Half Changed World

We had a truly delightful Rosh Hashanah.  For the first time, my parents came down to spend it with us, so I was able to both share it with my family, and with my home congregation. 

On Monday, I went to D’s classroom and read them the story of Engineer Ari and the Rosh Hashanah Ride (which we discovered from the PJ library) and shared apples and honey with the class.   It was a nice chance to meet his classmates and the teacher. Unlike his old school, I don’t think D’s the only Jewish kid in the whole school, but he’s certainly the only one in his class. 

At services, the rabbi said that today is the birthday of the world, and N asked me how old the world was.  I told him we’d talk about it later, and at dinner we talked about how it was the year 5769 in the Jewish calendar, but that science indicates that the world is a lot older.  Somehow wound up promising the boys that we’d take them to Dinosaur National Monument someday.

It was a gorgeous day, so after services we went down to the beach and did tashlich, naming the bad things that we wanted to get rid of.  For the boys, it was mostly things like hitting and not listening.  I started with things like yelling and not listening, but when T offered up "cynicism" I had to ask for the bag of crumbs back.

Tashlich, 5769

So, if McCain doesn’t show up for the debate tomorrow night, will they let Obama answer questions on his own for an hour and a half?  That would be awesome.

Two weeks ago, I had the chance to testify before a Congressional subcommittee.  It was quite exciting, even though the room was more than half empty, and only four of the members of Congress were present.  The whole thing was a little surreal, though, because the witness invited by the Republicans used all his time to argue that the biggest challenge facing American families is high energy costs, and so that we should expand domestic production of oil (in ANWR and offshore).  The ranking member therefore asked each of testifying whether we’d support expanding domestic production.

While those of you read this regularly can probably guess what I personally think of that, my organization certainly doesn’t have a position on the matter.  So when it was my turn, I responded that I would decline to offer a position on an subject outside my area of expertise.  Representative Davis then commented that I had disqualified myself from ever running for Congress, as having opinions on topics that you know nothing about is an absolute prerequisite for members of Congress.

This week has certainly proved the truth of that observation.  I haven’t been blogging about the bailout because I don’t know what the right thing to do is, and I wish I had any confidence that anyone else really does.  I’m afraid that they’re all making it up as they go along, and we’re going to be left holding the bag at the end.

While I recognize the symbolic appeal of limiting executive pay, I think I’d actually rather see the banks commit to opening no fee bank accounts — tied to debt cards, but programmed not to allow overdrafts — for everyone in the country.

This made me laugh.  (No video, safe for work).

So today was Car Free Day in the DC area.  Most of the time I drive to the metro, but I decided to give it a try.   I was a little concerned that it would mostly prove that public transit couldn’t handle a 10% increase in usage…

In the morning, I missed the express bus to the Pentagon, but caught the local that comes 10 minutes later.  Got to the Pentagon, and discovered that there was a disabled car between Foggy Bottom and Rosslyn.  So I took the Yellow line up into DC, then changed over to the Blue/Orange line.  If  I had gone my usual route, I would have been stuck on the Orange line until the bottleneck cleared.

In the evening, I was busily working when I realized that I should have left 20 minutes earlier if I wanted to catch the express bus from the Pentagon.  Ran out, saw the bus that goes from near my office to Columbia Pike, so hopped on it, and promptly got stuck in traffic.  Got home a good 40 minutes later than usual, although I did get to read all of both the Economist and Cookie magazine.  (Yes, I subscribe to both.  Take that micro-demographers!  But what I’d really like to know is why I’ve started receiving Field & Stream…)

Until today, I had never head of Christopher Cox.  He’s the chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, and he seems to be becoming the poster boy for the total failure of the regulatory agencies to do anything to try to prevent the Wall Street meltdown.

Well, that’s not quite fair.  As I learned this afternoon by listening to This American Life, he acted to ban naked short sales (e.g. the practice of selling stocks that you don’t actually own and haven’t borrowed from anyone) but only for Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Lehman, and 18 other financial institutions, and only for a limited period this summer. 

I’m not defending the idea that you should be able to sell things that you don’t own (and it’s apparently illegal in any case), but what this says to me is that he wanted to shoot the messenger.  Short sellers aren’t what’s bringing these institutions down.  Bad lending standards, massive leverage, and generally really bad judgment are.

When specifically asked by Senator Shelby (who is not exactly known for being an advocate for government intervention) if he wanted more regulatory authority, he said no.

John McCain says that Cox should be fired.  Bush says that he’s doing a great job, Brownie.  (And as in FEMA, I think the problems go much further than the top leadership…)

Via Bitch PhD and Yglesias, this terrific graph showing the Obama and McCain tax plans and how much they’ll affect different income brackets’ taxes, with the bands scaled to reflect the number of people affected:

This is from a site called chartjunk, which attempts to use Edward Tufte‘s principles in designing charts.  Definitely lots to learn from.

The Freakonomics blog at the NY Times picked up on this too.

While we’re on the topic of taxes and distribution, I’ll point out that the big tax cut bill coming out of the Senate, which includes both the Alternative Minimum Tax patch and a bunch of business tax extensions, does include one provision that is really important for low-income families: allowing families to start to receive the child tax credit starting at an income of $8,500, down from the $12,050 under current law.  This would help 13 million low-income children.  It’s not at all guaranteed that the House bill will also include this provision, so it’s worth dropping a line or calling your representative.

I’m going to use the blogger’s prerogative to add this to the post, rather than risking having it get buried in the comments with all the back and forth about child support.

Maria commented on the stat that’s shown in the third chart on the Freakonomics post — that the top .1 percent of the country pays 20 percent of the income tax.  I haven’t seen that elsewhere, but it seems plausible.  There are great statistics on US income and wealth inequality here.

It’s worth noting that for all conservatives in the US mutter about European socialism, the tax system in almost all European countries is far less progressive than the US system, because they collect a large portion of their government funding through a Value Added Tax (VAT) which is if anything, somewhat regressive.

I

I was at an all day class on Sunday, in downtown DC, and the teacher was from New York.  Some cultural differences appeared quickly — she was shocked to discover that 90 percent of the restaurants downtown aren’t open on Sunday.  Another difference showed up when during a break the teacher said something like "so, do you think Lehman is going to make it?"  And all the students sort of made polite murmurs and no one really answered.  If you live in New York (or nearby), the Wall Street collapse is something that is happening to you, or people you know, but here in DC, it all feels pretty abstract.

This doesn’t mean that I’m not affected at all.  For one thing, each American’s personal share of the debt has increased by more than $1,000 in the past 6 months.  For another thing, I’ve lost about $4,000 that we’d invested in Fannie Mae.  I’m also covered by an AIG life insurance policy, but everything I read seems to say that I don’t need to worry about that.

I’m not sure either Presidential candidate has said anything particularly brilliant about the economy.  I do think it helps Obama for the conversation to get pushed back to the things that government does, rather than lipstick.  I think this ad  using McCain’s words against him is effective.

The title of the book Infinite Jest comes from a film within the story.  it’s been a long time since I read the book, but as I remember it, people who come to see the movie see a projection of themselves sitting in the audience.  Nothing else happens, and eventually, some of the people give up and leave, but the film keeps going as long as a single person stubbornly sits in the auditorium, keeping the movie going.

My personal theory about the book is that Wallace intended it like the movie — he didn’t really expect that anyone would slog through the 1000 plus pages (including footnotes).  While he wrote darkly funny prose, and a lot of things happened in the book, it was just one thing after another, without a clear plot trajectory.  To be honest, you could  stop anywhere along the way and not miss too much.  Just as the audience had the power to end the movie by simply leaving, I think he was suggesting that his readers had the power to end the book just by saying "enough" and closing it.

This week, David Foster Wallace seems to have decided that he didn’t need to find out what comes next in his story.  I didn’t know the man personally, and I didn’t even love his book.  But I feel diminished by his passing.

The pictures are amazing and terrifying. I can’t believe that more people didn’t evacuate Galveston — I pray that those who are staying put have the opportunity to laugh at me and say "that wasn’t so bad."

And anyone, right or left, Democrat or Republican, who thinks that God sends hurricanes for political purposes is a jackass.

What I’m most struck by this year is how long it’s been.  The little baby who I came home to hug, who I pushed around the neighborhood under that impossible blue sky, who forced me to turn off the television and focus on my life… he’s now in second grade, and asking me hard questions.

The hearing I was at on the hill was delayed because of the remembrance ceremony, and while we were waiting, people started telling their "where I was" stories.  I do think there’s something very powerful about this shared experience, but I’m also glad that my children won’t have these stories to tell.

I do want to make it over to the Pentagon memorial at some point.  But not on a day when it’s full of politicians and cameras.

Last year.

Other’s posts today:

• Sue at inner dorothy
• uccellina at a bird’s nest.
• jackie at esperanza
• landismom at bumblebee sweet potato
• rj at procrastinet