NYCweboy

The Deserving Among Us

This is a yet fully formulated thought, but I wanted to throw some stuff up here... Here's a comment I left this morning in response to this post on the bailout below:

"There isn't another magic solution, there's nobody with a better idea... there's this, or nothing." I agree generally, we have to do something. But I thought there were lots of better ideas being circulated - Sen. Clinton's emphasis on reviving the HOLC, Galbraith had a well thought out plan in WaPo, no?

I was struck this morning by the brief remarks of 1 House GOP on BBC who voted against this bill, how it would give $$ to "undeserving" pp and that would make his constituents unhappy. It's sort of mind boggling...remove "Wall Street tycoons" and insert "welfare queens." (Wanda Sykes did the best riff on this on Letterman last week.) But really, it's like this faux notion of us all being in the "middle-class" and being the only "deserving" bunch in this country has really triumphed, and that blunt concept combined with this notion that our "middle-class" lives are distinct from those at the very top as well as those at the bottom is really problematic. Anyway, this is just the beginning of a thought that's forming...not quite sure where I'm headed with this yet...

So yes, there's an issue of trying to get the bailout "right."  And I'm the first to point out the problems of economic inequality and polarization in this country.  Yet, I'm nonetheless surprised to see how people's (conscious or otherwise) understanding of this plays out.  I could be crediting falsely this GOP member (and his colleagues) with a responsibility to their constituents ("the voters" are always a good scapegoat), but I'm - naively, I suppose - surprised again and again with how we routinely invoke this notion of "deserving" vs. "undeserving."  Now, instead of false, racist, classist, sexist notions of lazy, immoral poor people (women and children) of color, we're propagating less false but still stereotypical tropes of rich, ruthless white, male tycoons robbing us blind with the help of the government.  Notice my use of the pronoun "we," lest you think I'm excusing myself here.

My cousin who works for AIG told me yesterday how tired she was of hearing from people that she was "bailed out" by the government.  She's young, and has her whole life to re-coup whatever ethereal profits she's earned from the company so far in stock options, etc.  She is a bleeding heart GOP - one of those who want the government out of their lives and wallets but whose heart and pocketbook usually opens up to those in need - and so she's consumed by the stories of the older assistants at her company.  One woman who we've known for years and years was diagnosed with cancer the day after the AIG deal was reached; she can no longer retire both because much of her retirement is wiped out and because she now needs the health insurance.  As my cousin puts it, less than 300 employees took down a company that employed 116,000 due to lack of internal and external oversight.  Forgive her and most of her anonymous cubicle jockey colleagues if they suddenly feel less financially secure than they originally did when they got their jobs with such a legendary stalwart of Wall Street.

This post may be falling on deaf ears; fair enough.  We've all got problems, and there's something perversely satisfying watching Bush's failure to rally his Party and the general public around cleaning up his criminal mess.  I get it.  But in the last week I keep thinking of this post about post-Katrina New Orleans that I wrote two years ago, about our desire to remove the poor from our communities and thus disappear them from our lives (emphases added):

The prolonged displacement of so many [poor] New Orleanians is self-perpetuating, as their absence from the city justifies to the [Louisiana Recovery Authority] withholding the monies necessary to help bring them home. [...]

The 200 survey interviewees likely represent the 65% of current New Orleans households that are in the same home they occupied prior to the storm (accordingly, the city’s owner-occupancy rate has shifted from 46% to 62% since Katrina). Yet, they speak of the universal concerns of jobs and affordable housing in a city experiencing rental rates that are three times higher than they were prior to the storm. They also highlight the widespread concerns about infrastructure, crime and the role of government in securing the city’s safe and sustainable future. Nonetheless, the displacement of so many poor residents that many believe is essential to cleaning up the city is a phenomenon likely to deny New Orleans the full resources to rebuild. [...]

...the local debate over post-storm population estimates demonstrates that far from disappearing, the displaced merely re-appear elsewhere, often with an increased need for public services. Some scholars argue that our policies towards the poor and marginalized in the US reflect a “politics of disposability.” Rather, the population shuffle in Louisiana illustrates that whether we warehouse or deconcentrate the poor, their headcount remains materially relevant to healthy and prosperous futures for all Americans. Formally denying services and assistance to the poor only increases the eventual burden on the system, as we see with the estimated 99,000 families living in FEMA trailers 15 months after the storm. This is three times the number living in them last Thanksgiving season, at an estimated taxpayer cost of $70,000 to $140,000 per trailer. In New Orleans, renovating and re-opening structurally sound public housing as temporary worker housing would be a much more efficient and equitable use of federal dollars, and give the displaced a means to come home.

I feel like the only ending to this post is "we're all in this together!" but even I have a hard time imagining that.  These days I mostly feel like sticking my head in the sand and worrying quietly what kind of impact this crisis will have on my long-term financial health...  And I know "corporate welfare" is a real and substantial problem, far from the faux problem of those expensive welfare queens we're now trying to sterilize in some places.

Yet I also know that public debate around this bailout shares some discomfiting paralells to other discussions of government's role in our lives - who needs a social safety net?  Market intervention, what's that?  Make 'em pay!  They haven't worked as hard as I have!  They brought this on themselves with their bad behavior and lack of mainstream values. They're not like me.  They drain all the government's resources.  And so on and so forth. It's likely I'm trying to make a point to the wrong crowd. I assume I've now alienated our remaining 150 readers.  Have a good day.

- Redstar
X-posted, with edits, at The Hillary 1000

It's Now... Or Never.

Look, we've had two choices all along: do this, or do nothing. There's an argument to be made for doing nothing. There's an argument to be made against doing the Paulson bailout. It strikes me that neither of these has been done, sufficiently. What happened today was the result of a lot of frustrations - the frustrations of a general public, many of whom do not understand the issues; the frustrations of conservatives who can't stomach this level of government intervention, and the frustrations of liberals, who, frankly, think this intervention isn't nearly enough.  Of the three, I'd say the liberals are on to something.

But doing more - nationalizing banks, taking over various institutions... is simply unrealistic. We are not Europe. We are not that interventionist. The choice, as I said, was do this... or do nothing. I don't love the bailout; I think it's poorly thought through, debatable in its ultimate result, and not likely to save us. But... it's better than nothing.

Today's failure can be pinned, squarely, on Congressional Republicans - we know it, and they know it. Despite the excuse making, it's clear that conservative opposition - both in the GOP and among "blue dog" Democrats - was the key to this losing.

And now, conservatives have a choice - accept a revote and get this thing through... or do nothing.

That Won't Be Tomorrow... It's Today

Two years ago, I thought I'd try blogging. Actually it was more than two years ago, but Two years ago today (and I thought it was tomorrow, or the next day), I finally got this thing to work.

Then I wrote this.

Then this happened. And I was off.

Two years later, I've been up, I've been down, and mostly I've been having the time of my life. I write pretty much every day - and I even admit that the occasional vacation is helpful. I have friends who write poetry, take pictures of flowers (and write poetry), and are way more serious about the issues than I am.

And I love them all.

I also love my Mom, who supports this thing and encourages me, and tonight her sister ordered to go back to writing my most recent post rather than chat with her... because she needs to know about this financial crisis thing.

Ninety thousand plus visits, 1250 plus posts, 1350 plus comments later, I'm still here, and thriving. I swore, last year, to link to things I'm proud of. Well, this year, I'm serious. For the next few days, a few greatest hits. And not, I swear, the Worst Songs Ever (although it has been pretty popular).

So first off - the most popular thing I ever did: post a picture of Jake Ryan.

The Other Thin Red Line

On the day we appear to have a bailout deal, perhaps it's worth discussing one of those things that will drive the discussion as we go forward - the politics of how we got here.

As much as I think "how did this happen" and "who can we blame" are not the most useful questions, it's no doubt that there will be a reckoning. We have to account for some of these decisions, if only to figure out how to not repeat them.

Off the mark, two basic theories have appeared - from the left, a simplistic, obvious argument against corporate greed that blames banks, unscrupulous lenders, and the Financial Wizards of Wall Street. It's a sort of standard, anti-big business line that Democrats always trot out, and it generally fits, sort of. Let's save that part, for the moment.

The right, however, has offered a more compact, neatly assembled storyline: blame the Community Reinvestment Act.

What is the Community Reinvestment Act? It's a Carter-era piece of legislation meant to deal with some 20 years (at the time) of redlining - the historical practice of banks drawing lines and keeping certain people (mainly blacks) out of certain communities. At the time of deep urban decline, and cities across the country struggling with urban blight, forcing banks to go back into neighborhoods they'd abandoned seemed like a necessary step. The CRA basically made investment in all the communities of urban markets a part of bank licensure.

According to the conservative theory, the emphasis on meeting various targets forced banks to offer loans to un-creditworthy customers, who couldn't possibly be expected to repay.  This trend was financed, they argue, by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and grew over the years as Fannie and Feddie's management cast their lot with Democrats.  In the nineties, President Clinton signed a revision of CRA that they say exacerbated these trends, leading to an overheated loan market, as Fannie and Freddie floated mortgage backed bonds to finance their bad mortgages, and the market demanded ever more bad loans to satsfy demand for mortgage paper.

And now it's all coming apart and Fannie and Freddie have imploded. QED.

It sounds too tidy because... well, it is.

Kinda Fragrance That's Here To Stay...

For a New York Weboy, I've been pretty quiet about Charlie Rangel.

Outside of New York, I'm not really sure how many people understand the Rangel story, not fully, anyway. Rent stabilized apartments, vacation villa in Punta Cana... yeah, it's a scandal... but it's such a New York scandal. And part of the New York reality is that, in many ways, it's meaningless in Charlie's district. And that's really where it should matter most.

New York is a collection of neighborhood, and in politics, the neighborhoods are very much characterized by some larger than life presence, usually a politician. It's not the same politician, or political level in every case - Chelsea's gay enclave is voiced, for instance, by State Senator Tom Duane and City Council Speaker Christine Quinn. The Upper West Side, for a long time, was voiced by someone like Ruth Messinger, until her career imploded with a failed run for Mayor. Brooklyn's Orthodox Jewish community is usually voiced by Dov Hikind... and so on.

It's impossible to minimize how much Charlie Rangel is the voice of Harlem. His seat, formerly held by Adam Clayton Powell, has historically been the voice of the urban black community, and Rangel has been that, for a very long time. He dominates the uptown political landscape, and like most of New York's political clubs, the uptown political scene is a cozy, insular world still handled, comfortably, with a lot of patronage and cozy relationships.

I'm not saying this to impugn scandal or graft - though there's some clear examples of that at the State Government level  in Harlem, to be sure - but to explain why Charlie Rangel won't face a serious challenge to his power, now... or probably even two years from now.

Oh, and...

Paul Newman is dead.

Giving Up On Gramps

Just to be up front - I didn't watch the debate. Instead I took a hot sauna in an 85 degree coffee shop all night. Fun!

As far as I can tell, I didn't miss too much. I feel like debates are one of those cultural touchstones we just have to have - what would we be, as a society, if we didn't arrange for the most contrived, least enlightening, least interesting series of forums designed to give us a view of the candidates as they never will be?

I said going in that I thought John McCain couldn't salvage his week. And apparently, he didn't. Despite a lot of positive reviews from pundits and reporters, Obama dominated post-debate polling, labeled the winner and winning over more of the voters he needs to win.

Watching the bits that are around on the web - and someone, really, should be embarrassed that there's not a direct, easy to find YouTube of the entire debate, without interruption - I was struck by McCain's inability to especially articulate a position. His attempts to sound "serious" leave him raspy and muttering (I think he has a breath control problem, myself), and he doesn't so much offer new ideas, as complain about old ones.

This is what the GOP has become.

Torn Between Two Lovers

Though I've never been a fan of musical hybrids (ONJ/Tubes from Xanadu being the exception), this one brings together two too important icons to be ignored I think; still I found it difficult to pick a side to dance to

jinb

Friday Evening Flowerlude

 

jinbaltimore

I'm Your Mother Brother Sister Father Lover...Human. Whatever.

On a short, unrelated note: as a student of our marketing culture, I tend to watch ads a lot. My Mom doesn't, she thinks it's weird to pay attention to what's going on with commercial television in between the detective story part. I watch it kind of obsessively, because you can learn a lot from commercials... about who we are, what interests us, what works and what doesn't.

I'm always fascinated by Microsoft's advertising. Like a number of companies, I don't think Microsoft actually understands advertising because its success was never about getting the general consumer to like their product. It doesn't matter if you like Windows or not, if 89% of computers use it. It just is.

Plus Microsoft's people - Bill Gates, especially, but clearly others - think of themselves as big idea people. Thus they tend not to sell their products as practical, useful tools (if they did, they'd realize that Excel should be up front in their campaigns, for one thing), but as game changers that improve humanity... and we, of course, need improving.

I think these notions go a long way to explaining the frankly bizarre ads that recently showed up featuring Gates and Seinfeld. Lacking any real connection to Microsoft product, they seemed to represent some inner monologue about big ideas, and how things are interconnected. Mostly, though, they made no sense.

In its place, Microsoft launched a more direct assault on Apple's "I'm a Mac" with a rather witty response to the bespectacled "I'm a PC" presentation in those ads.  "I'm a PC," of course, is almost everyone; and Microsoft's ad made the connections ("i wear jeans." "I study genes." "I design jeans.") that showed the PC's reach.

Just one thing... what does that have to do with Microsoft?

What's really smart about Apple's campaign - yes, yes, I'm a Mac - is that it doesn't really run against Microsoft as much as it does the "DellWinTel" model of PCs with Intel cards and Windows operating systems. Yes, they've made fun of various aspects of Vista, but in the context of the problems it causes the pooter, not in itself. Microsoft's ad, while charming, falls into the usual trap - okay, we're all PC... now what? Nothing underlines it quite so well as the final clip of Deepak Chopra (fresh? current? why him?) expounding on the "I'm a human being" line. Portentous, overthought, and... unrelatable.

I mention all of this because the real punchline is this: like most advertising, the "I'm a PC" ad... was built on a Mac. And several of the spokespeople in it - Eva Longoria Parker, Pharrell Willimas, and, well, Chopra - are actually Apple users and supporters. And I'm just a human... giggling.