September 11 has been used to sacrifice our values

September 11 has been used to sacrifice our values

I've moved

I now post on Gather.com at http://www.gather.com/viewPostsByMember.action?memberId=642592

One down, two to go?

Just read that Arlen Specter is going to switch to the Democrats. The Republican full-mooners just keep shooting themselves in the foot. Once Franken gets in, the Democrats will have their sixty. Bear in mind, however, they may not get sixty on every vote as there are Blue Dogs like Landrieu and the Nelsons of Nebraska and Florida. Still, the psychological firebreak of having that number

I wonder if the Republicans, like the Bourbons, will forget nothing and learn nothing to the extent of driving Snowe and Collins out of the party.

China's hooked as much as we are

China can make all the noises it wants about replacing the dollar as the international reserve currency, but it's stuck on the dollar almost as much as we are. In order for China to sell off US treasuries, they need to find buyers. Given the large fraction of outstanding US securities held by China (about 24% of the value in January, measured in billions of $), they are going to have a hard time finding enough of them to absorb that amount. Further, if the markets even get a scent of a run in these securities, the value might plunge faster than China could sell them off.

China can, and has, sold off US treasures (and divested itself of the US dollar) slowly--but given how heavily invested it is (about a third of its foreign currency reserves are in US dollars, a wholesale switch to, for example, the Euro, would diminish the value of those reserves arguably faster than they could sell them off--if they could even find a buyer.

Failed banks should be nationalized

Given what has to be negative market value, it's not as if the shareholders/bondholders can legitimately expect compensation. One can argue that, in some cases that would wipe out small stockholders (who are involved via mutual funds) and pension funds, however it seems that one could have a compensation provision that functions like an FDIC guarantee, allowing some coverage for mutual funds and 401(k)s while still subjecting corporate owners and large individual holdings to the full consequences of market risk.

Thus, the taxpayer wouldn't be out an inflated amount for the toxic assets. Consequently, the latter could remain in govt. control until values revive while the rest could be reprivatized. If necessary, this could involve breaking up larger entities into units that aren't "too big to fail".

Since nationalization increases the long-term costs of capital (because of the perception of increased risk), it should only be applied to those companies that have definitely gone bust.

No such thing as animal rights

Rights are based on moral agency, not the ability to feel suffering. Humans are assumed to be generally morally accountable for their actions because we are assumed to be able to make moral distinctions and choose, or not choose, to act according to them.

Although one might argue that such a definition excludes babies and the developmentally disabled, one can simply point out that, in fact, babies are the responsibility of adults precisely because they are considered to not have fully developed the ability to apply the type of considerations that moral agency entails. Likewise, someone who is developmentally disabled to the point where they can't be held responsible for their actions is generally placed under someone else's care or made a ward of the state. However, because they are part of a species that generally has that ability, they still retain rights that aren't applicable to non-humans.

This is also consistent with the concept of legal insanity, at least as applied in the Anglo-American legal tradition, where the test is based on awareness of one's actions AND the ability to make moral distinctions.

Apply this test--Are you prepared to think in terms of good and evil animals? I rather doubt there is one case of an animal acting viciously were the humans responsible for it weren't considered to be blameworthy.

Third party in the US? Not likely.

On a couple of the comment boards I sometimes frequent, that partisans of Nader and the Green Party (who ran a non-Nader candidate this time around) often like to argue that if everyone had voted for [insert third-party here]. The possibility of the Greens emerging as Iceland's largest party in the wake of the economic collapse here has some here anticipating a similar development.

Unfortunately, a bias towards a two-party system is hardwired into our constitution (I am deliberate using the small "c" here). Our first-past-the-post system enhances majority representation and a presidential system has a centripetal effect on party formation. This latter comes from the fact that a President can't be removed by a member of a coalition even if it had a party in getting him elected. Further, since a US President has to get a soiid majority of the electoral votes, that support must consist of running him as a fusion candidate instead of having one's own leader who could then cut a deal. A third-party could hope to throw an election to the House, but unless it had a solid presence there, it would wield little influence.

Comparisons to Mexico the UK and Canada don't help here. Mexico does currently have a three-party system but there are two reasons why the case isn't analogous. Mexico had a de facto one-party system for decades after the Mexican Revolution. That may have distorted the dynamic, especially as the "third-party", the PRD, only formed twenty years ago by people breaking away from PRI.

The decline of the PRI can be seen in its representation on the Chamber of Deputies. It has gone from having just over half the deputies in 1988 to about 40% in 2000 to just over a quarter in 2006. Likewise, its percentage of the Presidential tally was about half the votes in 1988 and 1994 down to about a third in 2000 to just under a quarter in 2006. This may very well parallel the process in the ante-bellum US with PRI as the Whigs and PRD as the Republicans.

Further, the Mexican system isn't quite the same as ours. 300 deputies are picked by a first-past-the-post system, 200 others by proportional representation.

Finally, a US President requires a majority of electoral votes (although this can be based on a popular plurality, in 38/56 elections, the winner had a majority of the popular vote). The Mexican Presidency only requires a plurality of popular votes. The majority requirement has centripetal tendencies.

The UK has a de facto two party system. I wouldn't call the Liberal Democrats in the UK a major party. Starting in 1945, the Liberal party and its successors have never had more than 10% of the seats in Commons and there hasn't been a coalition government in the UK since WWII. The regional parties aren't even remotely important. Further, the UK is a parliamentary system, therefore a third-party, should it actually get leverage, is in a position to bring down a head of government.

This dynamic affects Canada as well. Further, the one situation in which a third-party can thrive in such a system is when it represents a regional interest. That's because the first-past-the-post system disproportionately rewards geographically concentrated parties. You can see an example in the 1948 presidential election in the US. Both Strom Thurmond's Dixiecrats and Henry Wallce's Progressives received a similar percentage of the popular vote, about 2.4%. However, Thurmond's vote was concentrated in the South and he broke into the electoral vote count with 39 while Wallace had none. Wallace didn't get more than 9% of the vote in any state. Thurmond got from 50-87& in the states that he took.

In Canada, the Bloc Quebecois represents many, if not most, of the Francophone residents of Quebec. Likewise, what is now Stephen Harper's Conservative Party started out as Preston Manning's west-based Reform Party in 1997. Looking at the Canadian election results, it was in 2004 that the Conservatives, formed by a merger of the old Progressive Conservatives and the Canadian Alliance, the descendant of the Reform Party, became a national party on a large scale by winning about a quarter of the seats in Ontario, its first substantial lodgement outside of its western core area. Since then, it two largest parties have been the Conservative and the Liberal, with Blog Quebecois being a strong third. Thus, what we have is another example of multi-party results being a way station to the replacement of one "second" party by another.

It would require major constitutional changes in the US system for a third-party to become permanently viable; of those changes and their possibility, I will write later.