Orwellian?

The word "Orwellian" is overused and practically a cliche. Here is a Wikipedia overview. Often, it refers to the sort of double-speak and propaganda he dramatizes in 1984, the book for which he is most famous. George Orwell was a journalist and essayist. In 1946, he wrote an iconic essay entitled "Politics and the English Language," (read it, go ahead, then come back; we're not going anywhere) in which he argued that debasement of the English language betokens a debility of political thought. Here's a quote:

A scrupulous writer, in every sentence that he writes, will ask himself at least four questions, thus: 1. What am I trying to say? 2. What words will express it? 3. What image or idiom will make it clearer? 4. Is this image fresh enough to have an effect? And he will probably ask himself two more: 1. Could I put it more shortly? 2. Have I said anything that is avoidably ugly? But you are not obliged to go to all this trouble. You can shirk it by simply throwing your mind open and letting the ready-made phrases come crowding in. They will construct your sentences for you -- even think your thoughts for you, to a certain extent -- and at need they will perform the important service of partially concealing your meaning even from yourself. It is at this point that the special connection between politics and the debasement of language becomes clear.

(It is as true of the spoken language as it is of written discourse.)

This phrase was brought to mind recently by this interview (and this blog post) with the person who was selected by the Republican candidate for President of the United States of America as his running mate, the person who will be one 72-year old heartbeat away from being the leader of the so-called "free world":


It's a jumble. Word salad. Talking point mish-mash. Incoherent. Stupid. It's as if she's trying to say things that will please the listener—she's obviously trying really hard. She wants Couric (and her morning show constituency) to like her and she wants to sell a palatable political product. But because it is so obviously canned (and garbled), the listener can't determine what it is she's selling—whether it's a pig in a poke or well-reasoned policy formulation. "Don't worry about the verbiage. Trust us. It doesn't matter what we say, we're Republicans. We're the good guys. Those other people are bad. You can tell because they come off all high-and-mighty. Elitists, don'tcha know. They want to talk to the enemy. We're tough and we will take a stand. We just can't articulate it right now."

Did her job interview with Senator McCain go equally as well. Did he even talk to her before selecting her? If this woman applied for a job as your office manager, would you hire her? What about your CFO? COO? CEO? If she botches simple declarative sentences this badly, how much worse will she botch the job of Vice Presidency?

Words matter.

Should We Be Afraid? Very Afraid?

Well, at least wary. Very wary.


Defense and Treasury are the two most important responsibilities of the Executive. This guy has made a mess of both departments. The question is: After his misadventure in Iraq, why should we trust him now? Is he going after the right culprits?

And why does it take a comedy show on basic cable TV to point out the obvious flim-flam that's going on. Where are the real news analysts? True pundits?

Sometimes you just want to bang your head on a wall.

Make Lemonade!

Now here's a man with a plan! The more I read of this guy, the more interested I grow. James K. Galbraith's column ("A Bailout We Don't Need") in today's Washington Post makes just plain good sense. Some quotes:

Now that all five big investment banks -- Bear Stearns, Merrill Lynch, Lehman Brothers, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley -- have disappeared or morphed into regular banks, a question arises.

The point of the bailout is to buy assets that are illiquid but not worthless. But regular banks hold assets like that all the time. They're called "loans."

If there are no more investment banks, who, then, are we bailing out?

He argues we should take that $700 billion and

(1) increase the $100k cap on FDIC deposits;

(2) put $500 billion in the FDIC and those agencies investigating fraud;

(3) put the remaining $200 billion into a reserve fund for recapitalizing banks, much as Warren Buffett did in taking preferred shares and warrants from Goldman Sachs;

(4) create "a new Home Owners Loan Corp., which would rewrite mortgages, manage rental conversions and decide when vacant, degraded properties should be demolished. Set it up like a draft board in each community, under federal guidelines, and get to work;"

(5) "Reenact Richard Nixon's great idea: federal revenue sharing. States and localities should get the funds to plug their revenue gaps and maintain real public spending, per capita, for the next three to five years" to aid ailing state and local governments which are feeling the pinch;

(6) "enact the National Infrastructure Bank, making bond revenue available in a revolving fund for capital improvements. There is work to do. There are people to do it. Bring them together;"

(7) supplement the dwindling Social Security fund and retirement funds invested in the stock market by imposing a transaction turnover tax on stocks;

(8) then, the clincher,

"If the 1960s were about raising baby boomers and the '90s about technology, what should the '10s and '20s be about? It's obvious: energy and climate change. That's where the present great unmet needs are.

So, let's use the next few years to plan, mapping out a program of energy conservation, reconstruction and renewable power. Let's get the public sector and the universities working on it. And let's prepare the private sector so that when the credit crunch finally ends, we'll have the firms, the labs, the standards and the talent in place, ready to go."

Indeed, instead of corporate socialism (or corporatism) which favors the very perpetrators of this alleged crisis, use the rescue to position the economy for future growth in profitable and mutually, publicly beneficial areas. Plus, this plan has the beauty of addressing the presumed cause of the problem (underwater mortgages and fragile bank assets) rather than the whole over-leveraged mortgage-backed securities house of cards that fueled such enormous profits over the past several years and which have now dried up precipitating the President* to call a 'crisis'.