Tag: Congress

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The New Speaker: Mike Johnson

The new Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, is known to be a devout Christian. He prays very often, leads bible studies, podcasts his wisdom on Godliness and spirituality, and fights passionately against renewable energy, gun control, and anything based on science or fact. Amen. Jesus and Exxon. Amazing how his politics align so much with Trump and so little with actual scripture. He argues that scripture commands individuals to be hospitable to “the stranger at your gate” and treat them well, but governments can pretty well tell them to go to hell.

 

This man believes in the Bible the way McDonald’s believes in nutrition.

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Credit Shackles

It is quite amazing how the credit industry in the U.S. has convinced conservative and liberal legislators that extending easy credit to people without the means to pay off their loans is an act of kindness and generosity. As if they were not charging interest or demanding repayment.

That is what they will tell you if you bring up the fact that U.S. credit industry has essentially reintroduced indentured servanthood on the sly. The average American carries a balance of $5,000 to $8,000 (depending on your sources) on their credit cards, for which they are paying an interest rate that was regarded as illegal for most of American history– usually, about 28%.

Most of these credit card companies are headquartered in the state of Delaware (yes, Joe Biden’s home) because at one time it was illegal in most states to charge “usurious” interest rates on loans.

Why is this allowed? The cover story, as I stated, is that this is a service to people, especially people with low income who otherwise would not be able to buy the big-screen television or xBox or laptop, or lavish that trip to Disney World on their youngsters. It’s a clever ruse: they are only able to continue to consume until they have reached the limits of their credit; if their limits are extended, they go even deeper into debt, and are even less able to pay off the principal. In keeping with the Republican tradition of giving laws names that are the opposite of their real purpose, (like the “Clear Skies Act”, in 2005, Congress passed “The Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act of 2005”. The BAPCPA should have been called “The Perpetual Credit Servitude Act” or the “Consumer Exploitation Act”. Some Democrats opposed it, some supported it. All Republicans supported it.  And that tells you a hell of a lot.

It is a tragedy that many otherwise sensible people take the attitude that if people are so stupid as to run up debts they can’t pay off quickly, they deserve what they get. To me, that is like asserting that a woman who goes to a party and drinks is asking to be raped. This attitude might make a little sense if most of the people you know are well-educated, have decent jobs and a decent income and an RRSP, and understand how they are being ripped off but do it anyway. But most people are not; they are drunk with consumer choice, bombarded by advertising, convinced by government and the media that they are entitled to enjoy the fruits of capitalism, lavishly.

But the essence of good government regulation is to protect vulnerable people from being exploited and abused by other people or corporations without a sense of right and wrong. And a corporation never has a sense of right or wrong: it has profits. The fact that the average credit card balance in the U.S. is so high tells you that the average citizen doesn’t understand credit or credit cards and is vastly over optimistic about his or her ability to pay off debt. The average consumer is vulnerable. They don’t understand that being able to buy the big screen tv and xBox now on credit means they will be able to buy a lot less in the future when their credit card payments are $400-500 a month, and barely cover the interest, while they continue to add on debt. It makes perfect sense for the government to step and restrict the ability of banks and credit agencies to offer them loans.

It made more sense when the government allowed some of these consumers to declare bankruptcy and crawl out from under an unbearable debt load. That’s what the BAPCPA was all about: tightening the noose. It imposed new, vast restrictions on the ability of any person to declare bankruptcy.

Why? The banks will tell you that they have to charge 28% on credit cards because of the great risk they take that people won’t pay these loans back. The only escape for many people was to declare bankruptcy and start over: risk taken, Mr. Banker, sometimes you lose. That’s why you were allowed to charge 28%– why are you complaining?

The only way Congress should have tightened the restrictions on bankruptcy law should have been by forcing the banks to drop their interest rates to something like 7% at the same time, in the same legislation.

The banks and the conservatives and their lobbyists and toadies would have howled to high heaven. For good reason. It’s easy profit. If you are in the investor class, it’s a fantastic way to extract money from poor people. Like taking candy from a baby, and just as ethical.

The banks and credit card agencies insisted that consumers would benefit because the tighter regulations would increase their profits and then– get this — allow them to pass on the savings to consumers in the form of lower credit costs.

Of course it did increase their profits. And of course, credit costs to consumers went up, not down.

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Who Wants to Torture? Me! Me! Who’s Next?

“in a 45-minute meeting last Thursday, Vice President Dick Cheney and the C.I.A. director, Porter J. Goss, urged Senator John McCain, the Arizona Republican who wrote the amendment, to support an exemption for the agency, arguing that the president needed maximum flexibility in dealing with the global war on terrorism”

The amendment they are talking about was attached to a $400 billion military spending bill by the Senate. The Senate– hey, hey!– voted 90-9 in favor of this amendment. The amendment bars the U.S. from the use of “cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment” of any detainee.

That’s all. The least you would expect, you would think, from a Christian nation. But we are not a Christian nation. We countenance a president and vice-president who beg Congress to please, oh please, please, please, please, don’t stop us from using “cruel, inhuman, or degrading” treatment in the war against terror…

Because, how else will we know if we’re better than them?

NY Times Story.

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What the Media Won’t tell you About Bill Clinton

According to Robert Bennett, Bill Clinton’s lawyer, Kathleen Willey is in the process of negotiating a $300,000 book deal. Coincidentally, she decided that “enough people have suffered” so it was time for her to tell the truth, on national television.

Well, why shouldn’t she? Everyone else is cashing in: Tripp, Kenneth Star, Orrin Hatch….. And no one is cashing in more than the media. The media have made the Clinton scandal the #1 story of the decade. They act as if this story is more important than Cuba, more important than Kosovo, more important than Bill Gates, more important than Iraq. Heavens, I think they might even believe it is more important than Princess Diana!

There is a paradox at the heart of the Clinton Scandal. I haven’t seen any hard numbers yet, but obviously people are tuning in to see the story and buying the newspapers and magazines that feature it prominently on the front page. (Or are they? Only 10 million tuned in to the 60 Minutes interview with Willey: that’s not an impressive number.) Yet poll after poll shows that Clinton’s approval ratings are actually rising. In other words, the average voter loves to read the lurid tales of sex and infidelity (fess up: don’t you?), but when Oral Hatch (don’t you just wish that really was his name?) goes on television and declares that the Willey allegations, if true, should lead to impeachment… they are laughing their heads off. No way!

As I watch some of the television reports on the scandal, and the discussion of the media’s coverage of the scandal, and coverage of the media’s discussion of their coverage of the scandal, I get the sense that some crucial issue at the core of all this is missing. Of course it is. The one thing the media cannot and will not admit to you is that this story is really a tabloid story, a cheap, tawdry scandal of absolutely no importance whatsoever, and not worthy of a serious national media. Picture Dan Rather saying: “And now, we will depart from our usual practice of informing you about wars, economics, and politics, to give you a blow by blow description of the President groping a woman with big breasts.” The question, contrary to what the media say, is not “is it true”. The question is, “is it important, or just juicy?”

How important is this story? How do you measure importance? There is a strong evidence to indicate that the average American voter rates “importance” on a scale based on the answer to the question: how does this affect me?

We have to be careful to exclude self-fulfilling prophecy. To say the story is important because the media are giving it a lot of coverage, is an Alice in Wonderland argument– “the story is important because I say it is important.” In the same way, if the Republicans ever dared to try to impeach Clinton on the basis of these allegations, the real story would be the coup d’état, not the Clinton scandal.

So how does this story affect you? Will it make your taxes go up? Are you more likely to lose your job? Will your children get a better education? Will the world be at peace? Will your access to the Internet be controlled by the government, or Microsoft, or nobody as a result? Will it cause your parents be more likely to end up in a nursing home? Will it improve television? (Not so far.) Will your insurance company be more likely to tell your doctor which treatments he is allowed to give you, because Monica Lewinsky cleaned her dress? Who will lead the Soviet Union after Monica testifies? Should we grant “most favoured nation” trading status to any country that will accept Linda Tripp as ambassador?

The answer to all of the above, of course, is no, unless, as I suggested, the Republicans dare to proceed with impeachment hearings. But those issues are what the people elect a government to deal with, and the voters have loudly proclaimed, again and again, that they feel Bill Clinton is doing the job they elected him to do.

Let’s get one thing clear: the public is not indicating that they don’t care about crimes committed by the president. I don’t think they have heard of anything yet that they would consider a crime, in the substantive sense of the word. Paula Jones has no case, and she knows it, and her lawyers know it. Lewinsky has never complained about her treatment. Kathleen Willey made no complaint. If there was a crime, who was the victim? Who is the plaintive?

The other great omission: last I heard, there were congressional elections coming up this year. The House of Representatives is currently controlled by the Republicans, by a small margin; the Senate, by a slightly larger margin. I have not heard a single newscaster yet remark on the fact that if the Republicans aggressively pursued impeachment, given the current attitude of the electorate, they might just get quashed in November. If I were a betting man, I’d bet you that people like Newt Gingrich and John McCain have given this a lot of thought. Furthermore, impeachment or no impeachment, if I were a Republican, I would be a little worried about the November elections. What if the voters decide to send a real message to Congress?

What does Clinton’s 67% approval really mean?

Most people believe Clinton did it. The media knows the public believes the stories so they think that the public doesn’t care, or that the public shares Bill’s amoral attitudes, and that’s why they continue to approve.

I don’t believe it. I think the public are disgusted with Clinton, but I think they are even more disgusted with the intrusive, harassing, jackal mentality of the media. I think that it means the public is disgusted with Kenneth Starr and Oral Hatch, even as they enjoy reading the lurid details of the scandal.

This is a junk food story: yes, if it’s on the table in front of me, I’ll nibble, but it’s still junk food and if you continue to stick it into my face, I’m going to get very, very angry with you.