EclecticLip

(originally written Nov 2; posted Nov 16) 

It looks like the Democrats are going to get clobbered in next week’s tomorrow’s today’s US elections.  Economic malaise tends to do this to governing parties, which is one reason currency devaluation is the policy-du-jour: if country A can make its currency cheaper, it becomes more competitive and can export goods (and unemployment!) to countries B, C and D, whose currencies remain more expensive.  It’s this kind of race to the bottom which has given gold aficionados their current decade in the sun.  Of course, though Hemingway never lived to write about it, the sun also sets… 

The Tea Party’s emergence has been an interesting but predictable phenomenon.  The stagnation in American incomes for the past generation has finally hit a boiling point (what took so long?).  Increased prosperity has largely been confined to the top 1% — and even then mainly the top 0.1% — of income earners in the population; those nice folks whose job titles begin with “Chief” and end with “Officer”. 

In many cases, union-busting concessions levied in the name of improving competitiveness went straight into C-suite compensation: “trickle-up economics”, as it were.  I don’t have the American numbers handy, but here are some Canadian ones.  Perhaps one day, left-leaning parties will realize that they’ll get more support if they confine talk of tax increases to the very, very topmost folks.  Noblesse oblige, and all that.

__(’Read the rest of this entry »’)

In line with the prior post, here’s a short rhetorical piece I put together for an earlier Climate Progress competition, from January 2009.

Regular programming will resume soon…

__(’Read the rest of this entry »’)

Like many Canadians, I regard the current Conservative government with a suspicious distrust; enough that after the 2008 election, I began donating money to the Liberal Party of Canada.  While my thinking leans leftwards of theirs, they remain the most viable less-conservative alternative in the near term — hence my “remittances of convenience”, to borrow from the marital phrase.

But the Liberals are stuck in a catastrophic polling funk – and their misery is continuing in respiteless fashion.  Furthermore, on a variety of issues, Liberal Party leader Michael Ignatieff seems about as conservative as Stephen Harper.  Born into the elite, Ignatieff doesn’t seem to connect with voters.  In contrast, the Prime Minister, hardly a man of charisma himself, seems to manage adequately, despite also being born into privilege (his dad became an oil executive).

As such, I wonder whether Michael Ignatieff is the John Kerry to Stephen Harper’s George W. Bush — a challenger indistinct enough from the incumbent, without the rapport / messaging advantage to pull out a victory.

Time will tell. 

As a follow up to the Peter Senge lecture (previously noted here) I should note that there was an awkward moment during the Q&A when a participant demanded to know why Mr. Senge hadn’t discussed the need for ethical vegetarianism, alongside his discussion of the need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and the other damage we are wreaking on the environment. To his credit, Mr. Senge deflected the question nicely, acknowledging the reduced footprint of a vegetarian diet, then segueway-ing into a discussion on the need for collaborative instead of confrontative approaches.

Because the other participant — as well meaning as they were — was a fratricidal ally, turning their fury on the very like-minded people they need to leverage, to get their own message heard. Such splintering seems pretty common in environmental circles; I can imagine an activist vegan calling out the aforementioned participant and arguing that ethical vegetarianism wasn’t enough, and that veganism was the way to go.  And so forth.  It’s like the scene in Monty Python’s Life of Brian where the People’s Front of Judea, the Judean People’s Front, the Judean Popular People’s Front, and the Popular Front of Judea don’t speak to each other.
On the far-left side of Canadian politics, the Marxist-Leninists and Communists certainly don’t seem to talk, as evidenced by data from the last election.  On the other end, it took a very long time to unite the Canadian right, with the Progressive Conservatives (”right lite”) and Alliance party (”far right” by historical Canadian standards) eventually merging into the Conservative Party, after a decade of counter-productive internecine strife.  (I’m counting from the 1993 election, a breakthrough for the Reform Party, to the 2003 merger.)
Fratricidal allies make it tougher for an umbrella movement (in this case the environmental movement) to gain critical mass, as they disrupt the umbrella movement’s messaging. Such withering criticism would be seized on by opponents to delegitimize the umbrella movement’s efforts, ultimately impairing the fratricidal ally’s own goals.
A more productive long-term strategy would probably be to gain buy-in from the umbrella organization.  But as long as there are absolutists out there, I suppose there’ll be plenty of people trying to catch flies with vinegar instead of honey.  Given the urgency associated with climate change, I can see how various groups might feel there’s not enough time to build influence in the greater movement, and thus switch from “friendly” to “fratricidal” tactics.

Ah, Hamlet, were you only alive to read this…  or, given that you were a fictional character, were you only ever alive.  Hmm…  actually, given how horrific your end, maybe ’twere better you stayed fictive.

A recent Harvard Business School study (”Red Light States“) further confirmed the trend that conservatives buy more pornography than progressives.  Conservatives can take comfort that maybe, just maybe, the difference is that progressives steal more porn through file-sharing.

__(’Read the rest of this entry »’)

It was reported recently that GM was using bailout money to expand production in Brazil.  Fortunately, it appears as though the sources were misquoted.  (Hat tip to Jesse.)  If that had been the case, then I think the automaker’s leaders would’ve been called back to Washington for a verbal grilling.  Or whatever passes for a verbal grilling by lawmakers who for the most part can ill afford to make deep-pocketed enemies.  (The individuals, not the companies, that is.)

That’s why this harangue by Michael Capuano (D-Mass) to the CEO’s of the US’s eight biggest banks — which even got excerpted on CBC radio — was particularly gratifying.  Even if — or perhaps, especially since – the CEO’s will probably escape further consequences.  Sadly, like so many US industries, the financial sector appears to have achieved regulatory capture of the regulators intended to oversee them, in the public’s interest.

(video under the fold)

__(’Read the rest of this entry »’)

That’s my vote for the epitaph to George W. Bush’s Presidency.

For all his violations against law and land — which were legion — I rank his authorization of torture as the very worst; the summum malum, the apex of evil.

Setting up the Guantanamo Bay gulag, revoking habeas corpus, and implementing extraordinary rendition make for a formidable axis of malice of their own.  But torture… torture is sui generis, a class of horror of its own.  And as the title points out, torture is what the Romans did to Jesus.

__(’Read the rest of this entry »’)

Climate Progress had a speechlet competition to the effect of “write the energy section of Obama’s inaugural address”.

Naturally, I entered. 

__(’Read the rest of this entry »’)

We went to the Steveston marina in Richmond on the weekend.  The fishers there priced their catch uniformly — which I’m assuming wasn’t an unplanned coincidence.  It’s unlikely any of them had a big enough competitive advantage to undercut their peers and offer lower pricing to consumers.  Even if they did, they’d probably figure it better to pocket the extra profit instead risking being shunned by their partners-in-trade.  I believe Canada’s big banks work on the same system. 

__(’Read the rest of this entry »’)

The second Obama-McCain debate was the other night; I caught a replay after coming home from ball hockey.  Obama won this one so handily, it reminded me of Chris Rock’s description of the first Rocky: “a movie which finishes with a black brother beating up a white man for forty-five minutes?  What’s not to like?”

__(’Read the rest of this entry »’)