| 2/22/05
Nothing much to talk about this week. The obituaries might be
the most interesting news. I have to issue a correction. I
talked last week about that school in Sutter County that wanted
to hang rather large, electronic ID badges on the students.
Because it was a K-8 school, I said they were hanging these
things on kindergartners. Not true. They were only hanging them
on the 7th and 8th graders. I guess if you
haven’t made it to the seventh grade, you still can go
anywhere you want without electronic monitoring.
What I didn’t mention last week is that the technology this
school wanted to use is nothing new; it’s in common use for
keeping track of inventory and livestock. That’s what we call
our kids in the public schools these days, livestock. Maybe we
even call them inventory. The good news is that the school
backed off in the face of protests from parents. So for the time
being, we’ve fended off those people who want to turn us all
into livestock and inventory. Do not relax, however. They’ll
be back.
* * *
I have to admit I never had heard of John Negroponte before
he was appointed by the Bushwhacker last week to be the
intelligence director. His name translates as black bishop, but
he’s neither. He is, in fact, the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, a
curious job title when you consider that Iraq is a country which
has no apparent need of diplomatic relations with the U.S. This
guy could just as well be the U.S. ambassador to Florida. He
does, however, have an interesting resume. By all reports, he
was deeply involved in the Iran-Contra thing while serving as
ambassador to Honduras at the time, and various human rights
organizations are complaining that he has a history of
tolerating and encouraging the sort of thing the U.S currently
is doing at Guantanamo, torture and imprisonment without due
process
Negroponte’s job is supposed to be coordinating all the
various U.S. intelligence operations so that a bunch of amateurs
can’t fly big airplanes into big buildings again. There’s no
way he can come out looking good. He’s taking the job while
people in the intelligence agencies are predicting more
terrorist attacks in the U.S. If that actually happens,
Negroponte is a failure. If it doesn’t, everyone will say we
didn’t need him anyway. The guy can’t win.
His appointment, though, falls in line with other Bush
appointments of people who were deeply involved with the foreign
policy of Reagan and Bush senior. This is not coincidence. Now
that he’s a lame duck, Dub is into full-bore Imperialist mode.
He doesn’t have to answer to anyone anymore. It has been U.S.
foreign policy for a long time to support corrupt dictators as
long as they were handing the goodies over to the right U.S.
corporations, then take ‘em down and just grab the goodies
anyway. It’s amazing that the evil dictators of the world keep
falling for that trick. Castro seems to be the only guy around
with enough sense to duck when the U.S. takes aim. Look for Iran
to be the next in line. Some talk on the Internet says that Bush
already has endorsed plans to take over Iran in June. If the
U.S. oil companies expect to get the crude from the Caspian Sea
region, it has to travel across Iran. I can imagine the current
administration taking over Iran, but I have a hard time
imagining what will happen if Russia doesn’t want to part with
the oil. I don’t think the Bush administration’s foreign
policy is especially enlightened, but I don’t think these guys
are so delusional as to send the Marines to Moscow. Several
potential conquerors have tried that before, and they’ve all
failed.
* * *
I’m not going to talk about Social Security this week, but
an obvious, ongoing theme about retirement funds is developing.
Just as Dub has been promoting a dismantling of Social Security,
Arnold has been plugging a scheme to dismantle CALPERS, the
Public Employees Retirement System into which virtually all
state employees and many other government employees in
California are invested. Same deal. Arnold wants everyone to
play the market with individual accounts, and shut down the
guaranteed benefits provided by Social Security and CALPERS.
Everyone who’s ever worked for wages knows that when they
reach a certain age, Social Security promises them a paycheck
for the rest of their lives, no matter how long they live. The
amount is based on how much they contributed while they were
working for wages. People who haven’t worked for the
government, however, may not quite understand that CALPERS does
the same thing. Arnold apparently sees this as a threat to his
vision of state government, even though CALPERS is not an agency
of the government. The benefits paid by CALPERS are not a line
item in the state budget.
Anyway, the story is that CALPERS has appointed a new
president to manage all that money, a guy named Rob Feckner who’s
a sure bet to oppose the governor’s efforts to shut down the
system. I’m not on the inside of Sacramento politics, but my
best guess is that Feckner has a lot more influence than
Schwarzanegger on this issue. CALPERS is a huge pot of money, so
big that it’s in a position to influence the policies and
decisions of the companies in which it invests. That’s what
bothers Arnold. His corporate pals don’t like being pushed
around by CALPERS. This is a fight Arnold is unlikely to win.
His buddies can take the CALPERS money or CALPERS can invest it
somewhere else. It’s big enough to write its own ticket.
Social Security is even bigger, but it doesn’t behave the same
way, even though the voters have a lot more influence over
Social Security than they have over CALPERS .
* * *
Okay, those obituaries. I’ll skip Alexandra Zuck, who was
better known as Sandra Dee. But I have to say a thing or two
about Hunter Thompson, who pulled a Hemingway on us a few days
ago. That’s not all that surprising, really. The gonzo
journalist had a lifelong fascination with firearms, as well as
some other dangerous things. I learned from him that there is no
such thing as objective reporting, so you might as well just
write the story the way you see it. Sometimes, the way he saw it
was a little twisted, but he admitted it. I guess he figured he’d
seen about enough. Like a lot of the creative people who check
out a little on the young side, he left a substantial legacy.
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