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Meaningless Senate Vote Offers A Cheap, Bitter Sort Of Hope For The Unemployed

CNN recently reported that members of our broke-ass Senate managed to put down their health insurance lobbyist-provided crack pipes just long enough to succeed in a bi-partisan vote in favor of pushing forward a bill designed to create jobs for people who actually need a bailout: Us.

But, before you pay up on that bet you made that the government doesn't care about us, I've got some good news (or bad news, depending on how you look at it): You haven't lost that bet after all.

See, the $15B bill is a sickly, pathetic shadow of the original $85B draft, and, moreover, the vote was only  "bi-partisan" in that a handful of Republicans (five, to be exact) went the way of the Democrat majority only in a procedural sense: The vote simply moves the bill forward, toward actually being voted on.

Neither Snow Nor Rain Nor Bullshit Spending Can Stop This Monopoly

The recession has taken a lot of heat over the past year.  It's been blamed for rising unemployment, tightening credit, falling profits, rising losses, and just about every other problem we've got right now.  The recession, in turn, has been blamed on greedy corporations, villainous executives, conservatives lifting regulations, liberals taxing and spending, American unionized labor, Chinese slave labor — the list goes on and on. 

Enough! If you're going to play the blame game, you may as well point your finger at the real cause. Riddle me this: What do partisan politics, corporate negligence, and excessive government spending all have in common?

If you guessed "stupidity," you're close.  The answer is, unforgivably mind-boggling levels of gross incompetence and carelessness coupled with bucketfuls of shit for brains!

Can you blame a single person or entity for the massive problems dragging down our society?  Of course not.  But certain individuals and organizations make prime examples of the kind of careless, moronic activity that I'm talking about.

Take the United States Postal Service.  It's got a sweet ass deal, doesn't it?  Imagine being a private organization with a total monopoly, only it's completely fucking legal.  Anti-trust laws?  Fuck 'em.  You're the USPS and you don't take shit from nobody.  You've been given free license to handle all postal correspondence for one of the most populous countries in the world, and as long as you don't turn a profit (or at least, if no one notices you doing so), you can do it however you'd like. 

Great opportunity, right?  Sure, if you define "opportunity" as a chance to take the biggest possible market advantage and completely fuck it up.

As CNN reported in an article just a few weeks ago, the USPS's inspector general revealed that the agency managed to blow an entirely-unnecessary $792,022 in five months.  It should then come as no surprise that it lost $3.8 billion dollars in the last year.  If you don't feel like caring because that spending pales in comparison to the organization's overall loss, consider these two points:

Can't Pay Taxes? Learn from Citigroup!

The IRS has found a new way to give me a catastrophic aneurysm.  As the Washington Post reports:

The federal government quietly agreed to forgo billions of dollars in potential tax payments from Citigroup as part of the deal announced this week to wean the company from the massive taxpayer bailout that helped it survive the financial crisis.

The Internal Revenue Service on Friday issued an exception to long-standing tax rules for the benefit of Citigroup and a few other companies partially owned by the government. As a result, Citigroup will be allowed to retain billions of dollars worth of tax breaks that otherwise would decline in value when the government sells its stake to private investors.

Motherfuckers.  So, before my head explodes, let me get this straight: we made an exception to the fundamental rules of our free market and gave a failing business lots of our money, cheap.  Then we made another exception to the rules of the otherwise heartless IRS and let that business off the hook for its normal financial obligation to the government (and us)?  Motherfuckers!

Rupert Murdoch: Free Enterprise Unfair When I Lose Money

CNN reports that Google has made moves to allow news sites to limit free access, possibly in response to Microsoft's talks with major news players, including billionaire Rupert Murdoch.

In short:

Google has updated a program on Google Search to allow publishers to limit users to no more than five page views per day without registering or subscribing to the news site.

"If you're a Google user, this means that you may start to see a registration page after you've clicked through to more than five articles on the Web site," wrote Josh Cohen, senior business product manager, on Google News Blog on Tuesday.

So basically, it's just more proof that, despite appearing to be run by free-spirited hippies, Google is just as ruthless and money-minded as every other big business. Obviously. I mean, that's capitalist, free-market, mom-and-apple-pie stuff.

Here's more capitalism and exercise of free enterprise:

In recent months, Murdoch has repeatedly threatened to pull his company's news Web sites — which include the Wall Street Journal, the Times of London and the Australian — from Google and put company sites that are currently free behind a pay wall.

But here's what free enterprise isn't:

Murdoch and other newspaper publishers have complained that Google is profiting unfairly from their content while many newspapers are struggling to survive.

Oh, poor billionaire, boo hoo! Murdoch's wealth was cut in half this year, down to a paltry $3.38 billion at one point. I'll start saving my spare change so I can send it to him. Oh wait, I haven't got any spare change! It's a fucking recession and while Murdoch is worrying over his remaining billions, the rest of us are discovering that we can save a buck here and there by switching to USDA Grade C meat and renting out our couches to former inmates looking for a place to stay after the prisons turn them out due to lack of state funding. But I won't complain — or maybe I just did.

Anyway, what right do Murdoch and the big publishers have to bitch about someone else "profiting unfairly"? Aren't these the same sharks who buyout and dissolve the competition, strong-arm their employed journalists into peddling political bias, and attempt to monopolize the media by stifling free public access to it? Besides, aren't these changes in revenue trends merely results of the same economic systems by which these media giants have for so long profited?

People tend to think of our economy as capitalist and based on a free market. But don't think that the two are one and the same. I actually like to think of them as somewhat competing philosophies: In a free market, everyone gets whatever chance they make for themselves; with capitalism, the apparent goal (with folks like Murdoch setting the standard) is to try and deny everyone else any chance at all and thus secure as much of the pie as possible for yourself, then exercise the resulting wealth in legal action to ensure that no one can follow in your footsteps and challenge you for the top spot. If we had a free market, AIG and most of Detroit's auto manufacturers would no longer exist, thanks to a little natural selection, economics style. And don't get me started on Goldman Sachs ...

Allow me to illustrate using an obscenely simplistic example: Let's say I own a company that manufactures something — I'll go with cassette tapes. Now for years and years I make flying assloads of money selling these things to recording companies, kids looking to pirate songs off the radio, and so forth. I keep up business as usual until one day, when a competitor comes along and starts manufacturing — oh, fuck me! — compact discs. I cry foul because people love the new technology and stop buying my shitty plastic tapes. I then take my (now dwindling) assload of assets and retain teams and teams of lawyers with the intention of suing my competitor into oblivion because, "Oh, you stole my idea of making recordable media and selling it!"

Of course, as I said, this is a simplistic example, and a rather fallacious one at that. Rupert Murdoch and his ilk contend that news aggregators are stealing their content and making it freely available, then profiting off the ad revenues resulting from increased search engine use. But there's a catch to this contention — actually, two catches.

First, any web page can be excluded from search engine indexing with relative ease, preventing undesired access.

Second, most news aggregators (like Google News) only show headlines and previews; you have to click through to the publisher's site to see the full article. Therefore, if you don't want folks to have free access, just require users to log in to read full articles. Besides, the site owners still receive the benefits of getting hits, visitors, ad views, etc.

So why the bellyaching? My guess: more of what we're already all too used to seeing — that is, corporate saber-rattling and legal posturing. Folks like Murdoch are just looking to use trumped-up issues with search engines as an excuse to take fair use to court and bring it to an end so that the path to total monopoly has one fewer obstacle. I can't wait until I have to buy a News Corp website subscription just to find out what happened at the last City Council meeting...

Gay Marriage Bad For Small Businesses? That's "Really Stupid," Says Jon Stewart

On Saturday, May 16, GOP Chairman Michael Steele told a group of Republicans in Georgia that their party can attract more voters by claiming that gay marriage could hurt small businesses. He believes that small business owners with gay employees would be forced to spend more on health care, and he gave an example of how he used that argument while talking to a conservative college student on a recent flight. 

"Now all of a sudden I've got someone who wasn't a spouse before, that I had no responsibility for, who is now getting claimed as a spouse that I now have financial responsibility for," Steele said. "So how do I pay for that? Who pays for that? You just cost me money."

If you're thinking that's one of the most ridiculous arguments ever made against same-sex marriage, you're not alone. Jon Stewart has a problem with Steele's rationale, too, and he shared his thoughts with viewers the other night:

"Now, you may be thinking at home, wait a second, Jon, that sounds really stupid. If the added expense of an employee's spouse affects the business, wouldn't that be an argument against all marriage? Because aren't there ... aren't there far more heterosexual marriages? Because there are so many more heterosexual marriages than there would be gay marriages, wouldn't the smart businessman hire only the undatable?"

Heh. Heh.

Keep talking, MIchael, you make my job easier every day.

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Someone’s Been Busy

So, today marks the 100^th day that Barack Obama has been President of the United States of America—and what a one-hundred days it has been.

Let’s review, shall we?

• $789 billion stimulus bill

• A budget plan that is being fine-tuned (or beaten into submission, depending on who you listen to)

• Interventions in the housing and credit markets

• Taking the heads of the auto companies out behind the woodshed for “a little talk”

• Some new rules set out for Wall Street (though the boys downtown aren’t quite under control yet)

• A revamping of foreign policy

• International travel

Oh, and there’s probably been some dog training going on.

In those same 100 days here’s what I’ve managed to do: not much. Oh, a few loads of laundry, a trip or 50 to the grocery store, a little writing—sure. I even made the bed once or twice. But when I compare my productivity to that of the Commander in Chief, I feel a little…chagrined. Chastened, even.

I don’t think I ought to feel as bad as a couple of other people.

What Was It Shakespeare Said About The Lawyers?

Damn! I guess I should have gone to law school, after all.

Turns out that the noted New York law firm, Skadden, Arps & Those Other Guys, Too has come up with a way to cut operating costs—they’re offering associates at the firm $80k to take the year off.

Yep. Eighty Thousand Dollars, which translates into about $6,666.66 a month (pre-taxes, of course—and you can draw your own conclusion about the possible meaning of all those sixes). To NOT come to work. 

It’s a world gone mad, I tell ya. 

According to an article in the New York Times  “The company is helping associates find pro bono work, and is encouraging them to do so. But the lawyers could also spend the year catching up on every episode of “Top Chef” that they missed during the boom years, or traveling around the world, ‘all of which is O.K. by us,’ said Matthew Mallow, a partner at the firm. Other firms have adopted similar strategies, but Skadden’s program is unusual in that it has no pro bono requirements.”

Here’s the funny part though—the powers that be at Skadden are surprised by how many associates have expressed interest in opting in. Really? Like they can’t quite imagine people choosing to explore the world on their dime instead of working 80-hour weeks? Who are these people?

Oh, wait. I know. They’re lawyers at a big-name law firm.

Now, $80,000 might seem like chump change to those working in a big city law firm, but to me it seems like…a fairly workable income for a year. If someone offered this deal to me, I’d definitely take it and book the first flight available to Italy. But no one’s going to offer me this deal because a) Elizabeth Gilbert already wrote that book and b) I didn’t go to a top law school which set me up for employment at a top New York law firm where I’d be making six figures the first year.

Maybe it’s just because I have a cold and I’m cranky but this just strikes me as another example of the rich being different than you and me by virtue of the fact that they’re, y’know, members of the privileged class.