According to the gurus over at Wikipedia, “A wooden nickel, in the United States, is
wood token coin, which are usually issued by a merchant or bank as a promotion,
sometimes redeemable for a specific item such as a drink. Wooden nickels were
most commonly issued in the US in the 1930s, after the Great Depression.”
Which is fine (as far as it goes), although in the
sense of the current bailout of fraudulent and specious investment vehicles, it
seems the wooden nickel is upon us almost before the fact. We have been
snookered out of our underwear before the game began.
Investment ‘vehicles’ are
well named, invented as they are to drive off with your money. In case you
missed the point of the failure in the House of Representatives to pass Hank
Paulson’s giveaway to his former partners in crime over at Goldman Sachs, it
was to provide political cover for the coming election, while allowing the
Senate to unashamedly lard the legislation.
Seldom does the Senate step in ahead of the House, but paid-off Senators were well paid and only a third of them are standing for reelection. Thus are leaders made. Such is the power of a corrupt two-party system that badly needs a viable third party to disrupt partisanship where stalemate and power-plays have all but replaced representative government.
Hope for a future lies in meaningful coalition governance.
What we have allowed in Washington simply will not suffice.
(Rescue Sweetened With Tax Incentives,
by Cecilia Kang, Washington Post)
The
House of Representatives yesterday approved $107 billion in tax breaks for
businesses and consumers as part of a sweeping financial rescue package
designed to stave the credit crisis.
Saddled
onto the 450-page bill is a provision to shield as many as 25 million Americans
from the alternative minimum tax and $18 billion in tax credit extensions for
wind and solar energy production.
Yet
to appease lawmakers and make the bill more attractive, several more prosaic
tax provisions are included, according to a government budgetary watchdog
group.
Saddled. Well chosen metaphor. Indeed, the nation’s
economic horse very nearly sank to its knees under the load. Any vague hope
that “the best Congress money can buy”
would seek anything other than its own unending grip on Democratic dominance
(under an Obama administration) sank as well.
Pelosi, who has an absolute majority in the House,
said, “We were dealt a bad hand; we made
the most of it.” This witless Speaker of the House has made nothing but
excuses for the deplorable job she has done since the 2006 mid-term election
gave her what she wanted and cannot find a way to use—control.
In the week that was, last week’s $700 billion refusal became this week’s acceptance--larded with an additional $150 billion in earmarks and other buried treasures. Republicans have been watching all year, like cats at a mouse hole, for a bill that could not be refused to which they could attach pet legislation.
They got it this week on a platter, thanks to the
Pelosi-Reid dumbo combo. Less able 'leadership' has seldom haunted the halls of Congress. Republicans are not always civic-minded, by by god they are able and showed it by their expansive mood.
(Time
Magazine) Paulson's original request was barely three pages long, whereas the
bill passed today runs well over 400 pages.
Pork, of course, is not exactly speech-writing, but it does take language and language
takes pages. Fortunately, that language was at the ready, loaded, primed and parsed,
eager to be fired so everyone could go home and leave the mess to Obama or
McCain. With change like this, who really cares who occupies the White House?
(Washington
Post again) NASCAR will be able to write off racetrack costs over 7 years and
manufacturers of wooden arrows for children will be shielded from an excise tax
applied to other shafts. The NASCAR provision was introduced by Rep. Mike
Thompson (D-Calif.), who voted in favor of the bill.
Nice job, Mike. That certainly bails out the
auto-racing industry, which grosses more than any other organized sport and is
awash in profits. A friend of mine, just today, sent me a pretty good idea--that those in Congress be required to wear NASCAR-like uniforms, so we could readily see their sponsorship. I don't know the attribution, it's not original with him, but it's pretty accurate and (would be) funny if it didn't cleave so close to the bone.
The
bailout package also provides tax rebates on rum imported from Puerto Rico and
the Virgin Islands and tax credits for economic development on the island of
American Samoa.
"In
the midst of a debate over a historic bailout package, Senate pulled out an old
bag of tricks: piling billions of dollars of unrelated legislative provisions
into the package and daring the House to reject the bailout again," said
Ryan Alexander, president of Taxpayers for Common Sense. "Many of these
provisions are tax extenders that have been waiting in the wings for months,
hoping for a legislative train to leave the station."
The
bill passed the House yesterday 263 to 171. It was a last-ditch effort of sorts
for proponents of renewable energy to get tax provisions extended before they
were set to expire by the end of the year. Those extensions, estimated at $18
billion, had repeatedly failed to pass legislative muster in both the Senate
and House over the past year.
The
tax breaks in the legislation total $149 billion over 10 years, and are offset
by $42 billion in tax increases. The hikes include a new levy on hedge-fund
managers who avoid taxes by transferring income offshore, a provision that
would raise $25 billion over 10 years.
It was an absolutely bi-partisan effort. Everyone got
their hand in the till, regardless of race, creed, gender or political
affiliation. No cause was too large ($150 billion in tax breaks) or too small (39
cents on wooden arrows).
(Bloomberg)
Senators attached a provision repealing a 39-cent excise tax on wooden arrows
designed for children to an historic $700 billion financial-markets rescue that
passed tonight by a vote of 74-25. The provision, originally proposed by Oregon
senators Ron Wyden [D] and Gordon Smith [R], will save manufacturers such as
Rose City Archery in Myrtle Point, Oregon, about $200,000 a year.
Senators Widen and Smith can’t get any more bi-partisan than that.
(Wikipedia)
It was during this (depression era) decade that some banks and chambers of
commerce in the United States issued wooden nickels with expiration dates to
mitigate difficulties faced by merchants in making change at times of
instability.
Wooden arrows—wooden nickels—guess we’ve now seen the closing of the circle. We can hope, but not be assured, that the circle is not a noose in disguise.
__________________________________________________
Media comment:
It’s silly-time at the Democratic Convention in Denver. That’s largely what political
conventions are all about, but as the nation sinks further into chaos,
silliness seems just a bit more—silly.
Bitter about what, Jerry? Bitter about a catastrophic,
unending and unfunded war; possibly about Guantanamo or abu Ghraib? Does your
bitterness stop at Hillary losing out in a nationally contended primary
campaign, or is there enough left over for torture, the retirement of
dissenting generals and flag officers, kangaroo courts, waterboarding and the
relentlessness of civilian spying?
What Hillary wants. That’s your criteria, JoAnn?
What Hillary wants has displaced in your mind the need to revive by
mouth-to-mouth resuscitation an entire country? Mouth to mouth, e-mail to
e-mail, door to door, friend to friend and living room to living room, America’s
abandonment of the Geneva Convention needs to be spoken of. George Bush’s
replacement of military and civil police by Blackwater thugs ought to register
as prioritized criteria, along with extraordinary rendition.
Agreed, Terie. It was a remarkable speech. But as
seems to be the mission of the Clintons, she did her share of damage, dangling
her name and intentions until way past the last moment, building personal drama
at the cost of unity. 
C’mon Dawn, wipe your eyes, put aside your petty
grievances and think for once in your life about something that transcends who you are. Does who you are, celebrate
the waste, theft and failure to account for hundreds of billions in ‘war’
spending? Do you stand proudly for abandonment of foreign policy in favor of
unilateral decisions that re-ignite the useless, wasteful and disproven
strategies of cold war? The replacement of America’s tradition of political
argument, with sloganeering and demagoguery, is part of why Hillary lost in
flashes of anger and hubris.
It hardly seems normal (or acceptable) to read in separate articles in my morning's Washington Post, that federal facilities right here in our country are running too short-funded to protect themselves. This, while Boeing and Northrop haggle over who is most deserving of a $40 billion contract for refueling planes. Further along in the tanker piece, one must suspend belief to choke down the admission that an end-contract for these planes may well exceed $100 billion.
$100 billion and yet the Federal Protective Service had its budget slashed by--who else?--Homeland Security. These guys (and women) protect nearly 9,000 Federally owned and leased buildings. The FPS used to be part of the GSA (General Services Administration), but that was in the days before this privatizing-crazed administration outsourced everything from V.A. services employees to armed guards and foreign quasi-military thuggery.
Which brings up the question of advocacy in a government that has become so diffused and downright opaque in its character that no one knows who is running the show. Congress writhes in the impotence of no longer even knowing whom to subpoena and is forced instead to bore itself and its constituents in waves of meaningless committee hearings.
When it, tremblingly gets itself together, draws itself to its full height, puffs out its chest and actually serves a summons, it is ignored. Not only ignored, but dismissed without penalty. The list of powerful no-shows is long and infamous, running out the clock in the waning days of a presidency as well as a Congress. In circumstance after circumstance, from terror to torture, from collapsing bridges to a deteriorating National Mall, from contracting theft to congressional enabling, we have allowed our nation and its protections to be quietly slid out from under us.
Alarmingly, distracted as we are by American Idol, there is no advocacy for the deteriorating bureaucracy that runs the nation's business. Bureaucrat has become a dirty word and privatize has taken its place, although it is the hardworking Washington bureaucrat who kept us afloat in the years before Ronald Reagan made of him a laughingstock. Consider what privatization has brought us in the way of
This is what neo-conservatism has wrought. Born of a reactionary response to the '60s counter-culture, conservatism panicked and dropped its pants to the likes of Norman Podhoertz and Irving Kristol, these 'new' conservatives who advocated the ignoring of America in an orgasm of foreign intrigue. Between this disguised liberalization of the old wire-rimmed glasses conservatives and the advent of the Harvard Business School's reverence for quarterly profit, America has steadily tanked.
If you think Barack Obama will be able to pull us out of our fifty year slide into irrelevancy, I wish you well and hope you are right. I will vote for him because he is--above all--an advocate.
Barbara Ehrenreich writes in the Huffington Post; "The Democrats are feeling empowered -- in part -- by the resounding echoes of change that is ringing in their ears." 
We've seen the first act of the play yet to come, titled "Democrats Back in Charge." It's had a bunch of bad 2006 reviews. Spencer Tracy had it right about stage presence; "learn your lines and don't bump into the furniture." 
Pelosi and Reid are terrified, not of impeachment (or the fantasy that it will complicate election 2008), but of their personal roll in the Democratic complicity that an impeachment trial would reveal. Every single step of the way, the Bush administration's murky wreckage of American ideals was approved by Democrats. 
Newt Gingrich and Tom DeLay at least had the guts not to give a shit. They stood there, guns blazing and dressed the theft of American politics as a Contract With America. Had Bush and Cheney not been so heavy-handed, the Gingrich-DeLay legacy would not yet be at risk.
Parse that, baby. Become different (Democrat rather than Republican) without permanently losing former characteristics (power, greed) or essence (the best government money can buy). Justice doesn't happen to be a part of change in this context and we are full-circle, back to the brilliant observation of Pascal that in the absence of justice, strength will suffice. Or the promise of strength, the hope of strength, the vision or the image of strength, when strength itself has proven too costly.
I am uninspired that the very legislators who have pounded together these lobbyist- congressional- military- industrial- pharma- agri- oil complexes (nail by nail, like Jesus on the cross) are the ones upon whom we must rely to tear it all down. Don't ask a theologian to tear down the church.
Barack can't do that, nor can Hillary or John. Only citizens in the streets can do that and they are busy at the moment, lowing like cattle behind the fences government has erected for them. Unless.
You will not be aware of that, because it is not likely you have reason to keep up with international currencies. Within the United States, all seems well. The waters are quiet. Outside America, a financial tsunami has taken place and the dollar is on the brink of collapse. No one wants our currency. No one wants our debt. No one wants much of anything America has chosen to export in the past seven years.
In about a year it will be the 90th anniversary of the establishment of the Weimar Republic, the nickname for post-WWI Germany and a moniker forever connected with the hyper-inflationary economy of Germany. That circumstance lead directly to the democratic election of Adolph Hitler and WWII. 
Ben Bernanke, who is the current chairman of the Fed is hardly a plumber. One can only wish he was. 
Ben Bernanke is going to fill ‘er up on money. He and George Bush and Henry Paulson have connived between them a ‘stimulus package to bolster the economy.’ If you look up ‘bolster,’ one meaning is to support and strengthen and another is to add padding. I leave it to your judgment which definition most closely defines giving each taxpayer $300 to $1,200 of his own money to goose the economy in the sole interests of the above-named public officials' personal friends.
Financial markets have been looted, Ben. Wake up. This is not about families and businesses, this is about pumping up the worthless investments hedge-funds created. It’s about papering-over the hole in the missing billions before their major institutional investors sue them for fraud and send the whole crop of $100 million a year criminals off to Sing Sing.
And the sworn duty of the Fed is to prevent inflation. Don’t cry for me, Argentina.
There is a cure for all this sickness and greed and fraud, but it will not be found in the halls of Congress, the meeting rooms of the Fed or within a new administration, no matter how much ‘change’ is promised. 
