It is, I think, important to reflect on what that means not only for us as individuals, or the political parties, but for the country as a whole. We are to borrow an overused term, – at a crossroads. When you look at where we are it could almost be a book or movie storyline. We have two wars we were led into. One of which was a clear case of being misled into it. We have an economic situation that is the worst since The Great Depression. We have a federal government that celebrates incompetence and cronyism. Plus we have climate change worries and the national infrastructure is crumbling. It sounds like a situation only a madman would want to willingly step into. Instead we have Barack Obama. I do not envy his task.

I am hopeful that the damage of the last eight years can be alleviated, repaired, undone. I am also confident that things will get worse before they get better. Our economy will worsen, we will learn things we did not want to know. And we will be angry, depressed, and hopeful. We will, as a nation, need to work hard to fix all these problems. We will need to be involved in our local communities. But that will not be enough. We will need to be involved at the state and federal level. For so many years apathy has been the rule for myself as well as others. Apathy is not the answer, that much is now obvious. We’ve seen something amazing happen. We’ve seen the people finally respond.

Now comes the hardest part. Not only for you, for me, or Obama, but for all of us equally. We’ve seen many bad things happen these past eight years. I want to see an accounting for all those things that were done. I want to see justice for those crimes that were committed. But I am also wary of my motivations for wanting this. I know that any accounting that is had must be in the interest of justice and not simple vengeance. We must be sure to right the wrongs and not simply extract our pound of flesh. I think that Obama realizes this. His behavior so far seems reinforce this. I wish others would realize this.

So come tomorrow I will give my new President the chance to act on his promises. To put his words into action. Only then will I hold him accountable. I will let him, and other elected officials know what I think. But I will give them the chance. I see many simple wanting to get revenge, or acting out in anger at the last eight years. That road is dangerous. So I say we fix what is broken before we look at punishing the guilty. If someone sets your house on fire you don’t go after them while the house is burning do you? No, you put out the fire than get them. Let’s not let the house burn down while we seek justice.

Technorati Tags: bush, obama, Politics

I read an article today regarding OSHA and the Bush Administration. What I read was very dismaying. It details some abuses and total capitulations by the agency responsible for protecting the well-being of workers in the workplace.   Maybe I should not be so surprised anymore but the sheer brazen nature of their attitude and their actions is just mind boggling. It shows such a contempt for not only the people they were sworn to protect but a contempt behind the very ideals that are the foundation of the U.S. Government. It really does say “I don’t give a shit about anyone but those who give me cash.” The mercenary attitude is very, very frightening.   

There are a few quotes from the article that really got me. My personal favorite is this one.

“The agency’s first director under Bush, John L. Henshaw, startled career officials by telling them in an early meeting that employers were OSHA’s real customers, not the nation’s workers. “Everybody was pretty amazed,” one of those present recalled. “Our purpose is to ensure employee safety and health. . . . He just looked at things differently.”

Let’s look at how wrong that is on so many levels. First, OSHA was created to protect worker’s rights regarding safety and health in the workplace. Their own mission statement says this. From their website - “To assure safe and healthful working conditions for men and women.” I don’t see anything in there about protecting employers. Maybe this is really Bizzaro OSHA, maybe Henshaw was having an “Opposites Day” at the office? I don’t know but really. It’s not even something that can be stretched to seem misconstrued or a misstatement. It’s pretty obvious there. It is also pretty ballsy to just say out loud. It shows how little regard he had for the worker.

Now let’s look at the new customer for OSHA – the employer. What we have here is a case of the police deciding their real customer was not the people but the criminals they were sworn to capture. Please note I am not saying that all employers are criminals. What I am saying is you would not expect the police department to put the needs of criminals over those they are sworn to serve and protect. I’d expect the same would be true of OSHA. They very nature of the relationship between OSHA and the employer is an adversarial one. You can’t get around the fact that OSHA is meant to police these companies to protect the employees. Might as well ask a dog to protect a pile of dog biscuits you just dumped on the floor. If you did that and the dog ate them all anyone would call you a fool for doing so.

The thing is I agree that you need to balance any regulation with the realities of enforceability and burden. You don’t want to regulate so heavily it strangulates you. You need to have some input from the employers in order to ensure fairness. But you also have to take anything they do and say with a grain of salt. After all regulation hits their bottom line. And most companies are extremely short sighted regarding that. This is why the priority needs to be the people you need to protect, not the ones you need to watch.

Now point two really makes my blood boil. My initial reaction was “What the hell?” when I read about the brazen nature of the attempts to influence reporting and regulations. Sadly it seems most of these attempts were successfully. Thankfully some did fail. There was a report about asbestos in car brake pad linings that the industry was trying to quash. It appears they were afraid of lawsuits against them. Well while Henshaw was there he worked hard to slow it down and kill it. After he left though it was published.

“Days after publication and seven months after Henshaw’s retirement from OSHA, he sent its science director an e-mail demanding that the warning be withdrawn and redone to express a “more balanced” view. Henshaw did not tell the career official that he had since been employed as a $350-an-hour courtroom witness on behalf of an asbestos-products firm and had testified for companies in two other asbestos lawsuits filed by auto mechanics.”

This man needs to go to jail. He basically used his time there to protect some people then when he was done tried to use lingering influence to earn himself a lot of money doing the same thing from the outside. What is even better is he pushed to have the writer of the report punished. He got his boss to recommend a 10 day suspension without pay. Luckily news of this was published by the Baltimore Sun. Sometimes the press does their job to good effect.

There are other troubling parts to the story but these two epitomize, in my mind, the real nature of what a Bush Presidency has meant. Namely the focus away from “For the People” and a move to “Greed above all else is the cause, the end, and the religion.” For the Bush Administration the People mattered only isofar as they could be used to maintain power. Our purpose became not to be a part of the government, to be served, protected and empowered. It became to be cajoled, manipulated and used to maintain their need for power and money. We existed to serve their needs and the needs of those they called “Master”.

Their lust for wealth, their craving for the trappings of power became that great. And it has nearly destroyed what this country was, is, and could be. It is also a great example of what happens when the Watchers refuse to watch. Our government was founded on the principle of Checks and Balances. It has never been more apparent that this system only works when at least two of the three branches actually agrees to do their job. It also shows the inherent wisdom of such a system. When the system functions properly it works great. I am hopeful though. The coming year brings with it a new president, a new congress, and a bit of light on the darkness we’ve seen the last eight years. I just hope in the next four years we can begin to undo the damage that has been done.

Technorati Tags: bush, corruption, government, osha, Politics, washington post, wtf

The article, the press in general really, has not properly conveyed the one thing that sits at the core of all these problems. What is this one thing? That our government has absolutely no idea how to properly control and contain this. If you look at the decisions that have been made. If you see the various reactions to the crisis you do not see any cohesive strategy. All you see is a series of after the fact reactions to a building storm. Let’s start with the various investment bank failures.

It started with Bear Stearns. We all knew Bear was in trouble. We expected it to have problems. We did not expect it to go under or Chase to be forced to buy them by the Federal Government in what was essentially the first bailout. I recall conversations regarding Lehman Bros. and Merrill Lynch and how they were most likely to be the next ones up on the block. As an aside both corporate sites now show how they are in bankruptcy/bought out.

The Lehman failure though was spectacular in a way none of us at work foresaw. Getting phone calls on a Saturday morning and being told we may need to open the markets early was very, very sobering. Being told we were opening them before Monday to help avert a potential disaster makes you pause in a big way. Being told it was the Fed directing this is even scarier. We opened them early to allow anyone with a position relating to Lehman a way to mitigate it. I later found out that any trades involving Lehman had to be directly approved by the desk heads. This also applied many to the Credit Derivative markets. A week or so later we shutdown their access. Merrill Lynch was also acquired around this time. It became a mere footnote though compared to the sheer insanity that was Lehman Brothers. AIG, which also was bailed out around this time was nothing compared to this.

The next big event was the general bailout of Citi. It is here that I saw the near panic and reactionary nature of our current administration the most. This was another thing that was mostly unexpected in the sheer scale of things. I plan on discussing what this bailout really is and means in a later post it really is that complex. At work we are dealing with how the government has decided to actually enact the $700 billion that it is bankrolling this with. It’s been rapidly changing nearly daily.

In all this one can sense a largely reaction stance to everything. We all knew it was coming. We could all see it brewing. In the end though, the ones we trusted to manage this, to control it, failed spectacularly. Why and how did it fail? We see all sorts of articles trying to explain it. In the end though it seems to come down to five things really.

They did not care. If you see their reactions they really didn’t have a depth of understanding that they acknowledged. They trusted that the markets, that the economy, would auto-magically fix itself. And when it did not? They threw a bunch of shit on the wall to see what would stick. And in the end they’ve stuck to a failed ideology in dealing with the economy for far too long. They still are trying to do so.

Some More Information On the Situation

• White House Philosophy Stoked Mortgage Bonfire
• AP Study Finds $1.6B went to bailed-out bank execs

Technorati Tags: bailout, bear sterns, bush, finance, lehman, ml, The Economy, work