Category Archives: inthenews

To Be Free Requires Diligence

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The Declaration of Independence is one of the most profound documents in human history. Today is the anniversary of it’s adoption by the American states.

Despite it’s prominence in our history, it has no hold in our law.

Everyone knows the the main phrase from the Declaration

All men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

And yet we, as a country, claim rights for our citizenry that we deny to others. We make excuses for how we allow ourselves to treat humans being we hold in our custody.

The only right an American should have over any other human on American soil is to stay on American soil.

Whether it’s extreme rendition, or lack of habeus corpus rights of foreign nationals we detain, our freedom has become one of the King citizens, by the King citizens, and for the King citizens.

Not unlike the King whose shackles we sought to throw off, we have long forgotten that we used to believe of all men. We used to “assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them”.

If we want all men to be equal, we should treat them all equally.

Edit: If you missed the news this week, and I did, it was revealed that our “coercive management techniques” chart used at Guantánamo Bay (and presumably elsewhere) came verbatim from a 1957 Air Force study of Communist Chinese torture techniques used to illicit mostly false confessions. Are we outraged yet?

Dark Markets of Enron

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If you haven’t noticed, our government hasn’t been regulating things in this country for about eight years. It cuts across almost every agency in the bureaucracy. Mostly they just unfunded the regulators or told them to stop doing their jobs. See recent headlines on airplanes being grounded because they hadn’t been inspected in timely fashion for an example.

You need only listen to the news any given day to be reminded. We haven’t been keeping our government accountable. Neither has our corporate media. So, we can blame only ourselves. Or only our media, if we are cowards. (Yes, I consider ignoring our own failing an act of cowardice. Blaming others is the height of it.)

It was interesting to hear of another regulatory failing on Marketplace on Monday night. This one not of Executive Branch malfeasance, but one of political will-bending in the Legislature in December of 2000.

I’m sure everyone remembers Enron. They went south in a very large way about a year later. But before that they got this legislation passed. Basically, deregulating (and effectively hiding) the trading of about 30% of the energy market.

Recently, we’ve had out-of-control rises in the price of crude oil. All the analysts say we’ve got plenty of supply. So, whatever could be the cause of the price rises?

Well the Legislature has finally fixed their part in this non-regulation snafu. Soon it is of course passing back into the Executive’s hands. What will happen there, only time will tell.

Michael Greenburger, previous Head of Trading and Markets for the Commodity Futures Trading Commission says “many observers believe that because those markets are not being policed, malpractices are being committed and traders are able to boost the price virtually at their will… From my own experience as a commodity regulator, I believe that if the Bush Administration were serious about its regulation, we could begin seeing prices drop within a month.”

If things don’t start moving in a positive direction, let’s make sure we tell our elected employees we aren’t happy about it.

Tim Russert, 1950 – 2008

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58 doesn’t seem that old (and it isn’t) when you’re sitting here with your age starting with a 4.  Droping dead at work, hard to believe. So many people survive heart attacks these days; it’s hard to believe a witnessed one can be fatal. Here’s the reminder.

Here’s Tim from a month ago, speaking what was obvious to many while invisible to many others:

Distinguished Alumnus

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I was reading my Alcalde, because I am a lifetime member of the TexasExes, and I was struck by the one of the award winners. It’s actually not surprising to me, having attended there. They have a Distinguished Alumni award and this year there were six recipients. (I assume there are usually six recipients.) They graduated from the University of Texas at quite varied times (1943-1986). They have led quite varied lives (US Ambassador, actress, CEO, general rich guy from oil, president of one of the UT sister schools. Three have been UT regents (hmmm). They live in Houston, Dallas, Fort Worth, San Antonio, New York. But the most interesting is

Salam Fayyad, PhD ’86, Jerusalem, is prime minister of the Palestinian National Authority and a former representative to the International Monetary Fund. Fayyad is widely respected in international circles and seen by analysts as one of the best hopes for peace between Palestine and Israel.

I bet he’s an interesting guy. One I’d like to meet, have a beer with, and discuss things.