A recent post over at FiveThirtyEight pointed out the increasing popularity of Texas Governor Rick Perry, and how he may start being a concern to more mainstream candidate Mitt Romney.

It should be noted that Michelle Bachmann is making strong showings in all of these polls as well.

I’d first like to point out that these early polls are essentially meaningless, and I personally think they’re borderline unethical to conduct. They survey the wrong people, and they ask bad questions. They have a long history of being worthless, yet they keep being conducted, so you inevitably have to deal with the media fallout of their results.

The most common form this takes is “Hey this insane, borderline theocrat may actually become president!” For some people that’s a sign the country is headed in the right direction. For others, it’s a bleak indictment of our nation and how far we’ve strayed from the enlightenment principles on which we were founded.

Either reaction is the product of bad information. Information delivered by a sensationalist, self-obsessed press who long ago learned to sell drama and conflict over substantive analysis.

But it also serves to mask the true nature of presidential elections in the US. It creates the illusion of a diverse pool of candidates, each of whom could potentially take the US into the future that most appeals to each of us. But that diversity is largely illusory. Those candidates who actually win their national party nominations are usually not very far apart ideologically speaking, and the final campaign months are typically spent fighting over those minor differences, which only serves to exaggerate them.

The extreme right wing represented by Bachmann and Perry do have genuine ideological differences not only with the left, but with their own party.

When most republican politicians say they want a smaller government, what they mean is that they want an ineffective regulatory body which is powerful but corruptible and controllable. While democratic politicians can’t really call for small government, they have essentially wanted the same thing (at least since Bill Clinton).

Perry and Bachmann (and Ron Paul for that matter) actually want a dismantled and diminished federal government which forces power and money down to the state level where it is more easily funneled to local special interests.

This is a major divide. And in many ways a larger divide than exists between democrats and republicans.

Largely speaking, politicians of both parties agree on the single largest point of policy in modern politics – the role of the federal government. Now I can hear you having an aneurysm from here, so just take some deep breaths while I explain this.

The debate you will hear in the constant drum beat of election coverage, and the current struggles between the president and congress is all about the role of federal government! And it’s completely divisive! It’s what has our whole government ground to a halt. How could I possibly say they agree?

Because they do agree. The role of the federal government in modern america is to protect corporate interests from international competition. While the different parties may differ on their justifications for this, and some of those reasons may even be morally defendable, there is no genuine disagreement. America is all-in on globalized capitalism, and this was a choice we made a long time ago. The captains of industry hold the US captive just as surely as they do most 3rd world countries. We are now a plutocracy.

Don’t believe me? Read the diplomatic cables released by Wikileaks. Here’s a few examples. I’ve read about a hundred of them and the picture they paint is not pretty. The State Department now spends a great deal of its diplomatic capital as the lobbying arm of large corporations.

But this should come as no surprise to anyone paying attention. Large scale and widespread corporate crimes simply go unpunished. Wholesale illegal market manipulations by international banks are met with small fines, or completely ignored. The supreme court has spent much of its current session actively protecting corporations, against standing precedent.

But I think ideologues like Perry and Bachmann legitimately either don’t know, or don’t understand the shifts that government has made over the last 30 years. They don’t understand that by wanting to diminish the power of the federal government, you diminish its power to serve corporate interests in the global economy. That effectively means the US ceases to be a world power. No one currently in power is going to let that happen.

Which is why Perry and Bachmann will never be serious contenders for the presidency. No one who honestly wants a smaller government will ever be allowed a serious shot at the presidency from either party. But it definitely serves a purpose to let Perry and Bachmann get out there and squawk. They get to be the voice of middle class white frustration, the republicans’ populist play in the face of a still strong hatred for being screwed by global capitalism.

Just to hedge my bets here a little: I can see Perry getting the republican nomination in one circumstance; the republicans are certain they won’t win 2012. If they feel that way (which we’ll probably know by early next year), it doesn’t make sense to run a credible candidate and have them lose. It will make it harder to sell that candidate in 2016. It’s much better to throw someone to the wolves cough McCain cough, and let your real pick build up credibility for when there’s not an incumbent in office.

Update 1/19/2012:

Bachmann dropped out of the presidential race on January 4th and Perry gave it up Today. Our disgraceful media organizations cynically pumped 5 months of juicy fundamentalist insanity from them and now they’re onto the Gingrich/Santorum crazy train. Gingrich, despite being one of the most corrupt politicians in recent memory, may in fact have a shot at the nomination, but I think it’s a long one.

Rick Santorum however holds no shot. Don’t get me wrong, he brings the best of both conservative worlds, he’s right up there with the best of them on christian insanity, but unlike Perry and Bachmann, he’s a huge fan of big government and whoring himself out to corporate lobbying interests. He loves war, and thinks it’s just peachy that iranian nuclear scientists are showing up dead all over the place. This could make him an appealing candidate to his party, if he wasn’t quite so goody goody.

See, Santorum isn’t just a prayers in schools, bring Jesus back to the government kind of guy. He’s prudish moralist. He wants to outlaw contraceptives. He wants to make pornography illegal. He wants a total ban on abortion, even when it’s necessary to save the mother. He’s said that he wants civil law to reflect christian religious law.

The republican party is still in a shambles from Bush’s administration. How long do you think it would take the republican party to recover from a poor Bush impersonator with a heaping helping of ultra conservative Catholicism?

His point was that ultimately all the money made by corporations goes to people, so raising taxes on those corporations taxes all of the people who make money from them. And while he didn’t mention it, “tax corporations” is usually liberal code for “tax rich people”.

In some ways, Romney is right in saying corporations are people. They are granted human rights for some inexplicable reason. But that’s not the point he’s trying to make. And on that point he’s wrong.

There’s an easy way for companies to pay no federal taxes. Really. Don’t incorporate. Any income the business makes passes directly to owners and they pay taxes on that income like any other income. Problem solved. Companies are people!

So why don’t businesses just do that? Because in the terms that Romney is using, corporations are very much not people. By and large, companies incorporate because it gives the owners protection from liability. If the corporation goes bankrupt, and they owe you money, you can’t go after the money of the owner or owners. Only the assets of the company. Company kills someone? Owners protected. Company poisons a rain forest? Owners protected.

One of core reasons for corporations to exist is that they abstract the institution from the people who own it. It’s also one of the core reasons they are taxed separately. If the business itself is liable for debts, not the owners, the same must be true of taxes as they are essentially a form of debt.

In a manner of speaking, those separate (some would say double) taxes are the price you pay to be shielded from the liabilities of your company. And obviously the price is so low that pretty much every big company becomes a corporation.

So here’s the insidious heart of this so called “conservative” notion: owners of businesses should get all of the income of a business (and only pay capital gains tax on it), but none of the liabilities of the business (which should be spread out over all the people it harmed). In a term I’m sure you’re all familiar with from the collapse of 08, they want privatized profits, and socialized losses.

Corporations aren’t people. They are tools we provide the rich so they don’t bear the liability for the sociopathic actions of their creations. That tool is extremely valuable, and if anything, the public should be charging a lot more for it. Think about that. Corporations can effectively cause limitless damage with the only liability being the company’s assets.

If Romney or any other republicans want to do away with corporate taxes, I have a proposal.

No more corporate tax. But no more free limited liability for corporations. Limited liability becomes a cap and trade system. Only 250 companies are allowed limited liability. How much do you think those vouchers would sell for?

Now tell me that corporations pay too much in taxes.

Listening to NPR a few weeks ago, there was a fellow on talking about the American education system, and the disconnect between what we believe about American opportunity and the stark reality of education in the US. He was talking about a young girl who wanted to be a doctor. Her parents were convinced that she could become one if she wanted to.

“We actually break down what the chances are of her reaching her dream,” Guggenheim says. Unless Daisy lucks out in a lottery and lands a slot in a charter school, she’ll end up at a local middle school.

“By the time she graduates eighth grade, less than 13 percent of her classmates will be proficient in math,” Guggenheim says. Worse: “The next high school that she’s going to go to, a very, very small percentage of her classmates will even have the credits to go to a four-year college.”

Later on, Melissa Block, in reference to Guggenheim wanting to put his own kids into effective charter schools says something to the effect of “aren’t you part of the problem?” i.e. by pulling out of the publicly funded and failing education system, smart (and wealthy) parents aren’t working to reform the broken system.

This struck a chord for me. Because it’s a question that I struggle with philosophically.

The American political system is insanely broken, and the common refrain heard from the activist wings of both parties is similar, “The only way to fix it is for good people to become active and change it” If all the good people become completely discouraged by the process, you end up with the inmates running the asylum.

Implicit in this worldview is the assumption that good people haven’t already been trying to fix things for a very long time. Unfortunately, large institutions have their own momentum, and they’re very hard to shift in short time frames. Think about the struggle for civil rights, or the modern erosion of the middle class. It makes no sense to an individual parent to sacrifice the 12 year education of their children for the sake of reforms that may not find purchase for 30-40 years. Why martyr their own kids in order to gain the moral high ground to fight for change? Who in their right mind would condemn their kids to a life of working poverty when they had the means to do something different and better right now?

Why would we continue to suffer declining real wages, and the annihilation of the social safety net in favor of propping up a fiscal policy dedicated to transferring wealth to the wealthy?

For those of you blissfully unaware of the all-new heights of political insanity leading up to this November’s midterm elections, let me introduce you to the pain.

The republicans are smelling blood. The economy still sucks. The Obama administration is still trying to pass legislation that no one cares about. The Republicans in the senate have set up a bulletproof filibuster machine that’s blocking everything the president tries to do. If they can keep this up, they can ride the wave of middle class discontent back into serious chunks of the senate and house.

But the Tea Party has started pissing in the punch bowl.

There’s a new kind of Republican in town. The kind that are tired of polite racism. The kind that think dinosaur-riding rambo jesus should be on the American flag. The kind that think taxes aren’t just too high, they shouldn’t exist at all.

In an effort to push the Overton window, the Republican establishment opened pandora’s box, and they’re now rapidly trying to close it again. It’s one thing to make overtly hostile corporate social policy seem more acceptable by throwing out windbags like Rush or Hannity. Yeah they ride the line and say stupid crap, but they know where the feedbag is hitched every night, and they never stray too far from message.

But now the Republican Stay-Puft nightmare is stomping through the nation, and they’re having a hell of a time calling in the ghost-busters.

Someday, after the apocalypse of 2012, there’s going to be a secret trial held in a dark concrete room. During this trial, John McCain’s Vice Presidential vetting team is going to be on their knees with dark canvas bags over their heads. Questions will be asked. Accusations will fly. “Who’s fucking idea was Palin? Which one of you assholes sold our septuagenerian torture-addled hope for America on this antichrist in a mini-skirt?”

Following George W. It was hard to imagine that the republicans could set a lower bar for intelligence, competence or interest in the job they’re doing. But there it was. Thankfully the disaster of VP Palin never came to be. Unfortunately for republicans, the GOP establishment pissed off the wrong mama grizzly when they blamed her for the loss, and demanded she return all the pretty shiny things she bought with the campaign dollars.

Sarah was the stupid stick that republicans wanted to use to beat the democrats, unfortunately they swung wild and instead cracked open the piñata of fringe republican insanity.

It all started out so innocently. Frame the tea party as a grass-roots uprising against out of control government spending. Give them a little money and some coverage on Fox news, and we’ve got a populist uprising we can use to attack the democrats. Ron Paul isn’t on message, so lets kick him out as soon as possible and plop in Palin since she doesn’t have anything better to do.

Whoops.

So to paint you a picture: The last Republican government held both the White house and the Congress for 6 years. They plunged us into 2 massive, sprawling, unfunded wars. They cut taxes on the rich with no commensurate cut in spending. They put together and executed on a largely secret bailout of their wallstreet buddies to the tune of 700 billion dollars. They passed a massive unfunded medicare prescription plan. Their fiscal policy was a fucking reckless mess.

But because Obama and a democratically controlled congress haven’t been able to fix long standing structural economic problems in the US, exacerbated by years of deficit spending, the Republicans somehow get to run on a platform of economic responsibility and fiscal conservatism. We americans aren’t a bright bunch.

So despite a head of the GOP who’s blowing campaign dollars at strip clubs, we’ve got a party trucking at an almost certain gain of seats in both houses based on a policy platform of “whatever they’re doing we don’t want to do it because it’s bad and socialist”. They are literally standing to ride back into office on the idea that doing nothing is better than doing whatever it is the democrats want to do. They don’t have to explain how they intend to dig us out of this mess, or how they’ll do anything better. They can say with a straight face that they want to continue both wars, AND send troops to the US/Mexico border, AND cut corporate taxes and taxes for the wealthy AND they’re going to balance the budget. And everyone pretty much just believes them. Yea ghost of Ronald Reagan!

And so it went. Kennedy finally died, and HOLY SHIT a republican took his seat, breaking the filibuster proof majority in the senate. This Tea Party thing has legs!

But what’s this? How did Ron Paul’s kid get elected in a primary against a GOP backed candidate? And now he’s going on TV saying businesses should be able to not serve black customers? Why the fuck did this guy go on Maddow? Surely he knew she’d expose his insane brand of libertarianism. What? He’s now going on numerous news shows try to downplay discrimination? Would someone shut this guy up? We might be able to get away with that kind of crap in a primary, but if he doesn’t shut up he’s going to get murdered in November.

Now just recently you have another young upstart Christine O’ Donnell beating Rep. Mike Castle in Deleware? Who the fuck is she? Wait, there’s footage of her on MTV denouncing masturbation? Okay at least that was 20 years ago. She dabbled in witchcraft? Fuck. But okay still in the past right? Wait, she was on O’ Reilly talking about how evil scientists have created mice with fully functional human brains? FUCK FUCK FUCK.

Do you feel the republican takeover of congress slipping away? Because at least the smart people in the GOP do. Karl “turdblossom” Rove is sending out the smoke signals in a big way even though he’s choosing to question her financial standing more than her obvious insanity. He knows that if moderate republicans get pushed out of the primaries, the majority of these Tea Party wackos are going to get crushed by liberals who wouldn’t otherwise have won. You just can’t get moderate republicans fired up about supporting insane people. Shit you couldn’t even get them to vote for the old guy.

So the republicans may very well be snatching defeat from the jaws of victory if they can’t get the Tea Party folks on mission and into the fold very very quickly. And good luck with that. But they’re trying. The GOP have bribed Palin by paying off her legal defense in Alaska, and someone has apparently told O’ Donnell to shut up and keep her head down and handed her a check for 47k.

But all of this stems from the fact that the Republican party remains completely without leadership, and rudderless in an America and a world in bad economic straights. So you get Michael Steele. You get orange faced Bohner. You get the barking baboon of Rush. You get Palin. The Republicans need to find a rudder, and they need it bad. Palin’s approval rating among moderates is awful, and anyone thinking she’s going to do the work necessary to be ready for a presidential run in 2 years is crazy. I’m not even sure she could win a senate seat at this point.

But one thing is for certain. Letting the crazy out of the box is now starting to hurt the republicans more than its helping them.

I was really conflicted on this. There are a lot of factors that go into making a decision about a tax that will take a billion dollars a year out of our state economy. Especially in a time that our economy is in a shambles, and we’ve dealt our tourism sector a crippling blow with the passage of SB1070.

A Broken State

Arizona has wide spread, deeply rooted, systemic issues that this tax does nothing to fix. And it some ways it serves as a relief valve for politicians to continue to do nothing. They have another 3 years to ride out the bad economy in hopes that they won’t have to make the truly awful choices that face them.

In fact, until recently, the state legislature was working on tax cuts in the form of H2250 that would reduce corporate taxes, repeal the property tax, and lower income taxes. Seriously. In the face of a 3 billion dollar budget shortfall, our legislature wanted to cut taxes, and Jan Brewer was the only voice of sanity, promising to veto it, leading to its death in the senate. She thought it would look bad to cut corporate taxes while at the same time raising sales taxes.

Our legislature continues to labor under the republican fantasy that lower taxes lead to more tax revenue in the long run even though they’ve been shown not to over and over again. Tax cuts lead to greater deficits.

So there’s a very real concern that taking pressure off the state budget will encourage our republican legislature to reduce taxes for corporations and the wealthy and land us right back where we were before the sales tax increase.

Arizona’s Regressive Tax Policy

Arizona aggressively pushes its taxes onto the poor and has the 4th most regressive tax policy in the US. Unfortunately prop 100 is an extension of this tax policy.

In Arizona the poorest 20% pay 12.5% of their incomes in state taxes. The middle 60% pay 8.5%, and the top 1% pay only 5.6%.

Taxes hit the poor hard in Arizona [PDF Link] (click image for larger view)

As you can see in the image above, sales and property taxes hit the poor much harder than the wealthy, and prop 100 is only going to push up the burden on the poor, while having little if any impact on the rich.

You’ll notice in light blue the percentage of corporate income tax paid across the board is almost nothing. In 2009 Arizona collected $7.3 Billion in sales and use taxes, $1.9 billion in individual income taxes, $836 million in property taxes and just under $600 million in corporate income taxes. That corporate number should stand out, as H2250 would have reduced it by 1/3 or so, reducing an already very low corporate tax collection to almost nothing, despite the fact that it would provide little economic benefit. As a side note, the Arizona Department of Revenue’s year end reports are complete shit, and their numbers don’t match up with the Census Bureau’s (might be a FY thing, but they’re still shit). I trust the Census.

So Arizona really had 4 possible tax choices to pick from when trying to meet the deficit. Property, sales, income and corporate income.

Arizonans really really really hate taxes. But they especially hate property taxes. They have repeatedly put roadblocks in place to prevent the state from raising property taxes, so it’s both an impractical solution and a politically suicidal one.

Sales taxes already make up the majority of taxes collected by a wide margin, and they are highly regressive. But it’s much easier in this state to pass taxes that largely affect the poor. This is why Jan Brewer decided to take this route.

So you’re left with personal and corporate income taxes. Our state income tax is fairly progressive, so it would have made sense to increase personal income taxes instead of sales taxes if we were interested in providing an equal burden across classes. Of course, this would never fly because Prop 100 is largely about protecting k-12 schools, and it’s reasonably safe to say that a good chunk of the rich in AZ either don’t have kids in school, or their kids are in private school. Also, to reach a goal of providing $1b the state income tax would have to increase by 50%, which sounds a LOT worse than “a one penny tax”.

We could also have raised corporate tax rates, which would have had almost no impact on the poor at all (some from increased prices, but probably not as much as 1%, really depends on how much they sell in state). But our legislature is convinced that lower taxes means more jobs and the solution to our 9% unemployment is to cut taxes on corporations, not raise them.

Shitty Choices

So we can raise taxes, or we can cut services. Republicans in the state of course jump at the opportunity to carve more money out of the budget for education and refused to pass any legislation that raised taxes as they know it would be very unpopular. For some reason they believe that cutting school funding will less unpopular.

So Arizona voters were given a sort of lousy choice. Choose between levying a highly regressive 15% sales tax increase on Arizona’s citizens, or decimate our schools.

I personally would have taken an income tax increase to try and keep the collateral damage from hitting the poor too hard. But that’s unfortunately not a political reality. And our state lawmakers are simply too lazy or too dumb to come up with other solutions.

So I voted yes under considerable protest. I believe there were other viable solutions to avoid cuts in education, but I knew our legislators wouldn’t pursue them. And I didn’t mind tax increases, but we ended up with the worst possible kind.

But I also think we’ve bought our lousy legislature a lot of time to avoid making larger, structural changes to the state budget that it badly needs. Either government has to get smaller, or taxes have to increase. The good old days aren’t coming back any time soon, and we’re going to have live with the reality of that.

A few years ago the US dedicated 1.3 Billion dollars to fighting the drug war in Mexico and since then, cartel violence has gone through the roof with 5000 deaths in 2008, 6,500 deaths in 2009, and already 2000 this year so far.

Mexico is tragically fucked up, and deeply corrupt. Our support for Calderon seems to have only made things worse, and the military is leading terror campaigns throughout the country in an effort to scare the cartels (which is failing badly).

Clinton more or less admits that the situation is almost hopeless, but we’re going to burn more money anyway to act like we’re doing something because people are dying in border towns. No one in the US wants to acknowledge that the major reason Mexico is so fucked up is because of overwhelming demand for cocaine and pot in the US.

We’re more or less paying off Mexico for bearing the awful burden that prohibition ultimately creates through feeding black markets. By preventing US sources of drugs, you end up importing them from other countries, and exporting a vast majority of the crime and violence to these countries in return.

President Obama has asked congress for $5.6 Billion to reduce domestic demand.

And so we continue this fucking ridiculous drug war. We keep raiding California pot dispensaries, keep incarcerating people for ridiculous amounts of time for small time possession. Awesome.

We have various reasons for justifying the drug war: crime rates, escalation into other criminal behavior, health implications, family well-being, etc. And all of those things are good concerns. They also the outcomes of a very small minority of drug use and drug users. There is a mountain of data around this, and I don’t want to go into a specific analysis of statistics, because that’s largely not what drives decision making around drug policy. It’s been clear for some time that drug policy is almost completely irrational and crafted in spite of the facts. In fact it’s almost impossible to maintain a position of prohibition supported by evidence.

But we bear a tremendous cost for prohibition, and we impose enormous costs on others as well. We have an increasingly militarized police force, over-zealous and over-empowered interstate border security, overflowing and expensive prisons, insane criminal penalties leading to the highest incarceration rate in the developed world, drastically reduced privacy, etc, etc, etc. But we are happy to bear these costs and continually up the ante to appear like we’re doing something about drugs.

Why?

And why do we continue to tolerate the use of Alcohol and Tobacco, both of which clearly and unambiguously kill tons of people every day and impose all of the same impacts to public well-being, if not more.

I’ve thought a whole lot about this, and talked to a lot of people about it, and I still have no clear answer. But one thing is very clear: we don’t hate drugs. In fact, we love drugs as demonstrated by our enormous pharmaceutical industry.

What we hate is people getting high.

There’s something deeply ingrained in the American psyche, and in the American mythos as a whole. It may even be some weird collision of American social norms and inherited animal social behavior. Something about our desire for fairness.

There’s an interesting experiment that behavioral economists have done: Give one person 10 dollars, and ask them to split that amount with another participant. If the other participant accepts the split, you both get to keep the money. If they reject it, nobody gets anything. Traditional economics makes the answer very clear – offer the other participant one dollar. Rationally speaking, you both come away from the experience with more money than when you walked in, even if the split isn’t equal.

Turns out that people hate it when other people do that. Offer them the $1 and they will reject it leaving you with nothing. Why? Because, being the social animals that we are, we are driven by a need for fairness. You’ve done nothing to earn that money, you are both equally entitled, thus you should offer half. If you don’t offer half (or something very close to it), people will reject the offer to punish you.

What’s important to note here is that if people don’t feel like they are getting a fair deal, they are willing to hurt themselves to hurt you.

And I think something like that is at work in how we approach drug use.

I think a lot of us perceive drug users as not doing their fair share. When a lot of folks think about the stereotypes that pervade our culture around drug use, we think about opium dens, or about lazy pot smokers, or about snorting coke in the bathroom of some expensive restaurant. There’s a common thread to how we perceive most kinds of drug use: happiness, satiety, excitement, bliss. We understand intellectually that these aspects are short lived and drive addiction. But we know that in that moment, any drug user can escape into a place that is better than where we are.

And I think at some level, for some people, this deeply violates their innate sense of fairness. Deeply rooted in our brains (largely through dopamine regulation) is a connection between action and reward. And most of us have learned that action equals work and it takes a whole lot of work to earn rewards. But if you look at the rewards we seek, as a result of this work, they are often exactly what drugs deliver. There’s a reason for that, which is that the chemicals released in the brain are very similar in both cases. Unfortunately the chemical situation delivered by work is a pale comparison to what drugs deliver.

When it comes right down to it, life is a brutal, painful and miserable experience. Thankfully our brains tend to tone all this down to a sort of long, grey banality with interspersed bursts of joy, happiness, excitement, etc. Most of us are constantly working just to make sure the grey banality doesn’t slip into pain and misery. And even those who actively pursue joy and happiness find it fleeting as our brains really tend to favor the grey banality. Novelty wears off, and we settle back to center.

So the thought of being somehow released from this constant work, seems like a tremendous cheat. Anyone who gets unlimited happiness subject only to the money in their pockets (or what they can grow in their yards), can’t possibly be working as hard as I am, yet they are getting better rewards. So we want to take away that cheat, or we want to punish you for using it, even if it hurts us in the process.

So why do we allow alcohol? It’s a complicated question which has a lot to do with money and politics, but to tie it into my thesis, it would have to not violate our sense of fairness, which I think is in fact the case.

Alcohol along with a handful of prescribed medications like xanax are largely looked upon as crutch drugs. Things that allow us to tolerate the grey. They rarely pull us up out of the grey, and when they do, they are sternly looked down upon. We don’t have the jealous fairness reflex to substances considered crutches.

But interestingly enough, you can see this action in drugs that formerly weren’t considered crutches. Blood pressure medication, cholesterol medication, diet pills, all were looked down upon when we felt certain they weren’t actually necessary. Everyone knew you just had to exercise and eat right. These medications were letting people not work.

And drugs that let people not do the work of pulling themselves out of the grey, drugs that catapult you into happiness, joy, satisfaction, or excitement must be crushed. Cocaine, pot, opioids, hallucinogens, all of them have to be suppressed and their users punished.

It’s long since time that we stopped punishing people for not doing the work. Long since time that we stopped hurting ourselves and others in the process. We simply can’t afford to keep burning dollars, and sacrificing lives to satisfy a primate sense of fairness.

There’s been a lot of groping around for reasons why we hit the wall, with many people seeking desperately to find reasons other than drunk driving on the part of the bankers.

The fallback position of many conservatives has been their default one: Blame it on brown people!

There have been widespread conservative attacks on the Community Reinvestment Act, a bit of legislation passed in 1977 and reformed under Bill Clinton to allow access to credit for low income households so that they could buy homes.

The conservative logic has been: The government forced banks to lend money to people who couldn’t pay it back. Of course there was going to be a crises.

Which is complete hosreshit. This has been largely discredited by anyone actually wanting to look at real numbers. Anyone bothering to look up default rates on subprime mortgages vs. prime could easily give lie to these cynical accusations. But I wanted to throw out a little more data for anyone who cared.

I linked to this story almost 2 years ago

And more recently:

ARMs drove the crisis, not subprimes. Turns out that people with good credit who arrange to have no equity in their homes are at higher risk to default.

A recent harvard study(PDF Link) also found that Alt A ARM loans were the biggest contributor to the failure of these bank owned CDOs. Alt As used to be about low credit scores, but during the boom, became synonymous with low documentation or no documentation loans, or liar loans as some people called them. These were used to buy bigger houses than people could afford, or by housing flippers to make short term profits with minimum payments.

Of course, this is only one part of the crash but I’d do my best to dispell the bullshit about what kinds of lending made mortgage backed assets toxic.

And it turns out that when that whole housing bubble burst, we were kind of in a bad place. See, when the money is rolling in, who cares about hedging risk right? New construction was booming and we were living fat off of taxes on new property sales, and property taxes on existing homes that continued to escalate in value. Little thought went into who exactly would live in all these new houses, and who would work in these new commercial buildings. It’s not like we have a diverse corporate infrastructure here in Arizona. Not like we have a surplus of high paying white collar jobs. We had construction jobs.

Well as I’m sure you are aware, that house of cards collapsed and our tax base went into free-fall and our legislature went into denial. Controlled by republicans, they simply refuse to raise taxes, and just don’t want to cut any of the benefits they promised their buddies in the business community. And of course the democrats don’t want to cut spending on social services or education.

So Jan Brewer, proving herself extremely ineffective in rallying her own party, controlling her subordinates, or engaging folks from across the aisle has issued a battle cry in her 2010 state of the state address. And it’s a fucking mess. It’s clear that Gov. Brewer doesn’t have the political clout to make things happen in Arizona, and her address largely comes off as a whining screed blaming everyone else for the problems of the state, rambling incoherently about public policy philosophy and morality, and insisting that she’s got the right people to fix things if only everyone would stop fighting her.

I’m going to pull choice bits from the address and make fun of them. Enjoy:

Honesty, versus lies. Right, versus wrong. Those are the choices Arizona faces. The essence of the challenge laid at our feet.

In a homage to George Bush the First, I was waiting to see the good verses evil line. Jan pushes hard from the beginning for her brand of moral absolutism. Governing isn’t really all that complicated, and if you don’t agree with me and my policy decisions, then you’re probably corrupt or more interested in politics than in helping people. We’re off to a strong start.

They carried out their perilous work with consummate skill and calm. And then before disengaging — came upon yet another device. The discovery came too late. With his last breath on this earth, this courageous man shouted a warning to his two fellow guardsmen. He saved their lives. He gave his own.

While my speech will barely mention the military, it’s always a good thing to associate yourself with bravery, patriotism and heroism. See, I’m just like this hero guy. The fact this guy gave his life for his country makes the stuff I’m about to say seem more relevant, urgent and meaningful.

Last spring, you will recall that I offered you a five-point approach to resolving this fiscal crisis and restoring our economic vitality. In my year on the job I have grown wiser — and time has grown shorter. And I know times are tough. So today, let me open these proceedings by offering you a deal — a 40% cutback…I’m going to boil my 5 points — down to 3.

I’ve tried to push this agenda for almost a year, and I haven’t gotten anywhere. What if I cut it back to just 3 things. Would you do it then? Pretty please?

The economy has still not recovered, our revenues are still depressed and there is no avoiding this hardship. More state jobs are going to be shed and services are going to be further curtailed or lost. Let me be clear, in the history of this state no other Governor has cut state government more than I have.

I’m not going to bother to actually look up the data on this in inflation adjusted dollars, because the statement itself is just ridiculous. Government exists to provide services to its constituents. Want to cut government? It’s not really that hard. What’s hard is improving efficiency and eliminating waste. Sometimes that requires short term infusions of capital to improve automation, or execute process redesign. You know, the hard work of actual governing. Just cutting budgets and telling state institutions to suck it up no matter what is not effective governance. Jan seems to be unaware of this distinction.

Government must live within its means. I did not create this situation — but I intend to resolve it — and continue telling the people the truth about it.

It’s not my fault. Really. And it’s not my fault that I essentially haven’t done anything for a year to resolve the problem. You’re all just in denial about our problems. I am the only one who knows our hardship. My heart is heavy with this burden. BTW: Napolitano really did this to us. It’s all her fault. Also, for some reason she won’t get the government to pay for our immigration problem. She’s a bad person.

And let me make one point very clear. I have great respect for everyone in this chamber, and your contributions to our state.

You are all fuckwads who have done nothing but fiddle while rome burns. (which BTW I agree with)

But there is no one here, and no one elsewhere, who has fought any longer or harder than I have for lower taxes, job growth and economic freedom in Arizona. So, spare us the profiles in courage; it’s time for a little less profile and a little more courage.

My entire speech so far has been me painting my own profile in courage. But you guys should really lay off that.

But if we do not act decisively, we will look to the west to California and see our future — government over-grown — people over-taxed — borders over-run — employers over a barrel — and freedom … simply over.

See how badly those democrats have fucked up california? Well sure their governor is a republican like me, but he’s really a closet liberal. – Employers over a barrel? Yeah it’s awful, all that capital flight from california. Oh what’s that? California still has a tremendous tax base funded in part by some of the most successful and largest companies in the world? And why haven’t they moved to Arizona again? Oh because California continues to create and attract the smartest people in the world? riiiiiiight.

And what the fuck does she mean that freedom is simply gone in California? Did LA become Stalingrad when I wasn’t looking? Has she tried crossing the border from California into Arizona recently? You know, those places that the supreme court has ruled are “constitution free zones”? Those places far into Arizona land where federal agents can stop and search you without probable cause to conduct a “routine search”?

Or has she perhaps read up about Sheriff Joe’s immigration sweeps where if you’re a certain shade of brown you will be pulled over and forced to show your papers?

Our federal government has reached new levels of arrogance, foolishness and disregard for the Constitution. The biggest external threat to our budget comes from the federal government — oppressive health care mandates, job-killing environmental restrictions, and continual refusal to pay for costs associated with illegal immigration.

It’s hard to rebut the constitution part, partially because I have no fucking idea what she’s talking about. But this is just pure party-line bullshit. I guess arrogance and foolishness are the chief characteristics you need to actually function as an effective politician. Say what you want about Obama, but he’s getting shit done in the face of significant opposition. What are you doing again? Oh right, nothing.

When you begin by spreading the wealth around — you end up destroying it.

You have no fucking clue what you’re talking about. More equitable distribution of wealth across classes has been shown time and time again to lead to better social outcomes and more political stability. It doesn’t fucking destroy anything. It just means rich people don’t get richer. The redistribution of wealth from the middle class to the super rich is a major part of why our economy is so fucked up right now. And you have no idea what I’m talking about because you were a fucking chiropractor (quack) and realtor before starting your political life. How’s that macro-economics reading list going? I thought so.

The President and the Congress tell us they are going to help by reducing costs. In reality, what they are doing is eliminating freedom for our citizens, dictating the policies they must buy for their families, and forcing our employers and the state to pick up the tab.

Not just the president, but the GAO and respectable party neutral organizations have acknowledged that the bill currently being reconciled will reduce health care costs considerably. Want to really reduce costs and improve the quality of healthcare? Go to a single payer system and put doctors on salaries. Its been shown over and over again that doing this increases quality of care and lowers costs. It’s fine if you want to live in a free-market fantasy where private business is the ideal solution to all problems, that’s fine, but don’t criticize the people who actually know what they’re talking about.

The federal government is also failing to control our southern border and refusing to pay for its failure. The cost of incarcerating these criminal aliens is not Arizona’s responsibility. It is Washington’s legal and moral obligation.

What? Why? While it’s absolutely a shared government responsibility to keep national borders safe from attack, why is it not a state responsibility to police its own borders? So you’re all about state’s rights and independence when it comes to mandated health care, but you’re all about government intervention on illegal immigration?

So, the ruinous cost of healthcare isn’t a widespread national concern that requires government intervention. It’s a state by state concern and should be left for private industry to fix on it’s own, i.e. you shouldn’t have to fix it. And porous borders on 3 states are a massive national concern that should be enforced and paid for by the government, i.e. you shouldn’t have to fix it. Got it.

Washington also likes to pretend that Government creates jobs. But, we know better. No government ever created a dollar of wealth or a dime of capital. Only the free market can do that.

You should have a grasp of economics, but we know better. Government policies including the fed rate, regulation, trade agreements, monopoly and patent protectionism, law enforcement and taxation generate or annihilate wealth, and either inspire capital investment or flight. They also enforce, extend or reduce class distinctions. There is no genuine free market in the US, nor should there be. There’s no such thing as a level playing field, and there’s always information asymmetry that well placed players can use to dominate markets.

It might be one thing if you were Ron Paul, and actually had read up on the austrian economics school (which is completely wrong headed, but is at least concerned and relatively informed). Or were a die-hard Greenspan/Randite, but you’re not. You’re just spouting the same mantra that flew our economy straight into the ground. Where where you for the last 2 years? Even Greenspan has recanted that shit.

In many ways, it’s the “free market” that has caused major systematic vulnerabilities in our economy. Specifically neo-liberal free trade agreements with countries that essentially allow for slave labor, wide-spread pollution, zero workplace safety, and manipulate their currencies to keep exchange rates favorable. They also charge marginal taxes that do nothing to offset the massive costs of the externalities that these companies impose on their host countries. They can do this because even those small taxes can make a small group very very rich, and that small group doesn’t give a shit about what the skies will look like when their grandkids are having kids. This is what is encouraging capital flight and suppressing wages, and driving unemployment in the US.

As long as I am your Governor, the sign out front will always read ARIZONA IS OPEN FOR BUSINESS.

Since I don’t understand any of the above, and don’t have any education on long term public policy philosophy, I don’t understand how to produce anything but a burned out industrial husk of a state with no real culture, education, business or population diversity. So hell, the only thing I can do is promise massive tax incentives to artificially lower operating costs for businesses in opposition to my previous free-market fantasy statement. I don’t understand that this kind of government intervention into the market is ironically the opposite of my stated objectives. I know our budget is fucked, but I don’t understand how decimating the business tax base will impact the state’s revenues. My business consultants assure me that this will bring in additional jobs and businesses so we’ll have more income taxes, sales taxes and property taxes, but I’ve never read any studies that prove this almost never happens and that states almost never recoup the lost tax revenue. I also don’t know that most of these companies always promise full time work, and always deliver part time, low paid positions that end up suppressing labor costs, encouraging labor mobility to other states, and pushing healthcare costs onto state and federal governments because they don’t provide benefits.

Just a few days ago, I helped secure an agreement from Tower Automotive to come to Arizona and invest more than $50 million, and create nearly 200 quality jobs.

I won’t detail the promised tax breaks, or reduced property prices or taxes we’ll award to these businesses to start up. Largely because they would make a stupid 50 million dollar capital investment look small. The fact that I crow about the possibility of 200 new jobs, and imply that’s a major win for my administration shows just how pathetic and desperate I really am. I mean, that would be pretty weak for a mayor. I’m a freakin governor.

We need to do more to un-shackle our job creators.

We need to roll back business and capital gains taxes, reduce enforcement on the taxes that we still decide to charge, offer sweetheart deals on state owned land and state offered services, provide infrastructure support at taxpayer expense, reduce enforcement of labor laws, you know the kinds of things that really inspire business investment and build strong communities.

Second, I will be allocating a significant portion of remaining federal stimulus funds directly to bring new jobs to Arizona.

Remember that bullshit about free markets I was spouting earlier? This is not another contradiction. This is not a government intervention into free markets that favors some businesses over others and gives them significant advantages over their competitors both locally and in other states. Remember that bullshit about federal arrogance and foolishness? Well giving us money for this was not the stuff I was talking about.

Third, under the leadership of Jerry Colangelo and Commerce Director Don Cardon … I have created the Governor’s Commerce Advisory Council. Working with other Arizona business leaders, they will transform the Department of Commerce into an engine for job creation.

So you know that guy who owns the suns, the mercury and ran the coyotes into bankruptcy? The guy who pays no property taxes on his stadiums in borderline illegal land lease deals? Oh and that guy who oversaw the housing bubble in Arizona as director of the department of housing? The guy who brokers these massive tax rebates and subsidies now as commerce director?

These two guys are going to fix business in Arizona. Largely by giving away the farm in special interest deals to their personal buddies from which they will undoubtedly take a cut. But hey, at least I don’t have to do it.

And — while I’m talking about jobs let me say we should do everything we can to see that Arizona is named a training site for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter.

Remember earlier when I said that the government doesn’t create wealth or capital, well I still mean that, but I guess it does create jobs and feed families. And this would represent a massive influx into state coffers. But government is still bad.

I’d like to recognize the work to-date by the regents and Presidents of our universities and community colleges…in response to my call for a new higher- education model that promotes greater access, quality and affordability.

I won’t mention the unilateral budget cuts that lead to job cuts across all of our universities with no consideration to actual spending needs. They can suck it up.

Isn’t it astonishing that in Arizona today, Bill Gates or Craig Barrett would not be considered qualified to teach students about computer science? We must stop our gate keeping and open the doors to all qualified and skilled citizens who want to teach our children.

So we have a shortage of skilled teachers? Really? Might that have anything to do with teacher’s salaries? I’m sure Bill Gates would love to come in and teach computer science for a college professor’s salary. Really. What we’re really saying here is:

We must crush teachers unions and the tenure system at universities because they are socialist and bad. I have no appreciation for the skills necessary for effective child or adult education, and think I could come in and control a classroom with zero preparation. I believe that success in a particular field is entirely determined by skill and resolve and has nothing to do with luck. It has not occurred to me that Bill Gates’ success was largely determined by his sociopathic need to win above all other things, including technical skill. I will ignore the fact that despite literally a mountain of Ph.Ds at his beck and call, he cannot produce a product that doesn’t suck in almost every way, and succeeds almost entirely due to early, barely above board, and often below board bribery to institutions and manufacturers.

But we must give parents the ability to make the best choices for their children. Starting with where they go to school. We lead the nation in school choice. In Arizona –a parent’s right to choose the best school must endure — whether that’s a district, private, charter or home school.

Our public schools fucking suck. We are consistently ranked among the bottom 3 in the nation. But that’s because of the dirty mexicans. White parents don’t want their kids going to school with dirty mexicans who can’t even speak english, so it’s important that we encourage gentrification and white flight to the suburbs and exburbs. If everyone had to go to a school in their own district, that means we’d actually have to deal with the problems in our shitty public schools rather than offer parents an easy out.

Also, our state is dominated by old people who hate taxes, and especially hate paying for the education of little mexican kids. So our elementary education system will remain underfunded and under-resourced. But that’s okay because rich people don’t have to use them, and poor people don’t vote. That’s a win/win in my book.

We must also arm parents with the information they need to help monitor their children’s academic progress. We will make sure they have up-to-date data that is available on-line –at any time. Sorry, kids, no more losing your report card!

The reason your kids are dumb is that you’re not making the effort of giving them the education we don’t really care to provide. You should really be doing our job, despite the fact that our economy is in shambles and you have to work 3 part time jobs just to make ends meet and maybe see your kids 2 hours a day. Doing this at least lets us place the blame on your shoulders by claiming that we’ve been telling you your kids are dumb on a regular basis and you did nothing about it.

And we should know well before third grade those students who are falling behind and get them the help they need. I look forward to working with Senator John Huppenthal and Representative Rich Crandall and other members to enact these reforms.

Who’s going to pay for that extra help? Fuck if I know. Johnny and Richy will figure that out.

First, I’m establishing the Commission on Privatization and Efficiency or “COPE”. COPE will identify state services and agencies whose functions can be eliminated, consolidated, streamlined or outsourced to achieve greater operational efficiency in meeting the needs of our citizens.

I fucking hate my job. It’s hard keeping track of all this government shit. Why can’t we just pay our buddies to do this for us at crazy rates? Of course they’ll offer inferior or no service, but it’ll probably cost us less over-all. At least for a couple of years until rate increases start happening every year and we’re held hostage by the small group of businesses that we fed like hungry ticks while starving out other local companies and decimating our in house expertise, leaving us with no choices and no options to recover when we’re fucked. Did I mention that private business does everything better than any government agency could do? I mean like everything. Never mind that private business has an incentive system that is systematically and diametrically opposed to the public good. I don’t understand that the whims of investors and their ongoing need for ever growing profits might not actually increase efficiency, but in fact lead to taxpayers getting ripped off. I haven’t read up about any other states doing this kind of thing, like say the wholesale deregulation and privatization of california’s energy infrastructure. I think that went peachy.

While we agree we must provide essential services for those with no place else to turn…we must only offer those benefits necessary and ensure that we have a program free of abuse or waste.

We must decrease visits to high cost settings like emergency rooms — and encourage those receiving state service to take personal responsibility for their own health, as all Arizonans should.

If you’re sick, it’s your fault. Eat less twinkies fatty. We shouldn’t pay for it. You should. Don’t have the money to pay for it? Die. Thanks.

Third, budget cuts within state government have resulted in reduced or limited funding for services for our most vulnerable — the elderly, disabled and low- income residents. Therefore, I’m establishing Arizona Serves. With the assistance of the Arizona Department of Economic Security, Arizona Serves will connect faith-based and non-profit organizations to help meet those needs.

On second thought, if you are sick and poor, maybe this is an opportunity to funnel public and federal funds into churches and non-profits that my buddies run. Hey. This might just work. Maybe I’ll net a fat directorship out of one of them if I lose the election. That would be sweet. God knows I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing here.

I won’t go in to her awful concluding comments. Ugh. Yet another shitty Arizona governor.

Enjoy this interview of a former Cigna executive by Bill Moyers. In case you’re wondering, the debate on public healthcare has been deeply corrupted by the healthcare industry who have been manipulating the debate for a while now and using political donations and lobbyists to bully politicians on both sides of the aisle.

Extra credit for republicans who don’t want public healthcare simply because it will make the democratic party look like they know how to actually run a government that serves its people.

Video

Transcript

In case you’ve been in a cave since the 4th of July, Sarah Palin has resigned as Alaska’s governor. She’s also been incoherently ranting and whining about why. None of which is even remotely believable.

While I have exactly zero information about the actual reasons for her resignation, I do know this:

No one with political aspirations gives up power, especially governor level power without a very good reason. And make no mistake, it would have been MUCH more advantageous to a potential 2012 presidential run for her to have served her full term and built her political credibility in the interim through extensive prep-work with political advisors.

There was some speculation that she might start pursuing a pundit position, making speeches and appearing on fox news. The Palins have taken on significant expense defending themselves from numerous state ethics complaints, and they may just genuinely need the money. That may be the case, but it will significantly damage her ability to secure a party nomination come 2012.

It could be that Palin is just getting awful political advice, or is ignoring advice from those who know. It’s now relatively well documented that she ignored the advice of McCain’s advisors on multiple occasions during the last campaign, and ended up looking foolish as a result. We might be simply witnessing another act of incompetence on Palin’s part.

But I have a strong suspicion that there’s something more at work here. Something bad happened, and Palin resigned rather than facing it.

As Andrew Halcro (another alaskan gubernatorial candidate in 2006) puts it:

The bottom line is that there has to be something major that forced Palin to bail out with sixteen months left in her term.

Something so big or so damaging that she feared dealing with it in the public arena.