It seems like hating banks is the new black nowadays. Financial companies found themselves in the remarkable position of having government permission to gamble with their clients’ money, and with the recent bailout and stimulus packages, they’ve learned that their losses will be covered by someone else. Government and big business have been closely tied together ever since the first politician realised that corporations could donate far more than any one individual. It’s only now that we’re starting to see the true extent to which special interests influence (and in some cases, outright control) our government. Every day, we’re hearing more and more about how lower and middle-class families are suffering, money is being squandered, jobs are disappearing, homes are being seized, and the people who caused this whole mess are either making more money than ever, or taking their million-dollar bonuses and getting out of Dodge. I have some fun arguments with a libertarian friend of mine, and we disagree completely about the solution (he thinks the free market will correct itself if the ties between government and business are severed, I think businesses have proven that they cannot be trusted to police themselves). But we both agree that the current situation is unacceptable.

I want to talk about the smaller battles you have with your bank, though. Not home foreclosures, Ponzi schemes, investments or anything like that; just the simple act of getting access to the money you already have, when and where you need it. It seems like a simple enough concept. Walk into a bank, ask for your money, give them your number, and walk out with your cash. Now that ATMs are prolific and most stores accept debit cards, you don’t even need to ask. It’s just accepted that armed with a magnetic card and a PIN, you can use your own money however you want. What you (and I) usually don’t consider is that by setting up a bank account, you are essentially giving your money to someone else and trusting them to give it back to you. And if you really read one of those user agreements they made you sign, you may find out that they don’t have to.

Last week, I needed to do some banking that my debit card didn’t account for. I needed to have cheques issued to give to my landlord, and I needed to set up a tax-free savings account. I thought it would be a painless procedure, as both of these are things that a bank probably deals with on a regular basis. I present for you a dramatic re-enactment:

“I’d like to have some cheques printed for my landlord.”

“Sorry, we don’t offer that service.”

“What? Other banks do. How am I supposed to pay my rent?”

“You can order some cheques from our website, they will be mailed to you in 5-10 days.”

“What’s the cheapest option for buying cheques?”

“It’s $30.00 for a set of fifty cheques.”

“But I only need eight cheques.”

“We don’t offer that.”

OK, that’s unacceptable and you’re probably just too lazy to find the cheque paper, but I guess I’ll try to convince my landlord to take the money electronically. What about the TFSA?

“Sure, one moment.”

<five minutes later> “Follow me, you’ll need to speak to one of our personal bankers.”

<five minutes later still> “Sorry, you’ll need to speak to one of our investment specialists.”

<five minutes later again> “Sorry, you’ll have to make an appointment to come back when we’re less busy.”

That’s about the point I left. I was pissed, sure, but only for a few seconds, because then I had a revelation. This bank was charging me $10 a month just for keeping an account open with them unless I keep a $3000 balance, and gave me an interest rate of exactly zero. They had taken a lot of money from me in various fees over the years, and in that time, not once have I ever managed to do anything other than make a basic withdrawal without fighting them tooth and nail. When I wanted to transfer money to my account in the UK, they wanted me to send them a signed fax. A fax! In 2009! I don’t even know anyone who owns a fax machine! It’d be easier to just stuff all money under my mattress!

I ended up going back to my old bank (no fees, unlimited chequing and debit, and an interest rate higher than zero) and getting all the services I needed right away just by asking for them, including the savings account. But when it comes down to it, the mattress plan probably isn’t a bad one. The whole point of using a bank account for daily transactions is because it’s more convenient than carrying a big stack of cash everywhere, and if it turns out that a bank account is less convenient, why bother? With a mattress, I’d know exactly where all my money is at all times, pay no service charges, never have to find an ATM, never worry about what cards businesses take, and get exactly the same interest rate as I’d get at many banks. I’d have to worry about being robbed, but I do that already, and with the economy the way it is, the money under my mattress is probably still a lot more secure than your average investment portfolio.

But the experience highlighted an aspect of banks that’s bugged me for years; they are absolutely terrible at adopting technology. While the rest of the world blazes ahead with digital signatures, secure authentication and incredibly robust web applications, banks are still essentially dependent on paper-based forms. If I want to sign up for an account, I have to find a personal banker, fill out a form with all my personal information, hand it to him, and let him enter it into his system. Why can’t I enter all that information through the bank’s website? Not because the process is complex or the technology isn’t advanced enough; the bank simply doesn’t care to change the way it works. Some banks let you print off single-use cheques, some don’t. Some let you transfer money electronically from home, some don’t. We’ve finally started to get debit and credit cards with those digital chips in them, but guess what, it takes twice as long for the transaction to complete than it did using the old magnetic stripe. And if you want to do any kind of non-standard transaction, you can’t just e-mail them; they need your signature by either letter or fax, a technology that was invented specifically because things like PDFs and e-mail didn’t exist.

If I create a PDF of a letter containing instructions for my bank and fax it to them, they’ll accept it. But if I e-mail them the same PDF and they print it off, they won’t accept it, even though both contain nothing more than a printed copy of my signature. Just think about that for a second.

It’s not entirely the bank’s fault, I’ll admit. That pesky Sarbanes-Oxley act requires financial institutions to keep up to 7 years of paper copies of every single transaction that goes through them, so maybe I should be blaming the government. They locked the banks’ paper-based business practices into place with legislation, and the banks seem to be using that as a way to ignore the fact that technology is passing them by. Remember the “paperless office?” It fell apart as soon as companies realised they needed some kind of legally-binding way of entering contract, and the current state of digital signatures requires everyone involved to have a fairly in-depth knowledge of cryptography. My mom says the first person to invent a way of digitally signing documents that is legally admissible will be a billionaire, and I’m inclined to agree.

But let’s be honest, it’s 2009. I should be able to do all my banking via my bank’s website, e-mail and maybe telephone, but even that’s being replaced by web applications nowadays. That should include opening accounts, paying bills, setting up automatic transfers, and sending money from my account to someone else, no matter who they bank with and where their account is based. And if the bank is going to prevent me from doing what I want with my money, they’d better have a much better reason than “because we can’t do that.” Yes, you can do it, you just never bothered to find out how. And until you do find out, you have officially lost my business. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go make a withdrawal from my bed.

money, politics

Hello?

Ah, yes, South Carolina, come in. Please, have a seat. Thank you for agreeing to see me on such short notice. I realize you’re very busy, and I promise I won’t keep you for long, but there are a few things I think we ought to discuss regarding what you’ve been up to in the past few years. To be honest, I’m a little bit concerned about the direction you’ve been heading.

Before you ask, yes, I have seen the Joe Wilson outburst; in fact, it’s what brought you to my attention. Yes, I’m aware that he apologized, but I think you know as well as I do that he wasn’t being sincere. After all, he did refuse to take back his initial accusation of lying (even though Obama was not, in fact, lying), and has turned his new-found notoriety into over $1 million in campaign contributions. Yes, his future opponent, Rob Miller, raised the same amount, but his donations came from the grass-roots efforts of progressive groups; Wilson straight-out asked people to send him money, even saying:

“The liberal supporters of a government takeover of health care are using my very vocal opposition as an excuse to muzzle the American people who have been outspoken against their risky plan.”

despite the American people resoundingly supporting the public option. Not mention that in 2003, he voted for the reimbursement of hospitals treating illegal immigrants, so he was apparently for it before he was against it. This leads me to believe that Throwing around baseless accusations of liberal takeovers, and then politically benefiting from them, is behaviour that I’d like to think you don’t encourage.

No, I’m afraid I don’t believe this is an isolated incident. Rep. Wilson is only the latest in a line of people who you have elevated to the national stage, only for them to be exposed as, well, not the sort of person most people would want to be associated with.

Mark Sanford – After voting for Bill Clinton’s impeachment due to the Lewinski scandal and declaring his behaviour “reprehensible”, and after consistently voting against gay civil unions as a “defender of marriage,” he proceeded to have an affair using public funds, and refuses to resign over it (and now may ironically be impeached). He has admitted to “crossing the line with a handful of other women.” He found a way to argue for increasing the powers of the governor while decreasing the role of government, which is a bit suspicious at best. He formally rejected the bailout money for his state, despite his entire constituency wanting it, and agreed to take it mostly to prevent anyone else from getting it. He voted against preserving sites linked with the Underground Railroad.

Lee Atwater – Raised in Aiken and educated in Newberry, and one of the most ruthless Republican campaigners ever. Planting fake news reporters in press conferences, smear campaigns, push polling by biased pollsters, spreading false rumours about political opponents (most notably Michael Dukakis in 1988). But you probably know him best for the Southern Strategy and his belief that cutting social programs used primarily by poor and/or black communities is “doing away with the racial problem” because hey, at least it isn’t as bad as saying nigger.

Strom Thurmond – Where do I start? How about when he set the Senate record for the longest filibuster ever, in an attempt to derail the passing of the Civil Rights Act of 1957. He joined a third party ticket because of the federal government’s attempts to (gasp!) stop segregation. He proclaimed that it would take a literal army to force Southerners to admit “the nigra race.” He came out publicly against the Supreme Court ruling that desegregated schools. He was an old cranky racist asshole, and like all the crankiest racist-est assholes, he had an illegitimate black child the entire time.

Jim DeMint – Let’s see here… wants to ban all forms of abortion, wanted to strip funding from Berkeley because they protested a Marine Corps recruiting center (and give the money to the marines instead), added an amendment to ensure that stimulus bill money wouldn’t be used for bicycle or wilderness trails, wrote a book on how to stop America’s “slide into socialism”, stated that gay people and single mothers with live-in boyfriends shouldn’t be teachers, supports prayers in school, and ranked as the most conservative senator there is. I think you get the idea.

Caitlin Upton – Better known as Miss South Carolina 2007. Clearly your state prizes education, although I’ll discuss that in a moment.

Those guys from Borat who got in trouble for saying slavery was a good idea – That’s right, they were frat boys from USC.

Hootie and the Blowfish – OK, you didn’t elect them, but I am so blaming you for them.

Of course, that’s just the people. We still have to discuss your other inadequacies:

• The lowest birth rates and lowest rates of HPV vaccination, and highest rates of teen pregnancy, premature births and infant mortality. And 17.4% of your residents didn’t have health insurance last year. Surely your elected officials can do something about -
  

  The reason you’re not going to have a government-run health care pass the Senate, is because it would be devastating for this country. – Sen. Lindsay Graham (R-SC)

  If we’re able to stop Obama on this, it will be his Waterloo. It will break him. – Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC)

• The lowest child welfare spending in the country.
• One in three high school students still doesn’t graduate.
• No state-wide smoking ban, but you can’t buy alcohol on Sundays.
• A terrible state flag.

Frankly, it’s almost a miracle you’ve survived as long as you have.

I know change never comes quickly or easily, but I’m starting to think you haven’t even been trying. It’s no good hiding behind tradition this time; tradition is just a word for something you’ve been doing for so long that you forgot why you started. Eventually, it does get in the way of progress, and I feel that’s what’s happened to you. The rest of America is moving forward into a new era, and you stick to this “good ol’ boy, government is bad, gays are bad, blacks are bad, education is bad, diversity is bad” mentality, you are going to be left behind.

Don’t worry, I have a plan. Because we value freedom and choice, here in the “entire rest of the world,” we’d like to give each of your citizens the chance to relocate to somewhere that suits them better. For those of you who are lower or middle-class, non-white, female, non-Christian, gay or bisexual, or simply who vote Democratic, there are a wide range of other states that would be glad to take your tax dollars and provide you with services for them. For the rest of you, the clock is ticking on moving to Texas before they secede. I know it will be hard, but you’ll be rewarded with the “real America” you always wanted; an entire country of rich white dumb straight Christian Republican men, responsible for your own health, education, road system, social security, transportation, monetary system, the whole nine yards. Hey now, don’t give me that look; you wanted the government out of your life, you don’t get to just keep the bits you like and refuse to pay for the rest.

Now, I’m very busy, and I’m sure you can show yourself out. If you see Florida outside, tell him I’d like to speak to him too.

politics

Between my serious Internet activities of looking up hilarious new image macros and updating my Twitter feed, I noticed that some politician in the US talked to other politicians to tell them that people dying is a bad thing. Since I agree that people dying is indeed a bad thing, and didn’t know it would be necessary to convince people of that, I decided to read what he said. He talked a lot about, under their current system, some companies in the US make millions of dollars by letting people die, and that is really fucked up, and he wants to make sure that doesn’t happen anymore. But then he talked about how he was going to make sure, and it all fell apart. It seemed like he didn’t want to take any actual risks in fixing things; he just wanted to patch the holes in the current system until it wasn’t as bad, and reward the same companies he was complaining about, and do it all over several years, by which point a lot more people will have died from the same broken system. And his own supporters totally fell for it.

Of course, I’m talking about President Obama’s speech to Congress last night (Sept. 9th if you’re reading from the future). If it sounds like I’m being overly hard on him, well, I think he deserves it. I’ve been following the health care debate all summer, partly because I feel this is the real test of whether the Obama administration is good at anything other than giving speeches, and partly out of the same sick fascination that makes people slow down to look at car crashes. Obama said “During [the past several months], we have seen Washington at its best and its worst.” I don’t know where he’s getting the “best” from, but this is definitely the most bipartisan, hostile, reactionary and insane I’ve ever seen American politics behave. And I remember the Clinton affair!

I think what people are slowly realizing about Obama and the Democrats is that just being good at giving speeches and motivating people isn’t enough. Part of being a good leader is knowing when to compromise, when to back down, and when to take a stand and say “We’re doing this, and people on the opposition may not like it, but our citizens do and they’re the ones who we’re supposed to be doing this for.” Imagine yourself leading a group of people lost in the woods and you come to a fork in the path. One path leads to a bright sunny clearing and you can hear cars and civilization just past it, and the other leads to a dank and smelly swamp full of spikes and poisonous things. Half of your group wants to go one way and half wants to go the other. What do you do?

You could put it to a vote and take whichever path has more support, however slim. You could suggest that everyone goes which ever way they want. Or you could man up and say “We’re going towards the clearing, because that swamp is dangerous and anyone wanting to walk into it cannot be trusted to make good decisions for the rest of us.” But there are a few things I bet you wouldn’t do; you wouldn’t try to blaze a new trail directly in between the two existing trails. You wouldn’t sit at the fork in the road for months debating whether the swamp is really that bad. You wouldn’t trust the opinions of people who have been paid by the snakes and spikes to lead people down that path. And you definitely wouldn’t say “OK, let’s take the clearing path, but only after spending a lot of money and time turning the clearing into a swamp.”

The Democrats raised health care reform as an issue, and decided that instead of laying down a clear set of minimum requirements that any bill would have to include before it counted as “reform,” they kept it vague and allowed the House and Senate to fill in their own details. And predictably, the Republicans seized on that ambiguity and came out swinging with ridiculous lies, slander, and threats of death panels, government-sponsored abortions, rationing care, Medicare cuts, and socialism. When you read some of the charges levied against the proposed health care bills, it’s difficult to understand how any reasonable person could take them seriously. It would be easy to dismiss this as “Well, Americans aren’t reasonable hurr hurr”, but there’s more to it than that. People wanted a simple, clear-cut, explanation of what was wrong with the current system and why the new system would be better, and the Democrats didn’t give them one, so the Republicans did, and by the time Democrats woke up and said “Wow, people are totally believing all these lies, we should set the record straight”, it was far too late.

Obama’s speech last night was excellent; it was to the point, passionate, exposed the problems in the system and gave an understandable list of ways to solve them. If he’d given that speech in June, when the debate was just heating up, there would have been no debate at all. But he gave it in response to a solid month of right-wing drum-beating about how he will abort your children and pull the plugs on your grandmothers, and there is a very real possibility that a lot of people simply won’t believe him (including the very congressmen he was speaking to). And what do you do then? When you give a calm, rational explanation of the facts surrounding health care, and your opponent’s only retort is “he’s lying,” how do you establish that you aren’t? If people won’t listen to the facts, what will they listen to?

The health care debate is only barely about health care; everyone knows it needs fixing, and the only real debate is how many fixes each congressman can get away with supporting without losing the millions of dollars of funding provided by insurance and pharmaceutical companies. But I think this debate will answer a lot of questions about the entire American political system. Can the Democrats run an effective government when the Republicans have perfected their ability to stand in the way of progress for political gain? Do the American people really support Obama as much as they said when they voted for him, or was his victory a result of finally becoming jaded with the right wing? And the big one (in my mind), what will it take for the Democrats to stop capitulating to the right? If there is as much support for a public option as the Democrats claim, and they enjoy a majority in both the House and Senate, why do they feel the need to work with and gain the support of Republicans who have explicitly said that they will not support the bill no matter what it contains?

There are legitimate complaints to make about the proposals Obama put forward. The insurance exchange that he wants to set up to lower prices will take four years, which is a long time for a project of that to fester in Washington without being subverted. The consumer protections for insurance companies only apply if they choose to offer services in the marketplace. The co-op plan touted by Sen. Max Baucus may have been co-written by an ex-insurance industry VP. It may take years to identify and cut out all the bloat from Medicare, and until then the money to begin setting up this system is going to have to come from somewhere. Taxing insurance companies for their high-cost plans will only cause them to increase the prices of all their plans. And most worryingly, mandating that everyone must have insurance is effectively rewarding the insurance companies that have caused this entire mess, by giving them 46 million new customers. But very few Republicans are focusing on those; instead of playing the hand they’ve been dealt, they went and got a deck that hasn’t been used since the Cold War, when anything resembling socialism was the greatest perceived threat to American values. Never mind that every other industrialized country has adopted aspects of both socialism and capitalism to great benefit; giving towards a common goal for the benefit of all is apparently anti-American.

And if your head isn’t spinning yet, consider this: the constitution of Iraq provides single-payer health care for the Iraqi people.  That’s right, America invaded another country, established universal health care as a right, then denies that same right to its own citizens. And the money spent on Iraq and Afghanistan is far beyond what health care in America would cost. And in supreme irony, many of the senators and congressmen who voted for the war are voting against health care reform.

Now, full disclosure; as a Canadian, I have single-payer health care through my government and I am very happy with it, and I’ve never been in a situation where I literally could not afford to go to the doctor. So I cannot wrap my head around the fact that so many Americans are so dead-set against it. I can only attribute it to the people running their country remembering the time when the Russians were the bad guys, which should mean it will get better as they make way for the younger generation to take over. I’ve been told that back when Tommy Douglas brought UHC to Canada, the conservatives made all the same arguments about cost and reduced care, and yes, even accused him of being a secret socialist. But he stuck to his guns and pushed for it, and now no politician would ever dream of repealing it, (although Harper’s been dancing on that knife-edge for a while now in the form of two-tier care). Our system isn’t perfect, but it’s miles beyond what America has, and even beyond what they’re planning.

I have friends in America, some of whom are not insured, and the idea of the most affluent country in the world failing to support them when they need it most because they’d rather spend the money on the military and corporate bailouts sends a chill down my spine. I want everyone in America to have health care, I really do. But speeches and warnings aren’t going to accomplish that, actions are, and so far their actions (or lack of them) are speaking volumes. Hundreds of people in America die every day because they cannot afford life-saving treatments, and any person who is against health care is saying that they would rather let their own citizens die than see one extra dollar added to their tax. I can’t understand that, and I really hope I won’t have to for long.

america, politics