(Cross-posted at Motley Moose, MyDD and C4O Democrats)

The word on the street is that the caps on executive compensation may end up getting removed from the final version of the economic stimulus package.  Rather than abandon the idea altogether, James Kwak has a brilliant suggestion (h/t the Left Coaster):

Why not say that all bank compensation above a baseline amount - say, $150,000 in annual salary - has to be paid in toxic assets off the bank's balance sheet? Instead of getting a check for $10,000, the employee would get $10,000 in toxic assets, at their current book value. A federal regulator can decide which assets to pay compensation in; if they were all fairly valued, then it wouldn't matter which ones the regulator chose. That would get the assets off the bank's balance sheet, and into the hands of the people responsible for putting them there - at the value that they insist they are worth. Of course, the average employee does not get to set the balance sheet value of the assets, and may not have been involved in creating or buying those particular assets. But think about the incentives: talented people will flow to the companies that are valuing their assets the most realistically (since inflated valuations translate directly into lower compensation), which will give companies the incentive to be realistic in their valuations. (Banks could inflate their nominal compensation amounts to compensate for their overvalued assets, but then they would have to take larger losses on their income statements.)

Just a few weeks ago, liberals hailed the selection of Leon Panetta for Director of the CIA - mcjoan described him as "a[s] much of a departure from torture as you could want."  It looked like the ticking time bomb hypothetical was on its way out.  Obama at the announcement of Panetta for D/CIA said "We must adhere to our values as diligently as we protect our safety with no exceptions."

Unless, that is, someone asks us a hard question in a confirmation hearing.

President Obama's economic stimulus has lost so much weight in the last few days that dieters everywhere are flooding Congress and the White House with requests for information about the so-called "Ivy-League Diet," named after an association of degree-granting institutions in New England that granted degrees to President Obama and most of his economic advisers. Thanks to my new job as a busboy at Washington's exclusive Alfalfa Club, I was able to get the inside story from Tim Geithner (Dartmouth '83), Paul Volcker (Princeton '49) and Larry Summers (Harvard '82).

"Excuse my humble self for disturbing your Lordships," I groveled, "but would you please be so kind as to explain the "Ivy-League Diet" that I hear so much about on TV?"

Larry Summers graciously replied.

"It's very simple. We shit on the economy and you eat it."

"Harharhar!!!" said Paul Volcker.

"Harharhar!!!" said Tim Geithner.

And even my humble self joined in the merriment.

"Harharhar!!!"

"What are you laughing at?" said Larry Summers.

"Nothing, your Lordship," I replied. "Enjoy your soup."

As odious as it seems to progressives for a gang of rascally senators to be slashing spending when spending is desperately needed, we should look at some of the cuts with some hope.

Included in the cuts is a 61% reduction in the proposed $1.2 billion in new drug war funding, a 50% reduction in the $150 million proposed for new Federal prisons, a 50% reduction in the $100 million proposed to militarize the border, a 50% reduction in the $50 million proposed to snoop on your Internet activities.

Not all spending is progressive. Most of the proposed cuts are awful, but some of them we could and should get behind.

And how much other spending on very anti-progressive initiatives wasn't touched by the haphazard Collins-Nelson back-of-the-napkin spending reduction strategy?

"Pathetic" has turned into a generic insult in the American version of English, but once upon a time it meant something on the far side of "pitiful," another essentially religious word that has lost most of its original force, and it isn't exactly surprising that pity would turn into a joke in a country where the left side of the political spectrum sponsored "Welfare Reform."

"You're pitiful."

"You're pathetic."

These characterizations are insults in America today, and vividly illustrate the absurdity of calling the United States a Christian country just because the parking lots of suburban mega-churches fill up on Sunday.

You might hope that the concept of pity could somehow survive the perversion of its name into something like contempt, but it's exactly this hope that was demolished in one of the most famous passages in the history of philosophy, Section 293 of Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations.

If I say of myself that it is only from my own case that I know what the word "pain" means - must I not say the same of other people too? And how can I generalize the one case so irresponsibly? Now someone tells me that he knows what pain is only from his own case! --Suppose everyone had a box with something in it: we call it a "beetle". No one can look into anyone else's box, and everyone says he knows what a beetle is only by looking at his beetle. --Here it would be quite possible for everyone to have something different in his box. One might even imagine such a thing constantly changing. --But suppose the word "beetle" had a use in these people's language? --If so it would not be used as the name of a thing. The thing in the box has no place in the language-game at all; not even as a something: for the box might even be empty. --No, one can 'divide through' by the thing in the box; it cancels out, whatever it is. That is to say: if we construe the grammar of the expression of sensation on the model of 'object and designation' the object drops out of consideration as irrelevant.

As remote as this paradox of "private language" may seem to be from everyday experience, it floated back into my consciousness last week when President Obama attacked suspected militants in Pakistan. About 18 people were killed, "including women and children," according to the Los Angeles Times.

A few days later, Barack and Michelle Obama visited the school where their daughters Malia and Sasha are enrolled, and there were big smiles all around. Michelle made a little joke about the unpaid postition of First Lady, and Barack read the children a story about Neil Armstrong, and then the President and his beautiful family went back to the White House.

 

People are getting all bent out of shape over whether Obama's Executive order on torture and rendition prohibits the kind of chicanery Bushco engaged in - wrapping hapless captives in diapers and duct tape, drugging them up, tying them into a business jet and shipping them to a country where these people would be tortured by the locals, with US people waiting for answers or even participating.

That looks like it has been prohibited.  But we need to avoid confusing a lot of concepts and procedures so we can think and speak clearly about it.  The tradmed is doing its usual egregious job of Stupid and Confuse, to make sure their Republican owners remain happy, by starting the lie that Obama has not banned everything but has left loopholes.

That's false.

Here - we simplify, explain, and clarify.

Today one of the top stories in the New York Times discusses whether the government should buy hundreds of billions of dollars of toxic "assets" from failing banks at the market price, or...

Should the government pay a lot more than the market price?

If a bank says their junk is worth 97% of face value, Standard & Poor's says it's worth 87%, and it's selling for 38%...

What kind of fucking idiot would pay more than the market price?

That would be you and me, acting through our duly elected representatives, encouraged by the New York Times and hundreds of half-witted professors who predicted nothing and now explain everything on network TV.

Except that nobody has really bothered to explain anything beyond a few talking points repeated ad nauseam by corporate media and the shills for Goldman Sachs who happen to be running the federal government.

Question: How did we get in this mess, and how bad is it?

Answer: Garble-arble gib-gab!

But now that the screeching panic incited by Hank Paulson and his pals to stampede $700 billion out of the US Treasury and more trillions out of the Fed has subsided a wee bit, a few reasonable and even conservative economic researchers have begun to question the basic assumptions of this humongous honking boondoggle.

It is high time to end the foreclosure crisis.  We can do it now.  It will take collective action, and it will have to come from the bottom up, but it is the kind of action which will get attention, quickly.  Think:  rent strike.

Rep. John Conyers has subpoenaed Karl Rove again to testify about White House influence on the prosecution of Don Siegelman, but Rove's lawyer claims that executive privilege invoked by President Bush still applies, and Obama is bound by his oath of office to maintain Constitutional separation of powers by endorsing Rove's immunity and instructing the Attorney General to resist the Congressional subpoena. So...  

Will Obama support executive privilege for Rove, or not?

Otherwise Obama has to give up his pipe-dreams of bipartisanship, and declare all-out war on Republicans by nullifying the claim of executive privilege and forcing Rove to testify, and it's war because the former President and Vice-President are only one step behind Rove as targets for prosecution. This would be the mythical equivalent of kidnapping Merlin from a Republican Camelot, and the boy-king Arthur W. Bush would be duty-bound to rally his knights in exile and storm the White House!

Or will Obama betray the credulous peasants who made him their king, and ally himself instead with the dark hordes of disorder and eternal sorrow?

Both alternatives are obviously impossible, and if Barack Obama is squeezed into the infinitesimal branch-point of this paradox, then the Universe will accordingly fall into a Logical Singularity where all known laws of physics and politics will be abrogated!

Our world will be swallowed by a black hole of Chaos and Unreason!

Bipartisanship is Obama, and Obama is bipartisanship, from his first real blip on the national radar at the Democratic National Convention in 2004, right through his otherwise incomprehensible and completely useless attempt to rally Republican support for his economic stimulus with humongous tax-cuts.

No entity can act in absolute opposition to its essence! Obama cannot abandon bipartisanship and declare war on Republicans by seizing their Merlin.

But not even the Arthurian Merlin could so mystify the rubes that they accept Obama's Department of Justice defending Karl Rove against a Congressional subpoena!

It's like biting the head off a chicken and screaming "Hail Satan!"

If Obama is abandoned by his outraged base, his fragile identity would be undone, the mask of Barack Obama, Progressive Hero would disappear, and only the original face of Little Orphan Obama would remain, abandoned by Dad and dumped on the grandparents by Ma Dunham, desperately cobbling together a credible persona in the lily-white paradise of a Hawaiian prep-school.

Obama cannot return to that nightmare of anomie! But he cannot make war on Republicans! Neither A or Not-A!

A logical apocalypse!

So anyone who wants our old familiar Universe to creep along through the next Great Depression that is already rolling down upon us, and anyone who wants a ring-side seat when either India and Pakistan or North and South Korea take that last little step into nuclear war and poison what's left of our already almost poisonous atmosphere...

Anyone who wants to survive for the next few years of our miserable future should call, write, or email John Conyers and tell him to stop squeezing Barack Obama into a paradoxical branch-point that will plunge our Universe into the nothingness of Singularity and Annihilation!

But there's obviously room for reasonable people to disagree on this issue, and maybe it's just as well to skip the last few chapters of humanity's absurd tragedy or sad farce, and let the whole thing disappear in one painless, illogical poof!

Federal Prosecutor Tanya Treadway probably has a fairly sweet life. Unlike many pain patients, her days probably don't involve a lot of worry about money or insurance. Her days are probably filled with a lot less agony than the former patients of Dr. Stephen Schneider, who is no longer treating them because Treadway is prosecuting Dr. Schneider for prescribing their pain medication. Nonetheless, the case Treadway is working in Kansas has taken some unexpected turns. On several occasions she has been faced with surprises from uppity defendants, some silly activists, and now... a Federal Judge. The judge has in so many words told Treadway that he will not be swayed by her threats, and to wipe the grin off her face!

From The Fort Mill Times:

In a contentious hearing Monday, Belot scolded Assistant U.S. Attorney Tanya Treadway for making what he termed "a government threat" to appeal his decision limiting the case to four deaths.
"Nobody threatens me in this courtroom," Belot said.

More below...

Tonight, the TV newsmagazine "60 Minutes" did a story on the economic crisis facing Wilmington, Ohio, a town of 12,000 people nearly all of whom are being laid off by freight corporation DHL.  If you missed the heartrending segment, you can watch it here.

Here's what Scott Pelley of "60 Minutes" didn't tell you: there's a promising local effort to help the people of Wilmington -- and there are a few things you can do to help their plan become a reality without getting up from your computer.

In 1840 Thomas Carlyle observed that every significant social connection had dissolved into cash, and this realization was so unpleasant that even a grim contrarian like Carlyle could only pronounce it in a book about Chartism, a fundamentally optimistic British movement intended to reconnect the working class with something, because the cash connection had left it more or less completely out of the loop.

Unfortunately for the Chartists, the something with which they tried to connect was Parliament, a gang of lords and squires that was happy enough to laugh down three million signatures on a petition for government reform that would have thrown lords and squires out of power.

"Cash payment the sole nexus," said Thomas Carlyle, and for the cashless working class, no nexus at all.

Now cash is the least significant form of money, and the Federal Reserve extends credit by two or three trillion dollars in a week, all of it invisible to the human eye, and the destination of most of it demonstrably incomprehensible even to the subtlest financiers, who only a moment ago misplaced the same unthinkably enormous sums.

The cash nexus is long gone, and the credit nexus is quickly breaking down. Banks are bankrupt, mere bubbles left behind when a greater bubble burst, sustained only by a current of fiat currency that flows from nowhere, and can only return to the same.

Chartist optimism has been miraculously reborn in the Democratic multitudes who elected Mr. Obama, and now they earnestly petition new lords and squires to save their jobs and houses and avert the evil day that even the very next dawn may bring.

The auguries are inauspicious, but our optimism is not disproved, and no one is likely to convince us we were falling instead of floating, until we hit the ground.