Who jumps into a bushel of bad apples?

Illinois is in a tough spot. Our budget is terribly unbalanced, Chicago is about to get turned upside down as mayor Daley leaves, unemployement is over 10%, the entire region is in the middle of an economic shift, I could go on. Short version: bad things.

The Senate seat held by Obama was handed to a career politician named Roland Burris. Or possibly sold. Now it's up for the taking with a close race between the Republican Mark Kirk and the Democrat Alexi Giannoulias. Normally I might just go ahead and punch the party ticket for Giannoulias to help maintain some Democratic control in Congress. But I don't think that would help anyone (besides Giannoulias of course). He strikes me as the sort of Democrat who ruined legislation in the first place by refusing to do the right thing without first getting all sorts of deals and handouts (which I suppose makes it the wrong thing). So he's worthless for that. Instead it could be useful to have someone reasonable, such as Mark Kirk.

But he has a problem: he's a Republican. That isn't really the problem. Instead it's the sort of consultants who hang around Republicans. An otherwise decent guy can end up as a heartless sociopath in no time. Just the other day he whispered a little line about "voter fraud", which while certainly something we want to avoid, in practice tends to be a great way to remove voters, certain voters in certain places with certain voting tendencies. But let's set that aside, I mean, a guy's got to win after all, and this is Illinois. I'd be more worried if he didn't appear slightly crooked, because then we'd know just how well he can hide it.

No, what truly worries me is a Mr. Karl Rove. This man has a consistent habit of corrupting all he comes in contact with. He turned the Republican Party from an essential balance to the Democratic Party into... well... Okay I'll just get to my point: Karl Rove is like a sneaky version of the Antichrist. He turns the best of intentions to evil ends. He lies. He deceives. He cheats. He is a worse threat to America than every terrorist in the world combined. Oh yes, he has a secret weapon: being an American political insider. Terrorists can only kill people. Political manipulators can kill people, imprison people, torture people, and worst of all: take away freedom.

I don't mean take away freedom the way liberals do with food regulation or social security. I mean take away freedom by shredding the bill of rights. Figuratively of course. The literal act would be too obvious.

He's the bad apple and he's rotting the entire Republican Party. I makes me sad to see Congressman Kirk in the middle of the bushel.

Foreign money is influencing elections in America

The Chamber of Commerce is doing just what we should expect from it: using a mix of lies and budgeting tricks to hide that foreign money is buying attack ads in America.

They claim that foreign donor money only goes to non-ad expenses. Which I'll go ahead and believe. But that doesn't mean that foreign money isn't still funding the ads. Yes, that is a contradiction, that's what happens when you're dealing with greedy people who don't give a damn about law or principle.

Here's how foreign money funds ads:
Let's say base expenses are $100, things such as offices and staff and the things that you need even if you're not doing much. Any money after $100 can go to ads. If $100 are given by Americans, then any money after that can go to ads. Even foreign money. Foreign money fills up the base expenses, meaning that more American money can go to ads. Since money is money, that means that in effect, the foreign money has purchased the ads, even if there is not an explicit money->ad transaction, the mere donation of the money will allow for more ads.

This is of course blatantly illegal.

The Federal Election Campaign Act (FECA) prohibits any foreign national from contributing, donating or spending funds in connection with any federal, state, or local election in the United States, either directly or indirectly. It is also unlawful to help foreign nationals violate that ban or to solicit, receive or accept contributions or donations from them. Persons who knowingly and willfully engage in these activities may be subject to fines and/or imprisonment.

The following groups and individuals are considered "foreign nationals" and are, therefore, subject to the prohibition:

# Foreign governments;
# Foreign political parties;
# Foreign corporations;
# Foreign associations;
# Foreign partnerships;

These are the ones giving money to the Chamber of Commerce, money which indirectly funds political advertising in the US.

So when can we expect to see the Chamber brought to trial?

Never?

Oh right, I forgot, laws don't apply if you're rich enough.

People have died before I have shot them

Now and then someone says that this or that act emboldens terrorists or will encourages attacks. Things like burning Qur'ans.

Inevitably someone else responds that we were attacked before we did that. There is of course the obvious flaw: there are many ways to be offensive which do not involve burning Qur'ams or secretly torturing Muslims who have never had a trial or lawyer. Such as assassinating democratically elected leaders and propping up dictators (see: Iran), supporting a state popping up in the middle of nowhere and forcing out the original inhabitants (see: Israel), or occupying religiously sacred land (see: the Arabian Peninsula), the last one of which I say is just too bad; just because I have a book that says you can't stand somewhere doesn't mean I get to kill you.

In other words we've never been attacked in an innocent state.

But the bigger flaw in this logic is that it fails to recognize that bad things can get worse. As my title says, people have died even though I haven't shot them. Does this mean I should go ahead and shoot people since there's no clear link between shooting people and death? Of course not! If A causes B but B happens anyway, that doesn't mean that A is unrelated to B and cannot make B happen even more. In this case B is American civilians being murdered in retaliation for perceived offenses.

This doesn't mean we should bow to the terrorists. Hardly. Terrorists should all be imprisoned or killed. But we should consider what effect our actions have on the potential next generation of terrorists. These aren't bad people, they're blank slates, so it would be smart to not scribble anything bad on them. But again, we shouldn't go out of our way to avoid offending everyone, because let's face it, someone somewhere will get offended by something. However we shouldn't go out of our way to be offensive. That's just stupid.

Why give him so much publicity?

As of writing this Mister Crazy Minister has backed down from the burning. Maybe it was just a publicity stunt. Maybe he recognized that someone was bound to kill him for it, possibly even a Christian, just to shut him up.

He got a whole lot of undeserved publicity. But I think that was a necessary evil.

Did the media and politicians blow up the story? Yes. Should they have been quieter? Hell no.

If they had been silent, then in a week Al Jazeera would have a clip showing and then we'd have a shitstorm. Why did no one try to stop this? Why has no one condemned this? This would have gotten out somehow, so what matters is that it gets out on our terms.

What are our terms?

Our terms are "Look at this terrible thing which we all condemn and would not do ourselves. This is a fringe person who gains no respect here. We are not like him."

Of course we'd say the same thing even if the clip was 'leaked' rather than broadcast constantly. But it's a much different thing to condemn the minister before he does it and before there's been a huge backlash than to appear to be patching things up afterward.

the Nationalist Socialist Party is scary

Why do commentators seem to have such a problem with the imaginary* socialist wing of the Nazi party but the nationalist part is just fine?

*okay, not always imaginary, it used to exist before Hitler destroyed it

Not everything Hitler did was bad

We live in a strange world in which anything can be criticized with "Hitler did that" or "Hitler did something similar". I wonder how we uselessly attacked people in 1930. I suppose we had Lenin. But the 1910s must have been pretty difficult times for poorly supported arguments.

Hitler did personally orchestrate the industrialized murder of millions of innocent people and started wars which caused the deaths of millions more. That's certainly bad. If someone wanted to criticize someone for having an idea similar to "kill millions of innocent people", I could see that as a valid criticism. In general I think people can agree that "kill millions of innocent people" is a bad idea, regardless of whether or not Hitler had done it.

The problem with Hitler wasn't that he was Hitler. It's not as if he was born a symbol of timeless and ruthless evil. Hitler isn't even a specific name, since I presume his father also had the name Hitler, as well as his mother, grandfather, perhaps some uncles and aunts, and so on.

The bad parts of Hitler are the bad things he did. Not who he was or everything he did, just the bad parts. When he orchestrated the murder of millions of innocent people, that falls under the "bad things he did" category. When he told France "go fuck yourselves and your ridiculous 'guilt for WWI debt'", I'd put that in the "good things he did" category, since the Treaty of Versailles was timeless bullshit. When he invaded France, through Belgium, in addition to invading just about everywhere else, that falls under the "bad things he did" category. This in no way diminishes the positive aspects of things like leading the recovery of the German economy and pulling millions out of misery and poverty.

Hitler is dead. Even assuming conspiracy theories were true and he actually escaped to go hide in South America, by now he'd be over 120 years old and probably dead. Not even his Aryan super-race descended from gods could live that long, and he clearly was not part of it. Someday Hitler won't have as much impact as he does now. Just as outside of England and Ireland people tend to not know much about the mass killings attributed to Cromwell, and therefore rarely use pictures of people with Cromwell's mustache attached, so some day Hitler won't evoke much emotion or outrage. Hopefully by then we'll have figured out that we shouldn't criticize ideas for "being like Hitler", but instead should criticize them for the true problem "being like killing millions of innocent people".

Taming the Beast

The stock market is overrun with speculators. And not just people speculators. No, that might be like actual work (not that it would be anyway). Instead they've automated their leeching. Welcome to the world of high-frequency trading in which computers are used to jump ahead of real traders and grab tiny bits of money from them. That's right, your mutual fund and pension are being slowly drained by a computer.

I propose two methods to calm the markets, to make speculating against other people unprofitable. My goal is to encourage investment in companies and long-term profitability, rather than grabbing the next big payout next quarter with accounting tricks and gambling on the fluctuations of the market, fluctuations which their speculation drives.

First, add a one cent tax to every stock transaction. This will have a minor effect on investors, a larger effect on speculators, and will completely wreck the computers. With a one cent tax buyers would only want to buy when they had a good chance of substantial price increases, the kind which can only be assured over the long term with stable companies. Even if a person can pull of 10 cent profits on transactions, this cuts that by 10%, a significant hit which would discourage such trading. The tax could be reduced or waived for sufficiently cheap stocks which might only move small amounts even over years.

Second, add a holding requirement, such as requiring stocks to be held for at least two years and unable to give dividends for a similar amount of time. This encourages long-term investment. Buyers would want stocks which will perform well for years and will not be tied to the short-term outlook. This means companies could focus on the research and development which drive long-term growth and profits (and the economy), rather than short-term gains from accounting tricks, layoffs, and deceptive advertising. It would also become impractical to speculate on the actions of other investors, since projections would have to go out for years, and therefore short-term bubbles and busts would be insignificant.

The goal is these changes is to stabilize the fluctuations in the stock market, fluctuations which are unrelated to the actual state of the economy, and which only harm it. The focus of traders could then shift away from predicting the market itself and towards the actual health of companies. Imagine how much different the dot com bubble would have been if investors had been forced (by their own self-interest) to look at the long-term profitability of tech firms. Maybe there would have been less of a bubble, less of a bust, and a better economy for Bush to inherit. With a genuinely good economy we might not have been so easily drawn to cheap credit and housing speculation. And so on.

These ideas aren't perfect. The tax needs tweaking, maybe a variable scale based on the initial stock price. The holding requirement might need to be longer or shorter. But I think it's a good start.