February 2010 archive

David Brooks is a strange animal.  In today’s column, he asks his elders to either forego their pensions due to their heretofore unrecognized elderly capacities, or he’s asking them to go die on an ice floe.   I’m not sure which.

First, I had no idea David Brooks was an ontogeneticist.  The Times must pay him a pretty penny for all of his untold scholarship.  No wonder they are going broke.  As this century’s Piaget of the elderly, Brooks tells us that all previous thinking and research about the elderly is bunk.  Dr. Brooks informs us that instead of being accurately characterized as a general functional decline, old age is positively bursting with juvenile alacrity that finds its greatest happiness in service to the young (and social hermaphroditism?), the “generativity” of which creates its own happiness.  Sweet and comforting narrative, Dr.    

However, there are political “downsides” to elders, namely that the happy-go-lucky, adept old-timers are meanwhile taking money, freedom, and opportunity away from the youngsters, like the agile, alert, and knowing fucking geezers that they are!

The odd thing is that when you turn to political life, we are living in an age of reverse-generativity. Far from serving the young, the old are now taking from them. First, they are taking money. According to Julia Isaacs of the Brookings Institution, the federal government now spends $7 on the elderly for each $1 it spends on children.

Second, they are taking freedom. In 2009, for the first time in American history, every single penny of federal tax revenue went to pay for mandatory spending programs, according to Eugene Steuerle of the Urban Institute. As more money goes to pay off promises made mostly to the old, the young have less control.

Third, they are taking opportunity. For decades, federal spending has hovered around 20 percent of G.D.P. By 2019, it is forecast to be at 25 percent and rising. The higher tax rates implied by that spending will mean less growth and fewer opportunities. Already, pension costs in many states are squeezing education spending.

In the private sphere, in other words, seniors provide wonderful gifts to their grandchildren, loving attention that will linger in young minds, providing support for decades to come. In the public sphere, they take it away.

Old people are truly the fork against humanity: good on one tine, bad, bad, bad on the other.  You think government can help?  Forget it, says Dave.  The old folks should start a spontaneous political movement to make the “unthinkable” “thinkable.”

It now seems clear that the only way the U.S. is going to avoid an economic crisis is if the oldsters take it upon themselves to arise and force change. The young lack the political power. Only the old can lead a generativity revolution – millions of people demanding changes in health care spending and the retirement age to make life better for their grandchildren.

In short, the elderly are okay people, but they are fucking net takers!

David Brooks will be escorting his grandparents out to the ice floe later this afternoon, for ritual, mutually beneficial parracide.  Dave will make a buck, and his elderly kin will feel good knowing they helped.

My rent-a-car quit on the road, and a tow-truck dropped me off in this oasis of motels and gas-pumps nowhere with nothing but a smart-phone and hope for a better tomorrow.

3:21 AM.

On TV the channel-guide cycles slowly through 100 channels.

Paid Programming Paid Programming Paid Programming

Paid Programming Paid Programming Paid Programming

Paid Programming Paid Programming Paid Programming

The horizontal axis is time. The vertical axis is choice, the free market, America.

Paid Programming Paid Programming Paid Programming

Paid Programming Paid Programming Paid Programming

Paid Programming Paid Programming Paid Programming

A block of named programs appears:

The Healing Power of Juicing. Your Baby Can Read. Collect Gold Coins. Celeb Hair. Cash in the Attic. Super-Size Beauty.

The Fox Movie Channel offers “Bad Boy,” a musical comedy made in 1935, starring James Dunn.

Then the crawl suddenly stops, for “scheduled hardware maintenance.” This thing runs on dedicated hardware! Live and learn!

3:51 AM.

Outside the motel, it’s very cold. Across the service road a quadrant of the truck-stop parking lot is empty.

The horizontal axis is time. The vertical axis is choice, the free market, America.

Arrests intensify Haiti adoption debate

Some groups call for moratorium, others fear long-term clampdown

Associated Press

NEW YORK – The debate over international adoption, already a bitter one, has intensified in the aftermath of Haiti’s earthquake and the arrest of 10 Americans for trying to take children out of the devastated country without permission.

Some groups are urging a long moratorium on new adoptions from Haiti, saying there is too much chaos and too high a risk of mistakes or child trafficking. Other groups fear any long-term clampdown will consign countless children to lives in institutions or on the street, rather than in the loving homes of adoptive parents.

Chuck Johnson, chief operating officer of the National Council for Adoption, said the arrests of the 10 U.S. Baptists would probably undercut his organization’s push to expand adoptions from Haiti as soon as feasible.

Q&A: Who else could help in Afghanistan?

The US and Europe play a leading role in working for Afghanistan’s stability. Can the interests of China, India, Iran, Pakistan, and Russia also aid in the nation’s success

By Mian Ridge / Correspondent / February 1, 2010

New Delhi

Although the United States and its NATO allies are leading the effort to stabilize Afghanistan, many of Afghanistan’s powerful neighbors also have an interest in how the country fares.

China, India, Iran, Pakistan, and Russia are each invested in Afghanistan – Beijing, for example, has committed billions to mine copper, and Tehran pours aid into areas that border Iran.

Also out of national interest, though, these countries are leaving to the West the difficult task of fighting the Taliban. And for some, disagreements over unrelated issues have prevented further cooperation on Afghanistan.

Here’s a look at what role these countries play in Afghanistan.

This was posted prior to Shinseki’s press conference.

Breaking down the FY 2011 Veterans Affairs Budget

While most of the DC military press is focused down on the Pentagon today, the Department of Veterans Affairs is also unveiling its fiscal 2011 spending plans and ambitious goals for the near future.

But even though the $125 billion VA budget proposal is only a fraction of the proposed Defense Department budget, the plans could have wide-reaching ramifications for current servicemembers as well as veterans. For example: >>>>>

Arrests intensify Haiti adoption debate

Some groups call for moratorium, others fear long-term clampdown

Associated Press

NEW YORK – The debate over international adoption, already a bitter one, has intensified in the aftermath of Haiti’s earthquake and the arrest of 10 Americans for trying to take children out of the devastated country without permission.

Some groups are urging a long moratorium on new adoptions from Haiti, saying there is too much chaos and too high a risk of mistakes or child trafficking. Other groups fear any long-term clampdown will consign countless children to lives in institutions or on the street, rather than in the loving homes of adoptive parents.

Chuck Johnson, chief operating officer of the National Council for Adoption, said the arrests of the 10 U.S. Baptists would probably undercut his organization’s push to expand adoptions from Haiti as soon as feasible.

Q&A: Who else could help in Afghanistan?

The US and Europe play a leading role in working for Afghanistan’s stability. Can the interests of China, India, Iran, Pakistan, and Russia also aid in the nation’s success

By Mian Ridge / Correspondent / February 1, 2010

New Delhi

Although the United States and its NATO allies are leading the effort to stabilize Afghanistan, many of Afghanistan’s powerful neighbors also have an interest in how the country fares.

China, India, Iran, Pakistan, and Russia are each invested in Afghanistan – Beijing, for example, has committed billions to mine copper, and Tehran pours aid into areas that border Iran.

Also out of national interest, though, these countries are leaving to the West the difficult task of fighting the Taliban. And for some, disagreements over unrelated issues have prevented further cooperation on Afghanistan.

Here’s a look at what role these countries play in Afghanistan.

Open Thread

President Obama is now perhaps the foremost contender for the Worst President Ever epithet.  Stealing that crown from Bush was a virtual impossibility, but Obama appears to be up for the challenge.  Obama said he recognized the need to change course, he was elected on that basis, and he expressly resisted change at every opportunity.  The endemic fraud of the Bush administration has more deeply retrenched in the persona of Obama.   The slick marketing campaign around the concepts of change we can believe in, we can do better, and yes we can was utterly fraudulent.  In the most charitable characterization, whatever self-justifying internal narrative propelled him to stump on change, his conception of change is now shown to be completely at odds with the public’s understanding.  This gulf of understanding is only bound to widen.  It wouldn’t be surprising to see The Gulf of Understanding completely militarized before this Presidency ends.

Americans apparently aren’t too concerned about wars of aggression, torture, illegal wiretapping, the rule of law, the separation of powers, the constitution, and so on, nor do they care much about how the US economy works, but they do care about their pocketbooks.  Not surprisingly, Obama’s fraudulent image is souring most saliently in the public’s attitude toward the bank bailouts, and more generally, the economy (Recall that his election was only cemented when the economy turned sharply south; that’s when Obama left McCain doddering in the polling dust).  Most of the economic damage was probably irreversible before Obama even took office, but he supported Bush’s actions wholly, upped the ante after taking office, and he’s been going “all in” ever since.  

During the SOTU, Obama said something quite attention-grabbing:

“We’re working to lift the value of a family’s single largest investment — their home [..]”

Like George “This sucker could go down” Bush before him, Obama was referring to the DEBT-o-nation of actual mortgages underlying and triggering the chain reaction of mortgage backed securities that are still set to take out lower Manhattan and the rest of the global economy like a controlled demolition.  The entire scheme was nothing less than the biggest fraud ever committed, and a lot of people were on to it at its early stages.  Spitzer, for example, wasn’t taken out for whoring.  Thus, the problems of the TBTF have only gotten bigger and failer.

Unfortunately, the debt-o-nation continues apace.