Scary

A student suspended from school and being banished to reform school for 45 days for bringing his cub scout fork/spoon/knife to eat his lunch.

Our country is cannibalizing itself. We can't seem to find the right balance. We accede too much control to central authority in this case - by not forcing teachers and administrators to make common-sense judgment. But in other cases, such as the torture by our troops at Abu Ghraib, we make these lax rules almost purposely designed to allow odious behavior. We similarly miss the point on how to deal with Wall Street, executive pay, and bailouts. The two sides are both ridiculously stupid, the right saying "they should get paid whatever the market bears," and the left saying, "we should cap executive pay because the income distribution between employees and ceos is too great."

Both are inherently stupid points because they don't reflect anything about the actual process of paying executives. No one should object to someone getting paid a lot of money if they earn it. The problem with the Wall Street executive pay system, as far as I can tell, is these guys got paid enormous sums of money for crashing the system. I suspect a lot of folks pay was based on short-term returns and they were gambling with other people's (ie stock owner) money. If they short term gambles paid off, they got paid big bucks. If they didn't, the stock prices slumped or other divisions profits covered their asses. In the worst cases, they bankrupted their own companies or the tax payers bailed them out. These guys didn't have their own skin in the game. If they did - no way they are making these risky plays. No way they bet their own money on lending to subprime borrowers. No way we end up with ARM's that will set off another round of foreclosures.

The problem isn't we're paying CEOs too much. The problem is the CEOs aren't earning their pay. Set up a system where you gamble big, you stand to lose big and you lose big first. They won't gamble anymore. Set up a system where you gamble big and someone else pays the bill, they'll gamble big.

And this whole healthcare thing is maddening. Everyone is culpable - the doctors, the drug companies, the insurance companies, the patients. Everyone. You could make a David Simon series out of it. Are we really ready to bankrupt this country tossing money into a pit on a moral crusade to give everyone healthcare? What a friggin mess this is...