Obama to himself, and this is the greatest compliment a narcissist like Clinton can pay to another person. He held nothing back in his praise for Obama and the campaign he had waged.

And then the speech ended, to a standing ovation and unrestrained celebration in the hall, and as Clinton left the stage, the Obama campaign, which had orchestrated every detail of the convention, cranked up Robert Palmer singing “Addicted To Love.” See ya, Bill. Thanks for the speech. Sucker.

Our presidents are not saints, and some can probably be said to have crawled to the top over the mangled remains of their vanquished foes. So if Barack Obama is just a misogynist and a vindictive SOB with a 12-year-old sense of humor, well, maybe he’s not the worst human being we’ve ever considered putting in the White House. Maybe, one could argue, this is sometimes what our political system produces.

But it’s worse than that. There’s also George Obama, his half-brother, who lives in a six-by-nine-foot shack in Nairobi, Kenya on a few hundred dollars a year. George is mentioned in “Dreams From My Father,” and Barack is well aware of his situation. On his grand tour of Kenya almost two years ago, Barack saw George, spoke with him for a few minutes, and then moved on to the next photo op. Apparently, they have had no contact since. George lives alone, struggling to survive, and dreams of learning to repair cars at a technical school, but the course costs about three hundred dollars, a sum he could never hope to raise. Barack Obama, of course, is a multi-millionaire.

Reading about George, I found myself wondering what I would do if I had a half-brother in George Obama’s situation. I am not a rich man, but it would take almost nothing to help this desperately poor man in a significant, even life-changing, way.

What would you do? Suppose you were separated as children and you didn’t really know the guy, but he was your blood and you could lift him out of squalor and give him a chance, at a cost you would never even notice. Wouldn’t you find some way to send him a few bucks? Wouldn’t you try to help? Wouldn’t you do something? Of course you would. Any decent human being would. But Barack Obama does not.

So yes, there’s the middle finger scratching the temple and there are the childish jokes and there’s the sickening joy he takes in revenge, and these are bad things, but they are not the worst thing about Barack Obama. The worst thing is that he has not lifted a finger to help George Obama when it would cost him nothing to do so. Barack is cold. Barack is ice. There is nothing inside of him.

Copyright 2008 Michael Kubacki

November 2, 2008

THE DEMOCRATIC PROCESS

Back when there were two sets of primaries, I would sometimes ask my Democratic pals whether they wished sometimes that their candidates would argue with each other about matters of substance, since the contrast between the primaries, Republican and Democrat, was so stark.

On the Republican side, you had pro-life candidates and pro-choice, pro-war and anti-war, pro-Israel and pro-Arab. You had global warming alarmists and global warming skeptics. You had a governor (Romney) who had set up a state-run healthcare system and you had others who wanted the government completely out of the health business. You had Fair-taxers, flat-taxers, no-taxers and John McCain. You had guys who wanted a border fence with snarling dogs and guys who wanted to give them all drivers licenses and margaritas.

On the other side, they never seemed able to muster much of an argument about anything. National health care? Mandatory! Raise taxes? Of course! Lose the war? Absolutely! There were nuances, I suppose (some of which may have been lost on me), but there was no real disagreement in any of their stated positions on major issues and there have never been any debates about policy.

And once in a while, one of my Democratic pals would agree that it might be better, or at least more interesting, if one of their candidates would propose a different idea about abortion or affirmative action or gay marriage or taxes or terrorism or something. More common, however, was the view that the uniformity of opinion among Democrats was actually a wonderful thing. We're united, you see. We don't have to argue about these things. We all agree on what the country needs.

Of course, one can't help but wonder what Joe Lieberman or Zell Miller thinks of this supposed unity, and I also have a feeling I could find a Democrat or two who might have some reservations about tax increases or abortion or banning guns. But whether you call it a glorious unity or suppression of dissent, the absence of policy disputes created a problem far more serious than boring debates. It created a situation where the only basis on which Democrats can pick a candidate is identity politics.

And that is what has happened to the Democratic race, which has become a death spiral of race and gender and ethnic groupings in which neither side has the juice to kill off the other. Hillary's supporters are determined, and Obama's minions are not backing down either. And since the only disagreements between the two have been purely superficial ("I'm for change!" "No, I'm for real change!"), there is no rational basis on which a Hillary supporter can be persuaded to switch to Obama, or vice versa.

It's an argument no one can win because there has never been an argument. All that's ever happened is a sorting out of skin colors and private parts and income levels and religions. And it continues. You there, you with the dark complexion---over here, please. And you with the vagina and the sub-75K income---this way. Bitter union members with guns? Step over here. And you Jewish folks---sorry we have to ask, but are you the sort of Jews who go to temple every week or are you the kind who eat cheeseburgers on Yom Kippur? Because if you're the first kind, we're going to put you in Hillary's stack, but if you're the second, you go to Obama.

For those of us who think it's morally wrong to judge people on the basis of their skin color or their gonads, the spectacle is somewhat disgusting.

Still, somebody has to win, and it looks like it will be Obama, though how and when this will occur is still anybody's guess. His black/leftie/academic mojo seems a shade more potent than her female/union/take-your-vitamins brand. Also, of course, should he be denied, the spectre of rampaging black Democrats outside the convention in Denver is genuinely chilling. By contrast, when Hillary is finally dragged from the stage, any vision involving legions of outraged Geraldine Ferraros laying waste to a Starbucks is more difficult to conjure.

And so they slog on, slowly, toward Obama's seemingly inevitable nomination. And this inevitability too is a product of the straightjacket of race and gender and ethnicity in which the Democratic Party has voluntarily encased itself. Obama's candidacy has never been based in a political vision (since all the other candidates had the same vision), but rather on who he is and, by extension, who his supporters are. This means that ditching him now, even though his vulnerabilities in November have become apparent, would be more than a political disappointment for his minions, it would be a personal affront. It would be---RACISM!!! And we can't have that sort of thing in the Democratic Party, can we?

So it is, in this most Democratic of all election years, that the party is poised to nominate one of the very few Democrats who is capable of losing to the blathering mess that is John McCain. With six months left in this most supernatural of presidential elections, I don't presume to know the result. But looking at the map, it's hard to fathom where Obama is going to find 270 electoral votes.

Start with West Virginia, where Obama was shellacked in the recent primary. The last Democratic president who lost West Virginia in the general election was named Woodrow Wilson. It's almost impossible for a Democrat to be elected president without West Virginia, and Obama can't win there.

And the West Virginia problem is bigger than West Virginia, of course. Bitter, gun-totin', church-goin' Democrats can also be found in abundance in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Michigan and Kentucky, all of which Obama lost and all of which are critical to a Democratic victory. (Kentucky loved Bill Clinton, by the way; they hate Obama.)

And then there's Florida, another critical state, which Obama lost handily in a record-turnout, perfectly fair primary that doesn't count. Jewish voters are deeply suspicious of a guy with links to Farrakhan (via Rev. Wright). Obama's desire to sit down for a chin-wag with Raoul Castro is not a popular position in Florida either.

In a general election, Obama is virtually certain to win New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Rhode Island, D.C., Illinois, Washington, Oregon, California and Hawaii. That's 157 of the 270 he needs. Kerry also won Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Michigan, New Hampshire, Vermont, Delaware, Maryland and Maine, and many of these are likely to remain in the Democratic column. But Kerry lost. Not only must Obama retain all the states Kerry won (and places like Pennsylvania and Michigan won't be easy), he must expand the base elsewhere. As more is learned about his background, however, the trend seems to be heading in the opposite direction.

But Obama may recover. And McCain can blow it (as he, at times, seems determined to do). I have little faith in election predictions at this point, including my own. My point is that the politicizing of group identity is cancer for our democracy, and it's been a cancer for the Democratic Party. It's the sort of factionalism the founding fathers did everything in their power to prevent, and the Democratic Party is a troubling example of how far this destructive process has gone. When months of primaries and televised "debates" are designed solely to divvy up the electorate into manageable little demographic cells and sort them into camps, what is left of the democratic process where free citizens weigh the arguments of the candidates on the issues of the day? Where are the hard questions from the peanut gallery? Where are the hecklers? Where is the point-counterpoint of finely-honed rhetoric and argument?

There used to be Democrats who favored a strong national defense. There used to be Democrats who had doubts about abortion. Believe it or not, there used to be Democrats who thought cutting taxes was sometimes a good idea. They tended to lose their arguments with other Democrats, but they existed, and they created a playing field on which important political questions could be discussed. And now they're gone, lost in the obsession with race and gender and class and religion and ethnicity, lost in the enraged cries of racism and sexism. This is not a healthy development, either for the Democratic Party or for America.

Copyright 2008 Michael Kubacki

VIRGINIA TECH AND THE MASSACRE

Masterman, where my son goes to school, is a tall and narrow building, five stories high. During the day, all traffic is funneled through one set of doors on the first floor. There are other exits, but they are all on the ground floor, and they could all be easily locked in a minute or so. The entire building is surrounded by concrete, so don’t even think about jumping out a second-story window.

The chief security officer is an elderly gentleman who mumbles. His only weapon is a nightstick he carries on his belt. At 150 pounds or so, he is smaller than some of the students.

His assistant is a middle-aged woman who moves a bit faster than he does, and weighs quite a bit more. A cursory glance at her physique reveals no hint of muscle tone. She appears to be completely unarmed.

For the past six years, every time I have walked through the doors at Masterman, the thought has struck me: this place is a potential slaughterhouse. A single armed maniac, with a little planning and determination, could easily lock down the entire building and, in the space of a few minutes, make us all forget Cho Seung-Hui.

Columbine, Trolley Square, Nickel Mines School, various post offices, and now Virginia Tech---every one of these places was a “gun-free zone.” Every mass killing in recent American history has occurred in a gun-free zone. Before 9-11, airplanes were gun-free zones. That, at least, has changed.

Masterman, of course, is a gun-free zone. On a typical school day, there are over a thousand children and adults in that building, and they would be completely helpless against a murderer. Such a person is not necessarily stupid, or irrational---to them, a gun-free zone is a victim-rich environment where they can go about their business undisturbed. In that sense, a gun-free zone like Masterman acts as a focal point for their fantasies. You never hear about a mass shooting at a gun show or an NRA convention, do you?

I am somewhat bitter about this.

On other occasions, I have written about some of the left-wing foolishness one must come to expect from a public school in Philadelphia. AIDS, we learn, was invented by the US government in order to kill people of color. The only thing white men ever did in America was enslave blacks, oppress women, intern the Japanese, abuse the disabled and beat up homosexuals. Students are taught to cherish their group identity and any attendant sense of victimhood. Etcetera.

That stuff annoys me because of its totalitarian nature. No dissenting voices are permitted. I am a distinct minority, but I am not the only parent who disapproves of their moral and political indoctrination, so the sheer unfairness of it bugs me.

Its effectiveness, however, is doubtful. For Tex, for example, all it does is sharpen his appreciation for how irrational and mean-spirited the extreme left can be. And he is not the only one. I know there are other students who react to the attempts to indoctrinate them by heading in the opposite direction. Teen rebellion being what it is, there will always be those who won’t knuckle under to the party line.

But though Tex and others will survive the indoctrination, keeping him for hours each day in a potential slaughterhouse is another matter. This particular manifestation of fluffy-headed left-wing bias makes me angry because it creates a real physical danger to my son and hundreds of other children. And for what? Because the school administrators think guns are icky? Because guns are “dangerous?” Well, maybe that’s why you need somebody who knows how to use one when a lunatic wants to kill children! No one is suggesting that 12-year-olds carry guns in their backpacks, but what possible reason can there be for the security guards to be helpless? What about the principal? What about the history teacher who was a marine for twenty years? Why can’t he keep a piece in a locked drawer?

Most people view political correctness as quaint, or silly. It’s not. It’s dangerous. Some of the students at Virginia Tech are dead because their campus was a gun-free zone.

Copyright 2007 Michael Kubacki