Tuesday, September 30, 2008
The New Year
Today was Rosh Hashannah or the Jewish new year. For many Jews, it's still Rosh Hshannah, for others, not really, but the for everyone, today was the day and I did almost nothing to celebrate. I didn't take my kids to services because I figured they'd be too overwhelming. I didn't take myself to service for the same reason. But we did all sit down to dinner together. It wasn't an especially special dinner, but it was at the table, we lit candles and blessed wine and honey and apples. ("Just like Shabbat and Channukah!" my daughter said.) And then, for dessert, we had a birthday cake -- because some people believe the world was created on Rosh Hashannah and what better way to celebrate the new year than singing happy birthday to the whole world. So here's to a new year for the whole world. Above all, let it bring peace. Everywhere.
But What Does It Mean Mr. Brooks?
Today in the New York Timess David Brooks wrote this:
"What we need in this situation is authority. Not heavy-handed government regulation, but the steady and powerful hand of some public institutions that can guard against the corrupting influences of sloppy money and then prevent destructive contagions when the credit dries up."
Can someone please tell me what this means? Because to me "heavy-handed government regulation" actually means simply "regulation" which means legal limits set on banking which, if we still had, would have meant our economy would have unfolded quite differently over the last 20 years. I understand nothing about what's happening, but I'd guess that with at least some regulation, some sense of rules and the limits of lobbying to undo them, the free-wheeling sub-prime-debt swapping ponzi scheme that made billionaires and now will bring our economy to its knees might not have happened. (I really must read Free Lunch by David Cay Johnston.)
More to the point, what does "public institutions that can guard against corrupting influences" mean? Does it mean a Treasury department that's not subject to the judiciary? I think it might. I think by "public institutions" Brooks might mean people like treasury secretaries and Fed chiefs and SEC commissioners because without laws (AKA regulations) institutions are run by people, people who need people, people who are beholden to people, people who like other people and do things for them and after sitting around in a group and thinking with them.
I know Brooks is a conservative and so for him "regulation" is actually a four-letter word. I know that he might mean something something else by "public institutions" than what I've guessed, but it's not clear what it might be, at least to me.
I'm not saying laws themselves aren't eventually interpreted (and, let's face it, avoided) by people who need people, of course they are. But a society needs rules, rules that protect the weakest among us and limit the most self-serving and those who've forgotten that the public good is not the same as their bottom line. If there aren't laws on the books to structure those limits, people simply continue to come in and out of institutions of authority. Some will hold the corrupting influences of sloppy money at bay, others will slosh around in them. So which would you prefer? Legal structures or the potential for all that sloshing? I think we've seen what the latter gets us. How about after the dust has settled, we get some well-considered version of the former. Mr. Brooks might not like it, but everyone else might. At least I will.
"What we need in this situation is authority. Not heavy-handed government regulation, but the steady and powerful hand of some public institutions that can guard against the corrupting influences of sloppy money and then prevent destructive contagions when the credit dries up."
Can someone please tell me what this means? Because to me "heavy-handed government regulation" actually means simply "regulation" which means legal limits set on banking which, if we still had, would have meant our economy would have unfolded quite differently over the last 20 years. I understand nothing about what's happening, but I'd guess that with at least some regulation, some sense of rules and the limits of lobbying to undo them, the free-wheeling sub-prime-debt swapping ponzi scheme that made billionaires and now will bring our economy to its knees might not have happened. (I really must read Free Lunch by David Cay Johnston.)
More to the point, what does "public institutions that can guard against corrupting influences" mean? Does it mean a Treasury department that's not subject to the judiciary? I think it might. I think by "public institutions" Brooks might mean people like treasury secretaries and Fed chiefs and SEC commissioners because without laws (AKA regulations) institutions are run by people, people who need people, people who are beholden to people, people who like other people and do things for them and after sitting around in a group and thinking with them.
I know Brooks is a conservative and so for him "regulation" is actually a four-letter word. I know that he might mean something something else by "public institutions" than what I've guessed, but it's not clear what it might be, at least to me.
I'm not saying laws themselves aren't eventually interpreted (and, let's face it, avoided) by people who need people, of course they are. But a society needs rules, rules that protect the weakest among us and limit the most self-serving and those who've forgotten that the public good is not the same as their bottom line. If there aren't laws on the books to structure those limits, people simply continue to come in and out of institutions of authority. Some will hold the corrupting influences of sloppy money at bay, others will slosh around in them. So which would you prefer? Legal structures or the potential for all that sloshing? I think we've seen what the latter gets us. How about after the dust has settled, we get some well-considered version of the former. Mr. Brooks might not like it, but everyone else might. At least I will.
Monday, September 29, 2008
Me, Losing It: Exhibit A
There I was in the preschool holding, I mean cubby, room. Here comes another mom, she's from an English commonwealth nation and we were all complaining about kindergarten and the cost of it and she says, "That's just what I'm worried about if Obama wins, all our tax rates will go sky high." I thought my head would explode. I actually felt that familiar whirring in my ears. But did I excuse myself to go to the hallway and breathe into a paper bag? No. Why not? You ask. Because clearly I have learned NOTHING in the last 39 years and 11 months. And since I've learned NOTHING I say something incomprehensible about how it'll be worse if McCain wins because there will be no confidence in America anywhere else in the world. Another (midwestern) mom says something nice and reasonable about how the market's going down no matter who wins. Then the non-voting mom from the Commonwealth, who has assured us she's not a Republican, then announces something along the lines of how all the banks were going to leave New York if some Bush tax kicked in after a certain amount of time and all the jobs would go abroad to London or somewhere because it's so expensive to do business in New York. And there it was, on a platter: A second chance. I could have shown maturity, wisdom, restraint. I might have bit my tongue and smiled sweetly and said whatever. But did I? Oh no I didn't. Not only didn't I, but I swore. In the holding room with children under three swarming around.
Oh yeah, it was a great moment. A bright, shining moment.
Oh yeah, it was a great moment. A bright, shining moment.
Friday, September 26, 2008
Away for the Weekend
We're off to DC for the weekend to celebrate my fabulous Sister-in-Law's great big birthday. Which is to say I won't be blogging about the debate if it happens and if it does I might not even be able to watch because I'm so nervous about it. I'll bring my knitting, which will help. Some.
Thursday, September 25, 2008
Wishing
When my kids are tired, when I don't feel like fighting, when I know I can fight all I want and after a lot of crying I'm still going to give in, I let my kids go to sleep in my bed.
Some nights I can tell the fight won't be too bad and my daughter Helen, because she's always the one who wants mommy's bed, will settle down in her own bed so I say No. Other nights, nights like tonight, I know I should just throw in the cards. On those nights, after they're well and truly asleep, we transfer the kiddos back to their beds, a process Helen calls "wishing." In other words, she wakes up in the morning and announces, "I wished myself back into my own bed, Mommy!!"
Even though every time we let them sleep in our bed we're tempted to pull out the air mattress in honor of the profound and essential and fleeting cuteness of our kids curled up in our bed, we resist for fear of losing not only the battle but the actual war. And when one of us -- tonight it was me-- takes the kiddos back to bed, one of them invariably turns over onto a belly and pulls up her knees and pushed her tuches up into the air in order to assume what's known in yoga class as "child's pose." Tonight, after watching MSNBC and the depressing ads for Cialis and the uninsured, there was nothing so sweet as that little tuck and prop. It was a hard day for us for a reasonable selection of reasons -- not a bad day, mind you --just a hard day. Anticipating Helen's morning announcement that she herself got herself back into her bed -- well, we should all be so assured of our agency in the world. We should just assume that even when it turns out the odds really are stacked against whatever it is we want to do, we can wish it to be something else and if we wish hard enough, and, you know, work hard enough, maybe the thing that we wished for that seemed impossible won't seem so out of reach.
There's a bad side to this wishing, like with Sarah Palin and how she talked about her relationship with Russia. And then there's the good side, the side that let's you dream a little and work again. That's the side that, with a little snort of Bourbon, I'm wishing myself back to. I mean, as Sarah Palin proves, a girl can't make it on wishing alone.
Some nights I can tell the fight won't be too bad and my daughter Helen, because she's always the one who wants mommy's bed, will settle down in her own bed so I say No. Other nights, nights like tonight, I know I should just throw in the cards. On those nights, after they're well and truly asleep, we transfer the kiddos back to their beds, a process Helen calls "wishing." In other words, she wakes up in the morning and announces, "I wished myself back into my own bed, Mommy!!"
Even though every time we let them sleep in our bed we're tempted to pull out the air mattress in honor of the profound and essential and fleeting cuteness of our kids curled up in our bed, we resist for fear of losing not only the battle but the actual war. And when one of us -- tonight it was me-- takes the kiddos back to bed, one of them invariably turns over onto a belly and pulls up her knees and pushed her tuches up into the air in order to assume what's known in yoga class as "child's pose." Tonight, after watching MSNBC and the depressing ads for Cialis and the uninsured, there was nothing so sweet as that little tuck and prop. It was a hard day for us for a reasonable selection of reasons -- not a bad day, mind you --just a hard day. Anticipating Helen's morning announcement that she herself got herself back into her bed -- well, we should all be so assured of our agency in the world. We should just assume that even when it turns out the odds really are stacked against whatever it is we want to do, we can wish it to be something else and if we wish hard enough, and, you know, work hard enough, maybe the thing that we wished for that seemed impossible won't seem so out of reach.
There's a bad side to this wishing, like with Sarah Palin and how she talked about her relationship with Russia. And then there's the good side, the side that let's you dream a little and work again. That's the side that, with a little snort of Bourbon, I'm wishing myself back to. I mean, as Sarah Palin proves, a girl can't make it on wishing alone.
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