mushinnoshin

No time for an in depth post but I just heard Obama’s looking at Richardson for Commerce Secretary. So that’s a bit of good news. Not as good as giving him foreign policy, but it is another strong area for him from a left-libertarian perspective, him being known as a market-oriented sort but not a market-worshipping ideologue.

This is pretty cool. Mother Jones told us about The Typealyzer, which probes your blog and computes your Myers-Briggs type based on content:

INTP – The Thinkers

The logical and analytical type. They are especially attuned to difficult creative and intellectual challenges and always look for something more complex to dig into. They are great at finding subtle connections between things and imagine far-reaching implications.

They enjoy working with complex things using a lot of concepts and imaginative models of reality. Since they are not very good at seeing and understanding the needs of other people, they might come across as arrogant, impatient and insensitive to people that need some time to understand what they are talking about.

UPDATE: I took this quickie online quiz which calls me an INTJ. I’m sure it’s not the most scientific quiz ever, but this does feel more accurate:

While the content of the post is completely unrelated, the Onion somehow managed to perfectly capture the essence of the woes of Tennessee Democrats with just a title:

Phil’s Party Reminds Area Man Why He Doesn’t Go To Phil’s Parties

A friend of mine recently IM’d me a blog post arguing against the proposed bailout for Detroit — I think it was this one — with a comment to the effect of “this is why I don’t like the Democrats OR Bush”.

I didn’t answer because I wanted to respond more thoughtfully and in depth than I could over IM at the time. Because, sympathetic I am, but neither do I embrace the fatalistic No Bailouts for Anyone Anytime attitude being taken, in earnest by libertarians, and in disingenuous rhetoric by many (especially House) Republicans.

First point, look I think you’d be really hard pressed to make the case that Democrats have been responsible for more corporate welfare over the years than Republicans. I would suspect the opposite, but for now let’s assume it’s a pretty even split. Because I think what we have here is a situation where alliances tend to form diagonally across the Nolan chart, so the issue doesn’t fit neatly into left-right or partisan terms. Somewhat upper-left, economically pragmatic Democrats find themselves working tepidly with lower-right biz-pig mercantilist Republicans in favor, while upper-right libertarian Republicans find themselves in uneasy alliance with lower-left populist Democrats in opposition.

Now, the heart of the libertarian argument against these bailouts has always been that we should let the free market sort things out, that companies go bankrupt because they deserve it, and that we have to let the invisible hand smack ‘em around to get them to work properly.

In the abstract, I think that’s absolutely correct.

But here’s the problem — as I’ve said many times, we don’t have a free market, and we apply free-market principles to the system we have often at our own peril. We have a mercantilist system rooted in statist corporate privilege and a perverted allodial take on capitalism. Together these things result in a degree of centralization and concentration of wealth that could never happen in a truly free market.

In other words, never in a free market would some 3 million jobs of real human beings who have little control over the major decisions of a small handful of corporations hang in the balance while we let the invisible hand do its job.

I’m not necessarily arguing in favor of bailing out the auto industry — I’m no economist, and I don’t have the data to crunch the numbers myself. All I’m saying is that sometimes, such bailouts may be necessary evils.

But in such cases, I want a few things in place to minimize the evil. I want strict control over tight strings to make sure the assistance does what we want it to do. I want caps on executive pay. I want oversight and public input on the direction the corporation should move (for example in the case of the auto industry, the proposed requirements to move towards producing greener cars). And most importantly, I want the beneficiaries of the structural flaws in our system — which, while not necessarily including every wealthy person, does include the vast vast majority of them, and certainly includes the corporations themselves — to pay most of the cost.

And for the job of implementing these conditions, I place infinitely more trust in the upper-left pragmatic Democrats than I do in the lower-right biz-pig Republicans.

I know I can call you Barack, since that’s how you signed all those emails asking me for money. Anyway, listen — you do remember why you got the Democratic nomination over Senator Clinton, right?

It was, as they say, war and foreign relations, stupid.

So please, please, please don’t let this be true.

Now I’m not saying Clinton shouldn’t have a place in your cabinet if that’s what you both want. Give her Education, Interior, anything else, but not Secretary of State. Not for someone who aided and abetted the war party for the last eight years.

This would be an enormous slap in the face to everyone who supported you. Especially since the right choice is obvious.

Thanks,
Jon

PS: I don’t really know if this is a good idea necessarily, I’m just throwing it out there, but has anyone considered T. Boone Pickens for Secretary of Energy?

In my inbox from the local chapter of Americans United:

Nashville Protest this Saturday at 12:30. Bring a sign.

Nationwide Protest Against Bans on Gay Marriage
In the recent election, Florida, Arizona, and California passed a ban on gay marriage, and Arkansas banned adoptions by gay couples. In response, there will be nationwide protests. The Nashville protest is Saturday November 15th at 12:30 pm. The location will be One Public Square, adjacent to the Metro Courthouse (where James Robertson Parkway, 3rd Avenue North and the Main Street bridge are.). Your presence and sign will be welcome. Please take a moment to review this website for details about the nationwide protest: www.jointheimpact.com.

If you have not viewed Keith Olberman’s comments on Proposition 8, you should spend six minutes and see it. Caution – you may need some time to compose yourself after viewing. It is very moving.

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=ChanTFSmqao

Some of you will wish to join in the protest. If you wish to contact the local grassroots organizers, check the web site. Signs can promote church-state separation, equal rights, or say such things as “marriage equality,” “no second-class citizens,” “the sin is homophobia,” etc.

Update: more info via Sharon Cobb

Professor Roderick Long, one of the keenest minds working the left side of libertarian purism, infiltrates CATO with some libertarian anti-corporatism 101:

Corporate power depends crucially on government intervention in the marketplace.[2] This is obvious enough in the case of the more overt forms of government favoritism such as subsidies, bailouts,[3] and other forms of corporate welfare; protectionist tariffs; explicit grants of monopoly privilege; and the seizing of private property for corporate use via eminent domain (as in Kelo v. New London). But these direct forms of pro-business intervention are supplemented by a swarm of indirect forms whose impact is arguably greater still.

I damn near teared up during what may have been Keith Olbermann’s best “special comment” yet:

OK, I’ve been googling to try and find any article probing into the question of Rahm Emanuel’s intelligence, one hundred percent for the purpose of making a post with this title. I found a lot of one-liners about him being a smart guy, but nothing pointed on the subject like what I was looking for.

Fuck it, I’m using it anyway.

It looks like Barr — the real politician with all that experience and groovy gravitas that was supposed to put the Libertarian Party on the map — got about 480K votes, about 100K more than the unknown party insider Michael Badnarik got last time around, and about what Harry Browne did in 1996.

So, yeah, selling their souls to an ex-CIA homophobic drug warrior on an ego trip worked out real well.

Oh, and remember how the LP thought Bob Barr was too important to debate Ralph Nader? Well at about 650K votes, Nader cleaned their clocks again. In fact his vote was up about 200K from last time. (I haven’t found McKinney’s results yet, but I’m going to guess she was probably down from Cobb’s run last time due to being on fewer ballots, and that’s probably where a lot of those 200K came from.)