Horizontal Governance: The Evolution of the Social Mind

So now that the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement seems to have fallen off the major media radar, most of its non-participating supporters are now left to wonder, not only where did it go, but what now? It is very important for OWS to send a clearer message, about what change it wants to implement. If this message is not soon delivered, the movement will deteriorate, and be forever discounted as a senseless complaint.

The first thing that I noticed, as the OWS movement peaked, was a lot of the organizers were talking about it having a horizontal structure. For those, who don't understand what that is, or those who believe that a leaderless horizontal political system is just another phrase describing socialism, or in right-wing perspective, a communist takeover, the horizontal hierarchy finds its strengths in being leaderless. It enables every voice to rise to the top of all decision-making procedures. Unlike any of the aforementioned labels, horizontal-ism is a facilitator of efficient information, for the purpose that leaders could make more effective decisions when drawing up policies, that directly effect society, but with a focus on the needs of the individual.

So, why a horizontal, leaderless decision-making process? When asked, what was the funniest thing that he witnessed during the OWS protests in New York City, Dr. Arthur Chen of Oakland, California, responded with an action by protestors that wasn't as funny as it was purposeful. He noted that the effect of our generation's sense of inclusiveness, while watching the protestors take part in a General Assembly. This inclusiveness he witnessed is what the information age has brought us. Put simply, we have the tools that grant us the knowledge, that we don't have to "screen" each other, when it comes to having our voices heard, and that all of the information we gather from these assemblies are their to better inform us of all of our needs, rather than a pigeon-holed perspective provided to us by the measures of antiquated D.C. politics, and corporate media. The information age demands a place for those venues that would not screen all of our points of view (7).

Well, as complex as the OWS movement's demands are, so is the political process in our modern society, especially when you consider the pace at which information retrieval and gathering is accomplished in contrast to the current method  of implementation of ideas, and policies in current governmental structure on the basis of information acquisition. Basically, there is no political structure in the world today, that is capable of keeping up with the mobility of information. So, it is incompetent in providing a highly informed society with the necessary laws and leadership that will improve lives across the economic spectrum. "The style of communication, decision-making and planning taking place in Zuccotti Park, and in Occupy protests across the country, mimics much of the way we have learned to talk to one another online." (1)

As a society, we are all psychologically geared to consume and produce information at a much faster rate today than in the past, when the only avenues to the most current information were institutionally supplied media. Now the flow of information, being less authoritative, and more unrestricted, enables the general populace to shift opinion and consensus through its own mechanism of verification and truth (i.e. mic checks, tweets, Facebook statuses, etc.). Take for instance Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton's statements back in March 2011, where she stated that the U.S. is losing when it comes to information distribution (3). She was saying this even at a time of the greatest usage of the internet as an information sharing resource. With the rampant sharing of information, and the low cost to produce it, media centers have propped up elsewhere, globally, while the U.S. makes cuts to major propaganda facilities, it is apparent that the U.S. government even recognizes its failure to effectively create or even maintain an effective infrastructure to inform on a new playing field.

The pattern of rapid information sharing, and the shift away from powerful or concentrated information centers, is beginning to find its way into politics and governance. If there is any debate contrary to this concept then, that thinking is as archaic as the political system that exists today. It is a failing system, slowly collapsing under its own weight, because it is either resistant, or incapable to changing its structure, in order to meet the needs of the people it is supposed to represent, and coordinate with those who are more aware of the concordance of the highly informed public.

What we're missing today in policy making is a leadership machine that runs efficiently, and that efficiency should stem from its ability to easily discover consensus among a representative body. Horizontal-ism was born out of the political leadership's incompetence to connect, network, or even embed itself within the ranks of a more informed and people, that exists within a nexus of economical, and political awareness. If we are to successfully regain economic and civil control of not just our own nations, but to assure that in the future there exists a global mechanism by which all informed voices can be heard at the level of the representational parts of our governing structures, then horizontal governance must become a compulsory branch of government.

Political leaders remain indifferent, well, at least those who support it. Those that don't support a new amendment to the governing structure, simply understand that they exist in a system that isolates them from common needs, while symbolically upholding that they are representing the people, when in fact they have latched onto a more concentrated, financially apt body of constituents: corporations. Since the decision of the Supreme court to classify corporations as persons, our representatives have shut the true people out of government, and even governing themselves. Through well financed lobbying, it is extremely easy to market popular opinion that is biased in favor of business' agenda, and marketing is not necessarily fact or even truth. The rate of information is faster, because it is smaller, concise, concentrated, and easily facilitated. Instead of having to wait for the true popular message, from veritable people, senators, congressman, and statesman, refuse to recognize the time, the patience or the capabilities to hear an ever-growing population's demands. So through corporate person-hood, the ears of representative governing have only been listening to the minority of the population. Even if it isn't a minority below the surface, it is a highly concentrated, single body, that portrays skewed data, information, and opinion to our leaders, and has basically hijacked the democratic process. If our leaders were competent enough to embrace new technologies as tools to reconnecting the bridge of representation to their people, the need to consolidate information through the pipe of false person-hood, the corporations, then OWS would have never had the need to exist.

I bring all this up not to belabor the issue of corporate person-hood, but to emphasize one aspect why our politicians turn to corporate lobbying first, instead of the mass of people they are really supposed to represent, if they are even doing so at all. It is really a matter of "voice" as information, and a conflict between that and the speed at which it flows into government from the people, and the amount with which they are inundated. Ask, any successful businessman, if a business grows beyond its capacity to produce, the business' production infrastructure needs to change, in order for it to satisfy that growth. The same thinking should be applied to governing. What OWS is attempting to offer up to its leaders is governing system by which the people can regain their voices in government, and "produce" policies that directly stem from that voice, and not from the concentrated minority of voices that are isolated from the people by financial means and sheer totalitarian information marketing committed by the corporations and wealthy elite.

The most important thing to recognize about the corporate person-hood and its new found tight relationship with political leaders is that it is authoritarian in nature. This convenient relationship is severely evident in the doctrines of right-wing politicians, who have plenty of private interests lobbying them, and also support an extreme version of capitalism that caters to the corporate person-hood status. Instead of gathering consensus from veritable persons, the information pipe is diverted, and the flow of information into government has become unchallenged, simply by changing the definition of a person.

In education, the lack of leadership's capacity to adapt to the information age is strongly evident in its complete ignorance of improving the learning environment in general education. In the U.S. classrooms still contain the educational tools of 50 years ago. How would our leaders expect students to compete on the global playing field, if the real world expects learning and skill gains through an information highway, while the primary learning environment is only stocked with only #2 pencils and dry erase boards? If the leaders in the U.S. need an answer to why students are not ranking higher in the global education standings, they should ask themselves, "why hasn't there been a massive R&D effort to understand how to use computers to develop customized reading-learning strategies for kids with different learning styles." (4) If our leaders realize the technology is more about a new way of thinking, and decision making, and less about entertainment (i.e. video games, and Tweeting), then they would discover that educating our kids along these lines would enable them to govern themselves better, teach each other more efficiently, and basically share ideas in order to effectively innovate.

There is a concerted yet unspoken effort to suppress this new mode of information sharing by only the most powerful elements of our society, and their political cohorts, that realize the benefits of not just guiding media output, but excessively controlling it. If schools are not funded adequately enough to utilize the technological tools of now, if legislation is written in order to selectively expose our privacy, take away our right to free speech, and prevent us from seeking out the right information, then it is absolutely evident that controlling the masses comes in the form of authoritarian restraint. If gaining information is a race, those capable of buying policies, and those making them, are slowing the greater majority of people down with uncertainty and unprincipled policies. If ordinary people are adapting successfully to information exchange, and that progression is being even slightly restricted or presided over, then it would suffice to say that not just media, but also the flow of free information is controlled.

In order to paint a picture of the entities that control the flow of information, it must be emphasized that the avenues by which we receive information are highly restrictive because of two factors: 1) the private industry's inability to embrace change;  and 2) the failure of policy makers to stimulate change (5). It's all about speed really. Not about the ability of businesses and politicians to keep up, really, but more about their reluctance to change, even increase, speed at all. If the flow of information is sped up, then change in any system is inevitable, and to ignore it for the sake of security, or preservation of pre-existing systems, is simply put, a failure. Here's a scenario that makes no sense, in this matter, when Google Health (a resource for users to store and analyze their health information) decides to discontinue it's service. Within the same month, Qualcomm Life plans to sell a health device hub, that connects up to servers, in order to continuously share a patient's real-time health information with medical professionals via the "cloud" (6).

Now, you read that last paragraph, and say, "so what, it's the nature of the market, and it's competition for these companies to make changes". But, if looked at from a non-business perspective, and more so from the information architect, it would make sense to have multiple arenas of data, that could be used in conjunction, in order to create a larger data pool, which in turn would enable medical doctors and patients as well as healthcare insurers a more efficient tool to analyze medical risks and factors. Basically, business, because of profit loss, has taken away one source of health data aggregation, and isolate it via a paid for service, that limits the flow of information. The argument here is, why not have it in multiple ways? Why not just have a horizontal information structure, like the format that the OWS's movement has instituted for the purpose of sharing information among working groups?

It is second nature for us to produce information. In fact we produce information as fast as we interact with one another, yet most of it goes undocumented, or is placed in a data-accessible format. Discovering the point at which human interaction on the social level transitions into information provision to those who need to analyze it, or use it as a way to make sound policy decisions, is most likely the intention of the horizontal political structure, that OWS intends to implement. Most people may think, that polls or surveys may be the tool by which all of this is done, but often surveys can be too specific to a certain research need, and cannot be easily digested by the average person, and polls are either too biased or skewed to provide a non-partisan assessment of any policy stance. This, in no way, is a justification for the gathering of information of individuals, but rather, having our political structure take a more determined approach to gathering a sense of what the public needs are.

1. Occupy Wall Street’s ‘horizontal hierarchy’ seen through prism of the Internet
2. The Authoritarian Personality
3. Hillary Clinton: US Losing Information War to Alternative Media
4. Miller, Matthew. The Tyranny of Dead Ideas: Letting Go of the Old Ways of Thinking to Unleash a New Prosperity. New York: Times, 2009. Print.
5. Arndt, Rachel Z. "Google Health to the Guillotine." Fast Company Dec. 2011: 32. Print.
6. Box Sends Health Data Right to the Cloud
7. Why I Protest: Dr. Arthur Chen of Oakland, California

Don't Make the Public Private!

Of late, it seems as if political leaders are making public investment and its value in infrastructure extremely insignificant. As news continues to pour in about the privatization of Social Security, more legislation is built up to prevent single-payer health care, and now our elected officials aim to sell off our infrastructure as if it were not the public's in the first place (1). It is important to recognize that private procurement of public infrastructure or services is not necessarily a bad thing, but it is detrimental to the quality, effectiveness, and financial efficiency of these things, when there is a tremendous gap in economic laws that passively allow private owners to take advantage of the public, utilizing the same legal avenues by which they dodge taxes, ignore accountability, and just plain rip off the American taxpayers (11).

Wired magazine in February 2011 published an article entitled, The Village of Shadows, about a small Romanian city that was host to numerous technology-based con-artists. A particular shady character named Chita was mainly responsible for generating a large network of fraudulent businesses, in order to scheme people out of money. Chita was using a legitimate business to serve as a shell for fraudulent activities such as phishing attacks. Romanian authorities were quick to catch up with the scheme of his business, because he was purchasing big money items, without a justifiable source of income, and when the authorities (government officials) wanted to see his business records, Chita had none (2).

No records? How does one operate an effective an ethical business without records? This is not a comparison of how most privately owned businesses behave, but it is a signal to those who fail to understand that profit can be a dangerous thing, when it comes to the security and welfare of a state. When maximizing money is the main focus of a particular party, every other matter is secondary, if not irrelevant. The stability of government, and public infrastructure, that is meant to defend against a state collapse into chaos, is placed right into dire straits. Such a market already exists in the shadows, and the only thing that keeps the public from economic despair is that regulatory mechanisms are in place to route out any questionable practices.

Such is the state of affairs these days among the private corporate elite. How is Chita's business-related behavior any different than a "drug company mislead[ing] doctors about heart attack risks in order to sell more pills", "an insurance company manipulat[ing] its earnings by billions through complicated offshore reinsurance dealings", or a major bank "illegally charging minority borrowers higher loan rates or helping a dictator stash his ill-gotten gains" (10)? With the encroaching invasion of free market ideals, and the demand for the expansion of deregulation, fraud seeps into the cracks of companies, with private investors, that invest in corporations that are granted the same civil rights to privacy as the individual. Given this level of questionable, if not illegal, practice, it is evident that profit-driven business in a deregulated market could directly lead to a crime-ridden, dysfunctional, and destabilized public services infrastructure.

In contrast, government or public servants are accountable to the public, no matter the level of service being provided. The bureaucratic system cannot dodge the scrutiny of the public eye forever, as private interests practice everyday, avoiding the scrutiny of their questionable business practices. Private business on the other hand is accountable to only the customer, but this relationship is worlds different from the patronage of the public or the taxpayers, in that there is a certain level of openness when a service is publicly executed, whereas there is a tremendous potential for private contractors to conceal elements of quality, fraud, efficiency, and effective improvements (9). What type of public system would we have if questionable businessmen, like Chita, used the ownership of the Brooklyn Bridge as a means to defraud individuals?

When private business acquires public services for profit, this breeds a duality, in that the private interest is compelled to balance between profits and integrity of the provision of service. Instead of relying on weak legal contracts between the public and private parties, if a business were to acquire a public service, then it would be sensible to apply the same public laws by which public servants must abide. Therefore, profit is not secondary to improvement, but rather carries equal weight with quality and effectiveness of service. What this guarantees is that private businesses, that are granted the operation of public services, are required to provide proper customer service, and can no longer hide behind contract loopholes, and a lack of transparency. If a private business procures a public service it is no longer just a private business, but a public servant as well (9).

"Proponents have argued that when government is both the owner and the producer/deliverer of a service, it makes it difficult to monitor the activities of its agents – the bureaucracy – and that such problems can be overcome by engaging the private sector through legalistic contractual arrangements. The flaw in this argument lies in what some scholars have identified as a problem of incomplete contractual arrangements" (3). This is widely known as "asymmetric information" and has been the primary utility of private banks and investment firms that created faulty loan packages, that in turn were sold to investors for a profit, with the buyer making the assumption that the financial product was risk-free, when it was not. It is considered to be a characteristic of "one party [having] more or better information than the other" (4), and so it's not fraud, it's just taking advantage of the other party by withholding knowledge. Basically, a fraud of indifference, or better yet, purposeful negligence. If private interests, like those of investment firms and banks on Wall Street, that used a passive-aggressive mechanism to, for lack of a better word, lie about the financial products they were selling, how treacherous would that same business practice be, if these same types of companies were allowed to say they were maintaining public infrastructure, while the public taxpayer has no avenue to ensure that that information is correct? In the case of the government, the private contractor can supply a service, but by taking advantage of incomplete legal agreements, the servicing party can avoid providing quality assurance and not have to provide the public with absolute transparency.

Most people would assume that not all private institutions are capable of being intrinsically deviant, in order to avoid the liability of providing a more efficient service than government. These assumptions can be correct some of the time through a measure of corporate social responsibility, but it is important to remember that government that offers public services is intrinsically held accountable, and transparent, not because law requires it, but the representative bodies in place will ensure the security, stability, and sanctity of the public.

With business it's a entirely different story. Private industry is dedicated to its own "bottom line". There is this ever-present "incentive for the private sector to cut costs in order to maximize profit". So how does one company effectively cut costs so as to maximize profits? This is done through basic labor reduction, by "retrenchment" (diminishing the workforce), "employee cutbacks, lower wages, and the greater use of part-time labor", in order to eliminate the expense of paying full-time benefits (3). It's fairly safe to say that across the board the profit-driven private company is reducing its productive capacity. If that is done the quality either remains the same or has to decrease, due to a rotating schedule of cuts. In other words the private sector is only concerned with itself, and that concern has the same weight, if not more, as the concern for the preservation of the public society it is serving.

Reconsider corporate social responsibility (CSR)! In some economic circles it is considered a myth, in that a company that strives to meet its "bottom line", does so to the point that social welfare is ardently relinquished by corporations. Take for instance, the reformation prospects of the Canadian mining industry (12). The irony dispelled by the industry is rampant, and it stinks of a smattering of double standards put forth by corporation who dread having to face regulation. Canada's government wants to pass legislation to softly regulate the mining industry on a global scale, in order to ensure that the industry does not abuse the rights of the citizens directly effected by mining in their country. The mining companies on the other hand are reluctant to be regulated by law, but instead insist that they can apply voluntary social responsibility to their business model or practices.

So, in other words, companies that follow along this same logic, are willing to regulate themselves. That is absolute nonsense. Is it acceptable to believe that governed regulation is synonymous with voluntary responsibility? It would be safe to assume that this premise would never support social responsibility, because of the model of a conventional corporation. That is, a corporation will only consider the interests of the stakeholders, and not all individuals of a society are stakeholders. Even if some have the capacity to be a stakeholder, they are invested in various businesses, more often than none competing against one another (13). So, you have two separate elements of the corporation that fail to fit into the model of social responsibility: 1) there is a demographic of society that does not have the capacity to benefit from the interests of a corporation; and 2) the interests of competing corporation pitch the interests of individuals against one another. In fact, corporate social responsibility is actually negligence, and in order for a corporation to function it would need to indirectly go against the best interest of a society.

What is most interesting about political attempts to privatize public services is that there is this attitude that privatization is great as long as it lays off workers, and moves more business into the realm of private interests. It's as if the attitude lends itself to characterization of some tough, suck it up, indifferent directorate, whose responsibility is voluntarily limited to shutting down one system, and failing to preserve economic stability. By being accountable for the economic repercussions of producing such drastic changes to an economy, any policy executive would realize that such a sudden change in the economic landscape would be ruinous, especially if one of the effects of overhead costs would deplete the workforce, and therefore directly effect the individual's right to a sustainable life.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights states, that "receiving a fair remuneration with which one can fulfill one's basic needs is an inalienable human right" (14). Now this is a guideline that corporations should follow, but in reality, the corporation's goal of maximizing profit is in conflict with minimal financial rights of the individual (because they must decrease wages, in order to lower the costs of production), and so corporate entities force themselves to not comply with the declaration. Deregulation, in a global free market, disables national governments from questioning or even enforcing that a corporation abides by the declaration or their own doctrine of voluntary social responsibility. Only so much policy can be drawn up in favor of CSR, but when it is voluntary, and not law, then it is not a matter of ensuring that corporations preserve human rights, it is whether or not the corporation as an element of society can compel itself to participate in the community as a responsible member, and not place the liabilities of profits before the priorities of human rights. Keep in mind, that this is the one policy that at least government of the United States has ensured.

Maybe, slashing overhead costs isn't the only problem, and when we consider the effects of profit-driven models, the lack of transparency adds more fuel to the profit-maximization fire. No matter which viewpoint you have, private industry's entitlement to not having to disclose its business secrets to the public, and possibly only to those who have vested financial interests (i.e. investors or shareholders), is another detrimental factor to supplying the public with quality services.

The public answers to itself, because it is placing revenue into a system that intrinsically belongs to itself. Just like a private interest would do to ensure its financial well-being. When public services are privatized, as long as their is a binding contract between the public and private parties, and that contract offers bounds that determine that the private party will provide superior services, there is intrinsically a gap. This gap is between the private entity's assurance of providing quality and efficient service, and the ability of the patrons to assess that quality and efficiency. In essence, the public, when it pays for a service should absolutely be aware of the value for which they are paying.

Works Cited:

1) Cities for Sale: Psst! Wanna buy the New Jersey Turnpike? http://www.slate.com/id/2288401/


2) Bhattacharjee, Yudhijit. "The Village of Shadows." Wired Feb. 2011: 82+. Print.


3) Ohemeng, Frank K., and John K. Grant. "When markets fail to deliver: An examination of the privatization and de-privatization of water and wastewater services delivery in Hamilton, Canada." Canadian Public Administration 51.3 (2008): 475-499. Academic Search Complete. EBSCO. Web. 6 Apr. 2011.


4) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_asymmetry


5) Charter Schools Outsource Education to Management Firms, With Mixed Resultshttp://www.propublica.org/article/charter-schools-outsource-education-to-management-firms-with-mixed-results?utm_source=socmed&utm_medium=Twitter&utm_content=tweet4&utm_campaign=Charters


6) "Rudy's way." Economist 330.7849 (1994): 26. Academic Search Complete. EBSCO. Web. 13 Apr. 2011.


7) Walsh, Mark. "New York City Votes Are a Blow to Edison." Education Week 20.30 (2001): 5. Academic Search Complete. EBSCO. Web. 13 Apr. 2011.


8) "The odd couple." Economist 333.7893 (1994): 24-25. Academic Search Complete. EBSCO. Web. 13 Apr. 2011.


9) Bovis, Christopher. "The Effects of the Principles of Transparency and Accountability on Public Procurement and Public-Private Partnerships Regulation." European Public Private Partnership Law Review 4.1 (2009): 7-25. Academic Search Complete. EBSCO. Web. 17 Apr. 2011.


10) Nader, Ralph. "How to Curb Corporate Power." Nation 281.11 (2005): 20-24. Academic Search Complete. EBSCO. Web. 19 Apr. 2011.


11) Risen, Clay. "Accounts Due." New Republic 230.11 (2004): 16-18. Academic Search Complete. EBSCO. Web. 19 Apr. 2011.


12) LAPIANTE, J. P., and CATHERINE NOLIN. "Snake Oil and the Myth of Corporate Social Responsibility." Canadian Dimension 45.1 (2011): 24-27. Academic Search Complete. EBSCO. Web. 19 Apr. 2011. 


13) Uccello, Cynthia. "Social Interest and Social Responsibility in Contemporary Corporate Environments." Journal of Individual Psychology 65.4 (2009): 412-419. Academic Search Complete. EBSCO. Web. 20 Apr. 2011. 


14) Rabet, Delphine. "Human Rights and Globalization: The Myth of Corporate Social Responsibility?." Journal of Alternative Perspectives in the Social Sciences 1.2 (2009): 463-475. Academic Search Complete. EBSCO. Web. 21 Apr. 2011.

Taxes Can Sustain Us, but Never Will the Machines of Profit

Maybe the toughest and best solution for a public bailout is possibly removing any and all public services. Not permanently, but take away public services long enough for taxpayers to learn how to appreciate and understand where and how their tax dollars are spent to keep the society in which they live stable, secure, and apart from living in squalor and third world status. In the United States, many voters/taxpayers are mislead into thinking that taxes are too much, harm the individual's ability to do business and profit from it, provides extreme power to government, and only provides services to those who, unlike them, are not a contributing part of society. These premises are completely unfounded, and lack the reasoning that would wholly explain why taxes even exist at all.

 I have always held to the saying, "one has to spend money, to make money", sometime more than you earn, and this statement has so many truths that can stand up to our current financial dilemma, in that the money needs to come from somewhere, and if those that possess it fail to reintroduce it into society, then that is the point at which the economic machine grinds to a halt. It's a cycle, and as the saying imparts, the economy needs a consistent cycling of money in order to sustain itself. Businesses do it everyday, yet those who favor business spending associate that type of revenue as a benefit to profit only. Those same members of society, though view public spending in a negative manner, maybe because it is not providing instant gratification to their profit margins, and associate it right away with wasteful spending.

So, let's take it to the extreme. Let's provide a scenario that meets the far-right's wet dream of tax policies, which would be minimal to if any taxes at all. What kind of society would that be? Let us compare the benefits of a nation with a structured tax system to that of an under-developed nation, that may have a minimal tax policy system in place. Consider, the United States, or any other fully developed nation in Western Europe, and you would find that these are nations that carry a fairly well structured taxation system. Along with this well structured taxation system, comes a strong military presence, one that can move about the globe with ease and provide ample security for its citizens, due to a consistent revenue stream. These well funded governments can go into other countries and invest in their natural resources and provide a pathway for the private industries to business and make profits.

Then there are the amenities of well paved roads, running water, a consistent flow of electricity to each and every home. Look to nations that uphold the status of global tax havens, like Barbados (a 74,000 land force with a coast guard), Aruba (no military force at all), Belize (a force of 79,000 soldiers)! Most of these nations, lack a significant military force, and if they were to be invaded by a foreign force, they could not independently defend themselves. Set the military aside, and weigh in on transportation infrastructure! The U.S. (with a maximum tax rate on individuals of 35%) has well over 15,000 airports, and it is ranked number one in total roadways and railways. Compare that to Russia (with a 13% individual tax rate), with just over 1200 airports, ranked number two in railways, and number eight in roadway infrastructure. It is apparent that societies with higher taxes reap the benefits of return, that comes in the form of a stable and well structured state.

Granted some of these services are supplied by some private companies, but without subsidies and regulation by government, all of which costs money to build and regulate, not only would these utilities be scantily available, they would not be sustainable (Without Taxes, America Would be a Third World Country). I would challenge any individual, who believes in a limited tax system, to provide an example of a state that legally unbinds its citizens from taxation in any form, and show that state could provide the stability and security that matches that of nations that participate in a sensible tax system. An under-developed country without a feasible tax structure will never climb out of non-developed status. According to experts at the International Monetary Fund, development "will often generate additional needs for tax revenue to finance a rise in public spending". This public spending is necessary because it provides all the necessary mechanisms to create effective infrastructure, and without out it, the country stalls in the process of developing (Tax Policy for Developing Countries).

Speaking of developed nations, let's shift the focus to the comparison of tax structures in European states to that of the U.S. Most would argue that European taxes are way to high, and that argument lends itself to the entitlement of U.S. taxpayers, who pay little taxes in comparison to European social democracies, but on the same token receive less services from public sector, and that service is lacking in quality as well. Americans are paying more, simply because they aren't getting a significant return, and psychologically that angers taxpayers, and lends them to believe that government is taking advantage of them (a.k.a. big, bad, and overburdening goverment). If U.S. taxation is placed within the model of private investment, one would see that it is a bad investment, because even though taxes are lower in comparison to other developed nations in Europe, the return of services is lacking quality, efficiency, effectiveness, security, and stability. Why would anyone want to continue the punishment of investing badly? On the other hand, investors would pay more for a share if they felt that its value would have a good chance of increasing over time, and if value is to increase, then that would lead us to believe that more money is being placed into that same investment. Contrary to current investment practices, the taxpayer effectively needs to understand that you cannot get something for nothing, and that a higher rate of taxation doesn't necessarily mean a deflation in the quality of life. The U.S. has "the lowest tax rates among rich countries, the least generous public services" (1). This makes so much sense, because if the taxpayer consensus is to pay less, then obviously the return on services would match the level of financial provision.

An interesting view is if you compare not the rate of taxes, but the effects of government spending and the movement toward privatization and deregulation. The decrease in taxes and the increase in private infrastructure, seem to have an evident detrimental effect on lack of progress in worldwide economies. Take for instance the huge amount of government spending in the U.S. in the 1960's, a time when big programs like Medicare, the space program, military research, and increased regulation were strongly sustaining the economy, and were enhancing the economy on the taxpayer's dime. It was a time of good investment from and for the public. The U.S. was taking on the spending characteristics of the European model (1). It was during the 1980's, with the introduction of Reaganomics (i.e. trickle-down economic theory), and the drive for more market deregulation and the privatization of nationalized companies, where it seems that the descent into economic instability began, where economic bubbles formed and burst in an almost schizophrenic manner. Privatization of once public infrastructure gave conservative leaders a good excuse to justify lowering taxes. It makes a lot of sense, if a company is no longer public, why should the taxpayers have to pay for it? Though this restructuring of the economy sounds good, it fails to work, and fails to guarantee that a stable and effective infrastructure would be provided to the society that, even if it pays a lower rate, has to pay taxes. Look at private energy firms like Enron, or many other privately run utility firms, who place profit over social stability, that took over national energy responsibilities, and yet failed to provide a stable source of electricity for California (Enron linked to California Blackouts); (U.S. electricity blackouts skyrocketing), or created the scenario for regional blackouts in the Northeast. If these utilities were provided by government, the only entity to protect the interests of society and not profit, could such a threat to the stability of society have been prevented?

Where's the evidence, well look back to the 1960's or further back to post-war America, when the economy was growing intrinsically, based on production and value. The nation at that time was providing economic security. Sure, the business economy kept growing through the new millennium, but it was false value, and was only producing profitable returns for those investing in compartmentalized returns, failing to reach the greater element of society. There is no guarantee that private investment will benefit the growth of society. It is ridiculous to think that a privatized nation could promise the same level of efficiency, effectiveness, stability, and security that a nationalized infrastructure could carry. Self interest and the decrease or elimination of taxes fails to benefit either society, the taxpayer or the business realm.

So, for those who doubt government spending, and label it as wasteful, and that it fails to benefit the country as a whole, well I would ask those people to provide me with some evidence in current economic affairs, where private industry has made up for the loss of publicly funded infrastructure. Currently, while most states are preparing to make way for even more cuts to public spending, not a single element of the private industry has come forth to fill that gap. On the same token, they wouldn't be able to because they lack the investors from both sides: the taxpayer funded states who are slashing budgets for spending, and the lack of public investors. Newly re-elected California governor, Gerald Brown, has taken on the same economic character as his predecessor Schwarzenegger, who made extreme cuts to government funded services, and Brown plans to continue this practice by pursuing state worker's pensions. So that's one effort to cut spending. Wisconsin governor, Scott Walker, would provide "only the essential services our citizens need and taxpayers can afford" (2). Illinois, having recently struggled to pay its bills, due to the recent economic fallout, has $8 billion in unpaid social services bills, on top of it under-financed pension plan system. This is number two on our list, and proves that there is still no proof of excessive spending, and in fact its a lack of capacity to spend (2). Due to a significant lack of effective tax rates, it is outrageous to think that any government agencies have the ability to over-spend. It is simply a matter of reality, that there is not enough money coming in to spend anything at all, and that "money coming in" is better known as taxes. It's all well and good to want to cut spending, but it is a futile measure to rant about cutting spending at a time when governments lack the capacity to do so.

With our current rate of taxation, from where is most of this wasteful spending derived? There was plenty of money in the government to be had by the private banks and investment firms, when they failed to provide adequate returns on the false-value commodities they packaged. That wasn't spending, that was considered a stabilization of secure economy, because the private sector was incapable of providing sustainability for society, but at the same time not holding itself liable for doing so. Is it a fair premise that the only heroes of society are the same which failed to rescue anyone but themselves, while the taxpayers lose their right to public services? It was not government that wasted money on the wealthy private industry, but instead the private industry that threatened society's stability, due to its irresponsible free market behaviors. If we are to remove taxes and government, the people that make up the nation will lack economic security, and will only a threat to their livelihood.

1. "From sea to shining sea." Economist 369.8349 (2003): 6-8. Academic Search Complete. EBSCO. Web. 17 Jan. 2011.
2. "Budget Worries Push Governors to Same Mind-Set". Davey, Monica. The New York Times. January 17, 2011. <http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/17/us/17governors.html>

Freedom: Cannot Help Your Self

The pseudo-biblical quote, that is on constant repeat in my head, throughout most of my current days, is "God helps those, who help themselves". This verse apparently is not in the bible, having gone through my entire life until now, thinking that it was a verse brought down by the authors of the bible, and in fact it has been noted by some Christian theologians, that it is an antithesis to actual passages in the Christian bible that go against the premise of the aforementioned quote. The bible's associative verse actually says, "For You have been a defense for the helpless, a defense for the needy in his distress, a refuge from the storm, a shade from the heat..." It's a mere political cliche!

So I set that quote aside for a few minutes and got down to reading a new book I picked up at the library yesterday, titled, Voices of a People's History of the United States by the historian Howard Zinn, and there was a passage in it, that rekindled my thought on the intent of this quote, that actually was coined by Benjamin Franklin, who cited it from Algernon Sydney's article, Discourses Concerning Government. In the history text by Zinn, there is a letter written by a group of slaves in 1777, who write a letter addressed to the Massachusetts House of Representatives, asking that they be allowed to serve the same purpose in life that all other free men serve in a free land as that of America. Consider for a moment that this petition for freedom in a country that was not even a year into its independence, a nation of men free to establish their own laws, and subsist of their own free lands, and were almost literally helping themselves gain true freedom! There's a subtle hint of irony though. How were free men helping themselves while, at the same time, helping themselves to the enslavement of other men, in order to gain an excessive amount of freedom that could never exist. The wealthy colonists were not helping themselves, but were instead very dependent on the withdrawal of another man's freedoms, in order to fulfill their sense of freedom. It seems as if God was helping those that depended on the help of others, and the former colonists were helping themselves to freedom at the cost of another man's ability to help himself. The strongest sentiment of the letter written by the slaves, states, that "they have, in common with all other Men, a natural and unalienable right to that freedom, which ... they have never forfeited." In other words, they never willingly gave up the ability to help themselves, until they were enslaved and forced to help those that couldn't help themselves, and those that couldn't help themselves were the ones who had gained the most from the institution of slavery. Even the colonists were indentured slaves to Great Britain at one point, so the men who had gained freedom from an oppressive state, should have been the first people to be able to relate unequivocally to the slave's predicament. In the letter, the slaves were astonished, that "[the granting of freedom] has never been considered" by a new nation that had torn itself from the long reach of England, which was helping itself at the cost of the colonists.

More times than none, you can always perceive religious proverbs as a sensible tool to be applied to making sure that one's life is being carried out ethically and morally, but it is extremely important to remember that just because it is a generally accepted belief, does not necessarily make it true or correct. How many times in our lives can we actually look back on the good outcomes and say that that particular situation was overcome because I depended solely on my own resources or abilities. Overall, we all sooner or later have any instance in our lives connected to someone else's contribution. Not to say that it should come in the form of oppression or authoritative control, but people can find themselves in a beneficial situation that was provided by others in a mutual sense.

The point here, is not a religious proclamation, but rather a proper understanding of what it means to help one's self, and how that is ethically degrading to the welfare of all people, whether it be the individual or society as a whole. Today we are often presented a lot of language from politicians who view the world in one of two ways - social or independent. From this we are lead to question whether we benefit as a society or more so from our participation in that society as individuals. In contrast to one another these two schools of political thought bring about this sense of struggle between which approach caters to the concept of being more free. Conventional wisdom among more conservatives is that the individual fails to be free, or is restrained by social participation, because the individual is committed to providing efforts of responsibility to the group, therefore sacrificing his or her individual needs. In contrast to that is the societal thinker, who identifies with freedom for the individual through the mechanism of a group's responses, social responsibility.

Are we to sustain our lives together, but apart? That is the representation of strict individualism, where the individual performs his or her life's tasks expressly for the purpose of self-fulfillment. Satisfying one's own happiness is not necessarily immoral in the context of society, but it is a very limiting or constrained premise. When one considers the individual versus society, and the implementation of laws, it is clearly evident that the individual depends on society, and is strongly connected to society via the rule of law. Granted, "legal entitlements may come into conflict as well as it occurs for individual interests", but the mere fact that there is a conflict between the individual interest and society's laws, the two could never separate from one another, and the existence of a society is necessary for sustaining the individual's interests. In this scenario, the individual is more of a threat to society, then society is a threat to the individual. If any one interest outweighs the interests of others, this is dictatorial, and fails to benefit the interest of all of the individuals within a society, and therefore the society fails to sustain itself. In either case, there exists a certain level of legal entitlement, and if that entitlement tends to favor the individual over society, and all other individuals are known to exist "under a disability" ("a party is unable to or exempted from extinguishing one or more of the existing legal relations of the counterparty."). A counter-party, or an individual grasping full power of the law, alters the other individuals' abilities to utilize the law. (1)

Division of society is a clear example of how individual power deteriorates the power of all the individuals within that society. The more times an individual can portray to the society that factions of society are wrong or bad for the good of the individual, that act of isolating power has proven throughout political history that interests of the individual work against all persons. There are many ways by which individualistic power forces can split societal powers, especially when it pertains to labor forces. There are two examples that come to mind: one, is the gender differences in the job market, and how one gender will criticize the other for creating an unfair, non-competitive job market; the second is free trade workers, in that there is a struggle between domestic workers versus foreign ones.

New Deal 2.0, featured an article, titled The Other Side of the ‘Mancession’: Women Left Behind, and it pointed out that new economic stimulus legislation directed at infrastructure in the U.S. is favoring men more than women, because infrastructure jobs only involve construction and engineering - two career areas the author assumes are only male dominated. The question that comes to mind is, was legislation meant to put more investment into the economy biased towards men, and meant to ignore the female staffed industries of health care or education? This seems to be an attempt at division of society, pitching male individuals versus female, and using the platform of job shortages and unemployment as a mechanism to challenge societal needs. No economic policy at a national level is meant to benefit a faction or an individual. It would defeat the purpose of serving as an economic policy, and therefore would never work.

The free trade movement is the most astounding attempt by one party to use an unrecognized structure of international law and culture to manipulate and take advantage of global citizens without global citizenship. Free trade offers all kinds of power through law, which entitles global businesses to make movement of trade goods across borders easier and cheaper. Under U.S. law, the business is recognized as an individual, and therefore in conjunction with free trade agreements, the U.S. business apparently serves its own interests over those of the global society, and in turn the global society's individuals are not permitted by domestic laws to participate in the same international manner.

These types of individualistic strategies benefit the proxy individual, in that a third party pitches two other factions of society against one another, as a way to deteriorate the power of society, and swing the power toward the third party's own interests. This dependence on necessitating an imbalance among members of a society proves that even the external individual's power highly depends on the unsettled society, for advantage. This is the "unresolved conflict of interests" and it prevents individuals from pursuing happiness, where it would cause all kinds of strife for individuals, making life "solitary, poor nasty, brutish and short." If the individuals cannot gain happiness for themselves, then society as a whole will never provide a common happiness through individual freedoms. (2)

The Tea Party's most recent attacks on government closely resemble these individualistic strategies to not just undermine a social authority like the government, but to remove all societal elements that weigh too heavily upon individual liberties, or legal powers belonging to a society of individuals. Those legal powers are what the U.S. Constitution represent, so this begs the questions: to what purpose does the constitution serve (individual or societal liberties), and does the constitution favor a social government at the cost of individual freedom? The perspective offered to us by Tea Party members is misleading, in that the constitution was constructed for the purpose of preserving the liberties of the people. The party platform, though, fails to specify how the constitution is continually amended, and that is by what is known as a "new Constitutionalism". The new Constitutionalism is a an approach to writing national laws, that allows for "multiple authority roles", not just the power of law granted to the individual, but all elements of a nation, whether that be a person, a gender, a business, or a social faction. Therefore the U.S. Constitution was never meant to only grant entitled law to the individual, instead, it goes "against the narrowly legal conceptions, against the approaches that see constitutionalism as a matter of institutional and intellectual history" and also "against the view of constitutionalism as aiming only to protect individual liberties by limiting the scope and power of government". (3)

The U.S. Constitution does not just grant the entitlement of law to the individual, and if it was intended to do that, then giving free reign of law to each individual would not be enforced, because the society would not have a government by which to do so. Each person would have their laws, and would force each other to do things of self interest, by which none of the others would abide. True anarchy. It is meant to provide law favoring many people, at various levels, and that can be interpreted as society. By having this multi-functioning law making concept at hand, it serves the individual as well as the society, but more so the society for the sake of providing liberty on a social scale.

Helping one's self is a human necessity. It tells us that we need to start at some point to recognize our liberties and rights, and make sure that there are boundaries as to how far other individuals can go, before infringing upon another person's. The law needs to be written with all members of an immediate society in mind, and not just those who have an individual stake, so that helping others is just like helping yourself in a more indirect manner.

References:


1) Vatiero, M. (April 2010). From W. N. Hohfeld to J. R. Commons, and beyond? A 'Law and Economics' Enquiry on Jural Relations. The American Journal of Economics and Sociology, 69, 2. p.840(27). Retrieved September 24, 2010, from Business Economics and Theory via Gale: http://find.galegroup.com/gtx/start.do?prodId=PPBE&userGroupName=orange_main


2) Faulhaber, R W (Sept 2005). The rise and fall of 'self-interest'. Review of Social Economy, 63, 3. p.405(19). Retrieved September 24, 2010, from Business Economics and Theory via Gale: http://find.galegroup.com/gtx/start.do?prodId=PPBE&userGroupName=orange_main


3) Morgan, D F (Sept-Oct 1998). A New Constitutionalism: Designing Political Institutions for a Good Society. Public Administration Review, 58, n5. p.453(11). Retrieved September 24, 2010, from Business Economics and Theory via Gale:
http://find.galegroup.com/gtx/start.do?prodId=PPBE&userGroupName=orange_main

The Struggle against Corporate Irresponsibility Continues

It is very difficult for the average person to understand why an industry that draws in hundreds of millions of dollars in profit a year cannot solve a problem caused by their own disaster. When we consider why companies on Wall Street that bilked the financial system and taxpayers, or we think over the reasons behind the cause of an oil rig to explode in the Gulf of Mexico, often times we overlook one important factor. This factor is plain and simple irresponsibility. The political engine of the United States has fully supported the enabling of these industries to keep themselves in check, a policy concept that would motivate selfish behavior in any situation.

A system that allows its individuals to be responsible for its own actions is anarchic in nature, and leads to lawlessness. Can we continue to expect these companies to be even in the slightest virtuous, and trust that safety, progress, production, and responsibility would outweigh the decision to make a profit at any cost? Being responsible for your own actions requires objective oversight. If there is no regulation or oversight, the individual is aware that there is no consequence for their actions, and therefore the individual will seek out the ways by which he or she can gather benefits for them self at the cost of all others. If we are to live out our lives in this manner, and find that it is more than acceptable, then we are living no more advanced than common animals. We are willing to degrade, destroy and pillage the potential for liberty, progress, and the well-being of human-beings for the sake of something so temporal as money. This is not to say that prosperity is bad, but excessive prosperity, better known as greed, is the true threat to all others that lay in its wake.

The British Petroleum oil spill is that wake. It is an absurdity that should be punished harshly, but instead it is looked as if it was as natural of a disaster as Hurricane Katrina, even though it was a man-made catastrophe, and could have been avoided. We fail to recognize how irresponsible these white-collar criminals have been, and we condemn them with only as much punishment as a parent slaps the hand of a child stealing cookies from a cookie jar.

While we continue to wait, still 30 days after the sinking of the BP's oil rig, we continue to hear about how BP failed repetitively to patch up it's leaking underwater pipeline. Even after several attempts by the general public to propose solutions for fixing the well break, BP has sat on 700 ideas for the fix, derived from nearly 10,000 proposals, and still has not come to a final decision on how best to deal with this catastrophe. So we wait, and while we wait, the Gulf of Mexico fills up with oil, and toxic chemical dispersant, and we wait, while a multi-billion dollar company waters-down an outright emergency.

So, some might say that this is a big problem, and big problems need time to figure out, so as to get it right without making the problem worse. Well, not to state the obvious, but it has been getting worse day after day for 30 days and counting. It shouldn't even be asked why it's taking so long to get this busted well fixed, instead why does it take so long to fix something that took almost 2 weeks to initially engineer.

At the end of August in 2009, BP completed the drilling of the Tiber well, and on September 2, 2009, BP went ahead announced the successful discovery of oil, in an industry strategy to boost stock value. Two weeks to complete a well drilling, and get a rig in place to begin making big money off of placing this new found source into barrels as fast as possible. When it comes to making a profit time is of the essence, but when BP and it's partners took shortcuts to make more profit by avoiding safety standards, and was irresponsible for the sake of money, it has all of the time in the world to lose money on fixing a disaster they created.

When you consider as well this strong emphasis on free markets by the political right, emphatically pressing its influence upon the masses to rid governmental regulation, not only do they make a broad stroke with this ideology, but it fails to address how private industry will be compelled to carry out business in a moral fashion. Consider the fact that BP has failed to fix the problem in the Gulf of Mexico, and then the right-wing insists on blasting the government for not taking over the clean up efforts, for which BP promised to be fully responsible.

Why is it that this political faction hold us to a double standard? The one side of the political state that demands less and less government influence and regulation among private industry, is the same institution that demands that government be more responsible for private industry mishaps. If they want businesses to remain independent, then let them! Do not exonerate government, and simultaneously point the finger at it for not fixing a problem caused by a private company!

##

The Forgotten Class

An interesting interview just given by Bill Moyers on PBS discusses what both presidential candidates fail to recognize: the lower class. McCain hasn't even acknowledged any classes in his campaign, and Obama is sternly focused on the middle class. But what about the lower class, the poor, those who are struggling to provide adequate food, housing, and a decent standard of living for themselves, because gas prices are so high, food prices are rising, credit is untouchable, and housing and rent costs are through the roof? It is blatantly obvious that no political member in the United States knows how, or should it be said wants to recognize a huge amount of people who have no influence on America's rudderless leadership, other than the fact that they are just ever-present.

How does such a lower level economic mass begin to effectively be a player in the political realm of government? In the past, revolutions seemed to have been the only means for poorer classes to force recognition upon their leaders, or in fact turn over the ruling institution, and grab hold with their own structures of economy and rule. The one thing the United States is missing since its inception is a revolution of sorts, one in which has completely turned the governing structure on its heels, and replacing it with what is necessary to make the populace feel secure in the way they can effectively, and efficiently get through life under a governance.

The United States, is in a sense revolution-proof. A large part of the lower class in America is partially informed, but not what most would call educated about how they're governed. Entertainment has replaced informative news at this level, because it is not only simpler to digest, but also quicker, and much more pleasing to absorb. How many people, lower class or not, actually spend the time to watch a Congressional hearing on C-Span, or actually read longer articles in a newspaper about current affairs (other than sports and entertainment related articles), or the economy? For one, they are complicated to understand, and often time overwhelm the reader with verbiage that is written by intellectually elite journalists, who are reluctant to inform at the level of a high school graduate. Granted there are some really great Internet resources available that scale this information down, but they still don't get the message across, because it's simply not interesting. Look at shows like John Stewart and the Colbert report, that do in fact give the average intellect an informed perspective of politics, government, or economy, but yet because it is satire, it leaves out all the questions, or the arguments of political perspective. So, for the most part, information in this country, and the ability to make an informed decision about your quality of life is basically removed via pulp entertainment.

Even the news in some cases is pulp entertainment. All major networks pretty much cover the same issues with slightly varying points of view. So the headlines are packaged into quick and easy relatable stories, without substance. Take for instance, the economic bail out of $700 billion being granted to financial corporations. Yes, it gets the people worked up, but because there is no points or counterpoints provided by the news networks, people won't despise or protest what they are hearing about, because they don't fully understand the reasoning behind it. They simply cannot understand, once they revolted, the arguments for changing it. In the same interview, as mentioned above, Moyers asks, Michael Zweig, that you can have a journalist relate this news to people, and have a professional economist advocate for them, why is there no unions, or other representative institution in place to provide a movement for these people to gather muscle to get the government to listen to them, and Zweig's response is, that they do in fact exist, but the problem is they are, if not weak, simply not active, and if after the presidential election they don't come to muscling up, there is a need for organization to "come from below". He even has tried to go to these organizations and have them gather their members, in an effort to educate them on how to get a better footing in the current economic struggle. Informing the masses simply isn't happening in the news, and these folks are not getting the information they need from anywhere else.

Confusion is Abuse in the U.S. Economy.

One Guy Who Has Seen It All Doesn't Like What He Sees Now - WSJ.com

(PDF)

In recent past articles, I've discussed deregulation, by our U.S. government, as the primary factor in the economic mess we're in now. In the article linked above, Mr. Bernstein has stated that the major contributing factor of our economic state, and the potential for this to turn into the next best thing to the 1939 Depression, is borrowing, and the investment rabbles that went unregulated by our government. In my opinion Bernstein is getting at a point in this article, that investors and the lending industry knew that if they could race to some undetermined finish line (the precursor to a market crash) with fattened funds, then they could sell off and come off the bull with a lot of money. This seems to be a fixed market in all senses. Take the risks up front, sell off the risk, and then walk away without worry of being anchored down by worthless stock.
Basically, the government was not watching the markets. The economy to me, represents pirates pillaging and looting large cruise ships of consumers. Bernstein even goes onto note that houses cost so much, that you can't buy anything in real estate with cash anymore. It all gets filtered down through the lending market, and this is where consumers represent the looted cruise ship, because a bulk of the real estate market are homeowners or buyers, who don't borrow, they are held under the pirate saber of loans. There are no other options. There's no protection for consumers in this current market, and this holds true in other realms of the market too, not just real estate. The Fed, now, is taking a top down approach, and funneling more money into a system that has way too much of it, and seeking more and more. Instead they should, what Bernstein states, "underpin the consumer". Start from the bottom, and in conjunction to this start sheparding big business lenders into fair loan practices.

Financial Wimps or Scared of the Bull?

When it comes to facing up to financial big boys, I can't decide if they're just plain wussies, or they can't run with the bull market. Seems to me a little of both, which has gotten the U.S. investors into our current market mess in the first place. I'd say that lack of knowledgeable and skilled financial staffers is the one reason, along with political bureaucracy, and these staffers having enough guts to relinguish there overweight wallets, and standing up to these companies who are relentlessly ripping off the American people.
The treasury secretary, yesterday, spoke on regulation yesterday, stating to the New York Times, "I am not suggesting that more regulation is the answer, or even that more effective regulation can prevent the periods of financial market stress that seem to occur every 5 to 10 years". Well Mr. Secretary, here's some news for you! First off, it's not financial stress, it's called a crisis, and it just doesn't appear every 5 to 10 years, but has been substantial throughout the past decade. It started with deregulation by our good ol' faithful, Alan Greenspan, who "engineered the wholesale deregulation of the U.S. banking and financial system" (1). If the Fed is going to take such a soft stance on regulation, then you better be aware of your past actions, before conning the American public into giving them security.
Now, you have the U.S. Housing Secretary resigning, to dedicate more time to his family?! Wrong answer, buddy. Now he's under investigation by the FBI, due to a possible extortion of Philadephia's housing authority, forcing it to turn over property to a politically connected developer (2). What is going on here?!? We've come to find ourselves and our government running from the problems it's created, and instead of rushing to patch up the holes, our leaders have decided to do little if not nothing to patch up the damage, and steer this economic ship in its true direction. If their explanation for all of this is that they were wrong and are cleaning house, then I hope for once in my lifetime, our leaders can find competent, and apt staff members, that can do the without being hindered by politics and money.

1. Financial Market Deregulation Under Greenspan: Did It Go Too Far?
2. Top U.S. Housing Official Resigns
3. Treasury Rolls Out Overhaul of Financial Regulators