Catch a Break

Posted on 18 July 2012 by Erik Hare | 9 Comments

It’s been the kind of week you swim through. The thick languid air drags back as if yesterday was a long time ago and tomorrow might never come. It’s not a day to get much work done, but we all slog through.

Daze like this I admit I go back through the Barataria archives to see if there’s anything that needs updating. Starting from July of 2011, however, it’s positively depressing. Employment is still lagging and the economy has not done anything new. At least funding is being secured to restore the old Rathskeller at the Schmidt Brewery on West Seventh – we locals are moving forward with heart and arm and brain. But at the big level, things are simply languishing as if summer never ended.

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Taxing Returns

Posted on 16 July 2012 by Erik Hare | 7 Comments

Why hasn’t Mitt Romney released more than one year of tax returns? “The cost of not releasing the returns are clear,” said conservative columnist George Will, on ABC’s “This Week.” “Therefore, he must have calculated that there are higher costs in releasing them.” Will has a reputation for being particularly honest when his side is screwing up, but he’s far from alone in his assessment. It’s far more damning when Bill Kristol weighs in – “He should release the tax returns tomorrow. It’s crazy,” Kristol said on “Fox News Sunday.” “You gotta release six, eight, 10 years of back tax returns. Take the hit for a day or two.”

Why are the conservative pundits hitting this so hard? What’s at stake here is not just Romney’s candidacy or even the whole Republican ticket that wants to keep the US House. There is a core myth that has driven Republican rhetoric for decades based on a concept of “fairness” that could come crashing down if this plays out badly – and the pundits know it.

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The French Example

Posted on 9 July 2012 by Erik Hare | 13 Comments

It’s summer, and time to talk national budget! No, not here in the USofA – we haven’t actually bothered to have a real budget in 3 years or more. We’re talking about France, a nation with a bold new Socialist government and determination to move ahead into the future. A future full of socialist visions of strong growth and commitment to reducing the deficit … wait a minute …

The fun thing about Europe these days is that it provides us with endless examples of alternative ways to run things. By “alternative”, of course, we mean things that are utterly impossible to describe even as they seem vaguely familiar. Yet, in the case of France, we might be looking at something like the future if we do manage to get a Democratic US House in the next election along with a second term for Obama. It only gets weird when you think of the left as the responsible ones who are actually trying to make things work.

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Unemployed and Unenthusiastic

Posted on 6 July 2012 by Erik Hare | 22 Comments

Another month, another disappointing jobs report. Following the same patterns as last year, employment gains over the summer are falling far short of what appeared to be momentum building in the winter. The gain of 80k jobs in June is just enough to keep treading water, enough to absorb the net increase in the workforce as Millenials graduate in June and set out to make their own way in the world.

Given that politics, economics, and any other social arrangements we can think of are tied together we know this will have an effect on the election in November. This should also shape the attitudes of an entire generation as they grow older and contemplate raising families, starting businesses, and generally making the world in their own image.

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Jubilee

Posted on 2 July 2012 by Erik Hare | 18 Comments

Terrible news piles up in the financial world. The famous JP Morgan inexplicable $2B derivatives loss may be as much as $9B, making everyone wonder who is in charge. The obscurely infamous shifts in the London Interbank Overnight Rate (LIBOR) that signaled the start of the major financial collapse included a lot of manipulation and other illegal activity that’s only now coming to light. And China is experiencing a slowdown in manufacturing that is only deepening.

It all seems unrelated, and yet it all ties together in this thang called “Globalism” – what happens in one part of the world affects everyone. Yet there are few agreements and organizations that really have this tied together in a way that seems appropriate, at least making sure that corruption and disease in one place does not bring down the whole world. And this points to what will have to happen to get us all to start over again – something I have taken to calling “Jubilee”.

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