Just condensed my previous post into a 250 character question for Change.gov. Sign in or register there to vote on or submit questions for the incoming Obama Administration to answer. Search for my question in order to vote on it by using the keyword "eco-cars".
"Couldn't bailouts help the American people more directly and still save industries? We make some payments on folks' mortgages: the banks get the money AND a home is saved. Tax rebates to buy American eco-cars would wind up in automakers' pockets etc."
ravingmoderate.com, Midwest, USA
Wednesday, December 31, 2008
Sunday, December 21, 2008
We can get more for our money than a simple bailout
Just posted the following on BarackObama.com:
I would suggest that rather than giving industries direct bailouts, we increase the incentives for Americans to patronize their companies while also benefiting society, the economy, and/or the environment. Case in point: the auto industry. If we gave a truly sizable tax exemption to anyone who buys a particularly environmentally friendly automobile that is made in the U.S.A., the industry would be forced to build the cars to meet the increased demand, and the money would still wind up in their pockets, while people could drive newer cars while cutting down on emissions. We would get a lot more for our tax dollar this way.
Similarly we should have bailed out mortgagees, not loan companies. The money would still have wound up in the companies' coffers, enabling them to stay in business, but at the same time more people could have stayed in their homes - for the same buck.
I'm also concerned that the dire forecasts themselves may be what is driving the economy down to a large degree. All the fear increases the rate of the spiral. At the same time, we should be learning to live with fewer unimportant luxuries, in order to preserve the habitability of the planet. In this sense, a slowing economy can be a good thing. The important thing is that we make sure people don't starve or live out in the streets. There has to be a tipping point where the philosophy that a booming economy is the best economy breaks down. Perhaps this is that tipping point, and we should be thinking of something other than to jumpstart things into another boom, which will lead to another bust. The economy we need is a comfortable level of food, shelter and medical care for all, where we aren't robbing the future just because we don't know when to stop.
I would suggest that rather than giving industries direct bailouts, we increase the incentives for Americans to patronize their companies while also benefiting society, the economy, and/or the environment. Case in point: the auto industry. If we gave a truly sizable tax exemption to anyone who buys a particularly environmentally friendly automobile that is made in the U.S.A., the industry would be forced to build the cars to meet the increased demand, and the money would still wind up in their pockets, while people could drive newer cars while cutting down on emissions. We would get a lot more for our tax dollar this way.
Similarly we should have bailed out mortgagees, not loan companies. The money would still have wound up in the companies' coffers, enabling them to stay in business, but at the same time more people could have stayed in their homes - for the same buck.
I'm also concerned that the dire forecasts themselves may be what is driving the economy down to a large degree. All the fear increases the rate of the spiral. At the same time, we should be learning to live with fewer unimportant luxuries, in order to preserve the habitability of the planet. In this sense, a slowing economy can be a good thing. The important thing is that we make sure people don't starve or live out in the streets. There has to be a tipping point where the philosophy that a booming economy is the best economy breaks down. Perhaps this is that tipping point, and we should be thinking of something other than to jumpstart things into another boom, which will lead to another bust. The economy we need is a comfortable level of food, shelter and medical care for all, where we aren't robbing the future just because we don't know when to stop.
Sunday, November 30, 2008
Note to Obama - the Campaign Needs to Continue
Sent to change.gov, the website of Barack Obama's transition team:
I actually came to this site looking for more of a national suggestion box than to tell my story... I had a small epiphany this morning. The campaign isn't over. In these troubled times, the chant of "Yes We Can" can be more important to overcoming adversity than it even was in electing a new President. President Barack Obama needs to return to whipping up those crowds, but also to continue to remember that it's not about him, it's about all of the people continuing to believe in their efficacy, and continuing to take the initiative. I fear perhaps he has begun to feel like the burden is all on him, even with the excellent help he has enlisted. He should remember that he has the assistance, and the ideas and innovation, of the majority of the American people, a majority that will hopefully grow. It is also important to remember that a cult of personality is a very fragile thing, whereas to inspire the many to each become wise leaders in their own right is to create a more robust democracy. Now that we have campaigned to make one man our President, we need to continue campaign for this even greater goal.
Additional note sent to the BBC in response to the musical question "Will Obama save the US economy?"
I believe that putting Americans to work rebuilding America is a very good start for the American economy. But Barack Obama will not singlehandedly save the US economy. The American people will. We cannot continue to rely on the fortunes of our nations rising and falling with those of our top leaders. Obama, however, is in a very good position to make a difference, and to keep leading us in the chant of "Yes we can!" Emphasis on "we".
I actually came to this site looking for more of a national suggestion box than to tell my story... I had a small epiphany this morning. The campaign isn't over. In these troubled times, the chant of "Yes We Can" can be more important to overcoming adversity than it even was in electing a new President. President Barack Obama needs to return to whipping up those crowds, but also to continue to remember that it's not about him, it's about all of the people continuing to believe in their efficacy, and continuing to take the initiative. I fear perhaps he has begun to feel like the burden is all on him, even with the excellent help he has enlisted. He should remember that he has the assistance, and the ideas and innovation, of the majority of the American people, a majority that will hopefully grow. It is also important to remember that a cult of personality is a very fragile thing, whereas to inspire the many to each become wise leaders in their own right is to create a more robust democracy. Now that we have campaigned to make one man our President, we need to continue campaign for this even greater goal.
Additional note sent to the BBC in response to the musical question "Will Obama save the US economy?"
I believe that putting Americans to work rebuilding America is a very good start for the American economy. But Barack Obama will not singlehandedly save the US economy. The American people will. We cannot continue to rely on the fortunes of our nations rising and falling with those of our top leaders. Obama, however, is in a very good position to make a difference, and to keep leading us in the chant of "Yes we can!" Emphasis on "we".
Wednesday, February 13, 2008
Scalia on Torture (ignoring the Starbucks headline...)
Maybe torture is "constitutional in a ticking time bomb scenario" (NYT paraphrasing Justice Scalia), if there is a reasonable belief that that is the most effective means of thwarting a genuine crisis that is truly imminent and of that magnitude, although the efficacy of torture is in itself questionable. But that scenario is also very fact specific. The danger is that the powers that be will simply hide behind an illusory version of this scenario when it does not apply. This tends to make the state itself look like something of a terrorist entity, and thereby also tends, as we have seen, to actually reinforce the anti-state arguments of the violent resistance, helping them to recruit. I read our Constitution as cleverly designed to avoid all of these things. Proper due process allows the guilty to be convicted and removed from society, while also largely convincing the skeptical that the state itself has not run amok. So we should be very careful about allowing for suspensions of due process, and not allow the executive to paint more-scary-than-real scenarios in order to clothe what is really the naked will to power.
Follow up post:
If Scalia's argument, per MR's comment, is that cruel and unusual doesn't apply -- we might reply to Scalia that torture IS punishment. It's almost by definition punishment for alleged non-cooperation, presumably used in an attempt to force cooperation. Often, it's also an attempt by interrogators to punish the prisoner for crimes he is assumed to have committed. In either case it is meted out without Constitutional due process of law, and if it is "cruel and unusual" (which is hard to get around if it's really torture) it is almost certainly unconstitutional on that ground as well. So I back off the part of my previous post that agrees that at least in some farfetched scenario, torture might really be constitutional. Even if the world was about to blow up, torture would still be unconstitutional on grounds of cruel and unusual punishment AND lack of due process -- whether or not those are Scalia's arguments. However, at that extreme, one might still forgive torture, unconstitutional though it may be, at least in the also unlikely event that it actually worked. In a way this sounded to me like what Scalia must have meant -- in the worst case scenario, the ban on torture would seem absurd, and the Constitution couldn't be absurd. But to the extent that there are better alternatives than torture, such a ban is not absurd. It's also possible that the framers, being human, didn't think of every possibility, and there may be, if only once in a lifetime, a time when something unconstitutional is the only right thing to do. But Bush and Co. are only pretending that that moment has arrived, because they don't want anyone telling them what to do.
Of course, the "unusual" in "cruel and unusual" is a most unfortunate loophole, inasmuch as it seems to allow any sort of "cruel punishment", if only it is also "usual". I would think this was either a linguistic lapse or a compromise on the part of the framers (who after all, were human). Then again, it might eventually force the phasing out of cruel punishments -- if for example the death penalty was found to be merely cruel (how could it not be cruel to be told you will be killed?) and several jurisdictions banned it, while others used it more and more rarely, it would also become "unusual". Meanwhile any cruel punishments that were new or simply unusual would immediately be unconstitutional before they could have a chance to become "usual", so they could never cross over that threshold.
Follow up post:
If Scalia's argument, per MR's comment, is that cruel and unusual doesn't apply -- we might reply to Scalia that torture IS punishment. It's almost by definition punishment for alleged non-cooperation, presumably used in an attempt to force cooperation. Often, it's also an attempt by interrogators to punish the prisoner for crimes he is assumed to have committed. In either case it is meted out without Constitutional due process of law, and if it is "cruel and unusual" (which is hard to get around if it's really torture) it is almost certainly unconstitutional on that ground as well. So I back off the part of my previous post that agrees that at least in some farfetched scenario, torture might really be constitutional. Even if the world was about to blow up, torture would still be unconstitutional on grounds of cruel and unusual punishment AND lack of due process -- whether or not those are Scalia's arguments. However, at that extreme, one might still forgive torture, unconstitutional though it may be, at least in the also unlikely event that it actually worked. In a way this sounded to me like what Scalia must have meant -- in the worst case scenario, the ban on torture would seem absurd, and the Constitution couldn't be absurd. But to the extent that there are better alternatives than torture, such a ban is not absurd. It's also possible that the framers, being human, didn't think of every possibility, and there may be, if only once in a lifetime, a time when something unconstitutional is the only right thing to do. But Bush and Co. are only pretending that that moment has arrived, because they don't want anyone telling them what to do.
Of course, the "unusual" in "cruel and unusual" is a most unfortunate loophole, inasmuch as it seems to allow any sort of "cruel punishment", if only it is also "usual". I would think this was either a linguistic lapse or a compromise on the part of the framers (who after all, were human). Then again, it might eventually force the phasing out of cruel punishments -- if for example the death penalty was found to be merely cruel (how could it not be cruel to be told you will be killed?) and several jurisdictions banned it, while others used it more and more rarely, it would also become "unusual". Meanwhile any cruel punishments that were new or simply unusual would immediately be unconstitutional before they could have a chance to become "usual", so they could never cross over that threshold.
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