Japan

What if all those horrible problems Japan has been dealing with over the last 20 years turn out not to be such big problems for the average Japanese citizen.  What if the "problems" have been all about the US FInancial Press needing to propagate certain articles of faith concerning American Capitalistic Exceptionalism.

Certainly anyone who visits Japan these days is struck by the obvious affluence even among average citizens. The cars on the roads, for instance, are generally much larger and better equipped than in the 1980s (indeed state of the art navigation devices, for instance, are more or less standard on many models). Overseas vacation travel has more than doubled since the 1980s. The Japanese boast the world's most advanced cell phones, and the biggest and best high-definition television screens. Japan's already long life expectancy has increased by nearly two years. Its Internet connections are some of the world's fastest -- something like ten times faster on average than American speeds.

Eammon Fingleton (via theatlantic.com) tells only the story of how Japanese business and government both have lots of leeway in how they can report their numbers, and he thinks that explains everything.  But am I to understand that nobody in the US (or in the rest of the whole fucking world) was smart enough to catch onto this?  Me thinks something else may be afoot.

Here's a coupla little tidbits that get tossed off as if they mean nothing - but could mean quite a bit:

True, not all of Japan’s indicators are equally impressive. The Tokyo stock market, for instance, has never recovered from its 1990s slump. Neither has the real estate market. (In the latter case, however, there is a silver lining in a major boost living standards, in that young home buyers now get far more space for their money. In any case the implosion since 1991 has merely restored some sanity to valuations that had previously become—very temporarily—outlandish).

On the negative side, there is also the fact that Japan’s economic growth rate, as least as calculated officially, has averaged little more than 1 percent a year in the last two decades. For those who propound the “stagnation” story, this is their strongest card. But it does not accord with the common observation— undeniable to those who have known the country since the 1980s—that the Japanese people have enjoyed one of the biggest improvements in living standards of any major First World nation in the interim…

So Japan has been cookin' along for 20 years, boosting their trade surplus by $194 Billion, and making a 65% gain in Yen vs Dollar; which means the standard of living for the average guy improves, plus life expectancy goes up by 2 years.  But somehow, life in Japan must really suck according to everything we hear from our Press Poodles because neither their stock market nor their real estate market is performing at a robust pace.  And there it is. "Little Guy makes out OK, Big Guy OK too" just doesn't fit the standard narrative here in the US.  We have to have "Ownership heroes defeat evil labor goons, our daughters are safe now".

This is such a crock of shit.

A Librul Press?

Horseshit.  Study after study, they keep finding exactly the opposite.  There was a big study in 2001 or 2002 looking at press coverage of the 2000 election that showed the majority of stories about Gore were negative and that the majority of stories about Bush were positive.  Fact.

Now, we get a picture of what's happening as the attempt to dismantle healthcare reform moves through the courts.

Part of the difference can be explained - the rulings upholding the law are in favor of the status quo, so that's pretty boring,  But the rulings against it make for big splashy headlines.

Or maybe it's just that the Press Poodles need to sell advertising (by pushing a point of view that pleases their owners) and they really don't give a shit about explaining what anything actually means.

Some Early-Morning Paranoia

I really want the "rough men standing ready" to have whatever they need to keep the bad guys away - I count myself among those to be criticized for abjuring violence while people are committed to doing violence in my name.  I have some strongly conflicting thoughts about that, but for now, I'll just have to accept the situation as a paradox of life on this planet in the 21st century, and continue trying to do the small things I can do each day that should accrue over time towards real change.

Anyway, I think it's a really dismal prospect that some people in our military forces always seem ready (even eager) to pull some horrendously shitty things on us.

from Rolling Stone

The orders came from the command of Lt. Gen. William Caldwell, a three-star general in charge of training Afghan troops – the linchpin of U.S. strategy in the war. Over a four-month period last year, a military cell devoted to what is known as "information operations" at Camp Eggers in Kabul was repeatedly pressured to target visiting senators and other VIPs who met with Caldwell. When the unit resisted the order, arguing that it violated U.S. laws prohibiting the use of propaganda against American citizens, it was subjected to a campaign of retaliation.

American citizens and our representatives in Congress are being targeted as "enemy".  I'm still able to feel some confidence that the worst of these power drunk assholes will be rooted out eventually, but this is another great example of why we have to be a lot more careful about building and maintaining a professional military.

Gained In Translation

Every successful politician has a good handle on the concept of Coded Language.

Sometimes, the links get pretty broad - Family Values can mean just about everything from Abstinence Only and Creationism to bombing the shit outa brown people to make the world safe for Americans at home.  You get to fill in the blanks on that one any way you want.

Other terms and phrases can be a little more specific:
Real Americans = dumbass rednecks
Service to America = Cops, Firefighters and Military ONLY - no bureaucrats allowed

You get the idea.  Anyway, continuing on my premise that no issue is ever really about what the politician says it's about, here's the basic idea behind the phrase "it's about jobs" when sleazoids like Scott Walker and John Kasich use it.  Plainly put, it means they intend to take one fairly decent job (teacher, building inspector, project manager, etc) and turn it into 2 or more really crappy jobs.  This is a huge push to reorganize and redefine public sector jobs.  And we might as well be outsourcing City Hall's HR Dept to Wal-Mart.

Springtime In Detroit?

General Motors Company (NYSE: GM) today announced its calendar year 2010 results marked by $4.7 billion of net income attributable to common stockholders for its first full year of operations.

Revenue for the calendar year was $135.6 billion. Automotive cash flow from operating activities was $6.6 billion and automotive free cash flow was $2.4 billion, both reflecting the impact of a $4.0 billion voluntary cash contribution to the company's U.S. pension plans.

"Last year was one of foundation building," said Dan Akerson, chairman and chief executive officer. "Particularly pleasing was that we demonstrated GM's ability to achieve sustainable profitability near the bottom of the U.S. industry cycle, with four consecutive profitable quarters."

Wait just a dang minute.  This is Gummint Motors; this is where all them commie unionist bastards are suckin' the federal teat dry; this is totally against what DumFux News says is even possible.

Barron's

BTW: all this good news was left over after GM paid back $700 MILLION in US Treasuries.  Still a long way to go, but they should at least get an Atta Boy once in a while.

Say What?`

This is what passed for "thinking" in the Jr Bush administration.

"We were not there in Afghanistan to eradicate corruption, or to end poppy cultivation. We were not there to take ownership of Afghanistan’s problems, tempting though it was for Americans of goodwill. If, as some have contended, we never had a plan for full-fledged nation building, or that we under-resourced such a plan, they were certainly correct. We did not go there to bring prosperity to every corner of Afghanistan. Our more modest goal was to rid Afghanistan of al Qaeda, and replace their Taliban hosts with a government that would not harbor terrorists... " - Donald Rumsfeld; pg 682 of his memoir.

Look, Don - you really can't accomplish the 2 things you say we went there to do, without doing the things you say we didn't go there to do.

I think you should continue your service to this great country of ours by scheduling a nice long trip to Spain as soon as you can manage it.  They'll take really good care of you.

fuckin' putz

About Wisconsin - update

I still haven't heard anybody on the union side say they're expecting more, or asking more, or demanding anything more.  Walker and DumFux News and East Blogistan keep trying to paint the unions as greedy bastards out to fleece the innocent taxpayer.  Bullshit.

Here it is, straight up:
What the protesters and the unions and the Wisconsin Dems are fighting for is pretty simply their rights (and ours, btw) under the First Amendment.
The right of association
The right to peaceable assembly

A Saving Grace?

We know that outfits like US Chamber of Commerce and the Koch Boys are working hard to get a certain control over politics here in the US.  It's just too obvious not to be the case.  We also know that they're willing to spend gi-normous amounts of cash buying people like Clarence Thomas to help them keep it "legal".  We know all that, and we've (I've) been assuming they intend to concentrate on owning the process here in the US - but what about the rest of the world?  There's way too much going on in way too many places where big American Companies have big deal interests at stake.

How much will these Corporations have to spend, in how many different countries, to ensure their interests are looked after?

Maybe I'm just hoping for rescue here, but isn't there something happening right now that will eventually make it impossible for a global oligarchy to consolidate power?  And isn't there some probability that it could all change without the kind of apocalyptic collapse that so many keep telling us is inevitable no matter what we do?

What if this scenario of economic implosion is the Big Lie that keeps us in thrall either to the Bosses who tell us to ignore the man behind the curtain and get back to work;  or to the Anti-Bosses who tell us the whole thing blows up if we do as the Bosses tell us?

World conquest has been tried for as long as there's been a world to conquer.  And somehow, the world remains undefeated.

Random Question

If evolution is "just a theory" and nobody can actually prove it's for real, how do we explain selective breeding?

About Wisconsin - update

Oh look.  Here's something else it's not supposed to be about.

From Democratic Underground - with an embedded link to the HuffPo article.

While there has been significant attention devoted to the fact that Walker's 144-page budget repair bill would strip away collective bargaining rights for public employees, the site "Rortybomb" points out a less noticed provision that would allow the state to sell or contract out any state-owned energy asset in no-bid deals with private corporations.

About That Wisconsin Thing

To be clear, I don't much like unions.  I also don't dislike them.  My thing is always about the balance of power.  I don't like anything that gets too big or too powerful.  So it's about trying to make sure there's always something to act as a counterweight to whoever holds the majority position in the power struggle du jour.

For whatever reason, Gov Walker has picked this fight.  There is, to be sure, a problem with all or most governments' budgets in that they're not taking in enough revenue to cover all the outlays - again, for whatever reason(s).

My point is that the real fight in Wisconsin has practically nothing to do with the current condition of the state's budget.  It's important to remember that almost nothing is ever really about what a politician says it's about.

Walker has proposed a budget that asks public employees either to take a hit on salaries and bennies, and/or to do without any increases - and it appears there's not much push back on any of that.  So we can kinda put aside all of this deflecting nonsense about how the unions are busting the budget with outrageous demands, or killing the chances of the noble politicians to get things back on track, or whatever the consultants have told them say.

What we're left with is another baldfaced attempt to chip away at everybody's rights.  Plain and simple.

Something else to remember:  we're deep into the Supply Side Economy.  It's a fairly simple notion.  If you flood the market with a huge supply of anything, you force the price down.  That goes for Labor too.  The greater the number of people trying to get a given job, the less you have to pay whoever you hire for that job.

We Are All Madisonians Now

It should prob'ly say "We are all Wisconsinites", but then I couldn't draw an allusion to James Madison.

So anyway,  Gov Walker is really under the gun here.  It's fun to watch him try to sell his pseudo-populist bullshit while being so obviously on the payroll of the Privatizing Looters.

I'll try to explain myself in a minute, but first, I want to point to something.  Look at this, by way of Democratic Underground, and then ask yourself, "isn't this what Free Market Capitalism should actually look like"?  Seems to me we've been buying a phoney-baloney substitute for a good long time.

As a hardcore Randian Zealot, I'm not in favor of "the collective", but that's not what's going on here - our understanding of 'evil collective' vs 'righteous competitor' has undergone a polar reversal.  Ayn Rand's big thing was always that power would be balanced naturally thru straight up competition; and that collectives would always usurp power thru the stifling of competition by force of arms.  Guess which 'side' is willing to use the government's monopoly on deadly force to coerce our cooperation with its plans to take, use and maintain power.

I'm not talkin' Dems vs Repubs here, but I have to say (for right now anyway), the Dems are starting to wake up a little; and that I think there're more of them who are a bit more willing to hew a little more closely to principles of honor and public service.  I realize there was a lot of equivocation in that last sentence, but I think it's even more important now than ever that we look for whatever slight differences we can find - and then throw as much support as we can muster behind any politician who's willing to dispense with the usual bullshit and talk to us about real policy choices, and the effects of those choices on real people in the real world.

This is likely to be pretty brutal for a while.

Keep Workin'

Continuing bad news for Boomers.

Be sure to check out the comments - seems to be split among the big 3.
1) Blame the victim
2) Soc Sec is a ponzi scheme anyway
3) We're being robbed

From The Rupert Street Journal:

This analysis uses estimates of 401(k) balances from the end of 2010 and of salaries from 2009. It assumes people need 85% of their working income after they retire in order to maintain their standard of living, a common yardstick.

Facing shortfalls, many people are postponing retirement, moving to cheaper housing, buying less-expensive food, cutting back on travel, taking bigger risks with their investments and making other sacrifices they never imagined.

"Inevitably, we find that, for the average person, there is not enough there," says financial adviser Paul Merritt of NTrust Wealth Management in Virginia Beach, Va., who has found himself advising many retirement-age people with too little savings. "The discussion turns out to be: What kind of part-time work do you want to do after you retire?"

Thanks, Professor

...that was loads of fun.

Bloomberg won't allow the embedding, so here's the link on YouTube.

How Interesting

The revolt is spreading faster and farther than could have been dreamed.  We've seen the glorious uprising of ordinary people against one bullying despot after another - Tunisia, Yemen, Egypt, Jordan, Algeria and now even The GOP.  Wait; uh, what?

A day or so ago, Mitch Daniels told a rather skittish crowd at CPAC that Repubs need to reach voters who don't care what Rush Limbaugh says (not quite what Daniels said, but words to that effect).  We've heard grumblings along those lines for years from some pretty big-deal Republicans like Christy Todd-Whitman and David Eisenhower and Mike Steele, et al; and practically all of them were thoroughly dismissed, spanked or otherwise quickly dispatched very loudly and very publicly - most of whom either knelt before His High Rushness to beg forgiveness or just limped away and disappeared.  Now, we have Little Mikey Medved feelin' his oats; and in The Rupert Street Journal, no less.

In short, the White House record of more than 200 years shows plenty of bad decisions but no bad men. For all their foibles, every president attempted to rise to the challenges of leadership and never displayed disloyal or treasonous intent.

This history makes some of the current charges about Barack Obama especially distasteful—and destructive to the conservative cause.

He goes on to take aim directly at Limbaugh, calling attempts to paint Obama as a willing destroyer of Mother America "almost perfectly imbecilic".

So how long before we hear from Limbaugh about Rupert Murdoch's vicious campaign against poor humble Rush?  How long before we hear mention of it on DumFux News itself?