But given what’s going on around the rest of the country, “Meltdown” seemed the more appropriate choice.

And while this post does mention fossil fuels, you’ll be happy to know the “meltdown” has nothing to do with global warming and the disappearance of snow and ice at Earth’s poles.

On the other hand, maybe you won’t be.  When it comes down to it, there’s no reason to be happy about Unspun™ coming out of hibernation.

After all, Unspun™ was originally created by me because I got tired of all the “spin” that was coming from the then-relatively nascent abandonment of old-style news reporting.  Faux News started it (of course, as one would expect of typically-stupid reactionary right-wing Americans, they pronounce and even misspell “Faux” as “Fox”), but these days, it’s the paradigmatic news form.

For me, I became an attorney, thinking I might help improve the world — ha! have I learned a lot over the last few years! — and Unspun™, I hoped, would be less necessary after we voted out the party and its Decider who made the Orwellian warp necessary in the first place.  I turned my attention to legal blogging and decided to leave the political and social commentary to others.

A man’s gotta make a living. Or at least try to.

Alas, I was seduced by a new Decider, an even better Orwellian by the name of Barack Obama.  A man not at all afraid to take responsibility and promise change before actually doing neither.  “Yes, we can!  ¡Sí, se puede!,” he told us, and the mere fact that America was about to elect an African-American as President caused me to believe, if only for a moment, that he was right.

The fact that “we can” was being translated as “se puede” in Spanish should have been my first clue that something was not right.

To simplify things only a bit, “yes, we can” is not a literal translation of sí, se puede. In fact, there is no good literal (that is, word for word) translation of the phrase. Sí clearly means “yes,” but se puede is problematic. “It can” comes close to its literal meaning but leaves out the vague sense of emphasis and/or completion that se provides.

But I’m not writing this article as a Spanish lesson.  Maybe I can do that another day.

I’m writing to say, primarily, that Unspun™ is coming out of retirement and to explain why.

The world is, as I alluded to above, in the midst of a meltdown.  And many of the responses to the difficulties spewing into the world — whether below or above the waterline — are quite frankly not only ridiculous, but more harmful than the problems which inspire them.

Sooner or later, people are going to start to realize that no small part of the cause is the irrefrangible deficiency inherent in Democracy.  Mob rule has never been a successful method for governance.  That’s why the Founders of the United States feared it so much.  What we’re seeing going on around us is to a large degree the result of America’s — and the world’s — increasingly stupid embrace of Democracy.

California, so near as I can tell from personal knowledge, has embraced Democracy the longest and most seriously of all the States.  For that reason — or so it appears to me — California is suffering the more serious effects of meltdown.  (Not counting what BP is now doing to the coastal states; the real impact of that will not really be fully felt for some years, and it, too, will eventually be felt right here in California.)

The thing that scares me is that when people begin to understand the drawbacks of unbridled Democracy, they embrace Deciders who are firm in their convictions and whose simplistic promises give them comfort.  We don’t want to hear how bad things are.  We don’t want to hear that we cannot afford unlimited government “bailouts” that give corporations and individuals everything they could ever want.  What we want to hear is “yes, we can!”

Down that road lies Fascism. The pure forms of Democracy have ultimately led to Tyranny since at least 594 B.C.E.

Perhaps that’s why James Madison said,

Democracy is the most vile form of government… democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention: have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property: and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths.

And it’s already happening.  In California, Steve Poizner, Carly Fiorina and, to arguably a lesser extent, Meg Whitman, are trying to out Mussolini one another in the race to govern on behalf of Californians.  (Poizner and Whitman are running for Governor; Fiorina is vying to represent California in the U.S. Senate.)

All these people are busily clouding the issues.  Fiorina, to give just one example, says,

I am an optimist and believe that people will make the right choices about their lives and their leaders if they know the issues and are equipped with the facts. So let’s talk about the issues…

On that same webpage, she is quoted as saying,

Tax, spend and borrow is not a governing philosophy, it’s a cycle of dependency.

Like it or not, though, taxing, spending and even borrowing are neither a governing philosophy nor a cycle of dependency.  Wording it this way is just political craptrap in the best Orwellian tradition.  Taxing and spending is a sad necessity; borrowing is, admittedly, less so.  (I would have no problem with a constitutional amendment that forbade governments from borrowing money.)  Without taxing, the government has no money to spend; without money to spend, the government cannot pay employees who deliver vital services, including building roads and bridges to somewhere, as well as maintaining fire and police departments.  “Carly” appeals to the lowest common denominator by arguing that these things lead to “dependency” instead of pointing out that most of these services are enabling.  If you have trouble imagining what it takes to move around California without roads and bridges, for example, just go to the library — another enabling service funded by taxes — and pick up a history book.

Appealing to the worst in human nature is also the reason these candidates are hammering away at the “illegal immigrant problem.”  It’s also perhaps the scariest of their tactics.  This appeal to all that is ugly amongst us is the sort of thing that allows for the restriction of civil rights that is prerequisite to a fascist government.  To the extent that we may actually have a “problem” with undocumented people entering the United States without proper authorization, saying that Arizona got it right isn’t the solution.

For all the above reasons — and more — Unspun™ is coming out of retirement.  I’ll still be blogging about law and disorder on my two law blogs, but Unspun™ is the more appropriate avenue for political and social commentary.  Since I can no longer remain silent on those issues, since I can no longer maintain a focus entirely on law (which, partly for the above reasons, is going through its own Meltdown), Unspun™ will live again.

Y porque yo puedo.

Why stunned?

Had they not read the reports circulating, at least as far back as 2002, about how George W. Bush did business?  When he was the Director of Caterair, “Caterair’s problems went from bad to worse to insoluble.” As things started to go south, he abandoned ship, but not before trying to “save” the company by extensive borrowing, essentially creating and selling junk bonds.  Did they not know that most of the businesses Bush had a hand in operating failed, with George W. Bush being one of the few people to make money off these failed operations?  Weren’t they aware of how George W. Bush, after running Arbusto and Spectrum 7 into the ground, sold shares in another company he helped run for $850,000, just before Harken announced a $23 million dollar loss?  (Is it a coincidence that, as mentioned in the Spectrum 7 story link, George Bush was in business with Enron and Ken Lay which later famously went into its own financial meltdown?)

Well, at least we’ll soon be rid of the Worst President in History.

Or will we? McCain apparently bought Greenspan’s book because “the issue of economics is not something I’ve understood as well as I should.”  Sarah Palin herself looks capable of out-bushing and out-cheneying anyone.

Obama says “the American people aren’t stupid.” I can only hope he’s right.

And new jobs? Well, last month, there were almost half as many jobs as economists were expecting! So that’s cool, nu? Obviously, this President is doing a great job, what with the war, the growing fear (f*ck respect, that’s for weenies!) that the rest of the world has for us, the demolition of our civil rights and now we’ve gotten almost half the jobs! We’re on a roll, folks!

I say we ride this one all the way back to serfdom!

This really should be a non-issue.

After all, the American people have proven that what the current administration does is actually irrelevant. I’m not saying this (seriously) to be sarcastic, but I’m not sure if the reason for this is because we so like having a Republican in office or if we just hate having a Democrat in office or if we like sending our children to die like heros in the dessert or if it’s because Bush claims to be a Christian or what. There’s something going on in the minds of most Americans that is simply unexplainable.

Over the last four years, I’ve seen prices going up for gasoline as if we were dumping gold into our gas tanks. Housing prices have risen dramatically (although this isn’t always bad, if you’re a seller). Civil Rights have become almost non-existent. Our government — and no one else — is responsible for this.

We accept these things because we refuse to believe our government — particularly one with a President who so frequently invokes the name of G-d — would not have our best interests at heart. And as to the restrictions on our freedoms, well, after all, most of us “have nothing to hide.”

Yet Americans don’t seem to understand that governments aren’t always benevolent. For more than 200 years, ours has been held in check by the law. For that reason, we’ve gotten used to the idea that (at least our) governments can’t really oppress — well, they can’t visibly oppress most white people, anyway. Essentially, we’ve been able to live free. The thing is that we’ve been able to live that way because our nation’s Founders placed limitations upon our government. Without these limitations, they believed, governments naturally turn despotic.

Under Parliamentary government, there is little or no restraint that is exercised by a Constitution upon the passions of the moment that may seize a nation. In what is perceived as an emergency, individual rights can be overridden. The entire government, therefore, is less stable over time and subject to being changed by something that might in retrospect seem whimsical.

The saving grace for the United States was that the Founders first wrote a Constitution to keep the power of government in check and then deliberately made it difficult to revise that Constitution. So opposed were the Founders to the concentration of power that a federal government would bring that the United States almost was not created at all!

Joseph Ellis points out in Founding Brothers: ?no one had ever established a republican government on the scale of the United States, and the overwhelming judgment of most respected authorities was that it could not be done.? The revolution had ?stigmatized all concentrated political power . . . and any energetic expression of governmental authority as an alien force that a responsible citizens ought to repudiate.? After all, Americans had just fought a long and difficult war to rid themselves of a ?despotic? king and ?tyrannical? parliament so they could be free to pursue life, liberty and happiness, unfettered by trade restrictions, taxes, and other burdens.

And so, for the majority of our history, our government has been limited in its powers. The major limitations have included requirements that prevent the government from conducting its business in secrecy. In addition to the Constitution, the Freedom of Information Act is one such limitation.

Freedom of information is a phrase bandied about almost daily by press and public alike. And with the perennial stress on both constitutional and inherent rights of American citizens, with the added assertion of government subservience to the individual, it was necessary that government information would be available to the public. Issues of counter-rights, such as sensitivity of government information or private interests, clash. It was, therefore, attempted in 1966 to enact a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) which would effectively deal with requests for government records consistent with the idea that the people have the ?right to know? about them. Also, close in hand, the Privacy Act (PA) of 1974 covered government documents charting individuals.

Today, the Bush Administration has been hammering away at all such restrictions. They want the ability to operate in secret and they want the ability to maintain records on the majority of citizens.

That’s right, the majority of citizens, not just those the average American might agree “should be” watched.

This blog entry is not intended to be an in-depth examination of these issues. For more information on Total Information Awareness, “the closest thing to a true ‘Big Brother’ program that has ever been seriously contemplated in the United States,” you can check this web page. Technically, the Total Information Awareness program was killed by Congress amid concerns it would be used to spy on Americans. But the government views your privacy as anathema — which it is — to their ability to control. And Total Information Awareness lives on — but now with new names that help disguise its breadth.

Again, it isn’t (well, it wasn’t) my intent to go into much depth on these issues. One other thing to note, though, is that even where the law still forbids government from collecting extensive databases on citizens, it does not forbid them from using databases created by non-government entities, such as Cendant Corporation, which is (legally!) compiling huge databases on citizens. So far, these databases are “only” being used by other companies to “weed out” customers they don’t want. Insurance companies, for example, look at the buying habits of Americans (remember those discount cards you get from Von’s, Ralph’s and other grocery markets that track your name and purchases?) to eliminate those with “unhealthy” habits like “buying alcohol, cigarettes and red meat.” (And when Robert Rivera slipped and fell in a California grocery store and fractured his kneecap, he sued the store to pay the medical bills. In turn, the store threatened to use Mr. Rivera’s shopping history against him, specifically, that he made frequent purchases of alcohol and that he “was a lush with poor memory and coordination,” the Seattle Weekly reported.) These same databases are being used by government agencies like the IRS to track people who underreport income — looking at your purchases allows them to make judgments about whether you are reporting less than you earn.

Meanwhile, as the government increases its surveillance of ordinary citizens, our Vice-President fights valiantly to protect his right to keep us from finding out how much participation oil and energy companies had in the writing of the United States policy regarding energy.

The Bush administration has lost two rounds in federal court. If the Supreme Court makes it three, Cheney could have to reveal potentially embarrassing records just in time for the presidential election.

Although he’s lost repeatedly in the lower courts, the chances are that his run at the Supreme Court will be like, well, shooting ducks. Purely coincidentally, “The Times notes that pair [sic] arrived Jan. 5 on Gulfstream jets and were guests of Wallace Carline, the owner of Diamond Services Corp., an oil services company in Amelia, La.” (See “Scalia-Cheney Trip Raises Eyebrows,” CBSNews.com, January 17, 2003, emphasis mine. In fairness, of course, Scalia notes that “I do not think my impartiality could reasonably be questioned.” That’s his opinion, anyway; and any other opinion isn’t reasonable.)

The White House’s fear is that in the unlikely event Cheney loses in the Supreme Court, it could be embarrassed by the records which would end up being released just in time for the election. But the damage this administration is doing to our country and our willingness to sit still — like so many ducks — is what’s really embarrassing.

He quotes a New York Times story which notes,

Nearly 3.8 million families were hungry last year to the point that someone in the household skipped meals because the family could not afford them. That is 8.6 percent more families than in 2001, when 3.5 million were hungry, and a 13 percent increase from 2000.

The question he asks — and the facts he provides — should set you to thinking. The question I ask is “Will it?”

Seriously, if things are so good, why are they so bad? Why larger deficits? Why more homeless? Why more hungry people? Why less jobs? Why do you vote for all this?