Intelligence, Please…

I’m traveling today to Las Vegas, Nevada for three days and two nights for the very first time – known to many as “Sin City,” but home to some of my very favorite people on the planet. There are six hyperlinked words there, folks, meaning six clickable links – check them out!

I doubt very much that I’ll actually play much poker over the next few days – not in this economy anyway (never play with what you can’t afford to lose – seriously, if you think you have a problem, contact the Gamblers Anonymous toll-free hotline, 1-888-GA-HELPS, or 1-888-424-3577). Though I make an effort to take one big casino trip per year, I’m headed to Glitter Gulch today for RightOnline 2010, an Internet activism conference for the center-right and right, designed by Americans for Prosperity to mirror the DailyKos’ Netroots Nation, which will also take place in Vegas this weekend.

But I did used to play quite a bit of poker back in my early twenties, back around the time when fellow Tennessean Chris Moneymaker became an overnight celebrity by winning the main event at the 2003 World Series of Poker, after starting his run for poker’s most prestigious championship event at a $40 sit-and-go tournament on Poker Stars.

All the memories of monster bluffs and bad beats, of laughs and friendships created (and alliances forged…) that have flooded back as I prepared for this trip have given me an opportunity to wax nostalgiac quite a bit about my early twenties (the parts I remember, anyway). But today’s post isn’t about my war stories and fisherman’s tales about gambling – it’s about Vegas, baby – Vegas and politics. But not Harry Reid vs. Sharron Angle – I mean poker. And gambling. And what the Hell the government is doing to screw with people’s private lives.

The Poker Players Alliance is a non-profit, membership-based advocacy organization that sprung up in the wake of the passage of the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006 (UIGEA), and aims to help turn back the tide of state and federal government crackdowns on social and commercial games of chance. They believe (as I do) that poker doesn’t even categorically fit the description; poker is a skill game. And just in case the clip above of no-name (at the time) Chris Moneymaker leveling a tournament-altering blow against poker pro Sammy Farha didn’t convince you, here’s Mike McDermott (Matt Damon, Rounders) on sitting down to play against poker pro legend Johnny Chan:

Okay, okay – Rounders isn’t real. But poker skills are, and there’s a line in the movie that goes something to the effect of “Why do you think the same people wind up at the final table at the World Series of Poker every year? What, are they the luckiest people on the planet?” If any of you out there are poker players, and you’re on Twitter, give the Poker Players Alliance a follow (@ppapoker). From their Mission Statement:

The Poker Players Alliance (PPA) is a non-profit membership organization comprised of online and offline poker players. Our membership consists of enthusiasts from around the United States who have joined together to speak with one voice to promote the game and protect the right to play poker in all its forms.

The PPA’s mission is to establish favorable laws that provide poker players with a secure, safe and regulated place to play. Through education and awareness the PPA will keep this game of skill, one of America’s oldest recreational activities, free from egregious government intervention and misguided laws.

The PPA is committed to defending the rights of poker players. On behalf of our broad membership, we will promote and protect poker through advocacy work in Washington, D.C., and throughout the nation. The Poker Players Alliance will work with key lawmakers to ensure a thoughtful and productive dialogue that represents everyone who enjoys and wants to protect the game.

When I used PPA’s online resources to email my Congressman, Rep. Jim Cooper (D-TN 5th), a couple years ago to ask him to use time in the 110th Congress to support a repeal of UIGEA, his staff wrote back and said “Get bent.”

Okay, maybe not, but they may as well have.

Ace-King: the Texas Hold 'Em starting hand known around the felt as "Big Slick." I prefer to call it the "Anna Kournikova;" no matter how good it looks, it rarely performs.

There’s nothing more fundamental or essential to the American system of government than the protection of people’s rights to their private property, which they have acquired through labor (usually now in the form of an income, as opposed to a share of land), and their rights to dispose of that property as they see fit. This has been explored exhaustively by great philosophers and game theorists alike. There are certainly social conservative arguments against gambling (of all forms, not just online gambling) – largely out-dated, out-moded traditionalist and absolutist moral arguments about the lasciviousness of a lawless, old West gambler’s lifestyle (booze, loose women, etc.).

Former Democratic President Bill Clinton, too – who I’d hardly call a member of the Religious Right or moral majority – supported a 4 percent federal income tax on all gambling wins. His thinking suggested basically that, if deadbeat dads were going to gamble their paychecks in a casino instead of paying child support, the federal government would assert its prerogative to levy a Pigouvian tax to force deadbeats to internalize the social costs of their behavior, which ostensibly resulted in externalities impacting child welfare:

[Then-candidate Hillary] Clinton’s history with gaming goes back at least to 1994, when President Bill Clinton suggested a 4 percent federal tax on all gaming receipts to help fund the administration’s health care and welfare reforms. The idea did not get very far before 30 governors convinced the administration that the states depended on gaming revenue for their own budgets, and the administration dropped the idea. But it prompted commercial casinos to organize a political action committee to permanently represent their interests in Washington, DC.

Back to my Congressman, Jim Cooper, who has helped the Obama Administration pass landmark vote-buys like health care reform. Other Lefties (mostly self-proclaimed socialists and other progressives) look at gambling as a tax on the poor – “…a highly regressive form of taxation that thrives by inducing false hopes among the financially destitute.” But Coop is a member of the Blue Dog Coalition, representing the Protestant Vatican, and he would no doubt would reject Clinton’s idealism and levying of a tax on gambling, despite the indignation of some of the Music City’s more progressive voices, because of the effect this would have on Nashvillians who have to travel 4 hours by car to the nearest casino resort town to have a little grown-up fun.

No, Jim Cooper the Spineless Statist that everyone seems to hate (but continues to send back to Congress – good luck to Jeff Hartline) thinks that telling me what I can and can’t do with my money – regardless of the fact that I have no estranged children or alimony to pay, and am not financially destitute (although by no accounts wealthy) – is the best course of action. Once again, the prohibition on gambling is another manifestation of the government presuming providence over all income in America, and what people can and can’t do with their earnings…much less hold people accountable for their decisions to wager income on games in which the odds are methodically and deliberately stacked against them, because they choose to view it as a get-rich-quick scheme. Before anyone calls me a hypocrite, I don’t gamble to make money – I pay for entertainment, and I don’t go over the figures I budget ahead of time. I have, of course, “lost it all” before, but by and large I break even or come close to it – that’s a win in my book. And besides – my freedom to do what I want with my money is more important to me than the money itself.

Former Cato scholar and now Senior Editor for Reason Magazine Radley Balko (who, by the way, recently moved to Nashville) is currently participating in an interesting debate over the legalization of gambling at The Economist website – and if anything I’ve said so far in this blog has been of interest, you’ll be riveted by what Radley is doing over there. After all – Tennessee finally made the lottery legal after prohibiting games of chance in the state constitution over 200 years beforehand.

I’ll try to blog as often as I can from RightOnline this weekend – and I’ll try to cross-post here and at my blog at Liberty Pundits. There may also be some good tactical/strategic discussions and panels, and I’ll try to reserve those for my blog at The Next Right. I encourage any and all of you to follow me on Twitter (@stackiii) for more instantaneous (and likely less-filtered, more hilarious) updates.

I’m about to hop on a plane, so until tomorrow…

Cross-posted at Liberty Pundits.

Raghuram Rajan, the former chief economist of the IMF and a Chicago professor, has a completely different take on the U.S. recession. There are different reasons for the global recession – not all of them tied to the fact that the U.S. economy is just freaking huge – but his explanation is fantastic.

I’ll summarize Mr. Rajan’s article:

1. Wages have been growing much faster for workers in the 90th percentile of the wage distribution than those in the 50th percentile. Technology has changed rapidly since then, and growth reached fever pitch in the ’90s. Those who had the necessary skills – or the education necessary to learn those skills – could advance. If all you had to offer the American economy was the strength of your back, your job got outsourced. Just look at the chart here. If you’ve got a professional degree, you only have a 2.3% chance of being unemployed. If you only have a high school degree, that’s 9.7%.
2. Rajan: “The everyday consequence for the middle class is a stagnant paycheck and growing job insecurity. Politicians feel their constituents’ pain, but it is hard to improve the quality of education, for improvement requires real and effective policy change in an area where too many vested interests favor the status quo. Moreover, any change will require years to take effect, and therefore will not address the electorate’s current anxiety.”
3. Thus, politicians opted instead to make credit easy to come by. Rather than the middle class utilizing the new credit facilities to go back to school, they bought houses. And keep in mind that the ease of credit was aided by Fannie and Freddie, but it can’t be blamed totally on them – Glass-Steagall had to be repealed as well.
4. Rajan: “The problem, as often is the case with government policies, was not intent. It rarely is. But when lots of easy money pushed by a deep-pocketed government comes into contact with the profit motive of a sophisticated, competitive, and amoral financial sector, matters get taken far beyond the government’s intent.”

Before all is said and done, we will witness the U.S. in decline in a global economy that knows how to educate its populace. Unless, of course, the government takes the steps to improve the long-term educational capabilities of our fine nation. And for all that Mr. Obama has done wrong, he at least has not wholesale supported the teachers’ union as I expected. Union-busting will help, but America had better be emotionally ready to stop “blaming the teacher” for everything that has gone wrong. The baby boomer generation supported lower expectations of their children at school and grade inflation – something that will need to go away as well.

Oh, and if you’re in the workforce now, you’d better start educating yourself on something you don’t know how to do. Chances are, your job will depend on it one day.

Ladies and gentlemen,

I very much regret my lack of postings here on said “blog,” but I assure you that I shall return with a vengeance to exact justice on bad ideas.

Until then, I leave you with the sounds of victory.

I’ve been by this site to comment on Joseph Mosby’s recent critiques on energy policy (specifically, his piece on off-shore drilling, and his oil economy charts – versions one and two), but I noticed just today that I haven’t actually blogged here in two weeks. I have been busy with a summer course, things have been heating up in primary season and appropriations season, and I have new blogging gigs at Liberty Pundits and The Next Right (you can also click through to my latest posts on each site over on the right sidebar).

I’ve heard and read all sorts of shoulda-woulda-coulda-mighta-musta-gonna about the tragic oil spill down in the Gulf of Mexico. It is heartbreaking that vast ecosystems are being brought to a premature end, and industries that sustain the local economies of hundreds of thousands of American citizens along the shore are also being destroyed, while they powerlessly stand by and watch.

Before I get into the meat of this post, I want to make abundantly clear my thoughts on the situation:

1. This is not any single person’s or entity’s “fault.” This is a terribly tragic accident that people of all political stripes are trying to use as their football as contentious elections heat up in the US, wherein the out-party stands to make considerable governance-altering gains. Both the MMS meth heads and profit-driven BP leadership are at fault for what happened here. Some of that fault is due to negligence, and some is just purely circumstantial.
2. I am not writing this to shout “DRILL, BABY, DRILL!” When I saw gasoline crest over $4 per gallon in the summer of 2008, it was easy to want to do something – anything – to increase the supply of oil on the surface just so that people could drive to and from work every day – something many of us take for granted. I personally tend to favor an “all of the above” energy strategy, and I am disheartened that “energy independence” has been rendered as nothing more than a political slogan for the Republican and Democratic parties over the last 40 years (this, by the way, is well-documented).

Now – on to the meat. I ran across this post today, a post by Kenneth Rogoff, Professor of Economics at Harvard University and former chief economist at the IMF (h/t to his colleague Greg Mankiw):

As the damaged BP oil well continues to spew millions of gallons of crude from the depths of the floor of the Gulf of Mexico, the immediate challenge is how to mitigate an ever-magnifying environmental catastrophe. One can only hope that the spill will be contained soon, and that the ever-darkening worst-case scenarios will not materialize.

The disaster, however, poses a much deeper challenge to how modern societies deal with regulating complex technologies. The accelerating speed of innovation seems to be outstripping government regulators’ capacity to deal with risks, much less anticipate them.

…

Now all bets are off.  In the United States, offshore drilling seems set to go the way of nuclear power, with new projects being shelved for decades. And, as is often the case, a crisis in one country may go global, with many other countries radically scaling back off-shore and out-of-bounds projects. Will Brazil really risk its spectacular coastline for oil, now that everyone has been reminded of what can happen? What about Nigeria, where other risks are amplified by civil strife?

Oil experts argue that offshore drilling never had the potential to amount to more than a small share of global supply. But there now will be greater concerns about deep drilling in any sensitive environment. And the problem is not just with oil. The big news in energy these days is the revolution in technology for tapping shale gas. With important reserves near populated areas, governments will need to temper their enthusiasm and think about the balance between risks and riches.

The basic problem of complexity, technology, and regulation extends to many other areas of modern life. Nanotechnology and innovation in developing artificial organisms offer a huge potential boon to mankind, promising development of new materials, medicines, and treatment techniques. Yet, with all of these exciting technologies, it is extremely difficult to strike a balance between managing “tail risk” – a very small risk of a very large disaster – and supporting innovation.

…

Economics teaches us that when there is huge uncertainty about catastrophic risks, it is dangerous to rely too much on the price mechanism to get incentives right. Unfortunately, economists know much less about how to adapt regulation over time to complex systems with constantly evolving risks, much less how to design regulatory resilient institutions. Until these problems are better understood, we may be doomed to a world of regulation that perpetually overshoots or undershoots its goals.

The lesson here is simple: methods of production – not just consumer products themselves – evolve quickly and rapidly. Capital investments are upgraded – sometimes making work environments safer, sometimes making plants more productive…and when society is lucky, sometimes both! Regulation – and the political process by which regulation is brought about – cannot possibly keep up with the pace of innovation. If you don’t want to take my word for it, just ask anyone working in the tech industry. Ask President Obama, who almost didn’t get to take his BlackBerry to the Oval Office after he won in 2008 (Jesus, what if he ever wants to switch to an iPhone?).

We can regulate the oil industry up to its eyeballs and beyond – but there’s always something for which even the smartest of eggheads cannot account, and technological innovation in oil production methods will continue to outpace the molasses-like movement of policy formulation. Trying to over-regulate won’t help things either; over-regulation will hamper our ability to produce other goods and services, like shale gas mining in Dr. Rogoff’s piece.

And now progressives are calling for global boycotts of BP, as if depriving them of revenues and resources will help them clean up the disaster more quickly (these are the same people who argue that the government needs more money – not less – to solve problems). The Deepwater Horizon disaster is tragic. People died. Now many more are suffering. Regulation didn’t help, and regulation won’t help because regulation can’t help. The government should worry about who’s using methamphetamines on the job, and why civil servants aren’t enforcing laws on the books. BP shareholders – and probably other oil companies in the world – could stand to (voluntarily) pool their financial resources into a disaster slush fund, if for no other reason than to give themselves some good PR.

In their counseling role, military chaplains assist all service members who come to them, even if they are of other faith traditions. But if a homosexual seeks counseling regarding his personal relationships, will the chaplain be free to recommend therapy to overcome homosexual attractions? Or will he be forced to affirm a lifestyle that his faith condemns?The numbers lost will dwarf the numbers gained by opening the ranks to practicing homosexuals.The numbers lost will dwarf the numbers gained by opening the ranks to practicing homosexuals.Anyone who points to the mountain of evidence to the contrary – or merely expresses the personal conviction that sex should be reserved for marriage between one man and one woman – runs the risk of receiving a negative performance evaluation for failing to support the military’s “equal opportunity policy” regarding “sexual orientation.”On June 1, 2010, Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council wrote an opinion piece for CNN proclaiming that ending Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell was a violation of religious freedom for Christians. I believe this is, in a word, complete and utter crap, and intend to dispute it.

Mr. Perkins raises two contradictory arguments here. He first states that homosexuality is a point of religious contention (obviously, agreed), but that it does not apply under the military’s religious nondiscrimination laws. It seems that he believes that military members are told, in all respects, what they are expected to believe. No nondiscrimination policy that I am aware of tells people what they are to believe – it tells them how they are to act. The repeal of DADT brings that in line with the rest of the government’s nondiscrimination policies.

Mr. Perkins cites SB 3065, which requires:

Revision of all equal opportunity and human relations regulations, directives, and instructions to add sexual orientation nondiscrimination to the Department of Defense Equal Opportunity policy and to related human relations training programs.

Mr. Perkins then uses that statement to conclude that:

This means that all 1.4 million members of the U.S. military will be subject to sensitivity training intended to indoctrinate them into the myths of the homosexual movement: that people are born “gay” and cannot change and that homosexual conduct does no harm to the individual or to society.

I’m not getting into the discussion about whether people are born gay or not, as it is not relevant to this discussion. I see no reason why any nondiscrimination policy needs to address whether an individual is born gay or turned gay throughout life to be effective. It merely needs to state that if an individual is gay, then they cannot be discriminated against for that reason. As for the second point – that homosexual conduct harms the individual and society – this is a point of personal opinion for Mr. Perkins, and one that is not held by the Commander in Chief. Once again, there is no reason to think that this point will be discussed in a nondiscrimination policy.

Mr. Perkins continues:

Anyone who points to the mountain of evidence to the contrary – or merely expresses the personal conviction that sex should be reserved for marriage between one man and one woman – runs the risk of receiving a negative performance evaluation for failing to support the military’s “equal opportunity policy” regarding “sexual orientation.”

Honestly, sir, there’s a “mountain of evidence” both ways. And currently, there are all sorts of negative implications for individuals who disagree with the statement as it stands.

Clearly, Mr. Perkins fails to see the contradiction here:

For no other offense than believing what all the great monotheistic religions have believed for all of history, some service members will be denied promotion, will be forced out of the service altogether, or will simply choose not to reenlist. Other citizens will choose not to join the military in the first place.

Mr. Perkins must believe this is not a big deal for the homosexual members of the United States military who are faced with the exact same situation right now for saying they’re gay.

Perhaps Mr. Perkins has some sort of statistical backing for this statement:

The numbers lost will dwarf the numbers gained by opening the ranks to practicing homosexuals.

Somehow, though, I doubt it.

A continuation, hinting at something here…

In their counseling role, military chaplains assist all service members who come to them, even if they are of other faith traditions. But if a homosexual seeks counseling regarding his personal relationships, will the chaplain be free to recommend therapy to overcome homosexual attractions? Or will he be forced to affirm a lifestyle that his faith condemns?

Mr. Perkins must believe that there are Muslim and Jewish soldiers lining up at the chaplain’s door to discuss proper ways of celebrating Ramadan or Yom Kippur in a foxhole. Those soldiers know that there are certain things the chaplain can help with, and there are certain things better solved by talking to a clergyman from a home church/synagogue/mosque.

The final statement:

While chaplains are members of the military, they must be “endorsed” by a sponsoring religious body. Denominations that are unequivocal in holding to a biblical standard of sexual morality may stop endorsing military chaplains rather than allow them to compromise their principles.

Don’t sponsoring religious bodies have to endorse their chaplains giving advice to members of different denominations or religions? And, by definition, don’t they disagree with every religion that isn’t their own?

The repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell is not an all-out attack on conservative Christian values, as Mr. Perkins would like to make readers believe. Corporate offices and universities have had religious (and often sexual) nondiscrimination policies in place for years, and the very fact that nondiscrimination policies exist is not an attack on people who do not hold those values. They are a shield to all views. They do not prevent Christian leaders from serving in high leadership roles – Belmont University, my alma mater, has a 100% Christian board of directors and upper echelon of executive leadership, a Christian mission statement, and a nondiscrimination policy. Clearly, the two are not mutually exclusive.

I am merely here to raise a few questions for my own ponderings, offering no opinions or things of that matter.

Admittedly, I voted for Obama. I chose to look past any skeletons in his closet or hints at whatever his political beliefs shaped up to be. If you are so inclined as to tell me “I told you so,” in the comments of this article, you have missed the point. I will be most happy to delete said comments, with the authority vested in me as site administrator. The point, currently, is not Obama vs. McCain vs. Barr vs. Ron Paul. So if you want to play against Obama specifically at this point, go find Mr. Scoville’s blog, where you will find ample opportunity to comment.

My musings instead turn to higher things.

As many of you may know, both my philosophies on blogging and the markets have been heavily drawn from Mr. Fly at iBankCoin.com. There are few individuals who draw regular readings from me, but Mr. Fly is one of them. On the whole, Fly ignores typical arguments against big business and focuses instead on making money. Yet he made a special exception for BP.

I shall not quote the article in whole here, as it is filled with countless vulgarities which you are more than welcome to view yourself. I shall instead edit it in a manner that I believe is in line with primetime network censor rules:

I don’t think I have ever hated corporations, like I do BP, CAM and RIG. Sure, I’m a big capitalism guy, always rooting for the middle class guy to get milked of his paycheck and all. But, this whole Gulf of Mexico “accident” situation is getting a bit lame. … A lot of you are corporate bitches, always rooting for the bad guys because you think they represent enterprise. WRONG. Those assholes represent oligarchy, not capitalism.

He continues with the next post here:

All of your theories about the economy, government, and life in general, are abhorrent lies. You believe said lies, for the same reasons why you believe communists are going to hell, while big hatted oil men will be going to heaven. … Whether you want to acknowledge it or not, we are living in a world without morals, rules or decency. I imagine the world has always been like this, just not as brazen sans the medieval era.

As for myself, Mr. Fly finally showed me that I am not the only good pragmatic small governmentalist thinking that the lack of action from the Obama administration is just plain wrong.

I ask you, each and every one of you, especially the conservatives who read my blog as an extension of George’s (and I am grateful to be alongside such an individual) – what would you have the government do? And who has the dignity and consistency to do that? Ms. Palin and Mr. McCain, were they in office, were all “drill, baby, drill” – the kind of thinking that drove this catastrophe. It appears that there are two thoughts on offshore drilling: either jump in the ocean and damn the sharks, or don’t go in at all. I ask you this – what should the policy be, and who has consistently chosen to advocate for that policy?

I, like my fellow bloggers, hold a special place in my heart for this great city. It is shocking to me, being on the west coast, that when I mention Nashville to people here, the response is, “Huh? What floods?”

Awesome.

So, I wanted to repost a bit of Joe’s blog from below. To help out the city that we all love and want to preserve, go to this link. It can direct you on how to help out- whether you are in Tennessee, or thousands of miles away (like me, *sniff*).

Let’s not forget Nashville!!

UPDATE:

To help the Middle Tennessee Red Cross Chapter for the Flood Relief Efforts, you can donate $10 from your mobile phone. Text REDCROSS to 90999. Or you can go to here to learn more.

"Evacuate? In our moment of triumph?"

My most recent cynicism (to be found here) has been proven most unfounded, as the people of the Volunteer State continue to deliver “epic wins” over such pithy things as “floods.”

You see, in recent days, Nashvillians have foregone their own needs and given the finger to floodwaters and lack of federal assistance, and teabaggers have sandbagged alongside our most liberal of followers (may you live forever). It is indeed our moment of triumph, where we shall continue to rebuild the lives of our neighbors who need a hand, and our conservative nature tends to believe that the government will probably just screw it up. Send MREs, though, those things are good. Just not the PB&J kind.

When the waters came, we buckled down and protected Metrocenter with copious amounts of sand.

When the waters came, rednecks and hipsters alike strapped boats to their tailgates and headed for water, fishing people off of rooftops because they seemed like they had no interest in swimming in cholera.

When the waters came, our restaurants opened on schedule for the comfort of their patrons while purchasing paper plates and silverware to avoid using dishwashers. They ordered port-a-johns and closed bathrooms to avoid waste. Our brewery filled its tanks with water to add security to the people.

When the waters came, we carted fans and sump pumps to the basements of our neighbors because they had not ordered swimming pools and needed a bit of a drain out.

When the waters came, we woke up like P.Diddy and delivered a half ton of dog food to animal shelters (Ke$ha did that, BTW).

When the waters came, we stopped showering and tried to conserve (we’re trying…we wish could we be better, but we’re not as good as Mr. Nathan T. Baker below)

"Steal ma cup and I'll kick yo ass"

So, while all of these things will eventually earn blog posts on the merits of small communities as opposed to large organizations (i.e., the Federal Government), for now, they remain most worthy of praise.

Special awards go out to the girls at Nashvillest, our good man Eric Shuff @tndotcom, Hands On Nashville, Christine Maddela at WKRN who hasn’t slept much, and the countless other volunteers who will go unnoticed because they didn’t feel they needed to be.

We are but a small operation here at Intelligence Please, with certain limitations on the amount of aid we can effectively provide the city of Nashville in this most trying of times. We direct you to Hands On Nashville, referenced above, to provide donations. However – I, our most prophetic of bloggers, will be representing us Saturday at Tent City of Nashville, where the flood wiped out a homeless population’s entire life. It shall be most necessary to rebuild said Tent City, and we intend to do so. Should you choose to join us, we will be meeting at Belmont U Saturday morning in the Inman gravel parking lot at 8AM.

As for now: you stay classy, Tennessee.

As an investor, I carry a certain worldview around with me. Generally, I operate under the economic principles of self-interest, where I should only expect help from others if it is in their own self-interest. Based on my interpretation of classical economics, this seems to be a fairly reasonable, rational worldview.

It sucks. I believe it to be no less true than I did 48 hours ago, but I realize more that it sucks.

Nashville is not Hurricane Katrina. I realize this – the damage wrought by this flood is probably comparable to what I experienced in Jackson as (then) Category 3 Katrina passed over the city after slapping New Orleans and the rest of the Gulf Coast around. The damage done to the coasts was catastrophic, and I understand that Nashville will not suffer the same fate. We are more sound economically and structurally and will recover from the Other Situation.

I also realize that our coastline is currently threatened by a massive oil slick caused by an explosion that will have a direct bearing on the lives of many Americans and countless numbers of sea creatures. I respect the environmental implications of this, and believe that the slick is worthy of the president’s attention. This will need to be a coordinated effort and will cause billions of dollars of damage, much more than what we have suffered.

But I watched Twitter streams, web pages, etc. of CNN, the Huffington Post, the Wall Street Journal, Fox News, and the New  York Times – essentially an attempt to gather all political views – for any information regarding the Tennessee flooding. At the time of this writing (11:48 PM, 5/2), Fox News has an article in their U.S. news section – half a scroll down the page. CNN also has it on the front page, but not featured. The Huffington Post is not featuring it at all. Nor is the Wall Street Journal. The New York Times has a link in an automated newsroll from Reuters.

Out of the White House, however – silence. Out of the GOP camp – silence. Out of the Tea Party camp – silence.

And it comes to my attention that no one’s coming. FEMA won’t be here, except maybe if face time eventually becomes required. Maybe the president will mention it, maybe he won’t. But, all in all, the damage has been done. We Nashvillians get to look at pictures of our city flooded, hearing about people whose homes are completely underwater. Outside the city, no one cares. We are no political issue, and therefore whatever happens, happens.

So many of the people living in low-lying areas were also some of Nashville’s poorest. Doubtless many were Obama supporters in the recent election, hoping something would change for them. Yet this is our microcosm of Katrina, where help was needed and not given. I understand a bit more of what New Orleans felt – not to just be hurting, but the feeling that no one was even listening.

On the whole, we will piece together our city ourselves, thankfully with the help of fantastic organizations such as Hands On Nashville and the Nashville Red Cross. And when some Democrat or Republican or Tea Partier tries to score political points with this, I will kindly give them the finger. If you aren’t getting your hands dirty or donating to one of the aforementioned organizations, please keep your mouth shut or go jump in a lake. We have several now.