ARTS & FARCES internet

I confess. Research for Information Eclipse got me all wound up about government and corporate surveillance in the United States. It only got worse when George W. Bush was installed in the White House and systematically expanded the unchecked power of the executive branch.

Last night my wife and I watched the first installment of The Last Enemy (no spoilers, please; we’re behind in our Tivo watching). It’s simultaneously fascinating and disturbing in a way that only our limey friends across the pond can do. Watching it didn’t help my internal spring one little bit.

But then I read something like Jeffrey Goldberg’s “The Things He Carried” and I breathe easier. Wait. What? Shouldn’t the fact that Goldberg got through Transportation Security Administration (TSA) checkpoints at various US airports with “al-Qaeda t-shirts, Islamic Jihad flags, Hezbollah videotapes, and inflatable Yasir Arafat dolls” not to mention “pocketknives, matches from hotels in Beirut and Peshawar, dust masks, lengths of rope, cigarette lighters, nail clippers, eight-ounce tubes of toothpaste… bottles of Fiji water, and box cutters” (box cutters!) be at least upsetting? Or how about the Beerbelly, designed to sneak of to 80 ounces of liquid into concerts and athletic events?

A simple question for the Obama acolytes: If the candidate truly believes—as he’s said—that healthcare is a right in the United States, and not a privilege or even responsibility, why is he campaigning on a program to provide not access to healthcare, but rather access to healthcare insurance.

There’s a big difference between the two.

Could the reason be that the candidate is bought and paid for by the US insurance lobby? That would certainly explain Hillary Clinton’s near-miraculous shift from supporting universal healthcare to supporting universal health insurance. Oh, and by the way, if you need a clear indication that the tide is turning in the US electorate just take a look at how the insurance lobby’s contributions have shifted in the last year.

I’ve suspected all along that Obama was little more than just another politician, and this does very little to assuage the perception. And don’t take this as any sort of backhanded endorsement of John McCain’s healthcare plans—McCain’s plan isn’t even worth criticizing.

If you thought the Obama administration would bring a refreshing new level of transparency—including transparency with the media—well, I guess you were wrong. Count me among the many.

Liza Mundy, writing for Slate, outlines the difficulties she encountered with the Obama campaign in getting access to sources for a book about Michelle Obama.

Mundy approached Michelle Obama’s relatives—both close and fairly distant—to have them “walk [her] through what they knew of her life” only to have the Obama campaign instruct the potential sources not to talk to long-form print authors.

It’s common practice during the political silly season to have campaigns instruct everyone to check in before talking to the media about anything. But keep in mind that this stonewalling by the Obama campaign comes after Michelle Obama told Michelle Powell and Jodi Kantor, writing for the New York Times, “I will walk anyone through my life. Come on, let’s go.”

Here’s Mundy on why we should care:

“Why should you care about one writer’s shaggy-dog story? In one sense, none of this is tragic; every reporter knows that being denied access to the usual contacts means you dig harder and turn up new voices. But you should care if you are expecting an Obama presidency to achieve new levels of transparency. Obama, if elected, may well bring many changes to Washington, but unusually open access to the media—and, by extension, the public—is not necessarily going to be one of them.”

On 23 September, US Treasury Secretary Paulson told the US Senate Banking Committee, “Some said we should just stick capital in the banks, take preferred stock in the banks. That’s what you do when you have failure. This is about success.”

On 10 October, Paulson said, “We can use the taxpayer’s money more effectively and efficiently, get more for the taxpayer’s dollar, if we develop a standardized program to buy equity in financial institutions.”

It’s time for Paulson to admit that he hasn’t a clue, has politicized the issue, and to step aside.

If the credit markets have, in fact, seized—and I’m not sure I believe they have—the resolution is straightforward, costs the US taxpayers nothing, but requires a backbone in US agencies and our elected representatives. At 7AM on Monday the US Treasury, Comptroller of the Currency, and Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) jointly announce that one of the core functions of banks is to make good loans. If said banks don’t immediately start making good loans they no longer meet the criteria of being a bank and will have their banking licenses revoked starting at 7AM on Tuesday. Deposits will immediately be seized and auctioned to banks willing to make good loans. Concurrently, the US Congress has to magically grow the appropriate anatomy and immediately reenact the Glass-Steagall Act in its entirety. If there’s something I’ve missed with this scenario, please advise.

Update: Sunday, 12 October 2008 1:20PM CDT: This, of course, has to be coupled with the banks writing down their questionable assets to their true values and the government helping recapitalize them. If the banks don’t revalue these assets—and do it now—as Thomas Friedman says, the market will do it for them.

Just days—days—after the US government bailed out AIG to the tune of US$85 billion and the US citizenry collectively entered the insurance business, AIG executives headed to the St. Regis Resort in Monarch Beach, CA. While there, the company’s executives ran up a US$440,000 bill—US$200,000 for rooms, US$150,000 for meals, and US$23,000 for the spa. The royal we wonder where the remaining US$67,000 went, but that’s what imaginations are for.

Representative Henry Waxman (D-California) totaled up the figures in today’s House of Representatives committee hearing about AIG’s close call with the financial reaper. “Less than a week after the taxpayers rescued AIG, company executives could be found wining and dining at one of the most exclusive resorts in the nation,” Waxman said.

Sadly, but perhaps unsurprisingly, AIG executives continue to draw multimillion-dollar paychecks. In fact, documents provided by AIG to Waxman’s committee indicate that “as the company’s risky investments began to implode, the company altered its generous executive pay plan to pay out regardless of such losses,” according to Peter Whoriskey’s Washington Post account. In March, after having lost more than US$5 billion in the fourth quarter of 2007, AIG chief executive Martin Sullivan urged the company’s compensation committee to “ignore those losses” and award bonuses. Which, of course, it did, awarding Sullivan a cash bonus in excess of US$5 million and a golden parachute of US$15 million.

Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da.

Update: Thursday, 09 October 2008 05:37AM CDT: On Wednesday, the US Federal Reserve announced that it would lend AIG an additional US$37.8 billion. Sigh.