More duh from McCain

In the midst of the bond collapse which means cities and CCAGs and Caltrain has problems raising money and may even have lost some in the collapsed financial institutions McCain proposing to have the government replace/reset bad mortgages with new ones at lower value with lower payments to keep people in their homes.

McCain's always been the more pragmatic politician on the latest issue, a sort of Johnny-come- lately. There is campaign finance reform, global warming, oversight of Pentagon spending, we don't torture, etc.. The problem has been the results. Take the last one for example. If someone had proposed torture ten years ago they would have been yelled out of the room, considered a crazy person, out of touch, a Klan nut. Then Charles Manson takes over the White House and everyone is marching under the holy cross of Abu Grahib. So McCain after saying he had the experience and was a supporter of Geneva Conventions then proceeds to embrace reform (torture reform sounds nuts) in name only, i.e. excepting the special circumstances of the presidency (which was claimed) and putting a few ridiculous restrictions in elsewhere ( which wasn't claimed and was now watered down.) Instead of saying, it's unacceptable to live in a world in which torture can be discussed rationally, we got the present dispicable situation.

You can see the same thing with Campaign Finance. After reform, media, friends, and issue groups were legal to bring in much more money than was previously possible, completely tilting the elections in favor of sound bites and entertainment and the stupendously crazy claims from the competing like Obama raised $60M in September. Can you imagine how much that would feed instead of feeding Fox and ABC?

So I'm wary of johnny come lately touching another important issue and adding his special blend of incompetence; which comes from a past understanding of a problem, instead of the social morality of the global community. For one thing what is he trying to solve? Is it the decline in home prices which is dragging down everything or an attempt to arrest the bleeding from bad mortgages? The latter may already be solved by the bank defaults and the federal buyout. Its a small function of the problem: which is that entities like Fannie Mac and Mae who did not have toxic loans also collapsed when valuations dropped for their legal loans. These issues in taxes, revenue, and spending also need to arrested by negatively capitalizing the loses in the entire market with similar formulations used in the real estate market segments of the Federal Reserve.

Drilling is bad public policy

The social benefits of high gas prices clearly outweigh the downside. Reducing sprawl puts more money in peoples pockets since they have less need to carry the fixed cost of an automobile. Immigrant families know this. They flock to cities not suburbs. They ride the bus until they can afford a car. We should be ensuring that services are available in walkable radius so people don't need to drive. Instead of discussing the benefits of high gas prices policy makers want to drill off the coast.

Drilling off the coast is bad policy. Numerous editorials have said that we will not make a difference in the price because we consume more than we produce plus what reserves are estimated off the coast. Based on available supplies and consumption trends (imports) drilling will bring 4 cents of relief ten years from now. So why aren't we developing walkable cities and implementing existing technologies now? and making this policy?

More importantly lower gas prices don't make sense. Because of the import dependency we create national security problems like Georgia, Iraq and Saudi Arabia. We put forward a sham of health care as a consequence of losing our money to war to protect oil sources. We end up with the worst of friends from Saudi Arabia to Pakistan and the most abject losers from Tibet to Aung San Suu Kyi. Our newspapers become government mouthpieces bemoaning the loss of
the dictator Musharraf while championing democratically elected governments in Georgia where we clearly don't intend to act.

Politics is about oil and the transfer of $2T in the last eight years to oil companies is the culmination of that policy. Bush is not just sleep walking through history- he is filling his and his cronies pockets along the way. Politicians blab on about religion and non issues like gods in marriage, talking about stuff that even the average American has a hard time believing in or holding up, and worse, firmly believe politicians hypocrits in this regard. They talk to preachers that the average American has a hard time trusting.

Then to make matters worse they can't even define who's rich. The average American earns 40k- $5M leaves out everybody. If you spent $1000 a day for the rest of your life it would not equal $5M. A frugal person with $250,000 could grow their own 100 sq foot vegetable plot and purchase health insurance and not work for the rest of their lives. Can you imagine an annual salary of 250k?

Without a quality discussion like politicians were capable of in the mid seventies on petroleum we get stuck on affordable (fossil fuel versus renewables and the poisoned be damned) practical (sprawl instead of walkable cities, Saudi Arabia Prince Bush versus Tibet's Dalia Lama) and available (now versus hydrogen's promise in the future- but not the siren call of technology: instead our continued dependence on hummers and priuses to consume greenbelt and Mexican peppers.)

Nancy Pelosi needs to do more than just accommodate the latest bad policy. She and others needs to articulate the modern security concerns and its implications toour pocket book and health care.