Why Bob Barr is wrong

Okay, so, I just checked out Bob Barr's website.  For my eaders who don't know, he's the Libertarian Party's candidate for president.

I've never liked Bob Barr - he's in many ways a Republican in libertarian clothing.  Then again, there are lots of these types of people in the Libertarian party, so it's not surprising.  Many of these types are some of the most hateful and bigoted people you will ever meet.  

Bob Barr was elected as the Libertarian Party's representative because he was a former congressman from Georgia and seemed to be the most famous person running.  Quite a bit of the work of the national Libertarian Party is on actually getting people elected to office.  

This is a real mistake - the Libertarian Party isn't going to get somebody elected anytime soon, and by focusing excessively on this goal, they're compromising libertarian (small "l") values, watering down freedom for the sake of not appearing too radical.  They combine this philosophy with trying to recruit the most famous person they can find to run at the top of the ticket - a la Jesse Ventura -as long as they followed some libertarian principles.

A lot of these types of folks are responsible for having Bob Barr on the ticket.  Here's where I disagree with Bob Barr:

• Freedom means that peaceful people should be allowed to cross borders freely.  This means that the immigration system reforms need to be structured to make it really easy for people to become citizens.  It should not be an onerous process.
• Drilling in public areas like the Alaskan wildlife refuge is just dumb, and Bob Barr seems to want to let this happen.  This means that these organizations who drill in these areas can damage the environment as much as they want, because these places are commonly owned rather than being privately controlled.  Want to eliminate the national debt?  Sell our national parks to private companies or organizations.  People won't decimate what they themselves own.
• He's played switcheroo on a host of issues: the Defense of Marriage Act, the Patriot Act, the Iraq War, and others.  This is a Republican opportunist who walked through a door when it opened, exploiting Libertarian Party nominating rules to manipulate things in his favor.  (Kind of like what happens here in Arizona when out of state interests come in and put crazy experimental propositions on our ballot to try to get things passed here as a test environment to encourage copycat legislation elsewhere.) 

So, he's a disaffected Republican trying to punish the party by turning Libertarian.  But even a big L nomination does not a little l libertarian make.  

Depending on how things go, Barr could be the kingmaker in a few key states, like Georgia - his home state.  Good things will come out of this, though - they'll be a few less votes for McCain, and the Republican party may actually wake up and take its libertarian-leaning wing (Newt Gingrich and other house members who voted against the bailout) seriously.

While a McCain-Palin presidency scares the hell out of me.  (Can you imagine Palin as President?  Republicans, you need to, because it's not unlikely.)  But I can't bring myself to vote for Obama - even though I was considering severely compromising my values to do so before he came out in favor of the bailout.  Unquestionably, if there really were only two choices, I would vote for him - but I know better.

So, unfortunately, the choice for me is to either abstain (or essentially do the same thing and write in somebody who I actually support that would do a decent job) or hold my nose and vote for Bob Barr.  

The depressing part is that I'm not sure that either will send the message that I really want to send or accomplish what needs to be accomplished at this sad hour.

Ick.

What caused the Great Depression?

For any of you out there who are interested in a pretty concise explanation of what's happening right now with our monetary policy, here are a few links for you to check out.

Now vs. Great Depression

Ron Paul re: Propping up a failed system

Mistakes of the Federal Reserve

The government breaks your legs and then offers to pay for your cast and crutch!  Bring it on!

The day of judgment is near

I posted a status update on Facebook back on September 30, predicting that the Dow would drop to 8,000 before Christmas, regardless of any bailout. A colleague of mine seemed surprised by this prediction and pretty skeptical.

We only have about 1,000 more points to go for me to be right, and we're still quite a ways away from Halloween.

One of my work colleagues half-jokingly told me not to make any more predictions.

People have asked me many times since I moved away from home why I didn't purchase a place for myself, and my answer was that I felt the bottom was going to drop out of the economy- that it was a ticking time-bomb. I said that it was dumb for people to put money into real estate, a commodity that you don't really own, you simply rent from the government.

Another colleague advised me that a house will eventually always be more than what you paid for it in our American economy. Few things are ever "always" true, and this is no exception. Even if it is usually or almost always true, your lives, and your children's lives, may not be long enough to see it happen. You and your children may be out on the street, with the bank owning your house, before you can see if my friend's advice holds true.

Truth is, our economy is collapsing, and with it, much of the life we've been used to up to this point. Things aren't falling apart slowly now, as they have been for the past several years, so that the disintegration can be papered over with pop culture distractions and government propaganda. Our world is coming apart so fast, many people - and not just the poor (who we conveniently ignore) - will be able to adapt in time to deal with it.

We can blame the greedy bankers and greedy Wall Street if we want, even though these are companies employing many of our friends and family that many Americans have investments in. We can blame high-powered executives for entering into legal contracts that protect them in the event they're dismissed, even though all parties knew what was happening when they signed their golden parachute-laden contracts. We can get mad and make short selling illegal, as we've done, enacting new regulations that seem to be based on a misguided sense that a free individual's calculatedly risky investment decisions are somehow done out of a collective schadenfreude.

But really - the blame sits with us Americans.

Collectively, we as Americans have decided to live high on the hog. We've bought expensive new cars and SUVs for $20K, $30K, $40K or even more. Some have gotten 30 year mortgages for homes costing perhaps 8 to 10 times our total yearly income because of low interest rates and balloon payments, thinking that we could simply hold on to one house, sell it at a profit, then buy and other, selling it at a profit, and going on and on until we have oodles of money. We've confused speculating with investing, thinking that we should concentrate our money in just a handful of well-performing stocks - instead of planning to grow our money slowly through balanced portfolios that will do well in any economic climate.

So, now, we have companies that chose to make bad loans to people who couldn't ever afford them, then tie these loan paybacks to an abstract set of calculations, selling them to others who were fooled into thinking this kind of intangible formula is somehow worth a great deal of tangible money. Now, these companies who took the risk want to get a free pass - to get out of the problems they have created for themselves. Our government has decided that it will do this, and that all of us will pay for it eventually when the government takes what belongs to us by force to pay off what it has done.

There is no accountability for these companies - so it teaches them that they can continue to make risky choices that make a few very, very rich, knowing that they will not have to face any consequences. This is a key example of moral hazard - disguised or made more palatable alongside patter about "increased regulation".

Meanwhile, many commentators praise the end of "deregulation", using equivocations and newspeak to reframe highly imbalanced and disruptive half-regulation policies that wreak havoc on our economy and push for a de facto totalitarian agenda that's supposed to save all of us.

All who chose to live high on the hog may also largely get a free pass to continue making bad choices, emphasizing the idea in our collective American thinking that the government should be there to help us. This is a great idea if you are the government and you want to continue to control the masses with cocaine-like infusions of capital to keep everyone glassy-eyed and happy.

We are also being distracted by the circus that is our presidential election. Many can agree that McCain is nothing more than a politically-savvy opportunist and warmonger. One who deeply understands that war is the health of the state and the path to immortality and greatness. We can see this most clearly in this 72-year-old's rash choice of a vice presidential candidate who is both frighteningly appealing through her folksy style and (sexual?) charisma, but frighteningly appalling in her implicit promotion of the American popular concept of ignorance as virtue.

The alternatives, while better, don't cut it. Simply put, Barack Obama showed his true colors when he voted the same way McCain did - to support this "bailout from hell", as Bob Barr calls it. That's not change, that's more of the same - the same economic policies that got us into the huge mess we're in.

Sadly, as we are finding out, this Ponzi scheme eventually collapses. Sooner or later, we come to realize that we simply can't obtain enough drugs to make us feel better. There comes a time when we can't print up more fiat currency, because all of our paper becomes worthless.

My friends, the judgment day long predicted by some of our most sensible thinkers is coming. It may already be here.

Yes, Julian of Norwich reminds us that "All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well." I believe this to be true. We who are Christians know this to be true.

But we also know that there are times when many, many people have died before we have seen this peace arrive for us here.

It is at times like these, when we may be coming face to face with a Malthusian scenario, that we have to look for theologians who speak of the atonement as God's action in Jesus' death on the cross as providing us a model of how to endure the most painful and pointless of situations. This may be the time that we hear the words from Ecclesiastes deep in our heart: "Meaningless, meaningless, says the Preacher, everything is meaningless!"

The question I'm asking is, what does our faith say to those of us caught in a situation that can only be seen as meaningless? One in which there is no hope? What does redemption look like in that place devoid of hope? Can we reconcile an idea of redemption with this concept?

This may not be time for us to hear comforting words. Perhaps it is time for us to face a judgement or a reckoning of some kind or another, embracing Purgatory for what it will ultimately bring us.