[Not-so] Love Lockdown, Prologue (1/4): Do Convicted Criminals dream the American dream?

Do convicted criminals dream the American dream?

Sure they do - Just look at freshly sentenced criminals Rajat Gupta (former Goldman board member), R. Allen Stanford (sentenced to 110 years in prison without parole), and of course Grandaddy Ponzi himself, Bernie Madoff. Hell, these guys even lived the American dream, with its fast cars, deep pockets, luxury yachts and diamonds for the ladies in life.

Now, these riches-to-rags storybook characters are scheduled to rot in a Federal penitentiary for the rest of their lives, leaving exponentially more finances and possibly life plans ruined in their wake. All this justice, of course, conducted in order to dissuade other current or would-be criminals from acting...in exactly the only way they know of how to get to the American dream - Get Rich or Die/Go to Jail Trying.

50 Cent was on to something

A rather paradoxical message, given the global rash of government-bank bailouts and the continued reliance on the instruments (i.e. financial markets) of who-dares-wins capitalism. But enough of this suddenly-fashionable bashing of fallen financial idols. It seems like just yesterday when activist judges, juries, and members of the media started defending the rights of convicted rapists, murderers, gang-bangers and the assorted denizens of American death row - new and vindicating/damning DNA evidence notwithstanding - so I'm sure public opinion will grow weary of its latest social witch-hunt sooner or later, and that District Attorneys/Federal Prosecutors will likewise find some other scapegoats upon which to build their reputations on the docket. Sooner or later, our generation's To Kill a Mockingbird of the early 21st century will be published, this time admonishing the veritable inquisition of financial criminals during a time of long-term recession and entrenched unemployment.

Yet even in a time of economic downturn, when Wall Street becomes an easy target of Main Street's wrath, no one seems to be pissing on how the wildly-popular (and mostly plastic) Kardashians, the train-wreck-of-an-excuse-for-a-man Charlie Sheens, or the well-paid, drug-snorting Lindsay Blohan-type celebrities don't pay "their fair share" of American taxes. Plus Justin Bieber- he's CANADIAN!! Where is that money going??

oh...nevermind.

What compelled me to finally write original content for the blog again - and a three-part series, at that - was a combination of many factors, the premier of which was my roommate's comment that, "no offense, but I think the American Dream is more of a Dream than a Reality."

Hump De Bump: Death Star Political Economy after the Jump

Exactly two weeks ago was May 4th, which is otherwise known as International Star Wars Day. As part of worldwide celebrations by geeky fanboys and girls everywhere dressed as Wookies, Boba Fett, or Princess Leia in a golden bikini (see: Adrianne Curry; then, if interested, bid on said golden bikini. America's First Next Top Model and Dork Goddess not included.)

But what really gets Star Wars into the prime-time for our Hump de Bump Wednesday special is this article from The Monkey Cage.org (The Week's 2010 Blog of the Year) on the Political Economy of Building and Using a Death Star. Really it was just an assessment of whether or not the construction of such a space-surfing, world/country-destroying apparatus would make any political sense in the intergalactic empire, or even in the geopolitical life and times we find ourselves in today.

The article was later featured in the Washington Post blog, proving that the Geek really shall inherit the earth. What set me off over it though, was the claim by some upstart Lehigh University students that: 

"just the steel for a Death Star would cost $852 quadrillion, or 13,000 times the current GDP of the Earth." 

Peko Set, a friend from a "think-tank kind of summer" I enjoyed a couple years back, listed the above estimate as his GChat status this past weekend, to which I protested :

11:58 AM 

me: they dont call it the intergalactic empire for nothing

  nearly all of known space was under their dominion at the end of the clone wars

11:59 AM including asteroid belts and other celestial bodies that could be entirely made of certain heavy elements

12:00 PM Peko: http://themonkeycage.org/blog/2012/05/04/death-star-no-thank-you/

12:04 PM me: haha

  very convincing arguments

 Peko:it's super long. got re-published in the wapo blog

 me: 

12:05 PM i dont think the lehigh people understand the economics of star wars though

  there's no way the empire needed to pay for steel or other building materials at cost

...A spirited discussion of Star Wars Economics, that had surprising parallels in the politics of dictatorship and crony capitalism in the real world, soon follows...

Week in Review: Occupy US, Baby

From Guy Fawkes to bin Laden, from Obama to the Titanic, Tommy, Iraq, and the burning
Übermensch, we've covered a lot of ground this week on Conflict Revolution. Don't miss a beat in our weekly countdown:

****
1) Matt raises the roof on D.C.'s building height ordinances. Is building skyscrapers (or even just above the 20th floor) just about real estate developer greed? Or is the character of the city itself at stake?

2) Speaking of capitalist hubris - and no, I'm not at even at the May Day socialist posts yet - would you like to take a voyage on the new Titanic?

3) We enter the complex and conflicted world of the Middle East with Kennan K. as our guide, as he breaks down Iraq's tenuous present and future dilemmas vis-a-vis Iran and the rest of the region like a boss;

4) Phil rambles about the unlikely but politically feasible alliance between socialism and anarchy as the Occupy Wall Street movement prepares itself for an "American Spring (& Summer)"

5) The man, it burns! The Burning man and his furry friends;

6) Matt likewise burns some straw men over why we should continue to support American space exploration;

7) And he also burns some Caps fans for leaving the Verizon Center too soon.

8) Tommy's inaugural Take (TiT?) blasts off into cyberspace - believe us when we say, now there will be blood

9) Das Übermensch Brett Aho cometh: "Not everyone needs to go to college...Fraulein."

10) And last but definitely not least, the crown jewel of Conflict Revolution itself, the master-debaters Stephen and Matt:

OSAMA BIN OCCUPIED PART 1: WILL OWS SURVIVE??

OSAMA BIN OCCUPIED PART 2: OBAMA CAN HAZ CREDIT??

MAY THE 4TH BE WITH YOU!

Man vs. Straw Man: Space Exploration

Stay tuned for an email discussion on the Occupy movement in the 5:00 hour.  In the meantime, some reaction to this, from Reuters: "'Tens of billions' of habitable worlds in Milky Way," 3/28/12

Space. I've written about it before, and it fascinates at least one of your writers here at Conflict Revolution.  It seems we come across one of these stories every few months or so - astronomers complete a new set of research, we find out something about our own galaxy or another, far away one that we didn't previously know, it increases the likelihood that we will one day find life somewhere in the cosmos.  The space-inclined among us get a little more excited.  Carl Sagan does the opposite of turning over in his grave.  And yet still, with each revolution of the research cycle, not to mention our own planetary merry go-round that we call a year, the mystery looms: Is there anyone else out there?

Is there?

That's an open question, and we may never know.  I'll tell you once thing I do know, however.  My venerable army of straw men, the Washington Generals of editorializing, preservers and protectors of my favorite rhetorical device, is right here, right now, on Conflict Revolution, to serve up counter-arguments for me to deconstruct.  The Straw Men are always ready with a seemingly valid point to be considered... and swiftly batted down.

The Shuttle's Last Flight: Why Space Still Matters

I was fortunate enough to get away from work for a few minutes yesterday to witness the much-hyped DC flyover of NASA's Discovery Space Shuttle, officially the last time a space shuttle of any sort will even leave the ground. The shuttle, which will now go to the Smithsonian Museum, left Cape Canaveral in the morning for Washington Dulles International Airport; in between, it stopped traffic, drew 9-5ers like myself from our desks, and wowed everyone else throughout the nation's capital by circling the city four times at low altitude.

I didn't take the picture to your left; I saw the shuttle only briefly out an office window and couldn't quite snap a photo, so the picture that you do see was actually taken by a friend of mine who works elsewhere in the city. What I can speak to, however, is the experience of being around a lot of people excited about seeing a space shuttle, and the good things that I think that says about our country in general.

Even looking out my window, every rooftop in sight was full of eager spectators, who weren't disappointed. After seeing the shuttle, I myself went outside to see if I could get a better view. Although the flyover was finished by then, there were still people milling about on sidewalks and, somewhat perilously, crosswalks; heads craned up toward the sky in anticipation as they asked total strangers if they had seen the shuttle, or if it had already passed over for good (as if anyone really knew). I was one of those strangers, asking a cowboy-hatted security guard next to the White House when it was going to come back. His answer made up for what it lacked in useful information with an equal dose of insight.

"That was just so COOL," the man cooed, "it flew right over the Washington monument. I can't believe it came that close to the ground."

Indeed. But the more amazing thing about the flyover was that I probably could have had the same conversation with anyone out in the street or on a roofdeck between the hours of 10:00 and 11:00 a.m. yesterday morning. What else could bring so many people out into the street at once on some idle Tuesday? What else could be so universally (excuse the pun) appealing that it made everyone forget about everything else they had to get done yesterday, in order to wait and see a space shuttle strapped to a 747?

Morning Update: Daily News Headlines and Events

1) Discovery Shuttle fly-over the National Mall draws spectators, cheers, and just a bit of nostalgia over the sunsetting American Space Shuttle program. The silver lining in the cloud? Now we can go to space via private space travel. Just start saving...

Or be enlisted to save the planet. Results not typical.

2) 5 big ideas for a new economy.

3) Obama Campaign uses "Buffett tax app" to see whether you pay more or less taxes than... Mitt Romney. Like it or not, this is some pretty effective messaging about the proposed "Buffett Rule" law.

4) Speaking of "The Oracle of Omaha," Warren Buffett has stage 1 prostate cancer and gives not a single f**k about it.

5) "How you like yo eggs?" - and that's the story of how the dinosaurs went extinct