The Eclectic Radical

The Developmental Disabilities of Developmental Scientists

2011-03-10T07:42:00.000-08:00

I've generally been too burnt out by the simple fact that most people like the world the way it is to do much serious writing. My burn out has been increased by the fact that part of me is comfortable with the status quo and fears real change just like everyone else.I've tinkered with fiction and I've dabbled in some paying work (all in the area of boxing writing)but that's it. The little serious writing I've done has been about philosophy, theology, and morality in the hopes of shifting the focus of this blog from political symptoms to the underlying intellectual, spiritual, and moral condition.

My discovery of The Autism Crisis has compelled me to try to turn my hand to something semi-political, though my real concerns are the moral and intellectual motivations behind the politics. The blog's theme is the science of ethics of autism research in an environment where said science is solely driven by advocates of specific autism-related agendas not necessarily terribly concerned with autistic individuals. The degree to which the issue seamlessly fits into my view of modern sociopolitical philosophy got my fingertips itching.

My personal interest in autism science and advocacy started with an entirely selfish interest in ADD/ADHD science and advocacy. My childhood academic experience was about as pleasant as someone who has seen me characterize the US system of education as "sadomasochistic" might expect. Some of the problems came from my attitude toward school and teachers and some of them came from the attitude of schools and teachers toward me. The degree to which the US school system and I came to loathe each other eventually required my parents to try find a home schooling program that would be compatible with my desire to learn rather than to perform busywork for the justification of the system. Ultimately I was fortunate to live in a state (California) that gives a high school diploma to anyone able to pass a test that proves they learned what they were supposed to learn in high school.

The merits of the educational system and the value of a standardized test are issues for another time. Suffice it to say that I passed and it was the only way out of what I perceived to be a Hellish experience. My interest in ADD, ADHD, and Ritalin were driven by a desire to acquire a "normal" tolerance for the useless busywork that life too often demands we perform and to be willing to settle for doing a job as I was told to do it instead of doing it in such a manner that it was finished and finished correctly. I wanted to know if I was suffering from ADD or ADHD and I wanted to know if Ritalin would help me. To this day I do not know what my actual "diagnosis" would be, were I to seek one out, because my investigation led me to the conclusion that all of the science on the topic was fundamentally flawed.

The following is quoted from the ADHD entry on PubMed Health,a website for which ultimate responsibility lies with the National Institutes for Health. If the NIH espouses a different definition, it is not on their website, so I will take this quotation to define the condition as the NIH sees it:

ADHD is a problem with inattentiveness, over-activity, impulsivity, or a combination. For these problems to be diagnosed as ADHD, they must be out of the normal range for a child's age and development.

The words "the normal range for a child's age and development" are important. They imply an authoritative baseline to judge the presence of a developmental disability that requires treatment by means of a powerful mind-altering drug.

ADD/ADHD science is based on a pair of serious epistemological errors that Bertrand Russell or John Dewey would easily be able to point out to the scientists involved. The first of these errors, and perhaps the most severe, is the conclusion that the use of the word "normal" involves an objective intellectual judgment rather than a subjective intellectual judgment. The second of these errors, which would be a horrendous mistake even if the judgment process behind the word "normal" were properly understood, is to equate the process of judging what is "normal" by the mathematical study of averages. Thus "normal" is defined as "average."

The problem is that an "average" is not a discrete thing. It is an abstract mathematical construct. It does provide a baseline for comparison but it does not provide any sort of guidance in judging the validity of the comparison. The "average child" on whom ADD/ADHD science depends does not exist. They are merely an imaginary construct whose only purpose is comparison with the individual. The matter is complicated by the fact that any child psychologist not on mind-altering drugs themselves will tell you that "inattentiveness, over-activity, impulsivity, or a combination" are in fact normal symptoms of a condition called "childhood." So we have a situation where evidence of normal childhood behavior is justification for a diagnosis of mental abnormality based on an arbitrary prejudice regarding "desirable" behavior combined with an imaginary baseline construct telling us how much "normal" is too "normal."

This flawed diagnostic system is broken entirely by the fact that behavior symptomatic of ADHD can also be a specific response to specific stimulus under specific conditions. The child who does not do his assigned homework because they believe the classroom exercises sufficient and who, instead, reads ahead in their textbook for the following day's lesson and then goes to basketball practice is making a rational decision. When such a child has prepared for the next day's lesson and expects to work on that lesson but instead finds the class bogged down in the review of the previous day's lesson in the form of homework analysis, it would be terribly abnormal if they were attentive. When said child also gets an "A" on all class tests it could further be considered normal for the child to receive a "D" in the subject they have clearly learned so well. All of this a natural consequence of a classroom environment created by valuing social promotion over the gradation of learned skills and the completion of assignments over actual learning.

None of us should be surprised that forced medication of students is preferable to school districts over the trouble and expense of giving individual children attention based on their individual educational needs and accomplishments. The parents' health insurance foots the bill rather than the school district. What should surprise us is that the majority of ADD/ADHD "science" is undertaken in support of educators with the purpose of controlling children they do not know how to teach. Many parents of kids diagnosed with ADD have been fighting this tooth and nail. They see the effects that mind-altering drugs have on their children outside the classroom. The "scientists" don't care.

My personal view, that ADD and ADHD do not exist at all but are merely convenient labels to allow school systems to drug students that resist sadomasochistic institutionalization, is not necessarily widely shared. However the parallels with icepick lobotomies in mental institutions in the 1950s and 1960s are worthy of consideration. Both "treatments" consist of the destruction of individuality to suit the needs of the institutionalizing system.

It is the issue of questioning the motivations behind the science that brings me back to Michelle Dawson's blog and this article. The subject of the article is a study advancing a specific thesis about autistic understanding of spatial relations. Their findings were not pleasant:

The press release starts by declaring that autistic children "lack visual skills required for independence" and does not exaggerate the claims in the paper, which merit a lot of scrutiny. So bear with me, this is not going to be short. First what they did (and didn't do), then what they found, then what it means.

The statement Ms. Dawson quotes from the press release encapsulates the high-minded science of the study quite succinctly. The study minimizes some of the real learning advantages studies have found autistic individuals to possess by dismissive their usefulness in "the real world." Rather than design a "real world" test of "visual skill", however, the actual study constructed an elaborate simulation that did not even directly test visual skills!

This attitude can best be described as a belief in the virtues of conformance, submission to authority, and the abdication of individual responsibility to expert opinion as recognized by the institutions that expert opinion serves. Teachers unduly burdened by students with ADD/ADHD are not able to properly teach the rest of the class, we are told. Parents burdened by autistic children are handicapped in every other area of life. In neither case is the individual diagnosed with a disability the victim of said disability: instead, through their disability, they are the means of someone else's victimization.

Something whose combination of symptoms we choose to label "autism" clearly exists. It is not so easy to argue that the symptoms of autism are as "normal" as the symptoms of ADD/ADHD. Even if ADD/ADHD does exist, however, teachers aren't its victims. The kids are the ones suffering from the school system's INability, as well as their own DISability. They deserve better. How much more insidious and dangerous is the scientific attitude that autistics are not the victims of autism but, rather, society and government are the victims of autistics?

I've talked more about the specific issue of ADD than I intended and less about autism, but the real point in all this is not either specific issue. It is a culture of institutionalization in which elaborate systems are developed for every stage and facet of life and people are deemed worthy or unworthy based on their ability to fit into those institutions. Science must serve fact and not institutional values.

Green, clean, or sustainable? Where should our priorities be?

2010-06-18T15:50:00.000-07:00

'I'm not saying the warming doesn't cause problems, obviously it does. Obviously we should be trying to understand it. I'm saying that the problems are being grossly exaggerated. They take away money and attention from other problems that are much more urgent and important. Poverty, infectious diseases, public education and public health. Not to mention the preservation of living creatures on land and in the oceans.' - Freeman Dyson

The environmental movement has busily attempted to make a great deal of hay off BP's colossal boner in the Gulf of Mexico. One sees it on HuffPo and one sees it on liberal blogs. It's hard to blame them.

The trick is whether they are pursuing the proper tack.

I tend to consider myself reasonably 'green' on most issues, but I tend to consider that Dyson's position on environmental activism bears a certain degree of merit too. It's important to understand that 'clean energy' is not as simple as it sounds. How do we define 'clean'?

The environmental lobby has a lot of ideas. Solar, hydroelectricity, wind, geothermal power... and they all pose their own economic and environmental risks. Hydrogen fuel cells are a substitute for gasoline, but not for oil. Hybrid engines and chemical batteries create waste more toxic than carbon dioxide and that waste must be disposed of safely. How do we do that?

Self-proclaimed 'conservatives' bandy about phrases and code words like 'clean coal' and advocate greater use of nuclear energy. Right wing propaganda aside, making 'clean coal' a fact and not a propaganda phrase would cost more money and pose a greater economic risk than public investment in solar and wind power. It is important to note that the 'free marketeers' who oppose investing in potential new solar and wind based industries are happy to pour a fortune into the coal industry on a pipe dream. Nuclear energy, like chemical batteries, requires the safe disposal of waste much more toxic than CO2.

This isn't an issue where there are easy solutions. T. Boone Pickens' plan to convert gasoline-power industry and transport to natural gas power while investing in wind and solar power was interesting... but also very expensive. Economic issues have caused it to be thrown aside. It still might be worth examination, but the cost is a real factor.

More importantly, natural gas is still a non-renewable resource. Ditto uranium, cadmium, lithium, and coal. We may not have developed Hubbert Peak level models to discern when these resources will be exhausted... but we still know it will happen if we're intellectually honest with ourselves and others.

This is not to say that investment in battery power and nuclear power is not practical. It is only by seeking to improve existing chemical and nuclear technology that cleaner and safer alternatives can be discovered. If cold fusion can be made practical, further research into fission and fusion technology must almost certainly precede it.

There are no easy answers.

What if we're not even asking the right questions?

It is not just a matter of finding safe and clean energy technologies. We also have to develop sustainable energy technologies if we don't wish to eventually go Luddite. This energy has to be affordable to the average citizen if we do not wish to narrow our economic base even further than we have already done.

Civilization is going to have an effect on the environment. We can make choices about just what form that effect will take. We can't eliminate it entirely. We may not be able to eliminate every option (with the exception of the non-existent and scientifically shaky 'clean coal' notion) entirely either.

The honest answer, from the environmentalist standpoint, is that we really don't know yet. The honest response to that answer is not 'conservative' declarations that we might as well keep doing what we're going as long as it keeps working.

The honest response is another question.

Why aren't we doing more to find out?

Long Silence, Random Thoughts

2010-06-16T15:14:00.000-07:00

Obviously, I haven't been around for awhile. Not just here. I haven't really been active on any of the political blogs on which I used to comment regularly. Originally this was for reasons of health. When I overcame the health issue that kept me from writing, I realized I was incredibly burnt out.

I'm still incredibly burnt out.

I've been working a new job since late May and it appears to be going well so far. This has kept me pretty tired in the evenings. It is good to be back in telecommunications again, but it is also tiring to learn a whole new system for a whole new company. I am just glad I was fortunate enough to be in that position.

I am a 'grandfather' now, which is rather amazing to me since I've never technically been a father. The baby is gorgeous and I got to skip the part of having to raise and pay for a kid for 18+ years and skip straight to the fun part. So no complaints there.

I think most of the bloggers whose domains I used to stalk are probably glad to be rid of me. That is probably a good thing, since I don't know when I'll be that active again. I just felt, today, that I had to write something. So I am writing about nothing.

My thoughts on the issues of the day are, as usual, a mixed bag. I just don't feel as motivated to shout at the wind. I want to be that motivated. The trouble is that we live in a world where people don't want to think, read, or listen if they can possibly help it.

I'll try to have something to say the next time, but this time I just felt I needed to say anything at all.

Housekeeping

2009-12-30T02:06:00.000-08:00

Once again I've been inactive for longer than normal. This has been due to a recurrence of my dental health issues that were responsible for my last unintended hiatus. I am pursuing their resolution, but until they are entirely resolved I cannot promise regular updates at the same pace as before this problem began. I apologize for any inconvenience to anyone actually paying attention my need to bloviate and I appreciate the patience of those who haven't dropped the site from their links yet.

Skepticism: The Cornerstone of Democracy

2009-12-14T01:55:00.000-08:00

That's right. The fundamental foundation of a successful democracy is an open-minded skepticism. Things like individual liberty and civil rights are not the building blocks of democracy. They exist in a successful democratic society because conditions in a successful democracy allow them to exist, but they are dependent on society continuing to create the necessary conditions.

John Locke, the recognized pioneer of classical liberal thought, was also the first of the British empiricists. Prior to the empiricists, philosophy and science were based on strict logical thought. It was assumed by many that logic was entirely reliable and that logical theory did not have to be challenged. While some of the flaws in the Socratic Method and Aristotleian Dialectic were already obvious and the Rennaissance had led to a flower of scientific experimentation and humanism.

All of this led to intense reaction from conservatives in many quarters. Martin Luther rejected the corruption of the Roman Catholic Church of his day, but he also rejected the humanism of the Renaissance and preached a stricter morality and a philosophy based on faith rather than reason. John Calvin went even further, coming very close to rejecting reason as altogether worthless and leaving a legacy of anti-intellectualism that lingers to this day. The Reformation undid much of the progress of the Renaissance in many of the countries where it took root and the Counter-Reformation that followed entirely repudiated the Catholic humanism of the age of Da Vinci and Galileo. Thus those inclined toward piety tended away from intellectualism regardless of their religion. Those who did embrace intellectualism clung to the dialectics of Aristotle.

Locke, and the empirical thinkers who followed him, rejected the idea that a logical theory was a correct theory. They correctly understood the lesson of Galileo: logic does not equal truth and no theory can be considered sound unless it has been thoroughly tested and the actual results observed in the real world. That's the scientific method, philosophically stated.

There's a reason we call this era 'the Enlightenment.'

Thus, in order to prove that our ideas are true, we must doubt them. Absolute faith in our beliefs is dangerous. By allowing logic or religion to dictate a belief system and failing to test our own beliefs we set ourselves up for grievous intellectual error and the disillusion that accompanies it. It is even worse when we ignore the results of real world testing of our beliefs and insist that the logic behind them makes them true regardless of empiric experience. Skepticism and flexibility of thought, coupled with an ability to observe and accept the actual function of our ideas in the world, thus become the only surety of reliable knowledge.

A recurring theme among conservatives and libertarians is distrust of government. I don't believe that this, of itself, is a bad thing. I believe skepticism of government is very important. Absolute faith in the righteousness of one's government leads to experiences like the Japanese internment, the Red Scare of the '50s, the Vietnam War, and the scandals of the Nixon and Reagan administrations. Forgetting these lessons led to the experiences of 8 years under George W. Bush and a Republican Party whose fundamental line of attack is to present their own blunders, corruption, and incompetence as absolute proof of their theses about government.

Of course we should not place blind, unearned trust in government.

Nor, however, should we be blindly and unthinkingly afraid of government and allow that fear to override the empirical facts. Reflexing, unthinking, and close-minded fear is not skepticism. It is paranoia. One of the fundamental truths of paranoia is that paranoids frequently manufacture their own nightmares so skillfully as to make them real through their attempts to resist or escape them. Like the man said, they find themselves living in lonely worlds they populate with enemies.

Skepticism requires that we able to see the facts as they are rather than as we want or fear them to be. We must accept empirical reality and work with it rather than attempt to reshape the world in the image of our own beliefs no matter how logical we are sure those beliefs may be.

I've noted in the past that I began my political life as a fiscally conservative Republican, slightly more socially conservative than my moderate-to-liberal parents. Time, experience, and observation have drastically changed my views and ideas. I have been noticing that recent events and debates have continued to have an effect on my views and ideas. Changes have occurred at an easily observable pace. No doubt this will moderate as conditions change, but I fully expect my views to continue to change as I continue to experience the world and see them tested.

This may be arrogance or elitism on my part, but I believe this self-awareness and skepticism is key to the democratic process. Empirical testing can be the only test of political theory and ideas that do not survive the test of the real world must change. Laissez faire has repeatedly failed empirical testing. It failed during the Gilded Age, when a handful of men amassed massive amounts of wealth while reducing their fellow man to poverty and economic peonage. It failed in the 1929 and in 2008, when economic disasters were directly caused by the corruption and speculation of investors entirely unfettered (from without or within) by common sense or enlightened self-interest. In 1929 this happened because a monied, capitalist aristocracy could not wrap their brains around the idea that nothing lasts forever. In 2008 it happened because the financial industry believed that credit was equal to infinite, free capital.

It is incumbent upon our society to learn from such mistakes and correct them rather than (as we have for many years now) repeat the same old mistakes in new forms. This requires government intervention in certain areas of the economy, as most of us have already learned and understand. Conservatives are correct to say that eventually we will have to pay the bill. That's the whole point. One always has to pay the bill in the end and forgetting that very fact is the fundamental economic mistake we have seen repeated ad nauseam throughout history. Yes, at some point in the future our taxes will go up. That's how life works. Tax cuts can't last forever either. Conditions change, and policies must change with them.

When we believe in something so absolutely that we do not even consider the alternative, we are writing our own doom on the walls ourselves. Experimentation, experience, and trial and error are the only way to be as sure as possible of our knowledge. Even then conditions may change.

This is only common sense. Unfortunately, in today's political climate, common sense is very radical indeed.

Society, the State, and the Government

2009-12-12T05:57:00.000-08:00

'Nature abhors a vacuum.'

-- Francois Rabelais, 1494-1553

One of the most misused words in the English language is 'statism.'

Merriam-Webster defines the word as meaning 'concentration of economic controls and planning in the hands of a highly centralized government often extending to government ownership of industry.' They date the word to 1919 and I am willing to accept their date and definition.

In recent years, much like the words 'Communism' and 'socialism' (which also have very specific dictionary meanings), self-proclaimed libertarians have used the word to mean 'anything the government does that I personally dislike.' It is certainly perfectly acceptable to dislike action taken by the government (something many conservatives forget when it comes to liberals, or when they themselves are in power.) It is simply not correct to use the word 'statism' to describe actions that fall outside its proper definition. Nor is it correct to use 'statism' to describe the belief that government should exist at all or should take effort to solve social problems. There are a lot more words for this, all dependent on context.

If one wishes to follow the correct dictionary definition of 'statism', then I don't believe there are many 'statists' in the United States of America at all. Nor, for that matter, do I believe there are many in most of the Western world. Even the most aggrieved socialists, most critical of capitalism, believe to some degree in capitalism and markets and do not believe the government should control or centrally plan the entire economy. Many of the most aggrieved socialists are philosophical anarchists who see the state and its sponsorship of corporate power as the problem.

I would like to be a philosophical anarchist. The problem is that government isn't going anywhere. It is inevitable and inescapable. If we successfully dismantled the United States government from top to bottom today then the governments of each of the fifty states would successfully Balkanize into fifty little countries. Some of them might combine to form larger associations on the pattern of the very government recently dis-established. If we dismantled the state governments from the ground up as well, we'd still have all that local government. Cities, counties, and townships would govern themselves as separate entities or federate into larger states on their own. The latter is highly likley, as that's the whole point: cities and fuedal counties discovered that they could better manage their affairs and protect their security by combining their interests under a central authority that could respond in emergencies.

I'll even go one further. Let's say we succeeded in completely dismantling local government on top of everything else. Everyone looks after themselves as best they can, gets together in community organizations to look after themselves collectively as best they can, or pays someone to provide them with protection. The former and latter system, which today is called anarcho-capitalism, has been tried before. During the Dark Ages they called it 'feudalism.' Everyone either protected themselves or paid someone else to protect them. Ultimately, the people providing protection became the government. They had the power to do so and there was no one with equal power to stop them. The middle option, community collectives in which freemen combined to defend themselves and each other against the feudal protection racket, is frequently lauded by anarcho-socialists. Ultimately, as the protection racket got bigger and stronger and more united, cities had to all with a bigger mobster, the king, to survive.

So modern government, in its first infantile throes, was born.

Break down everything libertarians and anarchists despise in modern government, dispose of the state entirely, and you simply create an environment for feudalism to make conditions so difficult that government becomes necessary all over again.

Of course, there is one notable difference between the Dark Ages and today. We have corporations with entrenched money and power. We complain about the government being in corporate pockets, with some degree of justification in many cases, but with no government at all we'd have the pleasure of watching corporations build the kind of government and society they wanted all around us with no recourse at all. Their government would be a lot less democratic and participatory than the one we have now, and a lot less responsive to the needs of society. It would be a 'one dollar, one vote' democracy. As bad as things are now, that would be much worse.

What society needs to do is take control of government. Government needs to cease to be a means of state control over society and become a means of societal control over the state. The state came into being in order to serve specific societal needs. These include (but are not limited to) public safety, general welfare, and (whether conservatives like it or not) the redistribution of wealth through the various strata of society in order to attempt to secure a basic standard for the quality of life. The only way this will happen is if people act. Responsible and informed voters must make responsible and informed decisions for the genuine public good, rather than base their decisions on personal prejudices against their neighbors or their desire to pay lower taxes. Democratic society must be an educated society. This does not mean everyone needs reams of paper proving their formal education. It means that everyone needs to be willing to take responsibility for educating themselves for their entire life regardless of their level of formal education.

It also means that society needs to reject ignorance as a badge of honor and embrace the fact that there are things we do not know... and seek to learn what we do not know. We should be proud of what we learn, not huddle in the dark and fear the sounds from outside. The only way this will happen is if we take control of our political environment. Government must become society's servant.

This is all very radical and extremely difficult.

Unfortunately, we've already gone through far too many years of the alternative.

Who's happy with what we've got now?

There Really IS An Explanation For Everything

2009-12-09T06:47:00.000-08:00

Dr. Ron Chusid has speculated a lot, on his own blog, about the real beliefs of outspoken and controversial right wing 'pundits' like Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck.

It appears that there may be more to Beck's particular apocalyptic visions than just the attention it gets him or the ratings.

He may so stridently predict the total economic and social implosion of the United States because he being paid to do so.

Brett Michael Dykes, writing for Yahoo! News, notes:

Yet another controversy appears to be brewing around Fox News host Glenn Beck. Some are accusing him of a blatant conflict of interest concerning his frequent on-air promotion of an investment sold by one of his main advertisers: Gold.

What are the accusations?

(If you'd like to see for yourself: http://mediamatters.org/research/200912020029 and http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/1209/Becks_cross_of_gold.html are the links in the above quoted text)

For a start, Beck is a compensated endorser for precious metals broker Goldline International. They sponsor his radio and tv shows, he frequently endorses them during live segments, he has had their CEO on his radio show as a guest in what amounts to free advertising, and their ads are all over his website. Now that's fine. Celebrity endorsement is nothing new and hardly a scandal.

Here comes the really big but...

When Glenn Beck tells his television audience to pull all their money out of the stock market and buy gold, he does not disclose that he is paid to endorse people who make money when the price of gold rises. This would be a violation of journalistic ethics if Beck were a journalist. It is a violation of Fox News's own policy about their hosts providing on air endorsements during their tv shows.

Even if Beck were not specifically telling his viewers to go out and buy gold, there is still a serious issue of conflicting interest. Beck has been talking the economy down hard since President Obama was elected. He has been predicting economic collapse and apocalyptic chaos. When people are afraid for their livelihood and personal safety, the price of gold goes up. They invest in portable assets they can take with them in an emergency. This means Beck is serving Goldline International's interests every time he forecasts that we'll be eating our neighbors in a few years. He creates a climate of insecurity that profits his sponsor. It raises fundamental questions about the integrity of Beck's show and its content.

Beck's response to criticism?

"So I shouldn't make money?"

The complete lack of compunction in this question is less disturbing than the fact that Glenn Beck doesn't even see the point the critics are making.

It's not about the money, Glenn. Every American has a right to earn their livelihood, as best they can, by means of their pursuit of happiness. We actually put that in writing somewhere.

It's about integrity. Like it or not, there are people in the country who trust Glenn Beck. When he panders to a narrow corporate interest because it profits him, he betrays the people who watch his show and take stock in his word. Personal integrity has value.

Glenn Beck's personal integrity is easy to put a price on.

Just check the price of gold.

Differing Views of Government

2009-12-08T00:54:00.000-08:00

One of the reverberating themes on the right wing of the blogosphere these days is the notion that 'Liberals can't complain about Stupak-Pitts because they wanted the government in health care and that means giving the government the power to screw it up.'

In the words conservative feminist blogger Jenn Q Public:

Proponents of liberal health care reform deliberately lured a bloodthirsty vampire over their thresholds, and now they’re shocked – SHOCKED – to find they have fangs buried deep in their necks. I’m not one to blame the victim, but it sounds like they might be getting exactly what they were asking for.

This sums up the entire conservative response to liberal complaints about Stupak-Pitts in a nutshell. 'Stupid liberals wanted fascism and now they are complaining about it.'

This, of course, is not an argument at all. It's an ad hominem attack that allows the actual points of debate to be entirely ignored. I'm not entirely sure, however, whether this is premeditated or whether it is intended as a genuine argument.

The left and the right, after all, have fundamentally differing views of the proper definition of 'government.'

The conservative view of government is that it is an inherent entity of its own, with specific coercive and authoritarian traits that define it. Government cannot exist without those traits, goes the right wing argument, and is something else entirely without those traits. Hence the need for a small government with specific and strictly defined areas of authority.

The liberal view of government is that government is representative of the people who elect it and that it has an obligation to pursue, protect, and ensure their interests, opportunities, and rights. They believe that government should be able to do what needs doing, in the best interests of the people, as long as the rights of the people are protected.

The emphasis is important. Liberals do not believe in the 'unlimited' government that conservatives often claim they advocate nor in 'fascism' (not even the terribly misdefined 'fascism' of conservatives) or 'socialism.' Liberals believe in responsible, effective government as a necessary component of civil society.

There needs to be a balance between the power of the government to do what needs doing and the protections in place to prevent it from ignoring all responsibility and simply using coercive force to do its will. The irony is that it is conservatives who have continually advocated the use of coercive force by the government to do their own will both at home and overseas. Corporate conservatives want the US military to enforce their business interests. Neoconservatives want American empire. Religious conservatives wish their religious mores enforced as law. All of these require the expansion of government power, not its contraction, and all are far more dangerous to the rights of individual Americans than health care reform. Yet they crow over Stupak-Pitts as some sort of self-fulfilling prophecy of government run amok. They rarely acknowledge the far greater danger of irresponsible demagogues advocating for real fascism from several directions at once.

While not precisely a 'liberal' myself (if anything, I am well to the left of most American liberals), I certainly support health care reform. Like liberals, I believe in responsible government rather than the unfettered government alternately feared and worshiped by conservatives. I certainly don't care for Stupak-Pitts and think it a horrible mistake, both politically and morally.

From the quoted article:

'When you invite the government to become more deeply involved in health care, you’re also inviting greater government interference in personal choice. Medical decisions become political decisions. That’s how it works, and it’s why philosophical opposition to the growth of government isn’t the crazy-eyed wingnuttery progressives make it out to be.'

Once again, rather than discuss the real issues at hand, we see an evasion of the topic with a statement about those stupid liberals who keep inviting the monster into the closet. The automatic assumption that responsible decision making and rational thought go out the window once one decides to create health care policy means that liberals have no right to complain about the policies that result from reform.

I can't speak for 'liberals', but I don't consider 'philosophical opposition to the growth of government' to be all that terrible. The government is one of several potential threats to individual freedoms. There are real risks to government expansion that must always be weighed carefully. I am no statist, I am a philosophical anarcho-socialist. What I consider 'wild-eyed wing-nuttery' is the belief that the private sector can take care of all of society's needs if civil society abdicates its own responsibility for its own needs. To reference a favorite phrase of the Anonymous Liberal, one cannot rely on the underpants gnomes to take care of the poor, elderly, and sick if we do not do so as a society. When one puts 'philosophical objection to the growth of government' over the economic and physical well-being of Americans, one has crossed the 'wing-nut' line. When one's personal concern for having to wait longer in the office for service prevents one from wanting others to have that same access to medical care then one has crossed an even darker line: one is no longer merely a wing-nut.

This brings us to the ultimate issue regarding Stupak-Pitts and health care reform at large. The government works for us. As conservatives are so fond of saying, American tax-payers pay a great deal of money to the government every year. If an automobile mechanic you were paying to provide proper maintenance and upkeep on your car deliberately used substandard parts and you were injured in an auto accident as a result, the depraved indifference law means that the auto mechanic is guilty of a felony.

Stupak-Pitts is a deliberate act of depraved indifference on the part of a bipartisan conservative coalition.

Everyone should complain about that.

American Children At Risk... from America?

2009-12-04T01:39:00.000-08:00

The United States is a terribly dangerous country in which to be a child.

Lack of a proper welfare system or a genuine health care policy means that children or poor rural or inner city parents are frequently trapped in a world of poverty and crime from which there often appears to be no escape. The people who appear to get the most respect in the world in which these kids live are often drug dealers, pimps, and bookies. Crime appears to offer an easy escape from poverty and there are plenty of role models available. Speaking of his life in early 20th Century America, jazz clarinetist Artie Shaw once said:

"Coming from where I did, it was inevitable. I was going to pick up either a machine gun or an instrument. Fortunately for me, I found an instrument."

Though there have been ethnic changes among the youngest victims of urban poverty, the details are much the same now as they were in 1920. Drug Prohibition has neatly taken the place of the Volstead Act. The ethnic make-up of gangs and 'the mob' is no longer the same, but they still appear to be the quickest way to respect and economic freedom. There is one more temptation working against them, one their younger forebears never had to face.

I'm going to knock the media, but I'm not going to condemn violence on tv or the fictional glamorization of crime. These offer their own problems, but they are not new. Children's fiction has been tremendously violent since Cinderella's step-sisters cut off pieces of their feet to make the glass slipper fit. In many ways, kids were exposed to far more fictional violence in the past than they are today.

Rather, the media sends kids (and adults, but it is kids on whom I am focused now) a massive amount of information about how important it is to have money and buy things. What is more, American culture is extremely tolerant of criminal behavior from the wealthy and powerful. Every day corporations engage in activity that would be felonious if committed by an indidivual. The wealthy abuse drugs every bit as much as the poor, but where the poor go to prison the wealthy do not. Star athletes avoid serious prison time for killing other human beings. Political figures engage in corruption and repression of civil liberties and their political opponents are accused of 'vindictiveness' and corrupt motives for wishing to prosecute them for their crimes. Thus we send messages every day that in America, you can get away with anything.

Unfortunately, you can't if you are a kid. The United States processes more children through its criminal justice system (per capita, not just gross) than any other Western nation. Until 2005, the United States was the only country in the Western world to sentence children to death for crimes committed as children. The United States is still the only Western nation to sentence children to life in prisone, without the possibility of parole, for crimes committed as children.

It doesn't help that there are people who want more kids in prison, longer, just so they can make a buck.

Two cases currently before the Supreme Court seek to prevent the government from sending kids to prison for life and making it impossible for them to get out. The first arguments were heard early in November, and there are reasons to believe that both cases will be victories for the defense. Human rights advocates hope that this will lead to a complete ban on such sentences. Congressmen with their own law to ban such sentencing are waiting to see if the Supreme Court does it first, preferring not to pursue a legislative solution unless necessary.

The trouble is the very strong likelihood that, even if both defendants have their sentences overturned, no such declaration will be forthcoming.

The Supreme Court specifically chose to hear both cases separately because of very thinly, but distinctly, separate legal issues raised by each case. Chief Justice John Roberts has suggested that he believes juvenile offenders sentenced so harshly should be able to use their age when the crime was committed as grounds for appeal of sentence in individual cases, but that he does not support a complete ban.

So there is a chance that the Supreme Court will decide that some children can be sentenced to life without the possibility of parole but others shouldn't be, and the best way to answer the question of who should or should not be is after the fact.

The trouble with such individual distinctions in an issue like this one should be pretty clear: in a criminal justice system rife with economic, ethnic, and social inequity we wish to decide which children need to be protected from such a system after the fact. Does anyone else see the grave weakness in this statement?

If childhood and emotional/intellectual maturity are to be criteria for the voiding of even one sentence, it is much safer for the rights of Americans to make certain that those criteria are applied across the board. It may cost 'American taxpayers' more to send an adult offender to prison for life without parole after a life of juvenile crime, but 'American taxpayers' have children too.

Let us suppose that the argument of judicial independence is made: suppose we believe the judge should have discretion to sentence each individual according to the particulars of the individual case. What then?

I happen to believe that, myself, very strongly. I believe judicial discretion is a component part of the criminal justice system, coupled with judicial review. If we truly intend to argue for judicial discretion, however, then arguing against a ban on the sentencing of minors is the wrong argument. Instead we should be arguing against mandatory minimum sentences that force a judge to deliver sentences harsher than he believes appropriate to the case. If we banned mandatory minimums, it would be easier to truly judge each case on its own merits.

In the absence of such a ban, the rights of individual citizens demand equal attention to the maximum sentences handled down and the circumstances of such sentencing. A ban on sentencing children to life in prison without parole is the least we can do in that area.

The very least, at the risk of sounding radical, there is a lot more reform necessary.

Civil Rights Do Not Come in Separate Boxes

2009-11-29T05:06:00.000-08:00

I don't really refer to myself as a 'liberal' anymore, though I certainly believe in core values that can be described as liberal in today's political metrics. This is not because the word is no longer 'cool' in American politics, but rather because I have drifted further to the left than the mainstream of American political liberalism. I would say they have drifted to my right, but I have to recognize that my political maturation has been a step by step journey further to the left.

I certainly refuse to call myself a 'progressive', both because I reject the utopian underpinnings of the original meaning of the word and because I reject the more modern notion that 'liberalism' and 'progress' are automatically synonymous. Not all change is automatically good, and quite a bit of human progress has been counterproductive. One can't turn back the clock or hold back the future, but we need to try to make better decisions.

Never the less, it really made me happy to see someone else make sense on the key left wing issue of civil rights.

Writing in The American Prospect, Ann Friedman writes:

In the wake of the passage of the House health-reform bill and its attached anti-choice Stupak-Pitts Amendment, the conversation happening among progressive women was viscerally angry and palpably fearful. The broader liberal conversation was very different -- one in which the amendment was regrettable but unavoidable in the interest of the greater good. It is moments like this, with Democrats in control of Congress and a nominally progressive president in the White House, when it becomes painfully clear that in reality we do not all take on the same level of responsibility for securing the rights in which we claim to believe.
We rely on gay-rights groups to battle it out alone for marriage rights in Maine. We expect feminists to secure abortion rights in health-care reform legislation. We look to the NAACP to effectively respond to racist statements about Obama. And yes, those groups will work hard for those goals. But when they fall short, they are not the only ones to blame. It's fair to look at the entire progressive coalition and ask the hard questions about our movement: What's the use of having a community, a coalition, if you aren't going to fight for each other? Are we amplifying the voices of those whom we hope to empower or silencing them? Whose "greater good" are we really pursuing?

Shout it a little louder. Please. I don't think most people on the left right now are really listening closely. At least, not the ones in actual positions of power.

In the specific case of Stupak-Pitts, the problem is relatively simple: health care is such a massively important issue that it is easy for a pragmatic policy-maker to say 'I am going to do whatever it takes to pass health care reform, because health care reform is better than no health care reform.' This is laregly a correct moral and intellectual position. The problem is that the purpose of health care reform is to serve society as a whole and the rights of the individuals within society. So when one makes a compromise that undermines the very purpose behind health care reform by undermining the individual rights of the Americans the policy is supposed to help, one is not really serving the interests of health care reform at all. One is undermining it. As a very smart fellow said before me: these kinds of violations of individual rights are exactly what conservatives foretell with gloom and doom when they predict the dangers of government intervention. The irony that conservatives oppose health care reform because of the danger of restrictions on patient-doctor decisions about care and that it was conservatives who colluded to actually place them there should be voiced more clearly and more often.

Instead of a fundamentally united civil rights lobby, we have a badly divided set of individual lobbies for the rights of specific groups. Instead of adopting a comprehensive civil rights platform for all Americans, the Democratic Party (and the liberal coalition within it) have instead established 'women's rights' platforms, 'minority rights' platforms, and 'gay rights' platforms that all work at cross purposes. I understand the political circumstances that have brought this about, but it is immensely counterproductive. We need a simple, basic, comprehensive platform supporting human rights: equal recognition of the natural rights of all Americans.

I am reminded of something from one of the last HBO specials of the late George Carlin:

"Rights are an idea. They are a cute idea, but that's all they are. Let's say you do have rights; where do they come from? Oh, you say, they come from God, they're God given rights... Personally, folks, I believe that if your rights came from God he would have given you the right to some food, he'd have given you the right to a roof over your head; God would've been lookin' out for ya!"

I both disagree and disagree with the philosopher Carlin. Rights are an idea. They are an idea borne of human intellect and human imagination. Yet I believe that human intellect and human imagination are God given, and that the notion of natural rights is entirely valid. It is better to agree to accept a 'cute idea', in this case, then to accept the far too obvious alternative:

"If you still think you do have rights, one last assignment for you. Get on the computer. Go to Wikipedia. When you get to Wikipedia, in the search field, I want you to type in 'Japanese Americans 1942' and you'll find out all about your precious fuckin' rights, okay?"

Since Blogger does not allow one to include a link in a quote block, I include this for the edification of my readers.

This is precisely the alternative to the cute idea of rights and is a point that should escape no one on the left. The internment of Japanese Americans happened precisely because the majority of American citzens were so focused on the 'big picture' and the 'necessary compromises' to achieve their greater goals that they pissed all over the basic premise of America itself. Health care should not become the same kind of clusterfuck.

Health care is not the point, however. It is merely one example that illustrates the point. The Japanese American internment is another. So is the somewhat soft commitment of many liberals to genuinely equal rights for gay Americans. The difference between a 'civil union' and a 'civil marriage' is such a tenuous fiction that it becomes useless to maintain it; unless one really intends to deny gay couples the full rights of interpersonal partnership.

One can go on. The willingness of 'liberals' to pander to nativist policies regarding illegal immigration deserve some attention, perhaps. The unwillingness of liberals to put real effort into passing laws to protect workers' rights to bargain fairly with their employers also come to mind.

As Ann Friedman writes:

"After all, "special interest" issues do not exist in separate silos. Labor rights are tied to gay rights are tied to women's rights are tied to immigrants' rights. If what binds us together as progressives is our vision for a more just society, it is our commitment to all of these issues that will define us."

Forgetting this is a fundamental betrayal of basic principles. One can even call it a fundamental betrayal of basic American principles and leave the word 'progressive' out entirely. I'd far prefer that she had done just that.

Ultimately, however, even Ms. Friedman loses her way:

"We can't work from sweeping visions of liberalism on down. We have to work from concrete rights and opportunities on up. Think of it this way: White men are the least likely Americans to identify as progressives. The people most likely to identify with the liberal worldview -- women, people of color, LGBT people, disenfranchised workers -- are those who have experienced a lack of freedom and opportunity themselves. They are then motivated to broaden their scope and see how injustice also affects other Americans. It is the progressive movement's commitment to these people -- its base, its core -- that will ensure its long-term survival. If we continue to compromise on the concerns of those people, or dismiss them as "special interests" working against an imaginary greater good, we will ultimately render our shared concept of liberalism totally meaningless. After all, if each group within the coalition is actually just in it alone, what's the point of subscribing to a common ideology at all?"

Most of this is dead on the money, but it fails to make the most important point. What is not needed is a renewal of the commitment to protect the rights of each member of the 'liberal coalition.' What is needed is a new and genuine commitment from all members of the coalition to protect the basic, common rights of individuals within society. True social justice requires us all to shed our labels. Even those of us 'priveleged' to be 'white men.'

Real social justice requires we all be willing to share the label 'human' without claiming our own precedence. Even if we really want to get Blue Dog votes for health care reform or badly want blue collar whites in the Rust Belt to vote for us.

A Brief Explanation

2009-11-29T01:38:00.000-08:00

So everyone knows...

A couple of weeks ago, I came down sick. This recent Monday I went to actually see the doctor and I have been in an antibiotic haze all week. This is why I haven't done any more than respond to comments here and why my comment volume on other blogs is down somewhat.

I'm sorry for the unintended posting gap and I'm not planning to join the hiatus club just yet.

The New Old New Criticism

2009-11-22T02:02:00.000-08:00

That's quite a mouthful, isn't it?

'The New Criticism' is a form of literary criticism, developed during the 1920s and 1930s, and very much en vogue during the early post-WWII years. While Wikipedia is not always the number one source I would prefer to cite, their description of New Criticism is fairly accurate and good enough for someone who is not a pedantic intellectual snob to understand the general meaning of the term.

The really important facet of the New Criticism was the idea that text itself has a unique and self-contained meaning that can be understood by a close, strict reading of the text itself. Nothing outside the specific text itself contributes anything of value to understanding the meaning of the text itself. This is most important, for the purposes of our discussion, because it means that the actual meaning that the author is deliberately intending to convey is irrelevant. The text means what it means, regardless of what the author meant when he wrote it. This is very convenient device for those critics who want to read their own prejudices into the text. Here we have the fundamental flaw of the New Criticism: a text ultimately means what the critic says it means. If the critic is judged to be following the rules of close reading of the text itself in a vacuum, then the critic's interpretation of the text's true meaning even trumps that of the author.

Wow. I thought I was an elitist.

T.S. Eliot expressed his view of this problem extremely clearly:

"When I wrote a poem called The Waste Land some of the more approving critics said that I had expressed the ‘disillusionment of a generation,’ which is nonsense. I may have expressed for them their own illusion of being disillusioned, but that did not form part of my intention."

The irony, of course, is that Eliot was himself (in some areas) a pioneer of the New Criticism. Ultimately, however, he decided the author's intention came first.

So why have I made you sit through a dissertation on a form of literary criticism I obviously have little use for and that has fallen into disrepute in many literary circles?

Well, it's because of the political renaissance of the New Criticism as it might pertain to political speeches, policy, and debate. Now, representing the other side's comments in the worst light is not entirely new to politics. In some ways it is very old. Even the political lie is hardly a new thing.

However, the right wing has increasingly taken the position that they know the meaning of the things said, written, or proposed by their political opponents better than the people actually speaking, writing, or proposing. It is ironic that a literary tool accused of too universally assuming a natural state of 'liberal humanism' has become the political tool of conservative anti-humanists. Whether one is watching Fox News, listening to talk radio, or reading conservative blogs and opinion columns makes little difference. One can see a twisted and deconstructive variant of the New Criticism being applied to everything the left and center say, write, or propose. There is one constant and universal truth being communicated: the 'critics' of the right know what it all really means far better than the actual originators of the material they 'criticize.' Even their lies are true because they understand the meaning so much better than anyone else.

'Death panels', 'government takeover of health care', and 'cutting Medicare' are the slogans of the new, political incarnation of the New Criticism. None of these catchy and frightening phrases resemble the actual intention of the authors of health care reform policy. Yet they are trumpeted by conservative critics who claim they know better than those actually taking a hand in making the policy. One can find a similar tack taken on nearly every political issue one might mention. Cap and trade? It's 'a punitive and economically dangerous tax on business' despite the fact that cap and trade policies are pursued by countries who are far more successful in the manufacturing market than the United States. The New Criticism, you see, does not allow one to consider anything outside the immediate words being dissected. So the fact that cap and trade policies or health care reforms are successful elsewhere has nothing to do with the specific policies being attacked by the right.

I've gone on the record as saying I have certain reservations and objections to the direction health care reform is currently taking. I've also been equally critical of the green left and the oil-loving right. I don't believe cap and trade is a solution to environmental risks, though I do think it is a sensible and moderate policy. I am somewhat apart from many on the left in that I believe the maintenance of a modern, civilized society and the extension of the benefits of that society to as many people as possible takes precedence over environmental issues. I believe we should find ways to maintain and extend civilized society in ways as environmentally friendly as possible, but I believe human life and human advancement is of prime importance.

Yet I believe it is tremendously important to speak the truth in these matters. The American political right is not doing so. On the subject of the environment, many on the European and international right are also lying. Worse, they are representing their own views as a more clear understanding of the actual meaning of their opponents' ideas than the authors of those ideas. They mischaracterize their opponents' intent or disregard it entirely.

The New Criticism is arrogant and elitist in literature.

It's deadly in politics.

'Corporate Efficiency', 'Emergency Rationing', and the Irony Deficit

2009-11-21T00:11:00.000-08:00

This piece serves two purposes; I want to make a real (if snarky and highly ironic) comparison between the 'greater efficiency' of the private sector that conservatives love to rattle on about and how the real world actually works. I also wish to make a misanthropic and cynical observation about people, regardless of their politics.

Opponents of substantive health care reform always talk about the superior quality and efficiency of service offered by the 'free market.' Indeed, many individuals on both sides of the political fence are in love with the 'efficiency' of the corporate model. They believe that corporate administration is less bureaucratic than government administration (it's not), that the private sector is more accountable for its failures than government (ha!), and that the corporate management model is streamlined to produce more immediate results. They fail to understand that today's corporate model is top heavy with a bloated management structure that exists to guarantee its own success and always cuts the product end of operations in the name of 'efficiency' while management acts as if nothing has changed at all within their own corner of the company.

A case in point:

Kellogg Co. says there will be a nationwide shortage of its popular Eggo frozen waffles until next summer because of interruptions in production at two of the four plants that make them.
The company's Atlanta plant was shut down for an undisclosed period by a September storm that dumped historic amounts of rain in the area. Meanwhile, several production lines at its largest bakery in Rossville, Tenn., are closed indefinitely for repairs, company spokeswoman Kris Charles said in an e-mail.

Corporate efficiency, that's the ticket. Kellogg, a tremendously successful company that could serve as a working model for corporate success, is is unable to adapt to unforeseen difficulties any better than the government might. Just as one plant is seeing production lines shut down 'indefinitely' for repairs, a storm shuts down another for an 'undetermined' period. Now the storm is truly a freak act of nature which cannot be completely predicted and about which very little can be done. However, regular maintenance schedules should avoid the need for 'indefinite' shut-downs for repairs. More importantly, there are very few conceivable reasons for a repair shut-down to be 'indefinite.' Estimates for repair time and costs are not difficult to obtain... unless one is looking to cut corners by taking too much time to shop the price in the interests of the 'bottom line.' Ultimately, a shortage of one of their most popular products could damage the brand in the long run... unless, of course, the joy of full availability leads to a massive buying spree as soon as Eggo returns to the market. If this happens, they could end up making a significant profit from the shortage.

I want to be clear that I am not suggesting a conspiracy to create a deliberate shortage of a popular product during economic difficulty in order to generate increased demand. I am simply noting that a corporation could end up profiting from the results of a shortage caused by poor planning and a lack of alternative plans.

This is a point that bears consideration. When a mistake of this magnitude is potentially without consequence because of the increase in sales created by the increase in demand during the shortage, it offers no incentive to take precautions to avoid such a mistake. So much for the superiority of 'corporate efficiency' trumped by conservatives. This is precisely why the government needs to be involved in the social sector and why regulation is necessary for that range of corporate activity more serious than a waffle shortage. This circumstance illustrates just how far from perfect the 'free market' is and just how dangerous it is to assume its automatic superiority.

I want to add a hat-tip to stay-at-home mom and blogger Joey Rescinti. Though the Associated Press noted her comments about the 'waffle shortage' and even interviewed her, they failed to include a link to her blog or even its name. This is a good example of the kind of sloppy journalism we must deal with today.

I also want to note the deficiency of humor/irony in the world today and the generally judgmental and nasty turn of mind many people find the internet allows them to over-indulge. Mrs. Rescinti made a nicely turned barb about 'rationing' her child's waffles and found herself attacked in cyberspace by random jack-asses. I don't know anything about Mrs. Rescinti's politics and they are entirely her business. Regardless of politics (and considering the nasty 'health food' tone of some of the attacks I am sure that the snots in question were liberal snots), this is just disgusting.

I can understand why tempers get heated when discussing serious political issues or controversial social topics. I have been very upset with people on occasions myself and can be very harsh with people I believe show a lack of intellectual capacity, a failure of common sense, a deficit of honesty, or simply strike me as mean-spirited and callous. I plead guilty. Likewise, I am sure I come off as snotty and superior to many people who disagree with me because of my own confidence in my own moral structure and view of religion and philosophy.

All of that is very different from taking time out of one's busy day to be unnecessarily vicious to a random blogger because you don't like that she feeds her child Eggo waffles or believe an ironic barb about 'rationing' during the 'shortage' is anything but a very clever joke.

Such people are fools.

How the Army Supports the Troops...

2009-11-16T22:42:00.000-08:00

"Well, you're just going to have to put your child in foster care."

This is what Spc. Alexis Hutchinson claims one of her superiors told her when she was unable to find a family member to care for her infant son for the duration of her deployment to Afghanistan.

Kevin Larson, a spokesman for Hunter Army Airfield, denies this. While he admits that he personally does not know what Spc. Hutchinson was told by her superiors, he claims the Army would never require a single parent with no one else to support their child to deploy overseas and force the child into the foster care system.

Army regulations do require a single parent-soldier to submit an official plan for child care before deployment to a combat zone. So the law-on-paper backs Mr. Larson's statements.

The trouble is, actual events appear to contradict the actual Army regulations on the issue... as well as Larson's statement.

Knowing that she had to deploy on Nov 5th, Spc. Hutchinson had made arrangements for her mother to care for her infant son. Citing other responsibilities (caring for an ailing mother and sister, a daughter with special needs, and running a 14 child daycare center), the specialist's mother returned the child to his mother just days before she was to deploy. Spc. Hutchinson contacted her superiors and simply requested more time to make alternate arrangements... a highly reasonable request. Unfortunately, it does not appear that her commanders were feeling reasonable.

According to the AP:

Her civilian attorney, Rai Sue Sussman, said Monday that one of Hutchinson's superiors told her she would have to deploy anyway and place the child in foster care.

This is in violation of Army regulations and policy as described by the base's own spokesman, Mr. Larson. Someone dropped the ball, badly, and Spc. Hutchinson is now paying the price.

Unwilling to place her child in foster care with the attendant risk of not seeing the child again (putting a child into the system is vastly easier than taking them out), Spc. Hutchinson felt that she had no choice but to refuse deployment. She was arrested and briefly jailed. Currently, she is facing charges.

There is no doubt that Spc. Hutchinson is guilty of being absent without leave and disobeying an order. A court martial trying the case solely on the facts has no choice but to convict her. So now Spc. Hutchinson is not only a single mother, but a felon to boot.

Obviously, I believe deliberate clemency is required in this case. I think a plea agreement allowing Spc. Hutchinson to receive a general, rather than dishonourable, discharge and avoid criminal prosecution entirely is more than fair. While I understand why the military cannot ignore her offense entirely for important reasons of military discipline, she was forced into a necessary and legitimate act of civil disobedience by an order that was in contravention of Army policy and may have actually been illegal.

My reason for writing, however, is to present a challenge. The champions of family values should all take a moment to stop crusading against the individual civil liberties of gay Americans and stand up for the integrity of this actual family. If Spc. Hutchinson goes to the stockade it will be because she believed her family values to be the most important values in her life. Stand up for her family values. The champions of 'saving the children' should all take a moment to stop crusading against abortion to stand up for an actual living child whose mother did not have an abortion and has put her own freedom on the line to guarantee he remains with a loving family. Save that child.

"... And now the news."

2009-11-13T23:31:00.001-08:00

As strange as this may sound, this piece is not about Fox News. I imagine that anyone reading my work either already knows how Fox News operates (being directed here from a liberal blog, nearly all of which have something to say about Fox) without need for me to write yet another piece dissecting the process. I will briefly recap how Fox operates, however, on the off chance:

Fox's base journalism coverage carries a story and the initial broadcast is pretty much straight journalism. They report what happened. Often, this initial coverage will not be shaded at all... though it will usually lead to a few 'unanswered questions' which the news staff will note but not attempt to answer. The story will then carry over to Fox's opinion programming, where these 'unanswered questions' will be the topic de jour for much of the programming schedule. The hosts will feature 'expert guests' (who may or may not have some claim to actual expertise, but are frequently conservative bloggers or radio hosts rather than real 'experts') who will engage in answering those questions with the help of the stars of the opinion shows. It can also happen the other way, of course, with the opinion host expounding his own theory to the enthusiastic support of the 'expert guests.' Either way, when the next round of news coverage comes around, the theories communicated on the opinion shows are then presented in addition to the original news coverage. They are presented as expert opinion about the 'unanaswered questions' in the original reporting and many of the opinion personalities are frequently asked on as guests in the news coverage to discuss the issues.

That out of the way, let's get to the real point of the column.

Southern Beale wrote this about CNN's coverage of the Fort Hood shootings. The article is highly critical of CNN and journalist Ed Lavandera for writing gossipy speculation about the motives of shooting suspect Nidal Hassan.

What is notable is that this line of speculation was featured front and center on Sean Hannity's Fox show. (The link is not ABOUT the shooting, but the video excerpt from Hannity is all nearly all about the Ft. Hood attacks and Hassan.)

Wait, you cry, you said this isn't about Fox!

It's not, the Fox reference is merely to lead into my point: journalistic standards have changed beyond what the pioneers of modern journalism would consider 'legitimate news' and moved back into the 'yellow journalism' of the pre-New York Times Hearst-Pullitzer era.

The motto of the New York Times at the turn of the 20th century was 'All the News that's fit to print!' This was because the Times' founder, Adolph S. Ochs, was one of the pioneers of what we would call 'modern journalism' despite being a capitalist and not a reporter at all. Ochs believed that as interesting as speculation and narrative were, the public would be that much happier to pay to know what was actually happening in the world around them. Ochs developed the idea that news reporters should write about what actually happened according to verifiable sources and facts, rather than speculate on what may have happened in the interest of providing a narrative to events.

The leading papers of the country (the variuous papers of the Hearst-Pulltizer publishing empires, primarily) were focused so aggressively on competition for the reader that they considered a narrative that would keep the customer buying the paper more important than factual writing. The most notorious example of this was the Dr. H.H. Holmes affair... when the Hearst and Pullitzer papers created lurid murder scenarios out of whole cloth in order to keep readers hooked on the developing story and top each other's sensational coverage. Henry Mudgett (aka Dr. H.H. Holmes) really was the first documented serial killer in US history, but his actual body count was far below that speculated by the newspapers. Mudgett was actually convicted of one murder, and his confession to another 27 has more in common with Henry Lee Lucas than with Ted Bundy... several of the people he claimed to have murdered were found to still be alive after his execution. Yet the Hearst and Pullitzer papers gleefully reported it all. One Hearst paper, the Philadeplpha Enquirer, may even have added names to the list! Even Holmes' wikipedia article seems to have been taken in by the sensationalism of the original coverage, though the footnotes do make reference to some of the inaccuracies.

In the face of this kind of 'yellow journalism', Ochs' notion of reporting the actual news based on verifiable facts was tremendously radical. It was not something that had been done before and was a huge commercial risk.

It paid off, however, and for generations the standard of verifiable fact had been the decisive factor in determining whether or not news should be reported in the mainstream media. There were other media outlets of course: 'yellow journalism' still found a market for those more interested in narrative than fact in tabloids, television 'newsmagazines' featuring tabloid content, and a variety of other sources. Many political magazines, programs, and blogs have become outlets for this kind of 'yellow journalism' as well.

Unfortunately, as the media has changed, the ethics of journalism have changed as well. The past journalistic standard was 'objectivity', which meant that reporters covered objective fact regardless of whom it benefitted or harmed. In an increasingly supercharged political atmosphere the media has been attacked as 'liberal' as a result of an era (most notably the Nixon and Reagan administrations) during which objective reporting of the factual news was very damaging to conservative political interests. In the interest of avoiding such attacks (in my opinion a cowardly decision) the media has changed its policy from 'objectivity' to 'neutrality.'

This changes the standard of news, as well. Instead of the standard being the objective facts verifying the story, the standard is that someone really said it. The media then reports what someone says, often with no commentary on whether it is accurate or inaccurate, because someone said it. This can give the most ridiculous claims (such as Sarah Palin's 'death panels') the appearance of legitimacy because the story is reported seriously and there is no commentary on the factual basis of the claims. The fact that the claim was made justifies reporting the claim as news.

This is a very serious flaw in modern news-media reporting and is a definite step-back from Adolph S. Ochs. The 'legitimate' media, as it was before the 2oth Century, is once again reduced to 'yellow journalism.'

Keep it in mind: when it comes to the news, today, we live in an age where the buyer must beware.

'What have here is a failure to communicate..." (Or: Why Moderates Are Stupid About Abortion)

2009-11-09T23:40:00.000-08:00

When I wrote my first piece on abortion, I had intended for that to be the end of it... at least for the year. A great many people of all political stripes throw wood into that particular oven every day all over the internet and it's not my intention to simply talk about what everyone else is talking about. I try to stay on track with economic, social, and political philosophy and commentary and a heavy dose of social and political criticism. The abortion debate in America, as driven by the right wing (aided and abetted by the unthinking center), has very little to do with the facts or realities of abortion. I had meant to say so, communicate the facts, and be done for at least the foreseeable future. While I had mentioned abortion in a recent criticism of moderates and 'fiscal conservatives', it was in tandem with other personal rights issues.

Unfortunately, Michigan Congressman Bart Stupak (D) and Pennsylvania Congressman Joe Pitts (R) made it an issue again with an amendment that would bar even indirect federal funding of abortion by denying private insurers in the national insurance exchange the commercial freedom to offer abortion to their customers if those customers are receiving federal subsidies to help them purchase health insurance. It's worth nothing that this is an issue of commercial freedom as much it is an issue of abortion rights. Barring private health insurers from offering a legal medical service to paying customers is restraint of trade. This is also a medical issue, as it is precisely the sort of intervention by government in the patient-physician decision making process that Republicans claim to oppose. Dr. Ron Chusid makes precisely this point on the excellent Liberal Values. Southern Beale mentions this as well, and also offers the more traditional feminist criticism of the bill. I agree with both of them.

Now some of you who read me closely may accuse me of being inconsistent and waffling on this issue, because when I proposed my own health care plan I included elective abortion on a list of procedures not to be covered by a national health care plan. First, that was just that: a national health care plan, not a program of health insurance reform such as Congress is currently considering. Second, I specifically noted that only truly elective abortions should not be funded and that medically necessary abortions were not elective at all and should be covered. Period. If one is going to undertake a massive program to fund necessary healthcare costs (as I believe we inevitably must) then one is going to need to exclude a range of genuinely elective medicine in order to reasonably control costs. Several of the items I included on that list are male-specific medical services or procedures that currently are covered by most insurance. As a note, I think birth control medication should be covered by such a plan.

Private insurance is not a national health care plan, however. While I am no supporter of the lawless state of volia advocated by today's conservatives, I believe in the free market. If we are to keep health care, for the time being, primarily in the preserve of the market than we have no business restricting the supplier's right to sell the consumer what they want or the consumer's right to buy it. Even if the consumer is buying, partially, on the government's dime it is still the consumer and the supplier who must make the decision in question. The government's role is to ensure that supplier offers a quality product. Not to restrict the supplier from offering legal products to paying customers. As the public option is intended to compete in the free market with private health insurance, it must be empowered to offer its paying customers a full choice of legal products as well. Offering abortion coverage with the public option is not 'federal funding of abortion.' It is offering a paying customer a legal product.

I want to be clear that anyone saying otherwise is grossly in error or guilty of deliberate intellectual dishonesty.

I worry that it breaks the thread of my narrative and somewhat undermines my point, but most private insurance already does not cover abortion. Southern Beale has rather firmly and thoroughly described the real inequities in health insurance costs for men and women. One of the goals of health insurance reform, if we cannot yet get real health care reform, should be to establish a regulatory framework to eliminate such inequities rather than to legally reenforce them.

I am on record supporting insurance reform efforts in the short term because it would improve the current system and establish a precedent for future reform. In the most basic examination, any improvement over our broken system is radical improvement. However, it must be real improvement and the Stupak-Pitts amendment is reenforcement of much that is wrong with the current private health insurance picture. It is also a reenforcement of much of what is wrong with the current political debate on the issues of both abortion and health care.

Do you? Do you really?

2009-11-06T23:37:00.000-08:00

My father's favorite line, when talking politics, is, 'I'm a fiscal conservative, but a social liberal.'

My father voted for Barry Goldwater and Richard Nixon. He may have even voted for Ronald Reagan in 1980.

Starting in 1984, however, my father has not ever voted Republican in a presidential election. Starting in 1994 (he voted for Pete Wilson for governor of California in 1990, something he tremendously regretted after he saw what kind of governor Wilson was), I don't believe he's voted Republican at all. Despite having never changed his party registration.

My father, like many people of his generation, does his best to say what he actually means and to actually mean what he says. Not everyone is so straight-forward in their thinking or communication.

From Bob La Follette (both of them), to Thomas Dewey, to Nelson Rockefeller, to John Anderson there has historically been representation for this view within the Republican Party. At some times, such as during the Truman, Eisenhower, and Kennedy years, it has been the professed platform of the Republican Party.

This is no longer the case. The Republican Party has done its best to purge them. Arlen Specter, who once slapped Anita Hill around (figuratively) on behalf of the religious right, was driven out of the GOP earlier this year for compromising with Democrats on economic policy.

More recently, in the New York 23rd Congressional District, Dede Scozzafava became the figurative punching bag for the national conservative establishment... despite being the candidate endorsed by Newt Gingrich. Once again, the big issues on which she was attacked were economic... along with a ridiculous character attack with only a loose basis in 'fact.'

The economy is, naturally, an issue which concerns all of us quite a lot these days. We are in a major recession and may have only just missed (or still be teetering on the precipice of) a genuine depression. Does that make it the most important issue on the American table?

Barry Goldwater once said that American freedoms were far more important than security or life itself. He said that Americans would rather die than sacrifice their own freedoms. This turned out to be somewhat naive. It might be more accurate to say that some Americans would rather sacrifice the freedom and equality of others in order to save a few bucks on their taxes.

Or rather, some Americans would rather deprive others of their individual personal liberties than pass health care reform.

The problem is this: if you claim to be a 'social liberal' or to support equal respect for the personal freedoms of all Americans, what are you doing about it?

I don't like litmus tests and I am personally uncomfortable with abortion. However, I've written the frank truth on the matter. The only rebuttal as frank is the Phyllis Schlafly-esque argument that equality between the sexes is undesirable and the status quo is better for women. I can certainly appreciate the mathematics of that argument from a utilitarian perspective, but I believe this to be an issue of principle rather than utility. If one believes in gender equality then abortion (along with a slough of rights to which some feminists object, which are a topic for another post in the future if I don't just decide that Wendy McElroy explains it much better than I do) is a necessary part of equality of opportunity and choice in a free society.

Gay marriage in and of itself is arguably of little consequence. There are gay rights advocates who agree with me on this one. The greater issue of equal rights under law for all Americans, however, is a very serious issue indeed. Regardless of what you think about gay marriage, if you believe in equality before the law then you cannot legitimately argue against legal civil marriage for any consenting adults who wish to marry and understand the commitment. The popular moderate compromise of 'civil unions' might be unconsitutional, if one were to understand the basic premise of Brown v. Board of Education to strike down any discriminatory law that relies on the premise of 'separate but equal.' This is not to say that I don't believe civil unions are a valid option if this is what gets a consensus on the issue, but the difference between 'civil union' and 'civil marriage' is such a minor semantic that one has to ask one's self why a distinction would be necessary. The answer doesn't say good things about us as people.

Homophobes love slippery slope arguments. Here's one for them, and I really want to hear their answer because I think they have plans for the future: if we amend a state's constitution to deprive one portion of society of its personal freedoms, who is next?

There are Republicans (even conservatives) who say they support gay rights. There are Republicans (even conservatives) who claim to want to see abortion rights protected and even accuse the left of being the chauvinists and misogynists.

The problem with this claim is my earlier question: Well then, what are you doing about it?

If the answer is voting for strictly conservative primary candidates who virulently oppose such rights, then people are going to question your sincerity. If you advocate for reactionaries over moderates who share your expressed views, people are going to question your sincerity. If you express support for candidates or pundits who are entirely opposed to your expresed views, people are going to question your sincerity. If you subscribe to every right wing political and media trope and conspiracy theory, people will question your sincerity... and they will have a very strong basis for doing so.

The justification for laisezz faire economic policies expressed by its advocates is 'freedom.' Economic freedom, however, is not an obvious no-brainer. Freedom for business can mean restrictions on the freedom of both consumers and employees, while the protection of consumer and employee rights requires a framework of law within which corporations must operate. Much as we have laws against robbery and rape, we have (or should have) laws against larcenous or rapacious behavior in the business sphere. While the most hardcore anarchists and libertarians would say that laws against robbery and rape go too far (and that we should all just have the right to shoot anyone who tries to steal from us or assault us), most mainstream conservatives advocate a law and order stance based on the classical liberal notion that government should protect the property rights of private citizens. A law and order mentality of this sort is not any more restrictive of freedom because it protects private property from corporate criminals the same as private criminals.

Yet it is support for laisezz faire and the 'freedom' engendered by same that motivates these self-proclaimed conservative supporters in individual freedoms to vote and advocate for candidates and organizations totally opposed to their professed social beliefs. It is difficult not to interperet this as a mistake in priorities. One's mileage may vary to a certain degree, but at some point one believes in something or one does not. There are far more moderates who support laisezz faire and individual freedoms than there are conservatives who support individual freedoms with full-throated gusto. Indeed, most conservatives oppose them quite forcefully in practice.

If you've managed to bear with my rather disjointed rambling (which I hopes manages to convey a message which appeared rather coherent to me when I started writing) then I have a question I don't consider radical at all:

If you say you support a woman's right to choose, gay marriage, equality before the law, or any of a dozen more real issues of personal liberty in the face of intrusive government control and you don't ever vote for or support candidates who share that position I just want to know...

Do you? Do you really?

Defending the Indefensible: When Partisan Politics Trumps Professed Principle

2009-11-05T10:39:00.000-08:00

Approximately a week and half ago, I posted about an amendment in a defense appropriations bill. The amendment, offered by Senator Al Franken (D-MN), would bar defense contractors from using their employment agreements to shield themselves from liability in claims made against them by employees. The specific example that spurred the amendment was a case in which defense contractor KBR is claiming that its employment agreement (which requires all disputes between management and employees and liability by employees to be settled by an internal corporate arbitration process) protects it from any and all liability in a case where one employee was allegedly gang-raped by her fellow employees in Iraq.

I've written about the nature of agreements between employees and corporate employers before as well, particularly when attacking the conservative position (held by too many in both parties) of the sadly shelved Employee Fair Choice Act. I've also mentioned them in passing or in some detail in multiple other postings.

I'll recap here again: an agreement which grants a corporation ambiguously limited power over its employees while allowing the corporation to define the means by which its employees can negotiate on their own behalf is not an honest contract. It should not be a legal agreement at all, but that is another topic for another post.

I can understand some of economic arguments on the other side, though I tend to believe many of them are specious. That is not the point, however. A line needs to be drawn and we should all be able to agree that the alleged victim of a violent crime has a legitimate expectation to a certain degree of assistance from their employer (on whose watch the alleged crime occurred) in seeing justice done, specifically if the alleged incident involved fellow employees. When the employer fails to provide the proper assistance it should not then be able to use an employment agreement to shield it from its responsibilities.

30 Republican senators did not agree. I discusses this in the original posting on this topic.

Now, some are going even further: they are accusing those who would defend the notion that an employment agreement cannot shield a corporation from its share of culpability in an atrocity of politicizing rape.

Jenn Q Public writes:

This current smear campaign began when Sen. Al Franken (D-SNL) proposed S. Amdt. 2588, a measure ostensibly inspired by the horrific gang rape reported by Jamie Leigh Jones while she worked in Baghdad for defense contractor KBR, then a subsidiary of Halliburton. Franken contended that “her KBR contract banned her from taking her case to court, instead forcing her into an ‘arbitration’ process.”
It was a lie.
No employment contract can be used to force criminal complaints into arbitration. Not in America. But that didn’t stop the disingenuous left from immediately seizing upon the talking point that Republican opponents of the amendment want to deny rape survivors their day in court. Commentators pretended to be mystified as to how any rational human being could vote against rape victims.

Of course, it wasn't a lie and this kind of intellectual dishonesty attempts to ignore the actual issue of whether or not a corporation can shield itself from liability by forcing its employees to sign away their rights to sue it in return for their jobs. Franken did not ever claim the company somehow blocked criminal prosecution or that the agreement prevented the victim from filing charges. The alleged victim's lawsuit does accuse them of failing to properly and impartially investigate the incident. If this accusation is true then the corporation would be culpable if the case proved impossible to prosecute and might be guilty of obstruction of justice; but it's not the point of the amendment.

The point of the amendment is that corporations who believe their immunity from lawsuit trumps a thorough investigation into the truth of rape allegations should not be doing business with the US government. It's a damned good point. It's a damned good amendment. The 30 Republicans who opposed it were not only wrong, they were expressing implicit approval of such an attitude. Writing in their defense and attempting to spin the issue into a left-wing politicization of rape is also an implicit approval of such an attitude.

A principled government would not do business with such people. A principled political party would understand that. Principled activists and writers would call the party out when it made such a horribly wrong-headed decision en masse. Particularly those writers who accuse the opposition of being misogynists and claim to be champions of 'real' feminism.

Jenn Q Public continues:

It is the foot dragging of the United States Department of Justice that is keeping Jamie Leigh Jones from facing her attackers in court, not her KBR employment contract and not Republican legislators.

Well, this is not what the alleged victim claims in her lawsuit.

(As a note, the above link is the same link in the quoted text.)

KBR specifically contends that Jamie Leigh Jones was not raped:

KBR is disputing Jones' claims. They said she was a willing participant in the sex act, and they said the incident only involved only one man.

When the employer who ran the only investigation into the matter possible under the existing circumstances claims that no rape occurred, this could be seen as a barrier to effective prosecution. The facts of time and geography make an investigation difficult as well. KBR could cooperate to make such an investigation easier. Instead it is defending its procedures in order to protect itself from a lawsuit it claims is not valid anyway.

This may not be the 'KBR contract' to blame, but it certainly suggests the possibility that KBR could in fact be obstructing justice in this matter. KBR's 'investigation' essentially involved accepting the claims of the suspect as totally truthful and dismissing Jones' accusation. So it is not surprising that Jones would feel the need to sue, nor should anyone believe that KBR could possibly be trusted to properly adjudicate the internal abritration process the contract dictates.

Jones also claims in her lawsuit that KBR submitted a rape kit that may have been improperly handled during the testing process. KBR denies it. Once again, not something that they can be trusted to effectively adjudicate internally as their employment agreement dicates.

The idea that, under all these circumstances, KBR should be immune from actual civil liability in this matter is ridiculous. The argument that corporations should be able to maintain the kind of control over accusations made against their own conduct of such matters that Jenn Q Public defends is also ridiculous. The truth of these matters is best determined in actual court, not through corporate arbitration procedures.

A woman says she was raped and the corporation says she was not. They don't say they feel terrible but are not liable. They say she was not raped. They are saying her claims have no validity and should not be given credence.

Yes. They are clearly the innocent victims of persecution that the author seeks to portray them as being:

Franken’s primary objective was not to ensure justice for rape victims, but to strike a blow at the company that sits at the top of every rank and file liberal’s hit list: Halliburton. The legislation is an overly broad political sledgehammer designed to ban the disbursement of federal funds to Halliburton when narrow wording addressing arbitration in assault cases would have received bipartisan support.

Yes, Halliburton (along with KBR) is specifically mentioned in Senator Franken's amendment. This is because Halliburton owns KBR and KBR's activities in this matter can safely be said to reflect on its parent company in the absence of action by said parent to rectify the problem. It's certainly legitimate to name KBR in the amendment, as KBR is the company that has specifically behaved in the manner the amendment is supposed to address. Of course they would be mentioned in the memo.

Here we have it, the real reason Republicans voted against the amendment and the real reason that a conservative blogger is attacking Franken and the Democrats for 'politicizing rape.' They want to defend a company they have been deep in bed with for years, precisely because they have been so deep in bed with it. This kind of cynically partisan political response by Republicans is not, entirely, unexpected. A cynically partisan attack on those who criticize it, by a blogger who professes to be a 'real' feminist battling left-wing misogynists is more surprising.

It's also even less acceptable. If there is something worse than 'politicizing rape', it is cynically defending a corporate culture that brushes rape under the rug and then claims it can't be sued for doing so... because of one's politics.

There comes a point when one's personal positions on civil liberties mean nothing at all if one consistently cooperates with those who trample all over them.

One Year Later: Lies Defeat Individual Liberties Coast to Coast

2009-11-03T22:45:00.000-08:00

A year ago, in California, those Americans who believe that they have the right to intrude into the personal lives and family choices of their neighbors amended the state constitution to deprive individual Americans of their personal freedoms. They did so based, primarily, on a lie: they claimed that banning gay marriage was necessary to prevent ministers from being legally forced to perform religious marriages for gay couples against the tenets of their faith. This was untrue and the people making the argument knew it. Thanks to their efforts and their lies, California became the first state in American history to amend their constitution to deprive American citizens of their natural rights.

That ugly record has still not been broken, but this morning the r esults were made official on a Maine ballot measure to repeal a state law explicitly protecting the rights of individuals to marry whom they choose.

As in California, the bigots won.

As in California, they won basing their entire campaign on a lie.

In Maine the issue was not religious freedom, but something even scarier to those with even the smallest touch of homophobia:

In addition to reaching out to young people who flocked to the polls for President Barack Obama a year ago, gay-marriage defenders tried to appeal to Maine voters' pronounced independent streak and live-and-let-live attitude.

The other side based many of its campaign ads on claims — disputed by state officials — that the new law would mean "homosexual marriage" would be taught in public schools.

Yes. That's right. They told voters that if gay marriage was legalized, then schools would start teaching their kids to be gay.

The voters are as much to blame as those advocating the bill, of course. They chose to vote to deny their fellow Americans basic personal freedoms that everyone in a free country should rightfully possess. They did so because they were bigoted enough, regardless of how many 'gay friends' they may have or how much money they've donated to AIDS research, to feel their skin reflexively crawl at the idea that their kid might be 'made gay' by the school system. They were also foolish enough to believe a lie designed to frighten them rather than vote based on principles of individual liberty.

Yet it is impossible for me to ignore the lie. The reason for the lie is simple, of course: there is no legitimate way to argue the legalistic denial of adult Americans free choice in their private lives and there is no legitimate way to argue against the American principle of individual liberty. Since every honest argument from the right would come down to these issues, lies are necessary. Lies are always necessary to support bigotry. Bigots must lie to others, each other, and themselves in order to feel secure and moral in their bigotry. If they had to truly face and understand the truth they would not be able to live with themselves.

This is not merely about bigotry, however, nor is it merely about lies.

The notion that it is acceptable to deny individual Americans their rightful liberties as human beings is not one that should be considered valid at law by Americans, liberal or conservative. The traditional conservative policy of governmental non-intervention in the personal sphere is utterly at odds with such policy. Those of us on the left, who advocate for a more just economic, legal, and social system should be offended.

Unfortunately, individual liberty is too radical for the people of Maine... if it means someone might teach their kids to be gay.

The Health Care Reform Debate In Perspective

2009-10-31T02:34:00.000-07:00

As everyone paying attention has seen, I've done a lot of writing about health care. A lot of it has been in much the same vein as every other liberal-to-socialist blogger on the blogosphere: criticism and polemic on the debate itself. As I've noted before, there's a lack of excellent writing on the substance of the debate. I've decided to try to address the substance again, partially because new readers who find me 'more liberal than radical' may not have seen my earlier commentary on the substance of the debate and partially because I'm still not terribly satisfied with the final form health care reform is taking despite my pleasure that it looks like some basic problems will be addressed.

First and foremost is the substance of the reform actually being discussed in Congress. The right-wing advocates of market reform and the left-wing advocates of national health care policy have both been excluded from the debate. As I (and others) have said before, what is being debated in Congress now is insurance reform. Insurance reform is better than no reform at all. It certainly addresses the real problems of health care in America better than market reform as advocated by the right.

Those problems, which I have also written about before, are basically three-fold:

1.) High consumer costs generated by the inefficient pooling of costs in multiple payment pools. This means multiple partially funded systems of payment and no single fully-funded pool of shared costs. This is entirely opposite to the principle of shared cost. Whereas other insurance can survive this way because it covers against the unexpected, everyone will need medical care at some point in their lives. Thus the inefficiency of the cost-sharing method has a mushroom effect on consumer costs. When one adds to this the cut the insurance companies must take from the consumer to make a profit it only gets higher. So while medical costs really do rise as technology changes, the consumer costs created by our insurance system are the biggest cost problem.

2.) Access to proper care is restricted in a variety of ways. The uninsured frequently forego all but the most urgent care (which is much more expensive) for financial reasons. Insurance companies frequently make their customers jump through hoops to make full use of their benefits, or deny payment entirely if it suits them to do so. Medicaid is difficult to receive (indeed, many of the people who need it are ineligible because of the family requirements) and offers inferior service. Medicare and the Veterans Administration only serve specialized portions of the economy. Thus many people cannot afford to see a doctor, believe they cannot afford to see a doctor, or choose not to see a doctor because they prioritize other financial needs before medical care. Even when one has coverage, there is no guarantee the insurance company will provide full access to necessary care under the current system.

3.) The current health care system puts a tremendous burden on American business. The majority of people with insurance who are not covered by Medicare or Medicaid receive health insurance benefits through their workplace. This infringes their economic freedoms (because their benefits tie them to their job) and it also shifts much of the cost of health care onto the business sector as a de facto tax burden. This latter aspect is worth taking into account among the many problems with American economic policy. I'm no friend of corporate culture, as anyone who reads my stuff knows, but forcing the corporate sector to underwrite what most of the world considers a national issue and a government responsibility is... of questionable capitalist virtue.

The current health care reform proposals in Congress primarily address problem #2. They would require insurance companies to open access to more care to their customers and restrict them from simply dropping their customers or refusing to pay for a variety of reasons. This is a huge improvement not to be ignored. However, it is key to remember that the first and third problems with our current system are only addressed tangentially if at all.

The focus on costs is on medical costs, not consumer costs. While medical costs are a real issue, they are secondary. A better system for paying consumer costs would lower them dramatically without the need to focus on medical costs that can probably not be cut to the degree believed by the advocates of insurance reform. The creation of a competitive, national insurance exchange will probably lower consumer costs somewhat... but it is difficult to say how much and it is possible it won't have a real impact because of the increased standards of quality may keep consumer costs higher than desired. A competitive, robust public option might help to drive costs down somewhat... but it is again very difficult to say how much this will help the guy who already can't afford to buy private insurance.

The economic problem is ignored entirely. First (and perhaps worst) it is assumed that everyone with employer-paid insurance is happy with their coverage and that there is no need for reform of this market. My partner's experiences following surgery have shown, to me, the facts are very different. Employer-paid insurance is in much the same state as private insurance, whether the premiums are lower or not. The public option, as it stands now, would not be available to anyone receiving employer-paid insurance.

In addition, liberals appear to believe that corporations can and should foot the bill instead of government. They advocate increasing employer's responsibility to provide insurance to their employees and punitively taxing those who do not. This may serve the needs of PayGo, but it is aggravating rather than solving problem #3.

None of this is intended to suggest that the insurance reform being discussed in Congress is not better than our current situation. It is. Nor is it meant to rally opposition to said insurance reform. If nothing else can pass, insurance reform needs to pass.

It is meant to put the problem in its proper context and to instill an understanding that this reform is not the 'end' of health care reform. It is a first, shaky step in the right direction. The issues of consumer costs and economic burden will remain to be addressed, and the left must not forget that. We must continue to raise and address these issues to affect future policy debate as much as possible.

To put it more simply, we need massive reform and even the 'liberals' in Congress are not approaching the problem from a sufficiently radical direction. We should support them, but we should keep pushing in the wake of their success.

Wall Street Journal Admits Support For Public Option Growing

2009-10-29T05:41:00.000-07:00

Yes, that's right.

Citing their own poll, carried out jointly with NBC news, they note that support for a public health insurance plan is up to 48% from 43% during the astroturf attack on town-hall meetings.

I usually don't post a lot of polling data here, but I think this is illustrative. It suggests that conservative opposition to the public option (and health care reform in general) is starting to become counterproductive. While the Journal still claims that Americans are opposed to 'his health-care plan' (meaning President Obama's) 42%-38%, these numbers are far less important than the growing support for the public option.

Naturally, the Republicans don't think so. Per a spokesman for Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY):

Don Stewart, spokesman for Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.), said positive movement in favor of the public option is "meaningless" if Americans remain opposed to the broader legislation.
"They can talk about momentum all they want. The momentum is in the Senate Democratic cloakroom. It's not in Topeka, and it's not in Arcadia, Fla.," Mr. Stewart said, referring to the town Mr. Obama was visiting Tuesday.

While this is the kind of argument that is required from a political operative under the current circumstances, it is simply wrong. The reason for this is simple: 'his health-care plan' does not exist. There is no White House bill for those polled to approve or reject. Thus one must assume that opposition to 'his health-care plan' is really disapproval of the plans in Congress now. The plan receiving the most play in the media is the Senate Finance Committee bill. As quite a few writers have said, this is a bad bill. It falls well short of the 'liberal' goals of health care reform and its sops to conservatives are not sufficient to induce the right to support the very idea of health care reform. So it's only natural this bill would not have a very high approval rate the polls. Indeed, as the growth of support for the public plan shows, it is very likely the lack of a public plan in the Finance Committee bill is the reason for significant portion of public opposition to it.

Growing support for the public option means growing support for real health care reform of the kind not provided in the Finance Committee bill as currently written. Plenty of polls, from a plethora of sources, have shown strong support for robust health care reform. Those who do want robust reform will naturally be skeptical of too much moderation in the pursuit of virtue.

The Republican establishment has shot their wad on health care and they know it. While they have successfully created a climate of fear and uncertainty, which is something they do very well, this time it is not going to work to their benefit. It worked in 2004 because it was possible to portray President Bush as a folksy, comforting figure and as a tough guy who would protect the nation. Thus, despite his myriad flaws and incompetencies, they were able to offer fear in one hand and comfort in the other. The problem now is that the Republicans have no leaders to make Americans feel safe about the economy or health care. They can scare Americans about President Obama's reform efforts, but they have nothing to offer to comfort and reassure American voters in its place.

The fact is that, regardless of how the right attempts to portray polling data, Americans want to see the mess the health care industry has become cleaned up. They want to know they can see a doctor if they are hurt or fall ill, they want to know they can do it without going bankrupt, and the current situation is that they do not know either of those things. Republicans can talk about how great American health care is all they want. People who are being sued by their hospital know the real situation.

People do not think they understand HR 3200 or the Finance Committee bill and so they have a hard time supporting them. They understand, or think they understand, the public option and so they can get behind it. As support for the public option grows, it won't matter what Americans think of 'his health-care plan.' Support for the public option means support for robust health care reform and that means the Republicans have lost. Filibusters and bravado may stop legislation, but they won't help the Republican Party. As time goes on and the support for a public option continues to rise, even those who intend to vote against the bill will not want to be seen blocking it from reaching the floor.

Human Resources: The cult of management and why fixing the economy is not enough.

2009-10-28T03:53:00.000-07:00

From a Privates Committee during the elections for delegates to the Pennsylvania State Constitutional Convention, quoted in A People's History of The United States (by Howard Zinn):

"An enormous proportion of property vested in a few individuals is dangerous to the rights, and destructive of the common happiness, of mankind; and therefore every free state hath a right by its laws to discourage the possession of such property."

Clearly, not all of revolutionary America was so unflinchingly capitalist as modern conservative authors would like us to believe. One can witness impulses toward socialism not only in the quote above, but also in the writings of Thomas Paine and in the class warfare of pre-revolutionary Boston. For the latter, Founding Father James Otis in 1762:

"I am forced to get my living by the labour of my hand; and the sweat of my brow, as most of you are and obliged to go thro' good report and evil report, for bitter bread, earned under the frowns of some who have no natural or divine right to be above me, and entirely owe their grandeur and honor to grinding the faces of the poor.. .."

Otis, of course, was defending the rights of the young professional and entrepreneurial class against the entrenched power of landed gentry. His words could serve equally as well today, however, as the indictment of that very professional class by the working class. Class prejudice and class struggle have changed very little since 1762 or 1776 even as many other facts of everyday life have become entirely different. The elite of the professional class look down on the middle and lower echelons of their own profession with the same frosty superiority in Scrooge's eyes when he looked down on Bob Cratchit. That hasn't changed since Dickens' time, even though Bob Cratchit V is better paid these days and Ebenezer Scrooge IV probably gives more money to charity. Yet even Bob is able to look down on the old lady who fries his morning breakfast or the kid taking his money at the register.

One of the most fundamental and least attractive facets of human nature is the need to look down on someone else as inferior in order to feel that we ourselves are superior. This hasn't changed as society has grown more technically advanced, it's merely taken new and stranger forms. Yet it also takes forms that would be very recognizable to the Pennsylvania Privates Committee of 1776, not new or strange at all.

One of those that I am most certain would be quickly understood is the concept of 'human resources.' This is the practice of treating those who work for a company as corporate assets rather than as individual human beings. This concept was pioneered during the Gilded Age and the Progressive Era, as the first great American corporate powers were expanding too fast and too greatly for the classic negotiation between entrepreneur and employee. They turned to the ideas of Frederick Winslow Taylor, the pioneer of 'managed efficiency' and the inventor of the modern concept of 'scientific management.'

Taylor was not a sociologist but an engineer, and his approach to business was that of an engineer to a machine. Believing that there was 'one best way' to do everything and certain that all one had to do was find that way and then systematize it, Taylor developed four rules from which to run his system. For the purposes of our discussion, the fourth rule is the most important.

4. Divide work nearly equally between managers and workers, so that the managers apply scientific management principles to planning the work and the workers actually perform the tasks.

This was the birth of our modern concept of management and the beginning of the development of the modern concept of human resources as well. Since management was a science, the manager had to be right in their projections and any failure to meet those projections was obviously the fault of the workers. Where supervisors and managers had previously been drawn from the ranks of skilled workers who were promoted for their skills, everything changed. Now it was the understanding of the principles of scientific management that mattered and the manager only needed a broad understanding of the work to be done and not a detailed knowledge of the work itself. Since management was a science, the manager had to be right in their projections and any failure to meet those projections was obviously the fault of the workers.

This was not, strictly, Taylor's intent. It must be noted that his (utopian and probably unrealistic) goal was a partnership between management and labor designed to improve working conditions as much as productivity. The problem was human nature. The human need to feel superior, thus to see others as inferior, is just too powerful to be ignored. When one is responsible for planning and supervising and someone else is responsible for actually doing the work then one is going to feel important and powerful. One will then seek to exercise that power in a myriad collection of petty tyrannies in order to feed that feeling. A modern sociologist would have pointed this out to Taylor immediately, but the social sciences were still in their infancy in Taylor's day.

The results of the application of scientific management is that there are two separate professional classes today. The productive professional class (lawyers, doctors, accountants, salesmen, architects, designers, etc) who actually do something and the managerial class who take credit for a job when it is done. Whereas managers were once intimately acquainted with every aspect of the work being done because of their personal experience in the field, they are increasingly specialists in management without a detailed understanding of the actual work. This means that they are not necessarily truly qualified for their positions, they are simply applying formulae they are taught to believe work. 'Scientific management' has become religious management.

In many ways, it is a cult. Its members are indoctrinated with revealed truth and then warned of the risks of deviating from that truth. When facts or reality collide with the 'truth' they have been taught, their faith denies the real in favor of the 'true.'

Which brings us back to the issue of 'human resources.' Systems do not deal with people, they deal with components. Workers (and even many professionals) become parts in the corporate machine. Managers are charged with operating that machinery. Like many specialized technicians, they are so confident in their own ability that any failure is the fault of inferior tools. Therefore, a suspecialty of technicians is created to put the components of the machine together and make sure that they are functioning properly. The very nature of their job requires a combination of detatchment and understanding that is very nearly impossible to balance. Since it is easier to do the job by being too detatched than by being too understanding, the imbalance rarely works in the favor of the employees of a company.

This is so alien to the spirt of Enlightenment that you may ask why I believe the Pennsylvania Privates Committee of 1776 would recognize such a thing. Well, it was quite common in 17th and 18th century America. It simply was called by a different name.

Perhaps you think that, by comparing the modern attitude of corporate management to corporate employees to slavery, I am being so sensationalistic that this piece is unworthy of being taken seriously at all. Certainly today's workers are enjoying conditions far better than the slaves of antebellum America. Perhaps you believe that the contractual agreement between employer and employee gives employers the right to ask certain sacrifices from employees. I would not totally disagree with that.

The problem is that one cannot have a valid contract with a machine component. One cannot systematize contracts so that everyone is treated precisely the same according to a strict pattern; that is antithetical to the very concept of negotiation and of the contractual relationship. Nor can a one-sided agreement that places the employee at the employer's absolute whim until they choose to quit but offers no restriction on those whims be truly called a 'contract.' This is particularly true if one party can void the contract 'at will' but the other can only do so without penalty when specific conditions are met.

When employees are 'resources' and not human beings, then employers feel the entitlement of ownership. While there are practical questions that certainly make some infringement on the personal sphere of employees necessary, while they are working, there is also a moral line to be drawn between the genuine interests of the business and the infringement of basic human dignity for the bottom line.

As long as this does not change, then it really does not make a huge difference whether we are in recession or enjoying tremendous economic growth. Some people will enjoy vastly more of the American freedoms we take for granted than others. Those people will bear the bulk of the responsibility for the mistakes and failures of American society while the cogs in the machines they operate will bear the bulk of the burden of the consequences of those failures.

The people most responsible for economic downturn will bear the least risk of it actually harming them. As our own recent economic experience has shown.

Fox News for President?

2009-10-26T07:30:00.000-07:00

With so much being said on the left and the right about the hostility between Fox News and the White House, it is perhaps only natural that some on the right are pushing for Fox News architect and Fox Studios boss Roger Ailes to run for president. Nor would the notion of a corporate CEO heading up the GOP ticket be entirely at odds with the neoconservative movement's 'government of the corporations, by the corporations, for the corporations' philosophy of economics and policy.

Leaving Fox News, and Ailes himself, aside for the moment it is still an item of trivia emblematic of our times. This year has seen corporate entities collude to block major labor reform, judges plead guilty to criminal charges related to judicial misconduct on behalf of private prison corporations, and military contractors bring massive pressure to bear on legislators to prevent the government from ceasing to grant contracts to corporations that cover up incidences of alleged rape. These are just three incidents of the most egregious corporate encroachment upon the public sphere. It doesn't take the little things that happen every day into account. When corporations have a such a deeply entitled sense of their ownership of the United States of America, the idea that a corporate CEO should run for president as the standard bearer of the corporate party is almost obvious.

Then throw Fox News back into the picture. The network has a documented history of misrepresenting the news in order to beat a neoconservative political drum. They have been conducting a non-stop offensive against Barack Obama since before he was even the official Democratic nominee. It has only intensified since he was actually elected. Combine this with the culture of corporate entitlement choking the oxygen from the collective brain of the Republican Party and the neoconservative establishment and the notion that the CEO of Fox would be an obvious presidential candidate becomes even more obvious.

Finally, there is Ailes himself. Before going into the media business during the Clinton presidency, Ailes was a political gunslinger for the Republican Party. He worked the 1984 and 1988 election campaigns of Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush. So he is not stranger to Republican presidential politics.

Ailes is a logical 'anti-Obama' candidate. The conditions are as primed for such an outside-the-box nomination now as they were when Wendell Wilkie captured the Republican nomination to campaign on behalf of corporations against 'socialism' during the Depression and New Deal. Ailes might not have Wilkie's corporate baggage in the way a bank CEO might; Wilkie was immediately tagged by many Americans as the kind of 'practical' businessman who had let the crash of 1929 happen. Ailes, a professional political propagandist, is likely free of that taint.

Despite the tone of some of the sources for the Politico article linked in the first paragraph, I'm not so sure this is a done thing. Professional propagandists don't always like to take the stage and make targets of themselves. Fox has a laundry list of dishonesties and bad associations with which Ailes could be tagged and I'm not sure he wants to expose himself to that. It might be interesting to see him run, however, just to see whether any of the other potential nominees would be interested in taking Fox on in hopes of winning.

That is probably the reason Ailes won't run. As long as Fox remains the media arm of the Republican Party, the GOP's presidential hopefuls will court it for their benefit. If it looks like Fox wants to take control of the Republican Party, all those who might want that control for themselves might suddenly become crusaders for ethical journalism. This could not only threaten Ailes' candidacy, but also threaten the monolithic power of Fox to make opinion and influence other conservative media and the larger conservative message.

Then we might wish to take the toxic corporate culture of our era into mind: A man like Roger Ailes almost certainly feels that, as a CEO, he is more powerful than any president and the job would only be a demotion.

Rapacious Capitalists in Defense of Rape: Why defense contractors want to protect their employees' right to rape one another

2009-10-24T08:32:00.001-07:00

Whenever I have had the opportunity, I have always tried hard to draw attention to the inherent abuses inseparable from the current relationship between American business and American government. Well, the opportunity has presented itself once again. They've presented us a with a classic 'good news/bad news' scenario.

First, the good news:

Senator Al Franken (D - MN) added an amendment to a comprehensive defense appropriations bill that would prohibit defense contractors who proactively prevented employees raped by other employees from suing the corporation from receiving defense contracts. This is another bit of proof (the first being Franken's excellent bill to provide disabled veterans with service dogs, co-sponsored with Sen. Johnny Isakson ) that Franken is shaping up to be a very good senator who offers his constituents and the nation more than just another Democrat in the majority. With all due respect to Stuart Smalley, Franken is a much better political thinker, satirist and policy wonk than he is a mainstream comic. Since a gift for acid barbed satire can only lead to a better attitude from which to approach Washington D.C, the Senate is where he almost certainly belongs.

The bad news:

Apparently, major defense contractors do not believe that strong-arming their employees into not bringing suit against them for on-the-job rape by co-workers or superiors is an inappropriate corporate policy. So they are attempting to strong-arm Congress into dropping or weaking the amendment. Does it say more about them or about me that I am not terribly surprised? While I admit to a certain level of misanthropic cynicism about life in general, specifically when it regards corporate activity, I admit it could be the latter... but in this case I really think it says more about them.

Thirty Republicans in the Senate voted against including this amendment in the bill at all and it is very important for everyone suggesting that the GOP is somehow stronger on feminism than liberals to keep that in mind.

However, the Republicans who voted against the amendment (and lost) are less important than corporate pressure and one Democratic senator.

As noted in the link above, the primary target of corporate pressure to weaken or remove the amendment from the bill is Democratic Senator Daniel Inouye of Hawaii. He has received a fair amount of money from defense contractors and may be amenable to said pressure. If he is, and if he folds under said pressure and weakens or eliminates the amendment, he will be far more culpable an accessory to violent crime than any of the Republicans who voted against the amendment when it was offered. He will not only be joining them in becoming an accessory after the fact, but he will be betraying one of the most liberal constituencies in the nation for campaign donations.

The real point of this, however, is not how the Republicans are so in thrall to corporate power that they vote against denying business to companies that force rape victims to forfeit their legal rights. Nor is it that a Democratic senator from a 'liberal' state may be no better when the rubber hits the road. The real point is the question of what kind of corporation would pressure lawmakers to prevent an amendment being passed to deny business to corporations that effectively condone rape and make themselves accessories after the fact. What kind of corporation is so obsessed with protecting itself from 'liability' that it would feel the need to 'protect' itself by the means this amendment would deny companies defense contracts for using?

The fact that we have to ask these questions is the answer to them. American corporate culture is so obsessed with liability, so determined to defend the bottom line, that questions of decency and morality are meaningless in the face of money. More importantly, this is precisely what the corporate apologists on the right are telling us is moral and proper. The economic priveleges and powers of corporations are inherently of more value than the rights and basic dignity of their employees. This is volia at its most glaringly honest.

I have somewhat more faith that the amendment will not be either excised or emasculated despite the pressures of defense contractors and the rumors out of Washington. I prefer to think better of Senator Inouye until he proves me wrong. If and when that happens, he will have proven himself to be every bit as bad as the rapists who created the issue themselves.

I don't think that is a radical statement at all.

Who was trying to gut Medicare, again?

2009-10-23T02:47:00.000-07:00

The number one insurance industry scare tactic related to health care reform as always been the threat that the government will ration your health care access if any sort of federal health care reform passes. The most recent Republican rallying cry against health care reform has been the notion that Democrats are going to cut Medicare. This trope has been kicking around right wing circles for sometime despite the fact that the only plan that would actually cut or ration Medicare services is a Republican plan whose own sponsor has now abandoned it. Yet the trope has gained a lot of traction in a lot of circles because of the skill of the right wing spin machine in exploiting basic human fears.

All this propaganda aside, Democrats recently tried to pass a bill (originally co-sponsored Republican Senator John Kyl of Arizona) to fix the deeply flawed system which Medicare uses to determine payment to physicians. Congress has, for several years now, been ignoring the system of payment with a series of delaying actions to keep the full damage from being done to the Medicare system. This has allowed 'fiscal conservatives' to claim that money is being saved when, in actuality, the system designed to reduce costs is not being implemented in order to prevent turning Medicare into the same kind of health care ghetto as Medicaid. This is a financial shell game that the Democratic leadership and the White House attempted to bring to and end by simply making the system actually in use the legal system of compensation.

Republicans were having none of that. All but one Senate Republican (Rhode Island Senator Sheldon Whitehouse) voted against cloture, allowing the anti-reform crowd to filibuster the bill if they wish to do so. Eleven Democratic Senators , unfortunately, joined in them in blocking the bill. The fact that Virginia's two Democratic Senators Mark Warner and Jim Webb joined Tennessee's Republican clowns Lamar Alexander and Bob Corker in opposition to the bill was especially galling. I had thought much better of both men. Original co-sponsor John Kyl (see the Malkin link below) voted against cloture and even denied co-sponsoring the bill.

Michelle Malkin, always ready with something nasty to say in such situations, crowed at the failure of 'Obamacare's bribe to doctors.' I understand the GOP's commitment to the rhetoric of fiscal responsibility, but in this case true fiscal responsibility would be to tell the truth to one's selves and the American people about what one is going to spend on health care. A partisan propaganda machine so determined to convince Americans that health care reform is a threat to Medicare and to seniors should probably be supported by a policy machine willing to step up to the plate and do something to secure the stability of medical access for Medicare recipients. When it is not, it shows the truth: the Republican opponents of health care reform are liars who do not care about the cost of human life and economic drain our current system represents. When their actions prove their lies, it is time to stop taking anything they say seriously.

As a brief aside, I should note that there are those who believe the only possible reason the left might have to heap verbal abuse on Michelle Malkin is misogyny. I think it is far more accurate to say that she invites attack upon herself by proving herself to be a lying and unprincipled shill for a morally bankrupt political machine. When one crows about the defeat of a measure intended to clean up a dirty mess, one invites abuse.

Dr. Ron Chusid write a far more incisive analysis of the situatio n that those offended by Malkin's line of crap should take the time to read.

It should be noted that Republicans alone are not to blame. Democratic Senators Evan Bayh (IN), Robert Byrd (WV), Kent Conrad (ND), Byron Dorgan (NM), Russ Feingold (WI), Herb Kohl (WI), Claire McCaskill (MO), Bill Nelson (FL), Jon Tester (MT), Mark Warner and Jim Webb (VA), Ron Wyden (OR) were joined by Independent caucus-mate Joe Lieberman (CT) in backing the Republicans in this idiotic perpetuation of a corrupt lie. I can only speculate on their reasons. Nelson is the most surprising, as he represents a great many seniors in Florida and was said to be shaky on the Baucus bill because some of its features might look bad to Medicare recipients. So he is willing to vote against properly paying their doctors instead?

More surprising, perhaps, is that Republican-in-Democrat's-clothing Ben Nelson of Nebraska voted in favor of cloture.

Those of you happily polishing your Democratic Party tie tacks should keep this in mind. Not everyone you are voting for is on your side anymore than the Republicans you are voting against. Some of the people choosing to oppose this real fix to a broken payment system were people for whom I had a great deal of respect before seeing the list of votes. Those people have dropped several notches.

All of this goes to show just how deep the tendrils of the insurance companies are sunk into fighting health care reform at all costs. The people claiming to be defending seniors from health care reform stabbed those they claimed to be defending in the back and are crowing about their great accomplishments. Some of those who should have been committed to truly defending seniors from conservative daggers instead helped the right-wingers aim the knives.

What makes my teeth grind the most, however, is Robert Byrd voting against a Medicare fix. I realize he has the full benefits of the Congressional Health Plan at his own disposal, but you would think he'd have a little understanding and compassion for the elderly. All things considered.

A Brief Moment of Self-Expression

2009-10-22T00:59:00.000-07:00

Thanks to the hat tip from Southern Beale a few days ago, I've been experiencing an increase in traffic lately. If my stat counter is to be believed, a small but significant number of new readers are checking me out. I have some new commentary being offered by people who've never commented before. All of this is great and makes me smile.

Since I have been getting this new attention, I thought I would take the time to blather on about myself and my blog for those who aren't quite sure what's up.

First, a brief autobiographical essay:

I was born in Southern California and grew up in the Greater Los Angeles metroplex. My parents have been registered Republicans all their lives, but don't let this fool you. My father, despite his fiscal conservatism, is very libertarian on social issues and a strong believer in an improved (as opposed to merely expanded) social safety net. My mother is, and always has been, a straight-up liberal Rockefeller Republican. Couple this with the communal and collectivist sociology of the Mennonite Church in which I received my religious education and you can see that it's only natural I ended up on the left, regardless of the political party to which my parents belonged on paper.

Despite where I ended up, as a teen I flirted with conservative and libertarian politics because of my belief in certain elements of common sense economic and constitutional principles. The problem is that those common sense principles, which conservatives and libertarians rhetorically espouse, had nothing to do with actual right-wing politics. As I learned more about economics and political science, I was drawn more and more to the left. I changed my registration to the Democratic Party in my very early twenties and now, like my parents, my party registration is largely on paper; I am significantly to the left of most mainstream Democrats.

It was also in my early twenties that I met my partner, whom I love very much. For reasons of economics, we moved from California to East Tennessee and I now live in the Tri-Cities roughly half-way between Kingsport and Bristol. In Tennessee, we have had our own experiences with poverty before our circumstances finally stabilized.

It's a lot easier to describe what I believe and oppose than to fit myself into an easy political niche. I believe in free will and reject any notion of predestination, which immediately separates me from the religious right on pretty much every social and moral issue. We enjoy the freedom of individual conscience as long as we respect the natural rights of our fellow human beings. This puts me at odds with libertarians and economic conservatives whose version of individual liberty is simply a lack of regulation that places no limitation on the rights of those with the money and power to do so to shamelessly violate the rights of others. Real individual freedom is impossible in a social and economic environment in which one's degree of liberty is increased by one's wealth and those with less wealth do not enjoy equality before the law with the rich. I would describe myself as 'libertarian' only so far as I believe in the importance of personal freedom. I do not place particular faith in the natural superiority of the 'free market.'

Indeed, it is the nature of the 'free market' where my real left-wing thinking begins. I have written, in the past, about the nature and varying definitions of freedom. It is a word with many shades and meanings that means different things to different people. When speaking about freedom in the political and economic sense, I find it most useful to abandon English and instead make use of the more clear distinctions between definitions of freedom in Russian.

There are two entirely different words for freedom in Russian and they mean two entirely different things. The first word, which represents the freedom advocated by many on the right wing and among the most active anti-statists, is volia. In English, the literal translation of volia would be less 'freedom' and more 'license.' It is the absolute negative freedom espoused by libertarians, the freedom from outside authority. One can do as one pleases and can only be stopped by force. One has the absolute right to respond with force in the face of such an attempt to restrain one's chosen activities. There are no limits to volia, no responsibility to respect any authority or law. It is the ideal freedom of bandits, buccaneers, corporations, Cossacks, and libertarians.

The are some obvious problems with this concept if one examines it closely. First and foremost, volia is not for everyone. It is a Nietzchean or Orwellian freedom for the favored few; the ubermensch is not bound by the same moral laws as the average man and some animals are more equal than others. This form of freedom is for those with the will and power to make it real and everyone else who tries to exercise it gets ground into the dust. When the right-wing in America talks about 'freedom', 'free markets', or 'individual rights' they mean volia. This is freedom for the 'special' people who 'deserve' it, something else I've written about.

The next time one reads a conservative writer going on about 'liberal elitism' or 'arrogance', I hope they keep all this in mind.

The second Russian word for 'freedom' is 'svoboda.' Where volia is absolute and unlimited in scope, and thus very specifically limited to those able to take it and hold it by force, svoboda is something in which everyone shares. No one person can possess svoboda alone, svoboda is the freedom shared by a social body aware of each other's rights and their own responsibilities to each other. It's the freedom that the Apostles talk about in the Bible, shared by the early Christian communities who practiced their own form of democratic socialism. It is the freedom that the tragic Russian Revolution was intended to bring to Russia and the freedom that we, as Americans, brag about but rarely appreciate or protect.

To put it simply, I am utterly opposed to volia and dedicated to the reality of svoboda and its expansion to include the entire American community. That is what this blog is about.

Energy Policy, Environmental Policy, and National Security

2009-10-21T02:02:00.000-07:00

Climate change is a real, ongoing phenomenon and human action has contributed to its aggravation. That is a scientific fact. I want to get that out of the way before I begin to ramble in twelve directions at once. There are real environmental dangers facing the world and it is important that we are able to confront them; either we must find real ways to minimize our impact on our world or we must find real methods of dealing with the consequences of our mucking up the world. No sane or intelligent person should doubt or deny this.

That said, no one really has any idea how to successfully go about this. Not really, not yet. We know the problem but not the solution. This has created the usual dichotomy in such circumstances. On the right hand we have the people who deny, publicly at least, that there even is a problem or say that we can't do anything about it without more information. On the left hand we have the panic driven activists who suggest anything and everything to stave off global catastrophe.

Southern Beale has been writing about 'astroturf' fronts for the oil companies fighting the administration's cap and trade proposals. Her last three pieces (here, here, and here) have all been on the topic of the environment, the oil companies' attempts to create 'grassroots' opposition to the administration in order to protect what they perceive as a threat to their bottom line, and what environmentalists are doing in return. All of this has had me thinking about the issue a great deal. It occurred to me, during my one hour break between my two stretches of work this morning, that I haven't written a really obnoxiously wonkish and geeky policy piece for a little while.

So all the new readers over the last couple days (high guys!) get to suffer through this for the first time. Forgive my malicious laugh.

I am going to start, as I always attempt, with a statement of the real problem in critically realistic terms:

Climate change is happening.

Not my deliberate phrasing. I did not say 'climate change will happen', 'climate change is happening but', or 'we can prevent climate change by' or any other similar phrasing parsed to fit an agenda. This not about the advancement of agendas, this is about the critical appraisal of the reality of the problem.

Climate change is happening. Now. There is no reset button, no miracle cure, no magic whistle. That bird has flown and all that is left in the cage is the guano. Anyone, right or left, who tells you differently is selling something. There may or may not be ways to reduce the affect we continue to have on climate change in order to ameliorate the actual problems it creates or we may have to start planning to respond to those problems now. I am thinking both is the best bet. In other words, if you've been writing about polar bears drowning to get people aware of the melting ice caps, stop now. Start writing about donating to the World Wildlife Fund and creating a Russian/Canadian/American conservation program to save the polar bears. The ice isn't going to magically refreeze because we switch to solar panels tomorrow.

It is not my intention to take a deliberately fatalistic approach to the problem, but the simple fact is that the problem is not 'how to stop global warming.' Climate change is happening and one cannot just stop it or reverse it, human science does not have that power at this point in time.

This is not to say that we should not explore alternative energy. We should, for a wide range of reasons. First and foremost is the fact that while we may not be able to stop or reverse climate change we might be able to affect the degree of damage the process does to the world.

However, green activists need to keep quite a few facts in mind. There is no (and, more importantly, will never be) technology available to support modern civilization with zero impact on the environment. It doesn't work that way. Hybrid car batteries save fossil fuels and reduce air pollution. Their manufacture also creates toxic waste that must be safely disposed of, and the batteries themselves become toxic waste when exhausted. Hydrogen fuel cells are not an energy source, they are merely a means of energy storage and transfer. This means that a hydrogen car runs entirely clean... but the fuel cells must still be manufactured using electricity, gasoline, nuclear power, or some other primary energy source. Which means that there is still an environmental impact. Solar power requires a great deal of space for solar panels, takes a great deal of time to generate energy, and is difficult to easily store/transfer. Wind power is quicker, but it still requires a lot of space and has the same storage transfer problems. Both require technology that produces significant industrial waste. Hydroelectric power is amazing and versatile... but it has a massive environmental impact on watersheds and wildlife.

I think everyone gets my point. We have to either start the Luddite Revolution now, which I think would be awfully silly, or admit to ourselves that we are going to continue to damage our environment no matter how we finally decide to power our civilization. There is no 'green revolution' because nothing we, as humanity, develop will be truly green for at least the next few centuries.

Before the oil companies start donating money to keep my blog going, however, I have even harsher reality for them. The world's oil supply is finite. One can believe or disbelieve in the precise predictions made by specific economists and geophysicists using various models, but the fact remains that oil is not a renewable resource. This means it is absolutely necessary that the world adopt alternative energy models and that the United States adopt a comprehensive energy policy and plan for transition away from oil and coal as the primary energy supply for the economy for reasons entirely economic. Environmental benefits accrued from such a transition are difficult to predict for certain. It is possible that the effects of climate change could be moderated to some degree but impossible to predict that degree.

This all brings me to policy. For all the right wing claims about innovation in the free market, much of 'free market' innovation has been driven by government research grants, government contracts, or both. Television, as we know it, was developed by defense contractors before the military licensed the technology to private corporations and the original developer of commercial television technology for RCA worked on the government project first. Other television pioneers also received grants from either the US or foreign governments for their work. The number of valuable commercial patents that have been sold to private corporations by NASA is staggering.

Yes, all the innovation comes from the free market. Really.

We need a robust program of government grants for alternate energy sources and plastics technologies that do no require crude oil. Period. Natural gas, hydroelectric, solar, wind, geothermal, nuclear, everything; we particularly need to finance hydroelectric, geothermal, and fusion research as there is still untapped or undeveloped technology in all these areas. Nuclear fission may be useful and necessary in the short term, as part of a transition away from oil and coal, but it is a dead end because of the expense and difficult of safely disposing of radioactive waste.

The corporate research labs spend their time on what is profitable now or will be profitable when easily perfected. They do not 'waste' time on what might be profitable in twenty years without incentive. They are making too much money one existing technologies to explore new technologies without incentive.

As much as possible, additional grants should be made available to scientists not affiliated with corporate labs in any way. If the government wants to sell the patents later, I suppose that's a price that may have to be paid (though I don't like it), but we need to have scientists who do not serve a corporate agenda working on matters this serious.

More than for any other crisis facing the world, the the energy and environmental crises are directly the fault of corporate profiteering. I don't think it's radical to suggest they might not be as interested in solving them as the rest of us.

Arlen Specter on Health Care

2009-10-19T01:05:00.001-07:00

From Think Progess:

Sen. Arlen Specter (D-PA), who until late April of this year was a lifelong Republican, castigated his former party this morning on Fox News. Specter ripped the GOP for refusing to be a good-faith negotiator in the health care debate:

'On the Republican side, it’s no, no, no. A party of obstructionism. … You have responsible Republicans who had been in the Senate — like Howard Baker, Bob Dole, or Bill Frist — who say Republicans ought to cooperate. Well, they’re not cooperating.

Specter also indicated he would fight hard for the public option. “I’m not prepared to recede at all. I think the public option is gaining momentum,” he said. “I am not going to step back a bit. I am going to fight for the best public option."

The original story Think Progress blurb (linked above) includes a forty second video of Specter waxing querulous against the GOP. I was rather impressed in one sense. The quoted article included another link to this story. He sounds like an old line New Dealer promising Medicare For All in the Nixon administration when he gets on his ear. It's an amusing change of tenor. When Specter originally changed parties earlier this year he said, "I will not be an automatic 60th vote for cloture.'' Now he is promising to be a liberal lion on the health care issue.

Naturally there are political issues at stake. Specter represents a state where, by his own calculations when he himself changed parties, 200,000 of his constituents switched from the GOP to the Democratic Party on issues like labor and health care. He had been facing a challenge from a threatening primary challenger as a Republican and his core support base has gradually shifted parties. He is still facing a more liberal Democratic Party challenger this mid-term and so it certainly behooves him to be a strong liberal voice on health care in order to convince his new party that he would serve them better than a new face.

If it means a better health care bill, however, good for Arlen Specter. While I've never been certain I'd vote for him if I lived in Pennsylvania, I've always felt that he was a genuinely independent lawmaker who stood for his constituents over party ideology. Since the interests of many of his constituents are directly related to his new party's ideology on health care, he is likely much more comfortable as a Democrat.

Living in Tennessee, I'm not directly concerned in Specter's continuing political fortunes... but it is terribly difficult not to root for him just to spite the GOP.

'The Worst Person in the World?' - Certainly one of the worst in Louisiana

2009-10-17T00:03:00.000-07:00

I live in the South, specifically the Hillbilly Triangle (the Kentucky-North Carolina-Tennessee-Virginia border, more specifically the Tri-Cities of TN), and I have some awareness of the local cultural attitudes. I read frequent protestations online, from right-wing Southern circles, about how racism is no more prevalent in the South than anywhere else even if one hears more low-class honesty about it in some parts of society. I find this has both true and false elements.

The true elements are pretty basic: people are people and human beings are naturally flawed. The rest of the nation is not magically free from racism. Economic segregation has largely kept urban black and Hispanic populations in their ghettoes despite the civil rights movement. Racial violence turned formerly middle-class black suburbs like Watts into extensions of the ghetto during the civil rights era and its aftermath. The reason that racial violence was such a major problem outside the South in the years following the heyday of the civil rights era is simple: in the absence of legal segregation the federal government never forced the same desegregation on the urban North to the same degree it forced such action in the South. Whether one approves or disapproves of the forcible action to reverse legal segregation or the lack of forcible action to reverse economic segregation, it led to unequal integration of society. Southern society often is more integrated than Northern as a result.

Many people, however, confuse lack of segregation with lack of racism. Economic segregation in the North does not automatically imply more racism anymore than greater forced integration in the South automatically implies less. The fact that integration was forced, in fact, contributes to resentments that create new racists.

I've now gone three paragraphs without leading into my main topic, which is something I've been trying to cut down, but for those of you have have borne with me I'm going to start making my real point: a justice of the peace would not be allowed to continue to deny marriage licenses to interracial couples for two and a half years in California.

I don't know if everyone has read about Keith Bardwell or not. If your home page is or includes a news aggregator, odds are that you have. If you haven't, I'll briefly recap: he is a Louisiana justice-of-the-peace who will likely soon be facing a civil rights charge from the US Justice Department for refusing to grant a marriage license to an interracial couple. If you have, you know the man is pretty despicable and his defense of his actions is pretty lame.

"I'm not a racist. I just don't believe in mixing the races that way," Bardwell told the Associated Press on Thursday. "I have piles and piles of black friends. They come to my home, I marry them, they use my bathroom. I treat them just like everyone else."

Now, I shouldn't have to dissect this for most of my readers. It speaks for itself. I will anyway, because it pisses me off and because I am a pedantic geek even when not pissed off.

Justice-of-the-peace Bardwell is not a racist. He's just an anti-misceganist. Of course, the concept of miscegany is a racist concept itself. Subscribing to belief in the concept and opposing it is racist and there isn't a nice way to say it. A statement like Bardwell's is self-condemnation of not only racism, but also a total failure to understand racism. While it may or may not be a tribute to Bardwell's open-mindedness and racial toleration that he does not have a 'Coloured' toilet installed in his home, it is certainly proof of his ignorance of even simple good manners that he believes we should be impressed with him because of it.

Bardwell is also either less than totally honest or less than totally intelligent when he claims he didn't do anything wrong.

"I've been a justice of the peace for 34 years and I don't think I've mistreated anybody," Bardwell said. "I've made some mistakes, but you have too. I didn't tell this couple they couldn't get married. I just told them I wouldn't do it."

If he had granted a license but not performed the ceremony, this would be correct. The problem is that he refused them a marriage license. Now, someone of strong libertarian leanings can and should be outraged that the US government requires people to pay for licenses to get married. It's also certainly a legitimate (if incorrect, in my view) libertarian argument to say that the justice-of-the-peace is not forced to marry a couple if he disapproves, as long as he grants them the license to get married. However, denying a marriage license is explicitly telling a couple they cannot be married even if Bardwell knows or believes someone else will grant that permission. That's what the license is: permission to get married.

It's hard to decide whether Bardwell is stupid or whether he thinks we are. Either way, there is a real problem.

This is not a partisan issue, thankfully. Republican Governor Bobby Jindal has called for Bardwell's firing. I'm no fan of Governor Jindal's, but he clearly understands racism when he sees it. He is certainly doing the right thing here.

Partisan issue or not, it is certainly an issue that should have Americans angry.

The real problem, however, is not Bardwell himself. Bardwell speculates that for the two and a half years he has been denying interracial couples permission to marry he has denied about four couples' licenses. Only one couple has complained? No one in the clerk's office has question these denials? That says something about racial attitudes in Lousiana that can't totally be ignored or wiped away. If this were an isolated incident, then one could say it said nothing about anyone but Bardwell. It's not. It's happened three times before and went by without comment. That suggests a larger problem.

I don't think it's terribly radical to say that Governor Jindal should be calling for an audit of peace court records in Bardwell's corner of the state and not just Bardwel''s firing.

The New Elitism: Yes, right-wingers think they are better than you.

2009-10-14T00:12:00.000-07:00

In a couple of my recent offerings (On Truth and 'Is Conservatism Brain Dead?') I've made mention of 'populism' and 'elitism' in the same phrase. I know that 'populist elitism' sounds like an oxymoron. It is, however, the defining cornerstone of Republican political strategy. It is also the defining cornerstone, specifically, of the motivations of the religious right.

The right has accused the left of 'elitism' for years, generations even. Thomas Jefferson, in many ways the founder of 'neoconservatism', was accusing Alexander Hamilton of seeking to foster an aristocracy before the ink on the constitution was dry. I've drawn attention to the irony of Jefferson's claims on behalf of 'the common man' and his attacks on Hamilton as an 'aristocrat' before and I probably won't ever get tired of it. Jefferson's own deeply ingrained elitism was plain to see in the fact that the straight-forward effect of Jeffersonianism is to protect the entrenched wealth, power, and privelege of the upper classes. The fact that Jefferson himself may have been ignorant of this and genuinely believed himself to be a 'yeoman' is open to debate, much of his writing and policy suggest a naive utopianism that makes this very possible. It does not change the effect of Jeffersonianism on society.

So, as we can see, even the tactic of steeping elitism in populist rhetoric is not new. What is new and interesting is the growing practice, on the religious right, of cultural elitism coloring every aspect of a populist movement. The core facet of this is, of course, an absolute faith in their own moral superiority.

There are those on the right who deny this aspect of the modern conservative movement and who occasionally seek to distance themselves from it. Yet they consistently buy into its key tropes; from the victimization of Sarah Palin to the idea that the words 'Democrat' and 'liberal' are somehow interchangeable because nearly everyone who doesn't accept core conservative dogmas has already been run out of the GOP. There are quite a few Americans who are far from 'liberal' who have gravitated to the Democrats not because of their 'liberalism' but because they don't believe that the ideas espoused by the 'conservative' and 'libertarian' blocs of the GOP are either conservative or libertarian. As a pragmatic democratic socialist and a philosophical anarcho-socialist, I can assure you that the Democratic Party is a very long way from being a 'liberal' party... let alone 'communist.'

The issue is not about 'communism' or even 'liberalism' as much as some right wing crackpots would like you to believe that it is. It is not even about 'secularism', though secularists are naturally going to drift away from religious extremism of any kind. It's about the belief that one American subculture has the right to force its interpretation of religion and morality onto the rest of American society.

With a tiny number of possible exceptions, the majority of the leaders of today's conservative movement (and the Republican Party, either actively or by their association with and defense of the movement) are concerned with one of two objects:

The first is the furthering of this brand of populist elitism and establishing the 'proper' stamp on American moral values. They would establish this by law and thus deprive all those who do not believe as they do of key constitutional rights. One doesn't just have to look at Proposition 8 in California for proof of this. One can look at the activities in school boards and educational associations all over the nation as they seek to 'democratize' the classroom to conform to their moral totalitarianism. As a Christian, I believe their view of religion is incorrect and dangerous. As a believer in American values, I believe their agenda is totally at odds with constitutional government and natural human rights.

The second is the exploitation of the former brand of 'populist' elitism to further genuinely elitist aims. As I mentioned above, aristocrats have been exploiting populism since Jefferson. It is only natural that today's elitists (who are 'managers' rather than 'aristocrats') seek to do the same thing. Many forms of 'individualism' and 'libertarianism', by placing too much faith in the free market and ignoring coercive power other than that of government, naturally further this kind of oligarchy. Indeed, supporting an oligarchic 'managerial' system of government and society through populist rhetoric is an even older tradition than Jefferson. It goes back to the Roman Senate of the Roman Republic. The modern neoconservative movement is more brazen, as they embrace the managerial culture and its bureaucratic elitism in naked and dirty hands.

One of the best examples of this embrace of the cultural, moral, and religious elitism embraced by this populist conservative movement is this: so far, of the various potential, declared, or projected candidates for the Republican presidential nomination in 2012 only one has not either expressly committed to a personal belief in literal Biblical creationism or advocated its teaching in schools. The lone holdout, Mitt Romney, has presumably not done so because the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (along with the Roman Catholic Church and those other Catholic churches in communion with it and Orthodox Judaism) acknowledges scientific evolution as one of its doctrinal tenets.

The 'elitism' feared by the religious right and many conservatives who have whole-heartedly embraced their tropes is best summed up by someone whose views on religion were at least as wrong as theirs:

“From the naturalistic point of view, all men are equal. There are only two exceptions to this rule of naturalistic equality: geniuses and idiots.” -- Mikhail Bakunin

After all, let's face it. Those on the right who are terrified by science, education, individual freedom of conscience and believe their moral standard should be applied to all Americans of all faiths regardless of their beliefs?

They aren't geniuses.

This Land Was Made For You and Me: Some thoughts on poverty.

2009-10-11T23:51:00.000-07:00

As the sun was shining, and I was strolling,
And the wheat fields waving, and the dust clouds rolling,
As the fog was lifting, a voice was saying
(Might have been Woody!)
"This land was made for you and me!"

-- As sung by Peter, Paul, and Mary

Just after Martin Luther King Day I wrote a brief piece about Dr. King, Woody Guthrie, and poverty. I had intended to write a longer piece on poverty, but was sidetracked and instead wrote a very angry piece about the truth of what the Bible says about wealth vs the prevailing right wing political theology of prosperity. I often write with a focus on economics. This makes it very easy to outline the practical aspects of what I am saying but it can obscure the emotion that motivates it. I don't want the fact that I am a pedantic geek to give anyone the idea that I don't care.

As I noted in the original piece, Guthrie wrote during the Depression and his work was filled with a biting anger at the state of poverty in which many Americans found themselves. Guthrie was also angry at the wealthy, whom he felt were so concerned with protecting and increasing their wealth that they made the plight of the poor worse. The fact that many of the poor of the Depression had not been poor before the Depression made him even angrier. The wealthy and the powerful were not only hardening their hearts against the poor but also against their former neighbors and friends. This was not just greed or lack of compassion. This was betrayal.

This not the Great Depression, but it is the worst economic disaster to befall the United States since. Journalists and op/ed writers alike have taken to calling it 'The Great Recession.' The most fundamental difference between Great Recession and Great Depression is in the economic status of the victims. During the 1930s, many wealthy and powerful people were reduced to penurious vagrants because they were the people to whom the stock market catered. The middle and working classes were collateral damage. The poorest Americans were least affected, their circumstances had not been much better before the Depression. Our current economic plight is very different: the middle and working classes have taken the bullet for the wealthy. Many who have not lost their houses or their jobs have seen their retirement benefits reduced to pennies on the dollar because those benefits were invested in the financial markets that took the hit.

Guthrie was angry about something else too. There were poor Americans before the Great Depression and poor Americans after it. Poverty did not go away because the Depression ended. This still has not changed. Poverty was with us before the Great Recession and it will be with us after. Poverty is a problem that needs to be addressed independently from the economy. Simply getting the economy back on track will not make things better for everyone. Robert Reich has noted that economic recovery on Wall Street does not mean things are better for the rest of the country. Even Reich fails to mention that there are many people whose quality of life will not change in a meaningful way even after the economy has made a complete recovery.

Bill Clinton came into office during a recession and left office with the budget in surplus and the economy strong. Yet this made very little difference for many people whose quality of life was made much worse by the gutting of the American social safety net that greatly facilitated those budget surpluses. A strong economy does not buy groceries or pay rent for a family of four in Butler, TN.

'The Great Society' envisioned by Lyndon Johnson included victory in the 'War on Poverty.' One can argue that this was utopian dreaming with no chance of true success if one wishes, but one cannot justify the slow transformation of Johnson's 'War on Poverty' into the modern right wing war on the poor. The poor number the vast majority of the victims of both crime and the criminal justice system that is supposed to protect them from criminals. Access to the full protection of the law and full enjoyment of one's constitutional rights become difficult when one cannot afford a lawyer to defend those rights. There is a whole industry of pawnbrokers, paycheck advance loan offices, and other loan sharks (legal and illegal) who profit from American poverty.

I do not pretend to know the solution to the problem, though there are certainly programs designed to address other problems that would definitely help. Meaningful reform in areas of health care, employment law, education, and criminal justice would go a long way toward helping the poor without bringing back 'The Great Society.'

As a critical realist I know the problem of poverty cannot be completely solved. Laws of economics mean that there will always be poor people. That doesn't mean we should like it and not do the best we can.

Let's Talk About the Nobel Peace Prize Shall We?

2009-10-10T04:54:00.000-07:00

Obviously, while I was taking my normal two days off from both my work and the internet, there was some very big news.

Equally obviously, the shocking (I'm not ashamed to use that word, left-wing or not) announcement that the President Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize has engendered a bit of discussion. Republican writers have already started to lay into the president on this little 'issue.'

Now, obviously, the President knows that he has not yet accomplished anything worthy of the award and said so himself while expressing himself to be somewhat nonplussed. The simple fact is that the biggest reason he was given the award is that he is not George W. Bush. Europeans feel comfortable with the president again, as they had not when George W. Bush was trying to treat them all like client-states. This makes a huge difference in the deliberations of the Nobel Prize Committee and let's face it, the Nobel Prize has always been awarded on subtle political judgments as much as by plain (and quite subjective) merit. While it is surprising that President Obama received the prize it is not hard to recognize the context in which it happened.

As Ron Chusid quotes quote former Carter administration speechwriter Jerome Doolittle:

1. What do you expect from a bunch of socialists?
2. Not that I’m a racist, but I know affirmative action when I see it.

3. Carter, Gore, Obama? Do we see a pattern here?

4. A clumsy attempt by Europe to save a failing presidency.

5. The Norwegians are just using Obama to slap George W. Bush in the face.

6. Besides, who cares what a bunch of geeks in Oslo think? The International Olympic Committee speaks for the whole world.

7. No thinking person has taken the Nobel Peace Prize seriously since Reagan didn’t win one for ending the Cold War.

8. We elect a president to keep America safe, not to win prizes.

9. True leadership is not an international popularity contest.

10. Peace is no big deal anyway. No, wait a minute. Strike that last one.

Can we take a moment to all admit to each other, in our secret hearts (regardless of whether we are left or right wing and consider the decision legitimate or bogus) that there is probably a significant amount of truth to reason #5 up there? Hrrrrrm?

Let's face it. President George W. Bush is not the most popular American president in European history. There is still a lot of bad blood circulating about him in European circles. There is a joke that posits a punchline in which Sarkoczy tells Putin 'not to pull a Bush.' Is it really that easy to dismiss all suspicion that prevailing European attitudes did not suggest the desirability of a firm rebuke of George W. Bush at the Nobel prizes? I can't do it.

Of course, having accepted the strawman premise offered by reason #5 above, I have to counter with this: does the fact that they would really feel so strongly about President Bush to feel the need to administer such a rebuke mean more about President Obama than it does President Bush? Could European attitudes toward President Bush influence their attitudes toward President Obama so very strongly if there were not some sort of substance to their issues with President Bush? If their issues with President Bush carried real weight, and if President Obama has addressed those issues and their disapproval of Bush thus translated into approval of Obama... would that not speak far more to the negative credit of President Bush than President Obama? Would it not work to his positive credit that he had actually begun to reverse this problem?

If one is to infer that this Nobel prize in some degree constitutes 'a slap in Bush's face' then one must also infer that President Obama has done something to show improvement in the eyes of European consensus. Which would, regardless of its worthiness for a Nobel Prize, be an accomplishment. So one cannot accept that inference as a valid reason without undermining the theory that President Obama is totally unaccomplished or without substance as Republicans would have us believe.

So let's be serious. Of course, President Obama's Nobel Peace Prize is not the most deeply meaningful ever awarded in one sense. It is deeply meaningful, however, in showing just how deeply the strain of American neoconservatism advocated by the Bush-Cheney school of Republican thought has offended Europe and in demonstrating that someone has started to do something about it before it is too late for such an attempt to matter. There is clearly a context that explains everything quite rationally.

I actually think it was a poor choice. If one wishes to discuss a genuinely worthy recipient then how about Virgin's Richard Branson, who has done more than any other Western businessman to attempt to really generate prosperity in the Third World and help those nations to develop their own identities rather than simply slavishly copying the West in every way? That may be a little out of the box (and you thought I hated corporations) but it's certainly based in a clear and legitimate context.

Of course, so was President Obama to the actual Prize Committee.

Who would the Republicans choose in President Obama's place?

'Is Conservatism Brain-Dead?'

2009-10-06T00:27:00.000-07:00

The question above was asked by Steven F. Hayward in this Sunday's Washington Post. Heyward is not a liberal attacking conservatism's philosophical and intellectual foundations but, rather, a conservative bemoaning the lack of intellectual heft among the ideological leadership of the movement. The spirit of Mr. Hayward's article is best summed up in this quote from his last paragraph:

The single largest defect of modern conservatism, in my mind, is its insufficient ability to challenge liberalism at the intellectual level, in particular over the meaning and nature of progress. In response to the left's belief in political solutions for everything, the right must do better than merely invoking "markets" and "liberty."

This is, in somewhat altered words, the very same indictment leveled against today's conservative writers, television and radio pundits, and political leadership by the left. The right is suffering from a drastic drought of thought and policy. There is, increasingly, far less 'idea' in its 'ideology' than ever before.

I know I'm not alone on the left in wanting to see an intellectually robust conservative movement challenging assumed truths among the liberal establishment. A viable opposition gives Americans freedom of choice and it challenges liberals to deliver on their promises and reevaluate their dogmas. The current state of American politics is a shambles. An intellectually vital liberal movement is weighed down by the accumulated emotional baggage of twelve years of cynicism with GOP control of the House, Senate, White House, or all the above. The GOP has lost all touch with its conservative and its progressive roots. Instead it has become the battleground between a neoconservative movement which combines the worst qualities of conservatives and liberals while neglecting the core philosophical values of both and a twisted populist movement entirely opposed to intellectualism or individual moral freedom.

The problem is that Mr. Hayward's idea of intellectualism starts well enough, but then falls short of the mark. I certainly have a great deal of respect for the late William F. Buckley Jr. and his undeniable intellectual heft, but the examples that Mr. Hayward cites of modern bright spots in the search for new conservative intellectuals fall short.

About the only recent successful title that harkens back to the older intellectual style is Jonah Goldberg's "Liberal Fascism," which argues that modern liberalism has much more in common with European fascism than conservatism has ever had. But because it deployed the incendiary f-word, the book was perceived as a mood-of-the-moment populist work, even though I predict that it will have a long shelf life as a serious work.

Citing Jonah Goldberg's work of intellectually dishonest political polemic as the scholarly heir to the work of Buckley, Friedman, or Fukuyama is evidence that Mr. Hayward himself is part of the same conservative intellectual wasteland he bemoans. Goldberg does not propose policy or advance theory, instead he busies himself with the attacking of a fascist strawman given a liberal label so as to avoid having to think for himself. It's not even his strawman, it's one borrowed from Ann Coulter. The fact that Coulter is one of the 'sound bite conservatives' listed as poor substitutes for the great conservative thinkers in Mr. Hayward's own piece casts some doubt on the sound intellectual basis for Goldberg's work.

Hayward also cites Glenn Beck as a sign of hope for the future of conservative intellectualism. Glenn Beck?

So Hayward is correct in his assessment of conservatism's problems but falls short on finding solutions because he himself appears to be part of that problem. "Better than invoking 'markets' and 'liberty'"would appear to mean comparing liberals to fascists by means of intellectual dishonesty. It is worth noting that the 'intellectual work' of his own whose poor sales performance he bemoans is not a work of theory or policy. It is a political history of the Reagan years in two volumes.

The reason for the dearth of intellectualism in the conservative movement is because neither of the two fundamental conservative ideological wellsprings of today are particularly friendly toward intellectualism.

On the one hand we have the neoconservative movement. This movement can best be defined, politically, as 'corporate populism.' In an economic sense, it is fundamentally mercantilist rather than capitalist. The idea is that state sponsorship of business (and the wealthy corporate managerial class that runs business) and the inclusion of business into the governmental circles of economic policy will ensure prosperity. The goal of the neoconservatives is the 'ownership society' advocated by Republicans not too many years ago and could be far better described as a 'management society.' Managerial types find intellectuals useful but are dismissive of real individualism, which they believe undermine corporations and states alike. Intellectuals are just another 'human resource.'

On the other hand is the religious right. For obvious reasons, the religious right is entirely hostile to any intellectualism that contradicts its own dogma. The embrace a nasty 'populist' streak that indicts all dissenters as 'elitist.' Their advocation for 'ordinary Americans' is dubious at best. Their 'populism' is itself elitist. Only those who share their views can claim any legitimacy at all and those who disagree with them are automatically wrong because they disagree. They are rooted entirely in what Ayn Rand called the 'Argument from Faith' and the 'Argument from Tradition.' Religious dogma and 'traditional values' are inherently superior to anything new. Thus anything new or anything that threatens to contradict dogma are automatically evil. Rand's 'Argument from Logic', on which she based the fundamental pinions of libertarian capitalist conservatism as she saw it, is itself suspect because of the threat logic presents to dogma. Anyone arguing from logic or expressing rational basis for why their ideas are better is an 'elitist' who considers themselves better than their opponent. This last is particularly ironic as the fundamental assumption of the religious right is that they are inherently superior by dint of salvation and dissenters are inherently wrong and likely inherently damned.

This 'populist elitism' has become the grass roots of the conservative movement and the base of the Republican Party. Its leaders attempt to assert themselves over the movement as a whole while neoconservatives seek to manipulate the grass roots to their advantage.

So we have a conservative movement with two heads. The first head is fundamentally opposed to what could be properly called 'conservative priniciples' and is instead an authoritarian and utopian ideology of 'management.' The second head nurtures many core conservative principles but is entirely opposed to intellectualism. Both are inherently hostile to individuality, the first being hostile to anything that threatens the corporate body and the latter being hostile to individual moral freedom.

Add this to the inability of theauthor to properly differentiate intellectual vitality from either self-referential politico-historical scholarship or intellectually dishonest polemic and it's hard to see a solution to the problem that Mr. Hayward describes.

Note: Thanks to the blog Delaware Liberal and blogger 'Unstable Isotope' for bringing Mr. Hayward's piece to my attention.

The Real New World Order

2009-10-03T01:54:00.000-07:00

On his blog, Matters of Principle, former Senator Gary Hart writes:

For about 300 or 350 years most conflicts in the world, or at least the major ones, were between and among nation-states, that is one country fighting another or several fighting each other. More often than not these conflicts were about boundaries, territory, aggrieved minorities, religious or ethnic friction, or simply raw power.
Conventional nation-state wars evolved into large armies wearing national uniforms, employing ever more sophisticated large weapons, often meeting in decisive battles in more or less open fields. These conflicts created their own rules embodied in international law and Geneva conventions.

Beginning sometime in the post-World War II time of colonial disintegration, so-called wars of national liberation sprang up, one country trying to rid itself of an occupying power. This produced guerilla tactics—non-uniformed, indigenous forces using light weapons, hit-and-run methods, and often hitting civilian targets. These kinds of conflicts proliferated when the bi-polar lid of the Cold War was lifted. We experienced this unconventional warfare in Vietnam as the Soviets did (and now the U.S. does) in Afghanistan.

Largely under the threat of weapons of mass destruction, nation-state wars are declining. But irregular, unconventional conflicts are expanding. History may record its inaugural date as September 11, 2001, but its roots are at least a half-century older.

This is all true and, arguably, so obvious one does not even need to state it. However, it is something terribly important to keep in mind when it comes to foreign policy and defense policy. The question is no longer about whether a nation can invade another nation or repel an invasion of its own soil but instead of how it can best respond to a multitude of small scale threats.

The Bush Administration cast these small threats in the familiar role of one all encompassing threat and initiated the so-called 'Global War on Terror.' Bush apologists and many conservatives who otherwise don't have much good to say about Bush will say, 'We haven't been attacked since 9/11 so the Bush Doctrine worked.' It's important to remember that we hadn't been attacked on American soil for nearly a decade before 9/11. So something others did worked as well, arguably better than what Bush was doing before 9/11.

As satisfying as it is to jump on Bush for the errors of judgement prior to the attacks on the World Trade Center, it is still important to remember that one hundred percent security is not possible in a free society. The fact that the attacks happened is less important than the reaction to them. Bush's reaction was the dawn of a new age of American Imperialism and unilateral action. The demonstration that the United States could react with overwhelming force was probably very comforting to a lot of voters, regardless of their political affiliation. It certainly made Dennis Miller feel better.

The problem is that, however it made us feel, the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq probably didn't do terribly much to address the real threat of small scale terrorist attack around the world. Instead we gained responsibility for two countries. Iraq appears to have been a successful effort in nation building, but we won't really know for years to come. The Soviet Union's 'nation building' efforts in Eastern Europe and Central Asia looked terribly successful for about eighty years. Afghanistan continues to be a quagmire.

I'm not proposing the complete abandonment of a conventional military. That would be irresponsible in a dangerous world. However, we need to gear that military toward the real threats to American security. As John Kerry said in 2004, we need to able to coordinate law enforcement and intelligence efforts with a surgical response to specific small-scale threats. We also need to understand there is no one overweening enemy. The SCGWOT is a farce. We face quite a lot of little enemies.

One of the fundamental disappointments I have with the Obama Administration is that they have not totally addressed this issue. President Obama emphasized Afghanistan so as not to appear too 'dovish' to Middle American voters who wanted a tough president. Now he is stuck dealing with that very big mess. Many of the civil rights issues raised by the Bush Administration's Homeland Security agenda remain unaddressed.

The economy and health care have distracted from many of these issue for many on the left. It's important that we change our foreign policy and security policy to suit a changing world. To avoid ending on a completely critical note, it is important to give President Obama a great deal of credit for his handling of political issues involving Russia. The cancellation of the misguided missile shield facilities in Poland the Czech Republic has led to Russia withdrawing its threat to veto tougher UN action against Iran.

Half Full or Half Empty?

2009-09-30T01:34:00.000-07:00

The most difficult problem of political analysis is trying to determine just what the facts really mean. This means any political analysis is inherently guesswork. As an example (and proof that I am not perfect) I give you this: I believed that Avigdor Lieberman's political blood feud with the Ultraorthodox Jewish party Shas, his quasi-socialist domestic agenda, his hunger for personal political 'respectability', and his commitment to the concept of 'land for peace' would trump the fact that the fact of shared racism and lead him to tell Benjamin Netanyahu to go to hell in favor of the greater legitimacy of serving in a broader coalition government led by Kadimah. Obviously, I was pretty wrong. Was this wishful thinking on my part or merely a misunderstanding of what was really important to Lieberman? Was it a combination of both?

Naturally the most frequent reason for differences in political analyses is partisan. If one watched CNN at all during the election cycle last year then one could see the partisan bias dripping from every word the Democratic and Republican analysts said. The Republican analysts were particular egregious in their attempt represent the entire country as frightening right wing nuts and represent the views of people like Sarah Palin as mainstream. All the same, Democratic analysts were certainly equally partisan in their presentation of the facts of the election.

Of course partisanship is not the only reason for such differences.

Yesterday Robert Creamer wrote, on HuffPo, that momentum for the public option is growing. Citing the votes in the Senate Finance Committee, in which the public option received ten votes in the second go round:

This robust support for the public option -- in what most observers consider the most conservative committee in the Senate -- signals a sea change in Congressional opinion toward the public option. The odds are now very high that some form of public health insurance option will be included on the final bill when it emerges from a House-Senate Conference Committee later this fall and is ultimately passed by Congress.

Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-creamer/growing-momentum-for-publ_b_303415.html

Great news isn't it?

Just about an hour and a half after Creamer wrote that the public option was gaining momentum, HuffPo staff writer Jason Linkins used the exact same facts to come to the exact opposite conclusions:

Today, the Senate Finance Committee rebuffed two amendments to include the public option in its health care reform bill. The first amendment, offered by Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) went down 15-8. The second, put forward by Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), failed to pass by a 13-10 vote.
So, now what? Is the public option dead? Will the fight go on? Yesterday, Democratic consultant Peter Feld assayed today's committee machinations and warned: "Spoiler alert: the public option goes down in a ritual sacrifice of which this is step one." Want to bet he's wrong?

Being a columnist, Linkins answers his own question:

I'd advise against it...

For the record, after having read both articles, I see where both are coming from. Creamer is focusing his analysis on the fact that the public option picked up two votes the second time it was put to the question. Linkins is focusing his own argument on a general (and justified) skepticism of the Senate Democrats' willingness to overplay their hand. Speaking clearly from a critical perspective it is important to note that Creamer's logical reasoning the more sound of the two analyses. The problem is that Senate votes are not 'logical', they are human undertakings in which quite a few illogical decisions are made.

If this were about logic, after all, we'd have passed 'Medicare For All' when Nixon was president.

Linkins' analyses brings up something important that I cannot let pass. Six years of a Republican House under Bill Clinton and six more of a Republican House and Senate under George Bush have made many liberals extremely cynical. Furthermore the Democratic House and Senate of the first two years of the Clinton administration did not inspire anymore confidence than did the Democratic House and Senate of the last two years of the Bush administration. There is a certain justification for this cynicism.

That said, we cannot afford to be permanently cynical. Ongoing cynicism will merely weaken our resolve. We need to be optimistic of ultimate success even when short term success is unlikely. We need staying power. Right now we do not have it.

If we do not develop the optimism to see when the glass is half full and fight to fill it then the glass will always remain half empty. Over time, if the glass remains half-empty, eventually the right will drain it.

Food for thought.

Radical Fundamentals

2009-09-29T01:14:00.000-07:00

I find that I am drawn more and more from the philosophical and policy writing that originally motivated me to start a blog to a strange sub-genre of literary criticism. The criticism of blogs and policy writing may be something my tiny collection of readers really wishes to focus upon. It's probably not going to completely stop anytime soon. It's just impossible not to offer criticism of much of the commentary being circulated today. I am, however, going to refocus my energies on my own (quasi-)original thought and social criticism as well. I don't want this blog to become a 'Daily Howler' about blogs.

So today I am going to break things down to the basics. What really matters?

This an unbelievably broad question. The liberal movement of today answers it in an extremely scatter-shot fashion. The Republican accusation that the Democratic Party focuses on 'group rights' over 'individual rights' is truer than I find comfortable. Moreover, the liberal Democrats who focus even on those 'group rights' are not the dominant power in their own party. The dominant faction, the Democratic Leadership Council, is committed to carefully balancing all those group rights so that everyone is 'happy' but the public is not offended by the tilt toward liberalism. This takes the idea of 'felicific calculus' to a whole new universe. Shouldn't there be a way to boil all the interests of the groups 'the left' represents down into a coherent, single list of priorities?

The 'group rights' approach is based on the premise that everyone best gets 'their share' if we individually advocate for each group. The problem is that we get so bogged down in group advocacy that the issue of collective advocacy for society can get lost in the shuffle.

Again we ask, 'What really matters?'

I think it can be boiled down to a few core points. There are four key concerns of a civil society:

1.) Justice/Natural Rights - This includes quite a bit. First and foremost it means ensuring that all members of society enjoy equal protection of the law. It also means making certain that there is always someone to advocate for the individual dignity of any member of society. It is also critical that we remember a key maxim: 'My freedom ends where your nose begins.' There is a key element of personal responsibility inherent in freedom. Not the counterfeit 'personal responsibility' argued by conservatives, but genuine responsibility to give one's best effort and to respect the rights and freedoms of other members of society. This is not exclusive to the working and middle classes or the poor either. The corporate classes and the wealthy must also respect the individual rights of others and the law should not grant them undue license to disregard those rights. 'Justice' also includes the problem of law enforcement in a civil society, but it is very important to remember that the purpose of law enforcement must be the protection of the rights of all members of society. Police power must not be a means of social or political control over the poor and the working class. Civil rights agendas fall into this category and the overarching goal of securing the rights of all members of society should be put above identity politics.

2.) The Economy - This includes the obvious but it also covers quite a bit not generally considered in this light. Alternative energy, environmental questions, and other issues of sustainability are core economic concerns whether the right wishes to admit it or not. Simply ignoring the issue will not make the problems go away and conservative 'optimism' increasingly looks a refusal to accept the facts as they are. It is certainly true that not all 'green' complaints are equally valid. Criticism of agrotechnology that has saved a billion lives worldwide is simply moronic. Yet it is equally moronic to believe we can continue to exhaust natural resources at a railroad pace and not expect unpleasant consequences. We must also, no matter how unpleasant the right and the center find the prospect, also seriously consider means to effectively prevent the extreme concentration of wealth in the hands of a relatively small number of individuals and corporate entities. This concentration of wealth prevents money from properly circulating, which harms the economy directly. It also creates undue power and influence which is a danger to the freedom of civil society.

3.) Health care - It is important that society be able to provide for the health of its members. We are the only major industrialized nation in the world not to make some effort to do so. Of the industrialized nations that make such an effort, the majority provide care to their citizens much more effectively at less cost. This does not necessitate a national health service or a single payer national insurance system. Though those systems are the most economical way of controlling the costs of the system and the most effective way to provide access to care to all members of society they are not the only alternatives. It is important, however, that we do so. We should work for that goal until it is achieved and we should constantly work for improvement of the system short of that final goal. This is both an economic issue and a moral issue. It is important enough to deserve inclusion in its own right.

4.) Education - This is another moral issue of grave importance. It is less important to economics than our culture had made it but our increasing linkage of employment to education means that the economics of education cannot be ignored either. This is an area in which we are stuck in a moral and fiscal quagmire. Our educational policy is coercive and dehumanizing. It is also highly inconsistent in its rate of success. Even if it were completely successful it would still be immoral. We systematically strip children of their individuality as people and treat them as identical copies of the fictional 'average child.' A tiny minority of children fit into the system. Most simply go along and do not make waves, their gain from the system dubious. A significant number, however, are destroyed by the educational system. Their faith in their own abilities, their belief in their own future, and their understanding of life and society are crushed by a system that has more in common with the prison system than compassionate teaching. This is not the fault of teaching or teachers, but of bureaucratization of the education system until the schools exist to justify the system of administration. Our schools are something very close to fascist and neither liberals nor conservatives appear ready or able to address that fact. Furthermore, a rather ridiculous 'populist' movement to 'democratize' education has eroded the ability of teachers to teach. This is being replaced by the politicization of curricula in every subject from science to history. This cannot be allowed to continue. There needs to be a limit to the tyranny of the ballot box and school is a very good place to draw the line.

Here it is then: a four point diagram of the issues that most fundamentally concern a civil society. We have a long ways to go in every one.

My challenge to both parties is to stop quibbling about who can take more money from corporations and get their asses into gear.

The National Security State: Remember when Ike said something about this?

2009-09-25T02:10:00.000-07:00

Former Colorado Senator and presidential candidate Gary Hart has started a blog: Matters of Principle. Senator Hart has cogently contributed to the Huffington Post for some time. The transition to his own blog is an obvious next step and I am eager to see how the undertaking goes. I liked his this offering, which was also posted on HuffPo, very much.

Senator Hart outlines what he calls 'the national security state.'

"The National Security Act of 1947 was the statutory basis for defining America’s role in the world post-World War II and for conducting the Cold War. It established a new Department of Defense, the Central Intelligence Agency, the National Security Council, and the United States Air Force as a new military service. For more than six decades, it has also been the source of authority for the president as commander-in-chief."

Though the American Civil War was the prototype for the 'imperial presidency' and the model for the dominant picture of the 'American President' in the 20th Century was drawn by Franklin D. Roosevelt. Roosevelt, because of the Great Depression and WWII, enjoyed unprecedented national and global power. He was elected president four times, also unprecedented. Only Ulysses S. Grant had run more than twice and Grant was not even nominated by the Republican Party on his third try. Roosevelt was the defining personality of the 1930s and the 1940s, even after his death. The National Security Act of 1947 was written with the view that the president would manage the Cold War the way President Roosevelt had managed WWII.

Here comes the rub: FDR was a wartime president who enjoyed broad wartime powers based on a situation of worldwide emergency. Even before the US entry into WWII, the rest of the world was at war for a period of two years. When America entered into the war it became the dominant force among the allies. Due to American resources and British and Soviet need, Franklin Delano Roosevelt became the Duke of Marlborough on a global scale. The National Security Act of 1947 was written during peacetime. The powers granted the president through the NSA has given American presidents wartime powers in time of peace to the best of their ability to wield them ever since.

Can you see why this is inherently dangerous?

If you can't, then consider this:

"Despite the fact that our Constitution, Article I, section 8, gives Congress solely the power to “provide for the common defense” and “declare War,” it is not accidental that no declaration of war has been authorized since 1941, even while we waged war in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan and dozens of other venues. Presidents now decide when and where we will wage war."

Due to the power given to the executive through the NSA, the single defining change in the law post-WWII, the president has been able to fight wars at his discretion without a Congressional declararion. For this the justification was the Cold War and the tool that made it possible was unprecedented peacetime authority and a vastly expanded national security apparat. As Hart says, all of this power is a trap for the man who wields it all. He can exercise authority over this national security apparatus, as Hart says, but he can't get away from it.

Dwight D. Eisenhower, the last president to command an army personally, understood this. It was very much the point of his last speech as president. Everyone knows the famous line:

"In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the militaryindustrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist."

Much of our history since Eisenhower is based not on remembering this warning, but forgetting it. Many of the crimes, failures, and tragedies connected to the Iraq War and the Bush Administration as a whole were intimately connected to the failure of subsequent American presidents to heed this warning. In the wake of WWII, every American president has used this national security apparatus to advance its own agenda around the world. While this was justified first by the Cold War, then the so-called 'War on Drugs, and now the 'Global War on Terror' it is really all the same thing.

As Hart says:

"This helps explain the demented insistence on the part of the Bush administration to create, or perhaps merely ratify, the “unitary executive,” a notion based on the premise that all executive power resides in the president and Congress has no authority to question his actions as they relate to national security. In this context “national security” is so broadly defined as to include virtually everything.'

This is the consequence of the concept of President-as-Generalissimo. Even President Obama, who ran against this concept, has been unable to escape it. Hart makes comment on this. It is echoed by this piece from Ron Chusid at Liberal Values.

Hart puts his finger right on the current situation:

"All this might make some plausible sense, but only if two things were true: one, that we are now locked into a kind of semi-permanent era of conflict and danger; and two that James Madison and his colleagues had not gone to considerable pains to create a genius system of checked-and-balanced government where power is concentrated in no single branch."

Hart finishes by saying that our chief concern should be what James Madison would think of this, but I strongly disagree.

Our real chief concern should be whether the concept of a 'semi-permanent era of conflict and danfer' is something that we, as American, can afford to accept. This concept has prevailed since the beginning of the Cold War. The only exception has been the brief period between the end of the Cold War and the 9/11 attacks. Americans who grew up during the Cold War find the return to that mentality unremarkable.

That desperately needs to change.

On Truth

2009-09-24T06:10:00.000-07:00

Note: This article originally appeared on Wednesday in different form. The original article contained factual errors that I was unwilling to leave in place. Responsibility for those errors is mine and I apologize to anyone who read the incorrect article. I offer this rewritten piece in its place, hopefully as some amount of compensation.

- Chris

The moral outrage of the immoral, the ethical standards of the unethical, the intellectual chauvinism of of the intellectually bankrupt, and the calls for truth of liars began to bore me in the 1990s. I am less dismayed now by the fact that the basic rhetoric and tactics of the right have not changed than I am that even people ON the right can still tolerate it.

I've been spending this week commenting on the most active of the two liberal blogs I follow (Dr. Ron Chusid's Liberal Values and The Anonymous Liberal... a doctor and a lawyer, which I find immensely poetic) and doing web research for a piece on poverty. In the course of both of these activities I was struck by two things. The first of these was the pure shamelessness in which 'thinkers' on the right present a specious argument with bald-faced purity even as they accuse the left of great evil and dishonesty. The second of these was the strange sense of innocence (or perhaps glee) with which these statements are made.

One of part of the process of researching an article on poverty was the attempt to find out what conservatives have to say about it. The answer was, 'not much.' Nearly every right wing blog reference to poverty online is connected in some way to an attack on policies perceived as 'liberal' by the writer. There is very little writing about actual poverty, whether or not it is a problem, or what should be done about it. The intellectual desert of conservative thoughts and writing on poverty surprised me a great deal, though in retrospect I should have expected it.

Christ, whom many on the right claim tells them what to do and when to do it on a personal basis, had a great deal to say about poverty. He spoke of charity, of caring for the poor, and of society's responsibility to its least members.

He also had interesting things to say about wealth, things which do not sit next to right wing policies very well.

'Now behold, one came and said to him, "Good Teacher, what good thing shall I do that I may have eternal life?
So He said to him, "Why do you call me good? No one is good but One, that is, God. But if you want to enter into life, keep the commandments."
He said to Him, "Which ones?"
Jesus said to him, "'You shall not murder'; 'You shall not commit adultery'; 'You shall not steal'; 'You shall not bear false witness'; 'Honor your father and your mother'; and 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.'"
The young man said to him, "All these things I have kept from my youth. What do I still lack?"
Jesus said to him, "If you want to be prefect, go, sell what you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow Me."
But when the young man heard that saying, he went away sorrowful, for he had great possessions.
Then Jesus said to his disciples, "Assuredly, I say to you that it is hard for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of heaven. And again I say to you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God."

-- Matthew 19:16-24'

As you can see, the Jesus of the Gospels saw wealth and poverty very differently from the politicians who would marshal the forces of the religious right on their own behalf today. When a faction that claims Biblical and Godly authority for their every action ignores the words of scripture, just how trustworthy are they?

The Anonymous Liberal describes House Minority Whip Eric Cantor's response to a constituent at a health care town hall meeting. The following transcript of the exchange is from his site, but is originally from Alan Colmes.

"CONSTITUENT: I have a very close relative, a woman in her early forties, who did have a wonderful, high-paying job, owns her own home and is a real contributing member of society. She lost her job. Just a couple of weeks ago, she found out that she has tumors in her belly and that she needs an operation. Her doctors told her that they are growing and that she needs to get this operation quickly. She has no insurance.

[...]

CANTOR: First of all I guess I would ask what the situation is in terms of income eligibility and the existing programs that are out there. Because if we look at the uninsured that are out there right now, there is probably 23, 24% of the uninsured that is already eligible for an existing government program [...] Beyond that, I know that there are programs, there are charitable organizations, there are hospitals here who do provide charity care if there’s an instance of indigency and the individual is not eligible for existing programs that there can be some cooperative effort. No one in this country, given who we are, should be sitting without an option to be addressed."

As the Anonymous Liberal says aptly:

"Faced with this all too common scenario, Cantor has nothing to offer. The suggestions he eventually comes up with are profoundly unhelpful and deeply hypocritical. This outspoken opponent of government-run health care suggests, feebly, that perhaps the woman might qualify for an existing government program. This, of course, is highly unlikely given that she owns her home and just recently lost her job..."

The irony of this, of course, is that Cantor and other conservatives would cut existing government programs if their views of health care prevailed in House and Senate. I have written about this before.

The party that claims to be the guardian of American morality has abandoned basic moral values. There are no facts behind their 'truth.' There is no Jesus in their 'Christianity.' There is no logic in their 'common sense.' There is no patriotism in their worship of all things 'American.'

This is immensely dangerous. While, in recent years, this appears to have caused many sensible people of moderate and conservative views to step away from the Republican Party and movement conservatism it has also enflamed the passions of those who desperately want to believe they are better than their neighbors. The right has kindled a populist elitism that combines the worst features of both and sells authoritarian truth with anti-authoritarian lies of the worst kind while shamelessly pointing to the very facts that prove their intellectual bankruptcy.

Yet they have faith to move mountains.

Can you think of anything more dangerous than a lunatic with faith?

Reality Based Politics: How do you fight people who don't live in the real world?

2009-09-18T10:27:00.000-07:00

Everyone has heard, by now, about the decision to strip ACORN of federal funding. Republicans have been crowing about it. The way the news media has fixed on one non-profit political action group whose entire agenda is about helping poor Americans fully integrate into economic and political society is fascinating. It shows that the 'Reagan Revolution' really has fundamentally changed the way America views the problem of poverty. The political debate is no longer about poverty. It's about demonizing and criminalizing the poor and those who would help them.

The way that the majority of the Democrats in Congress jumped on the conservative bandwagon in this case is more disturbing. The House voted 345-75 to strip ACORN of federal support. 345 congressmen of both parties believe that scapegoating this one organization is the best solution to the Republican attacks that haven't stopped since the election? It all points to one basic fact: political perception is more important to politicians than reality.

Republicans, sadly, are still better at reframing reality to fit their political perceptions than are Democrats. In one sense, this is a good thing. We don't want both sides undertaking the same effort to warp reality to suit their political purposes. It would be great, however, if the Democrats put more effort into finding a way to frame reality as it is and communicate the facts of policies that are better fitted to the world in which we live. This problem eludes them repeatedly.

The reaction to the Republican victory over a tiny, underfunded organization that is entirely dependent on donations and federal assistance to function is a bit over the top. Not only was the enemy entirely non-threatening, but it was entirely unequipped to defend itself against the attacks of a national political machine. Even after the victory has been won, the enemies of ACORN continue to attack. Jenn Q Public writes a vociferous assault on 'child sex trafficking' and manages to somehow make ACORN the villains of the modern world of white slavery. I am certain she believes she is calling it as she sees it, which is the scary part.

Those interested can find the best answer to this kind of manic trampling on the corpse of the beaten enemy here, penned by the Anonymous Liberal:

"That the GOP and its conservative supporters would single out this particular organization for such intense demonization is telling. In September of last year, the entire world came perilously close to complete financial catastrophe. We're still not out of the woods and we're deep within one of the worst recessions in U.S. history. This situation was brought about by the recklessness and greed of our banks and financial institutions, most of which had to be bailed out at enormous cost to the American taxpayer (exponentially more than all of the tax dollars given to ACORN over the years). The people who brought about this near catastrophe, for the most, profited immensely from it. These very same institutions, propped up by the American taxpayer, are once again raking in large profits.

But rather than focus their anger on these folks, conservatives choose to go after an organization composed almost entirely of low-paid community organizers, an organization that could never hope to have even a small fraction of the clout or the ability to affect the overall direction of the country that Wall Street bankers have. ACORN's relative lack of political influence was on full display yesterday, when the U.S. Senate (in which Democrats have a supermajority) not only entertained a vote to defund ACORN, but approved it by a huge margin (with only seven Democrats opposing)."

Since he defends those who cannot defend themselves, and condemns those who would play the role of the bully so effectively, I'll move on to the real problem.

Ron Chusid of Liberal values has written about what he calls 'reality-based politics' for a long time. In a post from January of this year, he very effectively highlighted the problem with the modern political right:

"Currently the sets of views which primarily separate liberals from conservatives are 1) support for liberty by the left and opposition to the authoritarian views of the right and 2) having a reality-based viewpoint as opposed to the anti-intellectualism of the right."

It's very hard for me to disagree, and I'm not the only one who gets it.

On Huffington Post, attorney/author/psychologist Bryant Welch attacks the problem head on and holds nothing back in a shockingly clinical description of conservative political tactics and their victims.

Welch says:

"We take our sense of what is real and what is not real for granted. We shouldn't. We each actually form our own unique "reality sense" with our mind that assimilates an infinitely complex bombardment of stimuli from outside us and from within. It is no simple task, and the most miraculous part of the human mind is that it is able to create a coherent reality at all.
The problem is that in times of extreme uncertainty the mind has a hard time creating this reality sense. The mind becomes confused. This can be caused by external events in our world, such as rapid change or inner psychological states -- for example, when we are experiencing strong emotions like paranoia, envy, or challenges to our sexual identity."

Much of this is fairly straight-forward empiricism, with a touch of Immanuel Kant. It's important to keep it mind, however. While 'reality' certainly exists in an objective sense, it is very true that our perceptions of reality can vary widely from what is peering back in at us.

"And this is where things go awry. Current right-wing politics is an art form that is designed to re-define reality for a class of people who are increasingly unable to establish their own sense of reality. Instead, they succumb and become increasingly dependent on someone else to tell them what is real and what is not real. In their regressed psychological state, under certain conditions, many people will accept as real whatever they are told by an authoritative sounding figure be it Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, or Bill O'Reilly."

This is extremely cogent, and does very well to describe why otherwise intelligent people can believe that Sarah Palin is a strong feminist figure victimized by misogynist culture for her strength. It also does well to show why the dark fantasies of Ann Coulter and Glenn Beck are so appealing to people who feel adrift in a world that can't possibly be 'real' as they define reality. However, while Welch offers a clear solution:

"So what should progressives do? Do we have to be like the far right and beat them at their own game? No, not at all. But we do have to hoist them on their own petard. We have to expose the manipulations and the manipulators with a torrential counterattack that is focused on the manipulations, not a message that emphasizes some irrelevant "positive" message such as how important health reform is.

Instead, we need to harness the rage that is ubiquitous in this country because of all the uncertainty and the confusion. That is the energy that is driving health care and most political life in America at the present time. We need to harness it for constructive purposes, exposing the puppeteers and the corporate interests that are behind them. Health care is ultimately a populist issue, but we are not igniting the populist rage that drives all populism. Until progressives learn this lesson they will lose"

While I certainly agree that we are not doing enough to harness the anger in Americans, the reason the left is not engaged in this activity is because most of us on the left want to solve problems and soothe that anger. We don't want to make it worse or to exploit it. We fail to understand, too often, the difference between addressing anger legitimately and indulging it. If we can address that populist anger legitimately, then we might have a chance.

Can we do it?

I have to admit that, as I read more and more of the lies and insanity being spouted on the right, I am becoming more and more angry myself. I am sure that I am no the only one. We need to focus that anger into practical action. We are not in a debate. We are in a fight to establish a view of the real world in those who can still see it and to prevent a genuinely dark force from establishing hold of America. I hate to use that kind of mystical language, but that is the only description I can find accurate anymore.

What can one call an attempt to rewrite reality for political gain?

That's evil on the level of a comic book villain, here in the real world.

What are you going to do to fight it?

Yes, I'm Going to Pile On Max Baucus and Kent Conrad Too

2009-09-17T04:54:00.000-07:00

Prior to day's piece, I've written six pieces about health care this year. More of them have been critical than not. I've attacked specific elements of reform bills. I've attacked whole reform bills as intellectually dishonest attempts to defund Medicare and exposing the Republicans as the only people actually advocating rationing. I've posted frank criticisms of many of the core 'religious' elements to arguments about free market health care. I've even proposed my own national health care bill. Clearly, I feel fairly strongly about the issue.

I've not been a fan of the Senate Finance Committee bill for some time. One of the early pieces I wrote critiquing the reform process was in reference to the original Senate bill as it left Teddy Kennedy's committee. I was already less than completely happy with it.

Well, Senators Max Baucus and Kent Conrad have gone and come up with something even worse. Dr. Ron Chusid of Liberal Values pointed out key problems with the Finance Committee bill back in early August and suggested it might actually be worse than no reform at all. As Bob Cesca and RJ Eskow both write on Huffington Post, the final Finance Committee bill is possibly even worse. Ryan Grim writes that the Baucus bill is already facing signficant resistance among Democratic senators and most of the Democrats in the House.

I'm going to pile on too. I'm not going to rehash every point that Cesca and Eskow make, except to say that I agree with their view of many aspects of the bill. It has the potential to do considerable economic damage to American business, seniors, and the working class. A provision to tax 'Caddillac' insurance benefits will double the burden already laid on older consumers by a fee scale that allows older customers to be charged as much as five times as much as younger consumers... a fee scale that completely wipes out the benefits provided by eliminating restrictions against and fees for consumers with pre-existing conditions. 'Health reform', if the Baucus bill passes, could actually end up making it more expensive for the average American to purchase insurance. At the same time, the individual mandate has not been dropped. The public option, of course, is gone.

The real damage done by the Baucus bill is in a provision that chop-blocks what would otherwise be the best provision in the bill before the bill even leaves Committee. Instead of a public option, the bill would empower health consumers to form their own co-ops to insure their own health care costs. I've more than once admitted to a strain of a certain kind of socialism, and that part of me certainly likes the idea of health insurance co-ops having the power to compete aggressively with the private insurance market. It would give many ordinary Americans an alternative to private insurance that could actually be superior to a government run plan. Conservatives have understood just how powerful co-ops could be in lowering health care costs and empowering health care consumers. That's why Ed Morrissey took the time to rail against them on Hot Air. Legitimately empowered health insurance cooperatives would be a very serious competitor for the insurance industry.

The trouble is that the Baucus bill kills co-ops before they get started. While allowing consumers to form cooperatives to cover their health care costs, it specifically denies those cooperatives collective bargaining power over fees. So the insurance companies would enjoy a huge advantage in competition, while the co-ops would be hampered in their ability to provide quality coverage at an affordable cost. When the single best part of the bill is so badly crippled by its own language, it becomes difficult to support the bill at all.

Baucus and Conrad become the real villains of this affair. Baucus has written a bill that gives the insurance companies everything they have asked for in order not to oppose reform. Yet the bill does not include enough comprehensive reform of the system to justify the concessions. If the bill contained a public option, a robust subsidy for those who cannot afford insruance but do not qualify for Medicaid, or a robust strengthening and widening of Medicaid to cover those unable to otherwise comply with the individual mandate then one could argue that the concessions might be worth it. Instead there is no public option, the subsidy is depressingly shallow, and the Medicaid benefits made available for those unable to otherwise comply with the mandate has been described as 'Medicaid lite.' When one considers how inferior Medicaid already is, this is simply unconscionable.

While Republicans have lied about the threat of any reform, Baucus has completely castrated reform in the hopes of winning Republican support. He has utterly failed to do so. Not one of the three Republicans in the 'Gang of Six' has signed on to the Baucus bill, not even Olympia Snowe... who is arguably more liberal than Baucus. Despite this, Baucus claims a belief that the bill will pick up support from Republicans on the Senate floor. I don't know what motivates this fount of optimism. Perhaps it is the same kind of 'we hope it is true therefore it must be true' thinking that impelled the Bush Administration to tell us all how easy the Iraq war would be.

Max Baucus needs to be run out of the Senate. He needs to be challenged by an aggressive liberal primary opponent who makes health care reform and the Baucus bill the central issue of the primary campaign. With this bill, with his lack of regard for the needs of the country, he has single-handedly stepped up to the plate for the role of scapegoat if this round of reform fails. If his excrable brand of 'reform' passes, he's clearly the man to blame.

Either way, we all need to make sure he becomes the face of Republican resistance to reform. It's what he has chosen to become in his quest for 'bi-partisanship.'

The 'Showboat Judge'? A Lost Icon?

2009-09-15T01:51:00.001-07:00

1907: Standard Oil is under criminal investigation for corruption charges levied by federal prosecutors in Illinois. The charge is that Standard Oil executives accepted significant kickbacks from railroad companies (thus vastly lowering their real freight costs) in exchange for a preferred business relationship that allowed both the oil trust and the railroads in question to limit their rivals' ability to compete. Federal circuit judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis, unimpressed with the explanations given by Standard Oil executives, subpoenas oil duke John D. Rockefeller and puts him on the stand to explain or refute the charges. He ends the trial by levying a 27 million dollar fine against Standard Oil, a figure that in today's money becomes astronomical.

Landis's decision was overturned on appeal, and the final fine levied was far lower. All the same, Landis's haling of Rockefeller into court and forcing him to answer for the crimes committed by his employees was a bold move. It was an important step in the antitrust battles of the Gilded Age.

Landis was what we used to call a 'showboat judge.' He used his judicial discretion to its fullest extent and acted as he believed right. While he was hardly a hero overall (he was a virulent racist who ended the US career of heavyweight champion Jack Johnson on Mann Act charges, dearth on organized labor, and as commissioner of baseball he kept the sport segregated his entire term), his actions in that courtroom on 1907 were certainly heroic.

Of course, the most famous 'showboat judge' might be Associate Justice William J. Brennan of the Supreme Court. The late Justice Brennan is able to boast of a career of heroic judicial actions. The high court certainly needs another Brennan.

2009: Judge Jed Rakoff disallows a 33 million dollar settlement between the SEC and Bank of America. Rakoff had held up the settlement last month. Judge Rakoff demanded to know why the SEC had not pursued a criminal investigation of the charges against specific Bank of America executives instead of merely opening and quickly attempting to settle a civil case against the megabank. In his final ruling, Rakoff touched on a key note we should all take to heart:

'Rakoff, in his ruling, found that the settlement "suggests a rather cynical relationship between the parties: the SEC gets to claim that it is exposing wrongdoing on the part of the Bank of America in a high-profile merger, the bank's management gets to claim that they have been coerced into an onerous settlement by overzealous regulators. And all this is done at the expense, not only of the shareholders, but also of the truth."'

A cynical relationship between the SEC and one of the entities it regulates? Impossible! Not the SEC! Didn't they heroically enforce banking regulations to protect smaller American lenders, American citizens, and the US economy!?

Well, no... they didn't. There has been a cynical relationship between the SEC and most of Wall Street since Ronald Reagan's presidency, and under the Bush Administration the SEC was a 'yes man' for the megabanks.

Good for Judge Rakoff for calling at least one part of the problem to light.

The SEC's case against BofA must now go to trial, which means more of the details of the matters for which the bank was being investigated will come to light. Actual facts might be uncovered by the American people and the American government and those facts might lead to real action, or real demand for real action, in the effort to reform our financial markets.

Best of all? New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo's office is preparing to hale the executives in question into state court to answer criminal charges. So Judge Rakoff's firm moral stand has succeeded in producing legal results, even if not from the branch of the federal government that should have produced those results on its own in the first place.

Corporate pirates need to learn that our economy is not the blue Caribbean and they cannot simply rape and pillage as they please. To that end, we need more 'showboat judges.'

Judge Rakoff, thank you.

Norman Borlaug -- RIP

2009-09-12T23:36:00.000-07:00

Norman Borlaug saved the world, and many Americans don't even know who he is. Borlaug is an American hero, yet American schoolchildren are not taught about him in school.

Now he has passed on, at the age of 95, succumbing to complications of cancer in Dallas, Texas. All the necessary obituaries will be run around the country and those who read the obits will be educated about a great man and his service to the world.

Borlaug single-handedly disproved (or at least delayed) Malthusian theories of ultimate economic doom.

In 1968, Paul Ehrlich's book 'The Population Bomb' predicted global catastrophe due to overpopulation. The human race was breeding itself into extinction, Ehrlich said, and a desperate campaign of population control was necessary to stop it. Ehrlich claimed that the global population was growing faster than global food production rates and pointed to the inability of India to feed itself as proof of his theories. Little did he know he was being proven wrong even as he wrote his book.

In the 1960s, Norman Borlaug almost single-handedly began the 'green revolution' in agricultural science. His 'dwarfing' process (among other breakthroughs) changed farming completely. Ironically, his 'revolution' began in 1965. Three years before Ehrlich's book.

Today, food production outstrips population growth by quite a bit. While famine is still with us, the leading cause is political instability and corruption interfering with effective distribution.

Instead of arguing whether or not to teach 'creation science', don't you think our schools should be teaching young Americans about the Americans scientist who saved the world?

Update: Conservative crusader Jenn Q Public has taken note of Dr. Borlaug's passing as well. Though she takes some pointed shots at environmentalists in her own writing that I cannot completely endorse, it's hard to deny the lack of respect for Dr. Borlaug's work in some circles. The viciousness of some of the more ignorant comments on the Huffington Post's obituary for the great man is simply astounding. Any self proclaimed 'environmentalist' who stakes out a position that the lives of one billion human beings were not worth saving because of the 'overpopulation' to which Borlaug's work has led (in their somewhat ignorant view) is occupying the same ground as the advocates of big business who deny global warming in order to justify their profits or the 'Christians' who oppose abortion to save the life and health of a 9 year old rape victim.

All are fools and villains together.

Glenn Beck: Wally George Writ Large?

2009-09-12T04:20:00.000-07:00

I don't know if any of the few readers I have know who Wally George was or not. He was a decidedly local personality in the Los Angeles area, his show Hot Seat was carried by a local Anaheim station and frequently focused on issues specific to Orange County, CA. To get an idea of the style and tone of his show, you need to know this: he accused tv hosts like Geraldo Rivera and Jerry Springer of ripping him off.

George was a 'conservative pundit', if by such a phrase one means 'reactionary bigot out to get as much attention as possible.' Orange County consists of the six most conservative congressional districts in California and local politics are frequently flavored by racial and economic tensions more commonly associated with the Deep South than California. George's show format consisted of inviting a single guest for an interview. Generally, that guest would hold policy positions that most liberals would consider extremely moderate. The guest would be bombarded by abusive questions without being allowed to properly answer and would be accused of 'socialism' without any grounds given for the charge.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Glenn Beck.

Beck is engaging in George's hectoring, abusive tactics and is equally guilty of not giving his targets the opportunity to directly reply to his charges. In one sense, Beck is worse than George. Wally George at least had his targets on his show. Glenn Beck is not that brave.

Beck, like George, enjoys a home court advantage that is hard to match. George had a local tv show in the most conservative county of what was, in the 1980s, still a conservative state. His audience was predisposed to accept any attack on 'liberals' as valid. Beck, on Fox News, enjoys a national audience equally pre-disposed to sympathize with any attack against any member of the Obama Administration.

If the administration had the sense to simply ignore Glenn Beck, this might not be a problem. Unfortunately, it has not done so. The resignation of Van Jones and the reslotting of Yosi Sergant into a new job have created the idea that the administration gives some credence to Beck's charges.

Witness this comment on HuffPo:

"Beck is starting to grow on me. I don't think the govt would be making so many changes if there weren't credible things behind them. I looked around over the past week and I realized that nobody else is reporting on some of these things... yet the govt is still making changes based on the evidence he's showing (by that i mean videos, clips, etc., not what he babbles about).

van jones - down
nea - busted
acorn - dumped by census, fires employees

im sure there are similar people in GOP,,, but why isn't anybody pulling out the video evidence, etc.?"

Or:

"Its too bad that 1 man must do all of the investigation and research that we should expect from the MSM. Sorry state of affairs I would say for journalism in our nation. Go Glenn.....you are doing courageous work that noone else in the MSM has the cahones to do! The others are still trying to figure out how what to make of that tingling feeling running up their legs!"

These are comments on Huffington Post, not on HotAir or The Other McCain Blog.

Beck is coming very close to giving himself the kind of influence in national politics that George enjoyed in Orange County politics: the influence of the rabid McCarthyist who offers nothing and attacks anyone who does.

Do we want someone like Beck wielding that kind of influence?

Daggers From The Left: Why are liberals always angry after elections?

2009-09-08T00:38:00.000-07:00

This is an anniversary of sorts, my 100th post since starting the blog. I had intended to write something specifically celebratory and engage in some self-adulation. As always, however, design was thwarted by circumstance. I am too angry not to spend some time throwing stones at crows.

The hatchet jobs from liberal writers have begun. HuffPo is just full of attack articles from the left, all about what a horrible president we have and what a horrible job he is doing on health care. Some of this is not new. The left has been criticizing the president on the economy since he put together his an economic team of center-right Clinton Administration retreads and with some legitimacy. It is not entirely unfair criticism, but much of it contains a thread of outraged betrayal that is simply not justified by the facts. The realization that changing Washington is harder than promising to change Washington is not sitting well with the left, despite the fact that they already know this.

The fact that the president is being criticized is not what bothers me. The president deserves criticism for his failure to reform the financial system after bailing it out. He deserves criticism for choosing to lock the advocates of single-payer coverage or a national health care system out of the health care debate. He deserves criticism for surrounding himself with clergy from the extreme religious right as part of his outreach to evangelical voters. He deserves criticism for being too hands-off with Congress as they fumble the health care reform football.

He does not deserve angry hatchet jobs and accusations of betrayal from liberal supporters who did not listen to the very words the man spoke.

President Obama is not a liberal. He did not run as a liberal in the presidential primary, he ran as one of the two most conservative candidates in the field. The liberals who chose to support him in said primary deliberately ignored Rep. Dennis Kucinich (who meets every bread-and-butter policy standard the left could hope for), ex-Senator Mike Gravel (who is an outspoken civil libertarian and was one of the great senatorial 'doves' during the Vietnam War), and the fiery populist rhetoric of John Edwards. President Kucinich, President Gravel, or President Edwards could be accused of 'betrayal' under the present circumstances. President Obama told us exactly what he would do.

He told us that he would seek to ignore the extremes of left and right and find a way to govern by consensus. Independent voters and moderates in both parties licked it up like cream. He did discuss pragmatic policy ideas appealing to liberals, but he also acknowledged that the economy would take priority over everything else. He mollified conservatives at every opportunity and he did not win key battleground states that have traditionally swung Republican by storming them from the left flank.

As president he has made every effort to govern as he said he would: adopting a pragmatic approach and seeking the greatest possible consensus rather than the biggest possible headline. Is this approach valid in the hyper-partisan atmosphere in the Washington of today? Probably not. It's what he promised us, however, and it is what he has made every effort to deliver.

I've written it before, but I will say it again. If liberals want to elect a liberal president, if they want a president to govern by liberal principles, then they will have to vote for a liberal president. Electing a center-right neoconservative whose major difference from many Republicans is that he is somewhat pro-choice, cautiously in favor of gay rights, and pragmatic in his view of international relations is great. One cannot, however, elect such a president to the chorus of angels and declare a liberal revolution.

That's just stupid, and the people attacking President Obama as incompetent or dishonest are stupid as well. He is exactly what he told us he would be, some of us just didn't listen properly.

Labor Day Musings

2009-09-07T01:45:00.000-07:00

This will be even more disjointed and rambling than my usual offerings because I am simply rattling individual thoughts off the top of my head. I've done this once before and I will likely do it again in the future. So hold on for the ride.

Labor Day is intended to celebrate the contributions of working men and women, and labor unions, to the American economy. Yet our government does nothing to defend many of worker's rights from corporations on a national level. Taft-Hartley still allows the government to assist employers in busting unions. Congress won't pass the EFCA. States are immensely inconsistent in the protections they give to the rights of employees. Yet the federal government has explicitly given credence to the ridiculous joke of corporate person-hood, entitling business entities with the sovereign rights of individual citizens. Why do we go through the fiction of the holiday?

Our workplaces increasingly exhibit more and more common qualities with our schools and prisons (whose resemblance to each other is already frightening) and yet it is 'libertarian' to support corporations over actual human workers?

What cuts into corporate profits more, do you think? The total wages of factory employees making eight dollars an hour or the total wages of executive officers making six and seven figures before bonuses? Why is it always the former who get laid off when times are hard?

I'm entirely aware of all the arguments against forcing people to join unions and they are all great... BUT... who is going to represent that employee's interests and advocate for them against a bureaucratic corporate establishment if they have no union to do so and to ensure proper due process is followed?

Why don't they call 'right to work' something along the lines of 'right to work for minimum wage' or call 'at will employees' something more along the lines of 'disposable?' Are they worried that honesty might not be the best policy?

Anyone else have any musings?

Should we be scared of 'Socialized Education?'

2009-09-05T04:41:00.000-07:00

Of course this is a silly question. While we retain free market options for those who can afford them and wish to make use of them, the bulk of our national education system is already 'socialist.' It has been since the Progressive Era.

On a completely unrelated note, it's very likely that a system of 'socialized medicine' would look very much like our system of socialized education. Good and bad with 'free market options' for those unsatisfied. Just thought it should be said.

The real question is this: can we reform socialized education to correct the flaws the current system has created?

Arianna Huffington thinks so. While I have been critical of Ms. Huffington's writings on health care (here and here) lately, this piece deserves praise as well as analysis and criticism. Her idea is certainly bold and sweeping. Ms. Huffington's idea is to break the monopoly that district schools hold on their students by a simple device:

"In a single-payer health care plan, the federal government provides coverage for all U.S. citizens and legal residents. Patients don't go to a government doctor -- they just have the government pay the bill.
And that's how it would work with education. In a single-payer education plan, the federal government, in conjunction with the states, would provide an education allotment for every parent of a K-12 child. Parents would then be free to enroll their child in the school of their choice."

She also argues, with a certain degree of legitimacy, that this would not be a significant increase in out education budget:

"The single-payer health plan would be financed by a payroll tax. In education, the annual cost per child -- equalized for urban and suburban school districts across each state -- would come from the current education funding sources."

So it's really all simply and straight-forward. Which is good, policies should be as simple as possible. However, this may be too simple. Ms. Huffington leaves several questions unanswered.

1.) Does the phrase 'the school of their choice' mean the public school of their choice or any school of their choice?

There are a couple of reasons for asking this question. The first is the obvious one. If the law were defined to mean 'any school of their choice' it would essentially be school vouchers writ large. All of the arguments for and against school vouchers would then apply to this proposal as well. As school vouchers have been advocated in the past, their cons have outweight their pros. This would be present a far greater threat to the public school system than school vouchers alone. If school vouchers take money away from public schools and put it into the private sector, how much worse would a subsidized private school education for any middle class kid whose parents want it be for the public system? We'd risk turning the public system into a bureaucratic ghetto comparable to Medicaid.

It's worth noting that there are countries that do contribute the same set amount of allotted funds for either private or public school and those countries successfully maintain both systems; but those countries have a higher income tax rate than the US. I do not oppose a tax hike to help pay for private school for those students who choose it, but it would be necessary to avoid cutting public school funds to pay for private school tuition.

2.) If the phrase 'the school of their choice' is restricted to public schools, does this mean conventional district schools or does it include charter schools that currently require students to meet strict standards of entry?

This is a hugely important question. Charter schools are frequently waved about by some educators as the solution to the public education problem. Certainly they offer an ability to innovate beyond the standard public school format. The problem is that charter schools' current success is artificial. Charter schools cherry pick the best students with grade requirements, admissions tests, or test score requirements. This guarantees they will 'succeed' while contributing to public school 'failure.' For charter schools to truly work, they have to be open to every student who wishes to go there and more public schools have to use a charter school system to grant academic freedom to the teachers and administration to run the school that works best for its students. This will be necessary for schools to compete in a free system.

3.) How will schools be allowed to compete to avoid overcrowding?

I already answered this question, but I'll raise the problem anyway: freedom to choose any school one wants will inevitably trigger a rush from the worst schools to the best if the current system remains unchanged. This requires reform allowing public schools to successfully compete with private schools and each other be implemented before opening up the system. The obvious answer is to make every public school a charter school. This allows administration and faculty to tailor their curriculum to their students for maximum results and the ability to at least try to reach every kid.

This, after all, is the real problem with American public education: the stultifying effect of the system on the classroom. We run our schools the way we run our prisons and make inmates out of our children. As long as this is the case, making our kids spend more time in school is like making innocent people spend more time in jail.

Ms. Huffington's idea has a lot of merit. I have addressed it with a critical eye less in the interest of deconstructing it than with the intent of improving it. I hope someone else does the same with my own analysis. This is the kind of attempt to solve real problems that Congress should be taking under advisement.

Football Economics: Suing the People Who Pay to Maintain Your Sport?

2009-09-04T02:56:00.000-07:00

Here's something a little outside my normal fare. I've recently used one example from outside the mainstream of political debate to highlight some basic facts about the immigration issue. Boxer Abner Mares is the very archetype of the immigration issue as it genuinely affects American society. On a less positive and uplifting note, the Washington Redskins are proving themselves an example of the corporate-consumer relationship as it affects the American economy. It isn't pretty.

The Redskins are suing fans who have entered into long-term season ticket contracts. These contracts offer season tickets to purchasers at a significant discount in exchange for a commitment to purchase said tickets every year of the contract's duration. The fans in question are not being sued because of money that the organization has lost. They are being sued for breach of contract because they cannot afford to buy season tickets this year. The customers being sued, overwhelmingly, are individuals who have taken significant economic damage from the credit crisis of 2008. Examples given in the linked piece include:

A real estate agent whose business has been wiped out by the collapse of the housing market.

A car salesman who lost his job.

A developer whose business is hurting so badly that he had to make drastic labor cuts.

This is not even a case of a corporation chewing up the poor, these people were comfortably upper middle class before the credit crash. They were able to enter into agreements in good faith based on their income. There was no reason to believe they would not be able to fulfill their commitments. Their only reason for defaulting on their contracts was an unforeseen disaster that they had no way of predicting. It is telling that many of them, in their new circumstances, cannot even afford to retain lawyers to fight the lawsuit.

It is also important to remember that we are not talking about genuine losses. The Redskins (through the subsidiary that owns the stadium, Wfi Stadium Inc.) have already pocketed the money from all tickets already purchased. They are not suing for money they have lost. They are suing for money they now will not earn because of the change of economic circumstances. This appears straightforward at first glance, they want to make sure the contract is honored.

The problem is, by not selling those season tickets at the discount rate, they now have the ability to sell those season tickets at full price or to sell the individual seats per game at a far higher rate than the seats would have fetched reserved for season ticket holders. So they stand to make more money by voiding the agreements than they stand to lose. They will certainly sell the tickets, regardless of the awards they receive in court, if the defendants cannot pay the judgments. Football games routinely sell out, which means the freeing up of new seats allows them to sell tickets in situations where they would not normally be able to sell them. At, I must repeat, full price. Which means they stand to make more money than they lose and anything they do collect from the people they are suing is simply gravy.

Contract law is on the Redskins' side, most likely. I am not a contract lawyer, but it would appear to me that a binding agreement would have to favor the Redskins in this case. However, there is clearly no breach of good faith here and it is only right to void the contracts and keep what's already been paid while the fans go without their tickets. No harm, no foul for either side. Especially with the increased revenue from the freedom to sell those season tickets at a higher price or to sell individual seats on a per game basis at a much greater total profit.

More importantly, however, is the fact that this lawsuit threatens the Redskins' brand. By suing their fans, the team risks undermining their credibility with the consumers on whom their business depends. Releasing the fans from their contracts does not harm the team and enahances their brand as 'fan friendly.' Suing their fans presents a completely different picture. One can tick down the history of professional sports to find owners who have lost a great deal of money or been forced to sell their teams because of the damage done to the brand by their business decisions. It's not hard at all.

This is merely an example of a problem widespread throughout American corporate culture. The American corporation frequently fails to understand its best interests vis a vis the best interests of its customers. It views its relationship with consumers as written in stone and does not consider how its actions might affect its relationship with those consumers. The myths of supply side economics allow one to believe that advertising dollars will magically replace every customer lost. The problem is that advertising costs money and the increased marketing and PR budget necessary to offset customer loss raises the price of the product... thus it risks making the product more difficult for consumers to purchase and losing even more of its market share. This cycle is self-repeating. The more customers are lost, the more advertising is necessary, and the more the added expense of advertising increased product price the more consumers are priced out of the market.

This is basic economics and, if the world really worked the way the advocates of the 'free market' claim that it works, corporations would not fall into this trap. The American auto industry is an excellent example they they do. The Washington Redskins are setting themselves up as the next General Motors.

Perhaps they should simply show some sense now, take the money and run, and avoid the cycle before it starts.

Spam/Commerical Comment Policy

2009-09-02T06:57:00.000-07:00

I've not had much of a problem with this, primarily because of the low traffic here, but today I had to delete a comment from my most recent posting because it was simply and only spam.

My content policy is clearly placed on the left hand side of this screen. It specifically notes that commercial announcements and spam are going to be deleted. If you are trying to generate hits for a website via spam links, it won't do any good to post them here. I'll just take them down.

I have a free speech policy on topical debate. If you disagree with me, swear, throw around racial or religious epithets, or attack my positions or character great. Just make sure it's topical. Anything someone says in a comment, in my view, reflects on them. I denounce objectionable statements rather than simply deleting them.

But I'm not going to leave spam links on my blog. Sorry.

The Economics of Health Care: Bank Bailouts, Insurance Bailouts, and Health Care Reform

2009-09-01T02:09:00.000-07:00

In an article written last night, Arianna Huffington made an interesting attempt to conflate the bank bailout with health care reform and advance the idea that President Obama's handling of the former has created opposition to the latter. I'm a fan of Arianna Huffington, and I enjoy her writing (when reads her facility with the English language in print one entirely forgets her 'deer in the headlight' traffic accident guest hosting the Rachel Maddow Show) very much. However, I am afraid that she is more comfortable criticizing than analyzing and more practiced in finding fault and making complaint than she is in serious political policy or theory. I tend to view her as an excellent political critic, but not always the best political analyst.

Here analysis in this piece strikes me as wanting. Her thesis is that President Obama's handling of the bank bailout is at least partly responsible for public opposition to health care reform. It is true that the bank bailout is deserving of criticism. Rather than bail-out small banks, the government bailed out the biggest banking concerns (in some cases mandating or bank-rolling mergers) and the result was that the banking cartel is smaller and more powerful than it was before the credit crunch. Ms. Huffington is correct to note this, but is not entirely correct to blame it on President Obama in its entirety. While many of the executions of policy went into action while he was President and he did argue for a bail out as a senator and presidential candidate (and thus is certainly not absolved entirely of responsibility for the bailout either), TARP was passed on President Bush's watch in response to the aggressive lobbying of President Bush's Secretary of the Treasury. TARP is a Bush administration bill and it can be argued that Senator Obama and other leading Democrats in both houses of Congress were responsible for inserting the few redeeming features the bill contains.

I should note, in the interest of full disclosure, that I am not philosophically or ideologically opposed to bank bailouts. Other socialists, such as Senator Bernie Sanders (I - Vermont), are. I have a very high regard for the senator and his knowledge and opinions, but I respectfully disagree with him on this issue. I am very much opposed to the ultimate form the bailout took, and to its effect of concentrating control of the financial market into an even smaller cartel of big banking concerns than had controlled it previously. I would have rather seen some of the worst offenders forcibly turned over to the control of their stockholders as credit unions, with the bank executives kicked to the curb, and then the bailout money given to the new credit unions (and to the remaining banks with significant strings attached.) Dwelling on my preferences overlong, however, is sort of useless. What is done is done.

I don't think any of this really has much to do with opposition to health care reform. Why not? Well, the very same people most opposed to the 'way President Obama handled the bank bailout' fall into two categories:

1.) Hardline paleoconservatives and libertarians who view any government intervention in economic and business matters as absolutely verboten.

2.) Equally hardline populists, New Dealers, radicals, and socialists (four widely disparate groups who do not always have anything else in common but a few basic areas of economic agreement) who view banks and corporations as 'the enemy' and thus believe government's job is to 'keep them in line' so they don't screw up rather than to bail them out when they do screw up.

The first category includes all the Republicans opposed to TARP when Bush was president (among others), and the latter category includes people like me as well as genuine lefty Democrats like Dennis Kucinich. However, regardless of whether these people fall into category 1 or 2, they will have ideological reactions to health care reform entirely unrelated to their opinions on the bank bailout. Indeed, their ideological reactions to health care reform are far too strong for the bailout to affect them either way.

The people in Category 1 (and some of the populists in Category 2) will be opposed to health care reform because it is health care reform. They will be against it on principle. There would be no way to make them support it, because they are opposed to the very idea on basic ideological principle. Blaming their reaction to health care reform on the bank bailout would be like blaming a hurricane on Microsoft. It's simply entirely ridiculous. Category 1 and those members of Category 2 who think like them on 'welfare' and 'entitlements' will simply always oppose health care reform. Period. They may say (as Roy Blount did) that they have no intention of offering any ideas at all, or the may say (as Judd Gregg and John McCain did) that they have an idea for 'reform' that merely makes the biggest problems with our current system worse. Either way, they will oppose real reform of the health care market designed to give access to health care to more Americans because doing so would raise their taxes. As it will.

The people in Category 2 (save some of the populists mentioned previously) are going to be four-square in favor of health care reform for the exact same reasons they are pissed off about the bank bailout. They are pissed off about the health insurance industry, as they have every reason and right to be. They want to see meaningful health care reform pass, and they want to see it pass fast. Some of them have wanted health care reform since the 1930s, some since the 1960s, and some since the 1970s or 1990s... but they have all wanted meaningful health care reform to pass for at least 15 years. They aren't going to oppose health care reform now because of the bank bailout.

Indeed, the people involved in the health care debate who may have been most influenced by the bank bailout are Democrats in both houses of Congress. While there is no discussion of direct handouts of easy cash to the health care industry yet, certain aspects of both HR 3200 and the bill the Senate Finance Committee is currently mangling (most notably the individual mandate that those not otherwise covered purchase private insurance) have the tone of an insurance industry bailout.

It is this fact, combined with poor media parsing of presidential comments on the subject, that have contributed to the large degree of ambivalence toward health care reform among the general population that widely favored it before the debate began and the increasing hostility toward the particular ideas being advanced by those most strongly supportive of reform in principle. The addition of virulently divisive Republican propaganda does not help, but I believe the majority of the individuals cooling on health care are doing so less because of Republican propaganda (which is primarily believed by those receptive to it, which is to say those opposed to health care reform) than because of the haphazard and mismanaged way in which Democrats are handling the reform ball and the media coverage of same. To be fair, however, the media also deserves a great deal of criticism for the manner in which they are handling the current Republican propaganda barrage. Can you imagine how history would have gone if the media had covered Republican opposition to Medicare in the same kind of irresponsibly serious manner in which they are handling the Republican claims about the extremely moderate bills Democrats are tossing around now? Not to refute such lies whenever mentioning them is to give those lies credence in order to maintain an appearance of neutrality in politics. That is an egregious violation of journalistic ethics.

'Opposition' to health care as it stands now is currently lumped into three groups:

A.) Those members of Category 1 in our previous breakdown, plus some populists with similar views on 'entitlements', who are ideologically opposed to serious health care reform. Period.

B.) The members of Category 2 in our previous breakdown who are having difficulty accepting the reform ideas on the table as 'serious', question the White House commitment to serious reform, or both.

C.) Those people who (because of the ineffective salesmanship of liberal Democrats, the ridiculous shilly-shallying of moderate Democrats, the propaganda of Republican opponents of reform, and the incompetent coverage of the debate by the mainstrea media) do not have a genuine grasp of the issue. Some of these people are truly 'opposed' to health care reform because of misconceptions they have drawn from the smoke and mirrors surrounding the debate. Most, however, have gone from strongly supporting health care to being deeply ambivalent about health care because not enough of a concerted effort has been made by anyone (either the reformers or the media) to educate them about the factual details therein. A few others have misconception of the entire issue for a variety of reasons.

Group A and Group C include some people who likely cannot be won over at all. This is most all of Group A, though there are some populists who could possibly be won over with a strong and honest indictment of the health insurance industry. Most of Group C should be amenable to direct, honest, forceful, passionate arguments on behalf of health care reform by advocates who believe strongly in it. The exceptions are fools with such a desperate miscomprehension of our health care system that they believe making insurance companies pay for doctors educating Americans to eat bran flakes will lower health care costs so much that insurance premiums will fall and universal coverage will just happen. Even they, however, might be reached if someone could actually educate them on the realities of our health care system.

Group B might be harder to win over with the bills currently on the table, but a strong commitment to meaningful reform and a serious ear turned to their concerns... and a little bit of input into the legislative process for them would not hurt... and I believe the White House would see a lot of positive response. The biggest complaint from the single payer and national health service advocates on the left is not that they are not getting their way, but they have been left out of the equation entirely and their views unsolicited. Even if Congress ultimately decides upon an individual mandate, the single-payer and nation health service advocates have a great deal of valuable input about the economic facts of health care which need to be considered in serious reform proposals. The right dismisses proven economic practice in favor of economic theory that is best described as a religious cult and the center is dangerously close to wading into that same water on the issue of health care. The real economics on this issue are on the left and the real economics are necessary to the debate even if the solutions of the left are not adopted at this point in time.

Of course, the same sincere expression of serious commitment that could close the sale with Group B would also succeed in educating many in Group C. The putative excuse for excluding Group B, winning over at least some part of Group A, is useless. To win this fight, all the advocates of serious health reform must be brought on board and then they should work together to inform the uninformed and educate the uneducated. Most people who don't know what's going on or what it is all about want to know. Badly. Their lack of knowledge is the reason for their ambivalence.

Obama vs LBJ and FDR: The Flaw in Such Comparisons

2009-08-30T01:20:00.000-07:00

While neither article is brand new and cutting edge by now, I've been spending much of my time between calls on this morning's trip to the quarter tree thinking about the differences between the situation in which President Obama is stuck now and the situations in which Presidents (Franklin) Roosevelt and (Lyndon) Johnson were stuck in their own time. This is because of one article by Arianna Huffington, and another by Leslie Parsley.

(There you go, Leslie, you've been just been referenced with Arianna in the same line. ;) )

Both of them make excellent points about the superb political leadership exhibited by FDR and LBJ during their administrations. Roosevelt fought bitterly for every plank of the New Deal, and the most difficult fight was over Social Security. Johnson had to cram the Great Society down the throats of Congress one bill at a time as well. However, both Huffington and Parsley neglect certain other key details of similarity between Obama on the one hand and FDR and LBJ on the other and one massive difference.

Like President Obama now, FDR and LBJ faced considerable difficulty with center-right-to-right insurgents in their own party. During the second phase of the New Deal, the most vociferous resistance came not from the Republican Party but from the right wing of the Democratic Party in the form of 'the American Liberty League' (ironically led by crusading progressive icon Al Smith, Roosevelt's former political archrival in New York, more due to old political grudges against FDR in New York state politics than to genuine ideological opposition)... who filed lawsuits and encouraged state governors to attempt non-compliance with the New Deal. Mark Sanford wasn't inventing anything new, he was copying a Democrat. LBJ's opposition came from the right wing 'Dixiecrat' element of the Democratic Party, led by senators like Robert Byrd (how times change) and Strom Thurmond.

When praise is given to LBJ's amazing skills at wrangling the center and center-right of the party into step with the Democratic Party's left wing, it is deserved. When FDR's leadership and communication skills in rallying much of the nation to his support regardless of political affiliation are praised, this is also deserved. President Obama is, perhaps, falling slightly short in this capacity. I believe that Obama, like FDR, is fundamentally a conservative operating in response to what he feels is a true crisis situation. The problem is that I am not certain the country understands, anymore, that crises are time for action. I find it difficult, completely, to blame Obama for not rallying public support when today's increasingly cynical public is much less willing to offer genuine support. I believe, however, that it is too early to compare Obama negatively to FDR yet. He's passed the stimulus, and the fight for the second New Deal was much harder than the fight for the first... so FDR had to take his lumps there just as Obama is taking his lumps with health care. Nor is the health care fight over, and President Obama could still win.

What is different is that, while the real opponent is the same (the right wing of the Democratic Party is far more powerful in this debate than conservative Republicans), President Obama is not able to avail himself of the same ally that other 'liberal' presidents have been able to access in the past.

FDR was able to ramrod the TVA (Tennessee Valley Authority) through Congress primarily due to the efforts of one political ally. This was not a Democrat, but rather liberal Republican Senator George Norris of Nebraska. Norris (and then Robert LaFollette Jr, when Norris left the GOP to run as an independent when the pro-Roosevelt faction of the Democratic Party in the Senate offered him committee chairmanships... though Fighting Bob Jr defected to the mainstream Republican camp due to his loyalty to the isolationist cause in 1938) was the leader of the original, pre-WWII 'Roosevelt Republicans.' Liberal Republicans like Norris and LaFollette were necessary for the passage of the New Deal. If the conservative rump of the party had been able to leverage the party to vote in a solid bloc, the votes of conservative Democrats would have ensured that none of the New Deal passed. Certainly not the TVA or Social Security. Republicans, liberal Republicans who bucked their own party to back Roosevelt, are as responsible for these programs as Democrats. Perhaps more, as their votes made the difference.

LBJ, in forcing civil rights legislation and the social safety net through Congress, was also opposed ferociously by the right wing of the Democratic Party. The team of Byrd and Thurmond were fantatically opposed to every one of Johnson's reforms, and the former leader of the liberal Democrats in the Senate (Hubert Humphrey) had been sidelined into the Vice-Presidency. While a young Teddy Kennedy and more nationally renowned (at the time) legislators like Eugene McCarthy picked up Humphrey's slack, Democratic votes alone would not have passed Johnson's bills. The man on whom Johnson was able to call for support, who himself was not in Congress but who influenced the entire left wing of the GOP, was New York governor Nelson Rockefeller. The votes of the 'Rockefeller Republicans' in Congress passed 'liberal Democratic' programs under the Johnson administration and without them, none of them would have passed.

So it is not his personal qualities in which President Obama suffers most by comparison, but the political conditions. There is no 'left wing' of the Republican Party anymore, but the right wing of the Democratic Party is as strong as ever. This means that liberal reform will continue to be difficult regardless of who is president or controls Congress for some years, unless the Midwest and South experience the kind of liberal rennaissance that Kansas and Nebraska and the other Great Plains and Rocky Mountain states underwent during the hard years of the Progressive Era and the Great Depression. I think such a liberal rennaissance is possible, but I don't think liberals are doing enough to encourage it. Nor do I think the centrist rump and right wing fringe of the Democratic Party really want it.

The left needs strong, outspoken, energetic advocates willing to stick to their principles in the manner the right has stuck to its own. They can, through sheer will and time and effort, start to 'sell' liberalism the way Newt Gingrich (who was considered a stereotype Southern Republican and a political joke before becoming Speaker of the House) sold conservatism in the 1990s or Ronald Reagan sold it in the 1980s.

The problem is that far too many of us on the left think that because we are so 'obviously' right in our observations and solutions of society's problems everyone will magically recognize the fact without our needing to go to any effort to prove what we're saying. It's this natural belief that everyone else understands what we're saying that gets leftists the 'elitist' label and makes people vote for George W. Bush over John Kerry. They want us to work for the sale, just like Republicans... and just as we want the guy selling us our car or our life insurance to work for the sale. A good product isn't enough, we have to earn the sale to get America on our side.

In that sense, President Obama has done more to 'earn the sale' than previous Democrats in his position. Whether or not it will be enough, even for the short term, remains to be seen. It isn't as if he is some kind of actual liberal committed unswervingly to liberal policy. So it may be a very small start, even if he wins every fight. It is, however, a start we can build on whatever else happens. It wouldn't be a bad idea for those who want to be the next salesman to start practicing their pitches, just in case.

Criminal Justice Revisited

2009-08-28T22:49:00.000-07:00

Mark Olmsted's first article on HuffPo caught my attention so immediately that I wrote about it here. So, naturally, I made sure to read his second as well.

Mr. Olmsted, once again, is taking on criminal justice... this time not so much the sole question of penal policy but the criminal justice system as a whole. Once again, he nails some very good points home very well.

I'll start with, perhaps, the least consequential portion of the piece... but one that casts a great deal of light on police culture and thinking:

"When LA Police Chief Bill Bratton recently announced his resignation, he trumpeted the fact that LA hadn't seen such a low crime rate since the 50s."

So, who else reads James Ellroy?

Ellroy is a novelist, of course, but there is a reason he chose the subject matter he did in 'L.A. Confidential.' The LAPD of the 1950s was a corrupt, brutal operation proud of its corruption and brutality. It marketed itself, nationally, as the model for the country's police departments even as it routinely violated its own due process in the interest of 'public safety' and senior officers financed their retirement packages with mob money.

That Bratton would identify himself with the LAPD of this era is a bit disturbing. It suggests that too many cops believe their own PR. I'm not really sure that's a good thing. Bratton was Rudy Giuliani's partner in cryptofascism in New York City, a police regime all too reminiscent of 1950s Los Angeles, and he was hired to bring that same style to Los Angeles. Who will Los Angeles hire next? I've heard they have some good cops in Singapore, with methods that might work well in the US...

From the LAPD, we move on to the media and to you and me in our living rooms:

"In the last 20 years, just as demographic trends have kicked in that probably explain most of the drop in crime, the local news culture of "if it bleeds it leads" has burgeoned. In any large media market, you could easily get the impression that crime has skyrocketed rather than gone down. Helicopter-filmed car chases will go on for an hour at a time, until we finally get a glimpse of the crazed meth-head as he jumps into traffic and police subdue him. The robbery of every 7/ll clerk is caught on tape, run over and over if there's a pistol-whipping. John Q. Public would doubtfully concur that his neighborhood is more Ozzie and Harriet than Beyond Thunderdome, even if the only crime he has personally been the victim of in the last decade is a stolen gym bag.
Ask people what they think the chances are that they will be hurt in a terrorist attack or get carjacked and they will give you massively inflated odds. This is the way the modern mind works. We are somehow convinced something we see on TV is more likely to happen to us. The irrational result is that the same person smoking 2 packs a day will be less panicked by the prospect of a fairly likely lung cancer than of catching a swine flu that has sickened 10 people 3 states away."

Which of course necessitates this modern philosophy of 'tough on crime' in our judicio-political system:

"The D.A.'s priority is not justice, it's a high conviction rate to run for office on."

This is one of the key facts of our system. We have transformed prosecuting attorneys into our future congressmen, and they know a good case or a lot of convictions will help them get there. Liberal Democrats need to be able to prove they aren't 'soft on crime', while conservative Republicans are always happy to have a strong 'law and order' record.

Then, of course, sometimes the judge is being paid off by the company that owns the prison.

The biggest solution to the problem of crime is socio-economic. Sharp divides in the standard of living between the rich and the poor, coupled with a consumer culture that values buyers over workers, create an atmosphere in which the 'have nots' want what the 'haves' have got all that more intensely. Crime even becomes a sideways form of social protest to some. Of course, because of the structure of our society, other members of the 'have nots' are the most convenient and available targets for such crime. So the 'crime problem' serves, in many ways, to reenforce the class structure.

Mr. Olmsted offers his solutions as well:

"It's unfortunate this is perceived as a liberal/conservative issue. Stressing education, drug treatment, and job placement isn't about "coddling" criminals, it's about expanding the tax base and reducing the very poverty that causes the vast majority of crime in the first place. Meanwhile, letting offenders out before the end of their sentences is a perfectly sane budgetary remedy, particularly if it keeps us from laying off teachers. Every dollar spent in the classroom is a dollar that won't have to be spent on a prison cell."

Some of you have read my own feelings about education policy but, despite my break from the conventional wisdom of 'more school better all time' that is now dominating our education debate, I certainly won't argue that early parole for non-violent drug offenders makes more sense than laying off teachers. I'll also note that I think presidential pardon for non-violent drug offenders serving life sentences because of 'three strikes' laws would be a more telling statement by the presidency on federal drug policy than anything else.

I also favor voluntary drug treatment programs and job placement services for parolees very strongly. For those who genuinely wish to quit, treatment is a far better option than jail. And the biggest quoted reason for recidivism is economic frustration with the difficulty of (re)assimilating into the workforce.

I don't agree that education and drug treatment are magic bullets. Strong statistical evidence suggests that most non-chemical drug treatment programs have exactly the same success rate as individuals quitting on their own. I am strongly against forced methadone treatment (in which an addictive drug is treated by forcing the addict to become addicted to a much more deadly and addictive drug) and I tend to consider that the statement 'treatment or jail' is not truly 'voluntary.' So, in my opinion, the only option that does not violate the rights of citizens is the one with the extremely low rate of success.

Likewise, with education, the idea of a one hundred percent college educated population is certainly seductive. However, consider this: if everyone graduating high school finished at least four years of college, would there be enough jobs requiring college degrees to go around? Someone would still end up working at McDonald's flipping our burgers or at Olive Garden. We'd have the best educated fast food service workers in the world... but I'm not sure that would lower crime rates. While poor schools and a dehumanizing education system certainly contribute to crime levels, I am not sanguine that fixing those problems will solve the crime problem. Consider that the most serious crime is frequently a 'business' run by' educated' people. Street gangs may be composed of high school dropouts (or they may not), but the people higher up the ladder probably have their diploma.

The real solution to non-violent drug-related crime is to legalize drugs. That is the real solution to most violent drug-related crime too.

All of that said, the increased availability of non-chemical drug treatment and job placement services for parolees is a desirable thing. It is also desirable for people to have the more informed and accurate picture of the criminal justice system offered by articles like Mr. Olmsted's than to learn everything they know about crime and punishment from the TV news or Russian novelists.

Case Study of An Immigrant: Abner Mares

2009-08-26T01:50:00.000-07:00

It's only fair to start out with an obvious comment: Abner Mares did not come to the United States to pick fruit, wash dishes, clean someone's house, or work in a meat packing plant.

On the contrary, Abner Mares is a professional boxer who represented Mexico in the Olympics when he was an amateur. All the same, he is the perfect archetype of the Mexican immigrant to the US. He came to the States to get a job and to escape poverty. His mother brought him (along with his six siblings) to Hawaiian Gardens, CA (a mix of working class/lower middle class neighborhoods and barrio in otherwise affluent Orange County) and worked two jobs to support them. Mares became a boxer in hopes of something better for himself and his family. He was good enough to become an Olympian, and he has parlayed that into a professional career. He has overcome adversity (a detached retina suffered in the course of his career) and has persevered in his chosen profession. He has learned lessons of life and experience and has certainly not asked the United States to pay his tab. His mother worked two jobs to pay her tab. He has fought, literally, to pay his own.

Naturally, most Mexican immigrants to the United States are not gifted athletes with professional careers ahead of them. Nor is Mares' success in his chosen career guaranteed, anymore that of any other professional plying their trade in America. He has that in common with his countrymen. They have something in common with both him and his mother:

As I have said before, Mexicans come to the United States to work. More of them come illegally than not, because of the restrictions on immigration to the US from Mexico and other Latin American countries. Like Mares' mother, they work hard. Most of them use their earnings to start businesses that become part of and help to support the American economy. Their children, like Mares himself, seek to further develop their gifts and take advantage of the opportunities that comparative prosperity (the barrio in Hawaiian Gardens is still safer and more affluent than any barrio in Mexico) offers and strive to succeed beyond their parents. Mares grew up in Hawaiian Gardens, but now he lives in Norwalk, CA. While Norwalk is not Beverly Hills, it is a step up the ladder.

Of course, this is the history of America. Immigrants from foreign lands (whether they be debtors fleeing imprisonment, as the founders of Georgia; or religious refugees, as the founders of New England, Pennsylvania, and Maryland; or simply looking to make a buck, as the founders of Virginia and the Carolinas) have come to America and worked their asses off to make good. While more of them have failed to build the American Dream than have succeeded, they have nearly always succeeded in building a better life for their children. Whether or not they have failed to build the American Dream, they have always succeeded in helping to build America itself.

They do so to this day, even when they aren't here legally.

Rest In Peace Ted

2009-08-26T01:35:00.000-07:00

I've criticized Teddy Kennedy before. As recently, in fact, as this May.

Criticism of the current health care reform packages under discussion aside, very few legislators have contributed as much to civil rights, women's rights, and the social safety net as Senator Edward Kennedy. Now he's passed on. This is a tragedy. Teddy Kennedy deserves his share of the credit (along with liberal lions such as Hubert Humphrey and Nelson Rockefeller) for the passing of the Great Society and (along with Rockefeller and others) for the passing of much of the liberal legislation of the Nixon presidency. Regardless of his foibles of private character (and there are few in Washington sufficiently without sin to cast stones in his direction, despite the popularity of doing so among Republicans), he was a man of great public conscience that his sucessors in the Democratic Party do not always appear to share. He was a man unafraid, despite his reputation as a liberal warrior, to cross party lines to do what he believed right.

I don't know if Teddy Kennedy can be called be the last great senator. I have a great deal of respect for John Kerry, Vice President Joe Biden, and even John McCain and very high hopes for Al Franken (yes, he's a comedian, but as someone who has been reading his books for a long time he his a man of public conscience and commitment to meaningful policy of Teddy's stripe)... but Teddy Kennedy was almost inarguably the greatest living, serving senator of our current era.

We should all miss him, even Republicans.

Without Teddy, who will Republicans be able to hold up and say 'Well if he's for it, I guarantee my district will hate it!'?

Politics and Race: Does 'the Left' or 'the Right' Have A Moral Monopoly?

2009-08-23T01:44:00.001-07:00

Strangely enough, the fact that we have a president who happens to be a black man has not ended the discussion of race in America despite that president's high-minded 'post-racial' attitude on the subject.

That was sarcasm, yes.

Obviously, a black president is going to guarantee that race is very much on everyone's minds for the four-to-eight years of the Obama Administration. That would be true even if that president's name were 'Barry Huntley Owens' instead of 'Barack Hussein Obama.' The first black president is a big deal, and people of all kinds and all racial attitudes are going to be talking about race constantly as a result. Some of this may be good and some of it may be bad, but it's all unavoidable. Anyone who actually believes a bi-racial president with an African father and a lifetime steeped in white American culture magically brings on an instant sea change in American racial politics is really, really naive. High minded post-racial rhetoric is good and a post-racial world is a worthy goal, but we're a long way from it.

That said, while dirty racial politics is to be expected and exacerbated under the current conditions, we don't have to like it. One of the constant ploys from the right is the desire to deliberately cast the left as racist, as devoted to stirring up racial hatred for political purposes, or both. One of the constant ploys from the left is to repeatedly bring up individual examples of racists on the right in an attempt to paint all conservatives with this brush. Both of these moves are 'politics as usual'... which means each side considers their own activities to be entirely above reproach and the other side's to be vicious and inhuman.

The fact is that both sides' attacks on the other tend to be more inaccurate than accurate. Today, here and now, racists are more likely to be Republican than Democrat because the 'traditional American values' championed in many red states include unfortunate racist legacies. However, President George W. Bush (this may be the only time you ever see me say anything good about the man, so keep reading) advocated amnesty for undocumented immigrants as part of his flawed immigration reform package. He was defeated by a bi-partisan hue and cry of aggressive nativism with both conscious and unconscious racist implications. Moderate and conservative Democrats are as guilty of such pandering as Republicans, and Hillary Clinton specifically attacked other candidates for the Democratic nomination who supported Bush's amnesty and immigration reform package. The locales in which the attack was given suggest a deliberate pandering to nativist white voters. Racism is a two-party problem.

There is, however, a fundamental difference between the approaches of the mouthpieces of both sides of the left-right debate to racism. Liberal writers nearly all agree that racism is a genuine problem. Conservative writers dismiss it as an occasional aberration. Liberals believe that action taken to ameliorate the effects of racism and to protect individual civil rights is desirable and necessary in a free society, while conservatives dismiss such action as unnecessary or attack such protections as unfairly depriving whites. The debate over Sonia Sotamayor's confirmation, the publicity surrounding the overturning of the case brought most prominently into the press by her nomination, and many of the absolutely moronic attacks on her person and character by conservatives included baldly ugly racist overtones that can't be dismissed or denied and these aspects were not disavowed by many (if any) conservatives.

I have been, and will continue to be, critical of the Democratic Party's approach to civil rights issues. I believe that treating black issues, Hispanic issues, women's issues, and LGBT issues as separate and independent agendas is fundamentally counterproductive. If the goal is increased protection of individual rights, then the narrow focus this approch creates is potentially disastrous. Civil rights issues are civil rights issues, and one coherent approach to individual civil rights is the only way to attack the problem. However, liberal Democrats are correct in acknowledging that there is a problem and seeking to take action to address it.

The single biggest problem (which conservatives recognize, though they support and perpetuate the problem rather than attacking it boldly) is the economic problem. Institutional racism is frequently unconscious, due to the simple fact that disproportionate numbers of black and Latino Americans are poor and that our society has gone out of its way (especially in the last twenty-five years) to stigmatize poverty and scapegoat the poor. Conservative 'reforms' intended to change the way the government address poverty have exacerbated the problems of the inner city. The Randian ethic of prosperity/virtue vs poverty/sin embraced (ironically) by both secular libertarians and Christian conservatives is tremendously damaging to minority Americans and serves to buttress institutional racism that has been slow to die.

In one sense, liberals are to blame. In 1865, the Republican government that freed the slaves decided against compensating freed slaves in order to attempt to preserve the support of pro-Union conservatives in slave states. This perpetuated a huge inequity between black and white Americans that has never been addressed properly since and may be impossible to fully rectify now.

However, it is conservatives who argue against even trying.

Some Thoughts On Health Care Debate and Policy --- Again

2009-08-22T03:50:00.000-07:00

Everyone is writing about health care. I normally do not write about what everyone else is writing about, thought I do occasionally offer criticism of the things others write. However, as anyone who has read this blog knows, health care is one the issues foremost in my mind. I believe that American health care policy is in need of a near total overhaul and I've said so before. Then, I outlined many of the problems with our system that need to be fixed and attempted to attack those problems specifically in my ideas.

Much of the health care writing on the web and in print right now is centered on the health care debate itself rather than health care policy. This is somewhat dangerous. Indeed, much of this writing attacks or defends the process in Congress or the administration without advancing constructive ideas. There is also, of course, well measured and intellectual criticism of specific problems with the compromises being made in the Senate Finance Committee in the name of bipartisanship. This second quote piece is from Ron Chusid of Liberal Values, who is likely one of the most sensible and sober writers on the issue on the net. Not only is Ron a doctor, and thus possessed of a knowledge of the subject not always present with the rest of us in the blogosphere. He has a great deal to offer both on the debate itself, and in support of many of the reforms currently on the table, in addition to the aforementioned critique of the finance committee bill. He's not so far out on the left as I am, myself, but who really is?

I'm not going to write, this time, about the debate. I agree with the majority of Ron's comments about the debate (I believe passing the current reform agenda in the form most palatable to liberals and most likely to pass muster is extremely important, even if not the final word), though I do believe that those on the left criticizing current proposals have important views that should be heard as well. I believe the left has been shut out of the debate on a more meaningful level even than the right, and I think it's inappropriate that so much sound thinking on the left was merely dismissed.

Instead, I am going to offer something tangible: a new American health care policy. While it is unlikely anything on this scale will be included anytime soon, it is important that such ideas be presented and circulate for the future.

I am going to start by identifying what I think are the most serious problems with the current system, and offer specific solutions to those problems. I will then attempt to predict the problems such a system might create, and create ideas to attack those problems as well.

1.) The chief problem with our current system is financial. This is not the problem of 'health care costs' as described by the pro-reform voices in the debate, but rather the high consumer costs created by the utterly inefficiant means of paying those costs. Rather than pool all the available health care dollars into one pot to pay the total health care costs those dollars are divided between individuals (both those wealthy enough to pay for most health care out of pocket and those too poor to pay any other way, as well as the dollars paid to insurance companies... as well as Medicare taxes), corporations (both through employee benefits and workplace liability laws), insurance companies (who collect money from both individuals and corporations, take their cut, and then pay health care costs), and the government (through Medicare and Medicaid... and also into insurance companies for government employees.) So there are four different entities who pay into multiple pools. In the case of individuals, the government, and corporations those involved all pay into at least two pools and sometimes more. For example: the same person pays Medicare taxes and insurance premiums, while also paying co-payments out of pocket. That person is paying three times for the same amount of health care. Employers pay into insurance pools while paying corporate taxes that go into the budget to pay for Medicaid, and also pays any workplace liability claims. The government funds Medicare and Medicaid and private insurance costs for government employees. That's a horribly sloppy division of costs and is practically impossible for all of that money to be properly applied the way it is spent.

The solution to this is obvious. Eliminate all the pools but one. Every individual pays a dedicated tax, based on the Medicare tax, into one pool of health care dollars. The insurance companies are eliminated. They are only a drain on the system anyway. Their administration costs and their profit requirements merely serve to suck money that could be paying for health care out of the health care pools. The drain on resources to pay for health care that they create does far more damage than the benefits they provide. While there are some excellent companies that would provide a useful model for a single-payer system or national health service (Kaiser Permanente, despite real flaws, would be excellent for the latter), even the best companies drain money out of the health care pool by their business models. The goal is to eliminate co-payments and deductibles for medical care and confine costs to one dedicated payment that would replace health care premiums.

Medicare and Medicaid would also be discontinued and this system would replace Medicare and be extended to cover Medicaid recipients as well. Importantly, this would eliminate the additional expense of Medicaid eligibility testing. An entire bureaucracy would be shaved off, the money saved to supplement the new health care system as necessary.

2.) Access to health care is, by far, the second biggest problem with the current system. This takes two forms: access to actual care and access to care of sufficient quality. The first is actually a set of several subgroups: those who are refused coverage by insurance companies because of pre-existing conditions despite the ability to pay, those who cannot afford to pay for health insurance and thus do not seek medical care under most normal circumstances, and those who have health insurance but whose provider refuses to pay for care for a variety of excuses. The second group consists of members of all the subsets of the third group: those who generate sufficient debt due to the cost of health care that their physicians will no longer see them until they have paid off their bills.

This problem is solved by the previous solution. Everyone is paying directly into the same pool and so everyone has access to health care when they feel the need to exercise that access. This increased access and the increased ability of health care facilities to receive compensation that results from increased access should also have the benefit of including the quality of care to which many people in the second group have access. The reforming of the Medicaid ghetto into part of the mainstream health care system would give people now on Medicaid access to a better quality of care. This would cause those clinics currently providing services to Medicaid recipients on a nearly exclusive basis to improve or be replaced by better facilities. In this sense (and in that of many people on low quality private insurance) this increase in consumer choice would actually encourage a more 'free market' competition between medical facilities and practices. If patients can go where they please with fewer limitations, then facilities must compete for patients more aggressively with better services and care.

3.) One of the major weaknesses of our current system is one that few people on the left or center properly appreciate, one of the few areas where the right is generally correct in their assessment: the economic burden paying for employee health care costs places on business. Many small businesses cannot afford to pay for health care for their employees at all, while more and more corporations are ceasing to provide health benefits or dramatically shifting the burden of paying for those benefits onto employees. The lifting of this burden would do American business far more good than any corporate tax cut. Current health reform proposals seek to shift more of the burden of paying for health care onto American business and to make it more difficult for corporations to opt out of paying employee health care costs by requiring those that do not to pay punitive taxes. Not only is this punitive taxation potentially a bill of attainder and thus legally questionable, but it aggravates what is already a major economic problem.

The system outlined eliminates this problem entirely. There's no need to add much more than that, and this one of the strongest arguments in favor of single-payer or a national health care system. It lifts a huge de facto tax burden on American business.

4.) Insurance companies and medical facilities currently compensate many medical specialists at a rate far beyond what Classical economists would consider 'market value.' Classical theories of labor, based on utility, would argue that the most important medical practitioners would be primary care physicians. However, because of the inordinately high compensation offered to specific specialists (cardiologists, endocrinologists, neurologists, oncologists, psychiatrists, and specialty surgeons all come to mind), the most necessary facet of medical practice is grossly underrepresented while specialty practice is overrepresented. Specialties like geriatrics and internal medicine are also frequently underrepresented, despite the incredible need for doctors in those fields.

The new, single pool for which to pay for medical costs would allow medical study of the need for specialists in various fields to be done to restructure more reality-based compensation for both general practitioners and specialists. Increased compensation for primary care physicians and underrepresented specialties would draw more doctors to those fields. More reasonable compensation for less necessary, but overrepresented specialties, would help to impose some small degree of basic cost control on the system.

There are at least two problems that such a thorough-going reform could create, which must be anticipated and addressed.

1.) Successful medical programs grow in cost precisely because they are successful. This has been witnessed most specifically with Medicare. The huge change it has wrought in the lives of American seniors has steadily increased the cost of the program because of the increased availability of medical care for seniors and the fact that seniors living longer because of increased access to better medical care means that there are more seniors needing medical care. It is only natural and logical to make a baseline assumption that improved access to medical care for all Americans would have a similar effect on the budget of such a system.

There are several things, however, that can be done about this. The most obvious is that purely elective procedures and medications (plastic surgery not directly necessary for reconstructive purposes, Lasik surgery, abortion in any case where the termination of a pregnancy is not necessary to protect the health or life of the mother, elective hysterectomies and vasectomies, ED treatments, etc) would need to still be based on the ability to pay. If this sounds unfair, then perhaps it is, but there is such a thing as economic necessity and that the more efficient allocation of health care dollars should allow the health care industry to lower the costs of elective procedures to a level where more people can afford to pay those costs.

Second, and perhaps most importantly, is this: the current SS/Medicare tax is capped and income over a maximum level is not taxed. A dedicated tax to pay for national health care costs should not have this cap. All income earned above the current cap should be taxed to pay for health care. Such a tax would still be lower, in all likelihood, than the insurance premiums/deductibles the highest paid Americans are already paying for their insurance, simply because of the need for insurance companies to funnel a percentage of their inflow into profits.

2.) Increased access to health care presents the problem of demand outgrowing supply. This used to be the right wing nightmare scenario, before they decided 'death panels' were even scarier. The image of flooded emergency rooms full of the miserably ill waiting their turn was flaunted by the GOP during the 1994 health care debate.

While there are definitely areas where this will be a problem, some of it is actually highly exaggerated. Emergency rooms are already flooded because of the inability of those without health care coverage to simply make an appointment and go to a doctor's office when they have non-emergency health care concerns requiring attention. The increased ability to see a doctor would reduce the strain on emergency rooms rather than increase it, particularly now that 'urgent-care clinics' have become the ongoing medical fad. The recent profusion of urgent-care clinics would relieve much of the current strain on emergency rooms without overcrowding the new clinics. Emergency rooms, more and more, would only be patronized in the case of actual emergencies. That would relieve the system of a tremendous burden.

The area where demand is likely to outstrip supply is primary care. The shortage of primary care practices could mean longer waits until new doctors enter the field. However, demand creates supply. An increased demand for primary care physicians would naturally generate more primary care physicians to meet that demand. The restructuring of medical compensation to pay primary care physicians more equitably would speed this process. There would be a short-term period in which appointments would need to be scheduled further in advance and waits at doctors' offices would be longer, but this would gradually normalize as new doctors entered the primary care field. PAs and nurse practitioners currently fulfill many responsibilities in this area and the expansion of both fields should be encouraged as well.

Besides, in the simplest possible terms, a medical system in which the biggest problem was the office wait for routine care would be a massive improvement over the current mess.

Some Issues Aren't Even Talked About During Elections: Penal Reform

2009-08-18T05:11:00.001-07:00

I haven't been terribly active either reading blogs or commenting on Huffington Post for a little while, as (excluding my period of burnout when I was not reading or commenting anywhere) I have been busier with my own blog and with reading/commenting on the blogs on my 'Required Reading' list. I get their daily brief in my email, however, usually check it, and read through those articles that particularly interest me.

Today, after finishing work for the late night/morning, I happened to open up my email and catch up on Monday's daily brief. I was very pleased find this article about life in the California Institute for Men in Chino, California, by Mark Olmsted. Mr. Olmsted, spurred by recent events there, shared his own experience as a prisoner in CIM and offered his thoughts on a possible solution to at least some aspects of the problem of prison violence.

"Those inmates willing to sign a statement committing to nonviolence and a rejection of racial politics during their sentence would be housed separately from those unwilling to do so. These "N" inmates would get extra privileges, like Saturday mail and more phone time. They could bunk or cell with any race. Any "N" inmate caught in a fight would be sent to housing in which inmates had not signed a pledge, where they could continue to fraternize exclusively with their own race, etc."

I have seen worse ideas, far worse. Of course, it's entirely possible this idea appeals to me solely because of my experiences and worldview growing up in the (pacifist) Mennonite Church. I have a natural predilection toward nonviolence that is as fixed in my philosophical make-up as opposition to abortion and gay rights is fixed in the philosophical make-up of many fundamentalists. However, a quote by HuffPoreader 'coaldust' makes me think it may not just be me:

"Mark; This may come as a shock to you, but I'm a conservative that occasionally comes to HP to get the other side of the story, whatever that story may be. A LOT of conservatives come to HP for that very reason. As you can guess, I don't post often, but I'd like to say that you make a very good point regarding separating non-violent inmates from violent ones. This is a point that I think reasonable people; liberal, conservative, or people in between, can identify with, and agree with. I think people get the mistaken image that prison makes animals out of people, but only because a lot of the "animals" were animals before they got into prison, and they prey on non-violent prisoners for their own purposes. Just as they prey on society."

Clearly, someone with very different views and experiences than myself had a very similar reaction to this article.

All of which, combined with the recent riots at CIM of course, has me giving penal reform a bit of thought again. While this is a problem with no easy solution, as none of the three main justifications for our prison system (deterrence, punishment OR rehabilitation) are being adequately served by our present system. This is primarily because these three competing justifications are all being advanced simultaneously, by different people and forces, without regard for the reality of the situation and often by people who somehow wish to combine three competing goals in ways that just are not possible. So instead of a place of punishment or rehabilitation, or a deterrent example, we have a place to warehouse people.

Many of the flaws in our prisons are much like the flaws in our school system. Indeed, it could be said the biggest flaw of our school system is that it is too much like our prison system. Both serve primarily, or so it seems, to warehouse dependent segments of society (the poor, in the case of prisons, and children, in the case of schools) so that none of the rest of us have to deal with them or their issues. Of course, the massive economic cost of warehousing our rather large prison population is at least as serious a concern as the right's obsession with the cost of Medicare. And unlike Medicare, where costs keep growing because the program is succeeding so far beyond expectations, I don't think most people would call our criminal justice system a success so far. Not when examining our prison population and comparing it to our crime rate. I think even the right wingers advocating harsher measures would have to admit they are advocating such measures because of the lack of success of the current system.

So what to do about it?

Well, for a start, we have to acknowledge that it actually exists and address it in our public discussion. We talk about 'crime' a lot, but really don't take the time needed to analyze our overburdened prison system.

It's about time we start.

Some Issues Only Matter During Elections: Immigration Policy in America

2009-08-15T05:54:00.000-07:00

Have you ever noticed that the topic of immigration reform takes on a very different shape prior to and during elections than it does for most of the year between? I'm not saying that the usual crackpots (your Tom Tancredos and Virgil Goodes come to mind immediately) aren't fulminating on the topic or the Minute Men and the 'border wall' go away. I'm saying that those of us not completely obsessed with that single issue tend not to give it the attention it deserves between election cycles. The voices calling for election reform during and prior to the last presidential election have fallen largely silent. It can be argued, of course, that the snarling reaction that reformers got from nativists in both major political parties is what led to the ringing silence on the issue. It can be argued, solely by poll data and election results, that too many Americans are in the nativist boat for the advocates of reform to be too vocal.

All the same, what do those of us who talk about immigration reform do with the topic between elections? I have to note, to my discredit, that I have not written on the topic of immigration policy since the Democratic primary. I don't even remember the original post to find and link it without digging through my entire backlog, since it is part of that portion of the blog I have not yet catalogued by label. This certainly is not something of which I am terribly proud.

However, I thought about the topic again the other day because a conservative asked (in the course of a question about former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum's (R) possible run for the White House in 2012) if a statement that Santorum was 'anti-immigrant' or 'anti-illegal immigrant.' My initial reply on some of the details and history of the issue led to a brief runthrough of matters and because I had too many thoughts to share coherently on someone else's blog (this conversation was on Ron Chusid's Liberal Values), I decided I would post something more in depth here.

I think the reason that most of us on the pro-immigration side of the reform debate don't say much between elections, is that despite the fact that we'd like to see the laws changed to make it easier for people to get here and prevent the people already here from being legally persecuted (in many cases regardless of their actual immigration status, on the thesis that because they are Latino they might be illegal) is that those of us not obsessed with the 'burning crisis of illegal immigration' are happier with the status quo than we should be. People come here, people work, people raise families, everyone is happy most of the time and we really don't stop to think about the legal status issue unless it obsesses us. Most of those who are obsessed by it tend to be on the nativist side, and most of them can be observed to have pretty baldly racist motives for their obsession. Whether people agree or disagree with them, on the political questions of immigration, most people simply do not take Tom Tancredo or Virgil Goode seriously and there is a reason for that.

However, the fact that the 'crisis' being manufactured by the nativist voices in our country is (as it always has been, since the days of the Know-Nothings) a manufactured crisis built on a primary foundation of prejudice, that does not make the immigration issue a real issue worthy of attention. Especially since far too many people are unaware of the reason there is even a question of comprehensive immigration reform or border security in the first place. While we have issues of illegal immigration with Asian nations, for instance, there is neither a call for reform on our Asia policy nor widespread fear-mongering on the topic.

While this many come as a surprise to many today, prior to WWII there was no immigration quota on applicants from other American nations. Immigrants from Canada, Mexico, and Latin America could (and did) cross the American border in unlimited numbers as long as they met basic immigration requirements. In many areas, transit across the border was easy and unregulated. In California (both the US and Mexican states), there was a large migrant worker population that travelled from the southern peninsula to the Oregon border (and points north) following the seasonal work. This was a core component of the West Coast agricultural economy in both the US and Mexico and while much of the migrant labor was Mexican, there were Americans who followed the same route as well.

After WWII, an America flush with victory and revelling in its destiny and exclusivity as never before changed its immigration policy vis a vis Latin America. Strict quotas were set, immigration guidelines toughened exponentially, and the borders patrolled with increasing vigour. With strict new labor laws, as well as flush economic opportunities, the local American labor pool dried up. This confluence of legal reform in labor law with counter-reform in immigration law had a two-fold effect. It served to simultaneously reenforce the dependence of West Coast agriculture on a migrant labor force consisting primarily of Mexican nationals and to criminalize that same labor force. There are those who posit complex conspiracy theories that this was the intended result, but I think it more likely that lawmakers did not foresee all the consequences of labor reform laws when coupled with the immigration restrictions.

Without the immigration restrictions, of course, this would have meant a significant rise in the standard of living of the migrant labor force and a significantly higher legal immigration rate. Coupled with the reformed labor laws, however, it created a situation where it made far more economic sense (from the point of view of a farmer) for farmers to hire illegal labor and pay their workers in cash, under the table, than to hire American citizens or documented residents and pay them according to the new labor regulations. This led to major economic exploitation that, itself, led to the unionization of much of the migrant labor force... an ironic situation, a legal union that represented many illegal workers. A balance was ultimately found, one where cheap agricultural labor and farmers could co-exist and both profit from the relationship.

It is terribly important to recognize how central this process was to maintaining stability in the agricultural economy of the West Coast during the 1950s. Prices for farm produce were kept down even as demand increased to a greater degree than ever, which meant significant regional growth. The region of Southern California called 'the Inland Empire', where I myself was born and raised, was built up and developed because of agricultural profits made possible by illegal labor. In many ways, the economic success and massive growth of California, post-WWII, is as dependent on illegal labor as it is on the aircraft industry. While many of the old agricultural communities have urbanized or suburbanized, the Sacramento and San Joaquin Valleys, Riverside County, the Imperial Valley, and San Diego County all contain significant agricultural sectors. Even the heavily urbanized counties of Los Angeles and San Bernardino maintain at least minimal agricultural activity. When one factors in the large agricultural sectors of the Oregon and Washington economies, one starts to have an even greater sense of just how illegal immigration supports the American middle class when they go grocery shopping.

The sad economic facts make exploitation by American business in the United States preferable to many Mexicans over exploitation by American or Mexican business (or unemployment) in Mexico. This isn't something than can be changed by law enforcement budget hikes or crazy racist quasi-terrorists policing the border. It's also important to note, from a critically realistic point of view, that actually putting an end to the current system of migrant labor could have grave economic consequences for both the US and Mexico and could pose a significant politcal and social problem in Mexico. Therefore, whatever the solution to a genuinely morally repugnant siutation might be, it's not throwing law enforcement or military dollars at the problem. Nativist political activists who insist otherwise are simply showing their ignorance of the real situation.

Thus immigration policy is a difficult choice between three options:

1.) Maintain a morally repugnant but mutually beneficial (in a purely economic sense) system of exploitation of illegal workers to preserve the highly successful status quo. Most people in politics, in both the United States and Mexico, have consistently chosen this option. From a purely utilitarian viewpoint, it is very hard to argue against this choice. By simple, zero-sum measurements, everyone wins with this system... except that it is the most morally repugnant agribusiness system in American history since slavery. Which makes stark utilitarianism less appealing. Moreover, while the 'crisis' of undocumented workers 'stealing American jobs' and overburdening American social services is manufactured crap, it is true that this system allows corporations to switch from legal to illegal labor if they choose to take that option... and some corporations have. This has a real economic cost, but it is intellectually dishonest to blame the immigrants and doing so is incorrectly defining the problem. In these cases, the real issue is not undocumented workers but corporations who smuggle them into the country. It is worth noting, as well, that many of the workers exploited in such a fashion are not part of the Mexican influx of which the nativists complain, but Asian laborers specifically smuggled into the country by or for corporate clients.

2.) We can spend a massive amount of money on the kind of enforcement and interdiction policies the nativists advocate... and have largely the same situation that exists now, with a police state mechanism incorporated that poses a real risk of forcing Latino Americans to prove their citizenship on demand. First of all, this is unconstitutional (yes, despite my disregard for the intent of the Framers in many constitutional questions I do believe the document itself has value). It is a bill of attainder, acting to stigmatize a specific class of citizens and not the rest of the population. It is also in violation of the 14th Amendment, denying one section of citizens their full share of their civil rights. Before you argue otherwise, consider... who will asked to prove their citizenship before receiving medical care or when pulled over by a traffic cop? The odds are that it won't be people who 'look like Americans.' Beyond the constitutional problem, this also vastly increases law enforcement costs and will necessitate far more public spending than the share illegal immigrants currently consume.

3.) Take a deliberate, critical, and holistic look at the situation and work to actually define the problem. The definition of the problem will be a key step toward finding the solution and the current definition of the problem, as given by nativists and accepted by many Americans, is pure bullshit. The share of public spending that goes to provide social services for illegal aliens is too tiny to justify massive spending on enforcement and deportation operations or writing a new set of Jim Crow laws targetting Latino Americans. So the question becomes the chief object of any policy undertaken. Is the problem the economic issue of corporate criminality and loss of opportunity for the American labor force? Is the problem the humanitarian issue of the economic exploitation of undocumented workers by American employers? Is it a combination of the two? Is it simply that lack of legal access and legal opportunity creates the demand for illegal access and illegal opportunity? Clearly, different problems require different policies and any policy with any potential for success must, automatically, consider issues over which we do not have direct control in this country: the Mexican government's border security, the Mexican economy, the highly charged atmosphere of violence currently permeating many northern Mexican cities due to the drug war?

Repeatedly, for reasons that only become obvious when one considers the degree to which American agriculture relies on the status quo, the American government has chosen option #1. This is a purely utilitarian decision that can be criticized on several different grounds, but is very easy to understand when the situation is considered in its proper depth. Full and careful consideration of the situation also requires that one admit just how counterproductive and wasteful option #2 really is, in addition to being entirely at odds with the spirit of the laws that govern our nation and tell us how we can and should govern our nation. Even the 'enforcement first' compromise approach to immigration reform offered by John McCain during the presidential election would require an effort and expense not justified by the problems posed. So the choice really becomes between option #1 and option #3.

In all likelihood, because of the real undercurrent of nativism in both political parties (witness both the violent reaction of the GOP against Bush and McCain's varying amnesty and reform proposals and the vicious attacks on her primary opponents over this very issue by Hillary Clinton), it is unlikely that option #3 is forthcoming anytime soon. This particular prejudice is one that heavily colors American thinking across the political dividing line and which cannot be labelled a 'conservative' or 'liberal' vice.

That said, I believe real immigration reform is ultimately the choice that the country must take. We are a country of immigrants, except for what amounts to a tiny handful of the population we are immigrants or the descendants of immigrants. The American exclusivity which drive the nativist current that has always inhabited American politics is built on ethnic and religious prejudices which are not the sort of political ideals compatible with America as a country or a concept. Utilitarian economic necessity may force that reform to be a knee-capped guest worker program of the kind proposed by President George W. Bush the final decision America reaches, and if it does that would be better than the situation as it exists now. However, in my opinion, the real solution is the removal of the quotas imposed on immigration to America from Latin America in the wake of WWII. The original thinking behind the original policy was that all of us, from Canada to Argentina, are in some sense 'American' and that our doors should be open to our neighbors. That this is no longer a feeling broadly shared throughout our national society is... upsetting.

Regardless of whether we choose option #1 for many years to come or what form we decide option #3 should take, it is time for another amnesty. The people here are part of our society. They have done jobs we have not wanted to do for pay that we would not be willing to do it, and their willingness to do so is part of what puts food on our table. Anyone who argues against this, Democrat or Republican, is simply wrong. Perhaps they don't understand the real nature of the situation, as many of us simply trying to live our every day lives do not. Perhaps they are something worse, like Tom Tancredo or Virgil Goode. Either way, they are not the people who should be given the forefront in this discussion and it's time America stops simply taking their line at face value without really considering the reality of the situation.

Adopting the slash and burn enforcement policies of nativists would be biting the hand that feeds us.

Let's All Take a Moment to be Frank About Health Care...

2009-08-14T04:14:00.000-07:00

There are a lot of misconceptions about health care on the right and the left. On the left, too many are in love with the idea of 'reducing costs' in some way that will miraculously solve the system's problems. The liberal idea that more access to primary care doctors will lower fundamental health care costs is akin to the conservative idea that cutting taxes leads to increased tax revenue. It's so counter-intuitive as to be ridiculous. Better health access to better health care will always raise health care costs, and as I go on I will explain in more detail and give a tremendously cogent example.

On the right, there is a failure to understand that one is frequently advocating what one is professing to hate and fear. Namely: rationing, the writing off of human life for utilitarian benefits conveyed to society by so doing, and ultimately a far greater number of otherwise preventable deaths. This is the horror scenario presented by the right to frighten us all out of supporting what is, essentially, far from 'comprehensive health care reform' but rather a health industry bailout following on the heels of the bailouts of the automotive manufacturing and financial industries. There are lots of reasons for finding fault with the House health care bill, and even more to find fault with the Senate Finance Committee bill. None of those reasons are vaguely related, however, to socialism, government takeover of health care, or rationed care. The current system, as it exists now, is a system of rationing: economic rationing. The ability to pay guarantees access to care and those unable to pay face significant health risks and even greater economic burdens. 'Free market based' reform of health care will simply be a crystallized, finalized statement that economic rationing is the correct social decision.

Jenn Q Public quotes an Atlantic article by David Goldhill on her blog, an article highly critical of current health care reform efforts that Jenn rightly (in my view) refers to as 'mommy kisses and a Dora the Explorer band-aid.' Mr. Goldhill is a business man and registered Democrat who begins his piece with a very moving personal testimonial about his father's death and how a hospital hand-washing procedure rejected by doctors as 'unnecessary' could have prevented it. He then moves on to discuss how the experience drove him to research health care problems and solutions. Clearly, he put some work in.

Goldhill is correct in his fundamental analysis of the fact that the current reform package will affect the problem of fundamental health care costs: it won't. He is also correct in his characterization of the reform bills currently under consideration as merely fundamentally re-cementing the foundations of the current system. As I said above, what is being discussesd now in Congress is not so much 'comprehensive reform' of the health care industrty, but a comprehensive health care industry bailout. Goldhill certainly recognizes that and is not afraid to say so, to his credit:

"But fundamentally, the “comprehensive” reform being contemplated merely cements in place the current system—insurance-based, employment-centered, administratively complex. It addresses the underlying causes of our health-care crisis only obliquely, if at all; indeed, by extending the current system to more people, it will likely increase the ultimate cost of true reform."

I can't disagree with that assessment at all. Nor with:

"Health care simply keeps gobbling up national resources, seemingly without regard to other societal needs; it’s treated as an island that doesn’t touch or affect the rest of the economy."

The problem, however, lies in how Goldhill sees health care reform and how he defines failure. It is important graps this definition of 'failure' and the full consequences of such thinking in the long run. I don't know if Goldhill grasps them or not. It's very reflective of much of libertarian and conservative thought about health care reform and it reflects the blind spots and rationalizations inherent in many of their arguments and solutions.

"But even leaving aside the effects of price controls on innovation and customer service, today’s Medicare system should leave us skeptical about the long-term viability of that approach. From 2000 to 2007, despite its market power, Medicare’s hospital and physician reimbursements per enrollee rose by 5.4 percent and 8.5 percent, respectively, per year. As currently structured, Medicare is a Ponzi scheme. The Medicare tax rate has been raised seven times since its enactment, and almost certainly will need to be raised again in the next decade. The Medicare tax contributions and premiums that today’s beneficiaries have paid into the system don’t come close to fully funding their care, which today’s workers subsidize. The subsidy is getting larger even as it becomes more difficult to maintain: next year there will be 3.7 working people for each Medicare beneficiary; if you’re in your mid-40s today, there will be only 2.4 workers to subsidize your care when you hit retirement age. The experience of other rich nations should also make us skeptical. Whatever their histories, nearly all developed countries are now struggling with rapidly rising health-care costs, including those with single-payer systems. From 2000 to 2005, per capita health-care spending in Canada grew by 33 percent, in France by 37 percent, in the U.K. by 47 percent—all comparable to the 40 percent growth experienced by the U.S. in that period. Cost control by way of bureaucratic price controls has its limits."

The indictment of Medicare as a Ponzi scheme is extremely harsh and is reminiscent of neoconservative indictments of Social Security. In a Ponzi scheme, the sucker gets nothing for his money. The swindler pockets or spends it all and walks away with it. Moreover, a Ponzi scheme is a deliberately orchestrated fraud for profit. One pays off early investors with later investors money, pocket the remainders, and skips town. It's worth noting that the only people actually discussing so treating Medicare (or Social Security) are the Republicans who want to slash it entirely. I have not heard their plans to reimburse all of us paying Medicare taxes. So who are they really fooling? Goldhill's solution to 'the Ponzi scheme' of Medicare is the same as theirs... pocket the money and walk away rather than fulfilling the program's obligations. This is a fundamental flaw in the indictment of the program.

The description of growing health care costs is accurate, but more central than the weakness of the 'Ponzi scheme' analogy is the failure to recognize why Medicare costs (and the costs of health care in nations with thorough health care policy) grow so steadily. It is because Medicare works. If Medicare did not work, it would be the cheapest government program ever.

Consider this: before Medicare, senior citizens frequently lived in circumstances of crushing, absolute poverty or entirely off the support of their younger relatives. The reason that the age of 65 was chosen as the date of entry for Social Security was that the average American life span before WWII was 63. To put it bluntly: old people died more. No one spent anything on their health care... because they were dead. Medicare came along, and old people started living longer. Not only because they got better medical care at far less cost, which they did, but also because the financial burden their health care costs imposed on them had been affecting their entire standard of living. Not only were they able to get medical treatment for their medical problems, the increased ability to provide for their material needs meant that they were far less likely to die (or suffer medical problems) because of the influence of economic factors on their health. Their younger relatives also had more money as a result of the program, contributing more fully and vibrantly to the economy. So their standards of living were beneficially affected as well. Medicare was good for everyone and the country and still is.

So, by pure analysis of what many consider to be the core test of success (whether or not it meets its explicit goals), Medicare is the single most successful government program ever. So much for right wings paens to the United States Postal Service as the only thing the government ever did right. Medicare has done everything it promised, and even exceeded expectations for its success.

Of course, people living longer means more old people visting their doctor twice a month. Which means more medical costs. This is an inherent problem in the system, certainly, but I prefer paying those costs to adopting the Malthusian attitude toward human suffering necessary to lower them.

Here's where it's time to be really frank: when the right talks about how 'the free market' will lower health care costs they mean that only those who can afford health care will have access and everyone else will do without. This certainly eliminates the 'free rider problem', so the people paying for their health care experience cost reductions and the government certainly saves a lot of money on the budget. On the flip side, we're talking about Victorian Era living conditions reimposed on a significant portion of civilized society. Do any of us want that, even if it means lower taxes?

Goldhill's solution to the problem of health care costs is much like right wing solutions. His description of the ideal health care reform package sounds very much like the perfect Republican utopia:

"The most important single step we can take toward truly reforming our system is to move away from comprehensive health insurance as the single model for financing care. And a guiding principle of any reform should be to put the consumer, not the insurer or the government, at the center of the system. I believe if the government took on the goal of better supporting consumers—by bringing greater transparency and competition to the health-care industry, and by directly subsidizing those who can’t afford care—we’d find that consumers could buy much more of their care directly than we might initially think, and that over time we’d see better care and better service, at lower cost, as a result."

Now, it's true, that the right doesn't want to see any direct subsidy of those unable to afford health care. In that sense, Goldhill's proposal is superior. However, the reason that the system of comprehensive health insurance that exists today came into being is because it was already, during the 1940s and 1950s, becoming incredibly difficult for individuals to pay for their own health care. Fundamental costs have risen since then, every bit as rapidly as administrative costs, and eliminating the administrative costs of the insurance agency and government bureaucracy will not reduce the fundamental costs one iota. Real wages are lower than they were in 1950, real health care costs higher. If the working man could not afford to pay for his family's medical care without comprehensive insurance in 1950, how could he possibly hope to do so today? Ignoring these economic realities is very dangerous.

Catastrophic health care insurance is a key portion of Goldhill's program:

"First, we should replace our current web of employer- and government-based insurance with a single program of catastrophic insurance open to all Americans—indeed, all Americans should be required to buy it—with fixed premiums based solely on age. This program would be best run as a single national pool, without underwriting for specific risk factors, and would ultimately replace Medicare, Medicaid, and private insurance. All Americans would be insured against catastrophic illness, throughout their lives.

Proposals for true catastrophic insurance usually founder on the definition of catastrophe. So much of the amount we now spend is dedicated to problems that are considered catastrophic, the argument goes, that a separate catastrophic system is pointless. A typical catastrophic insurance policy today might cover any expenses above, say, $2,000. That threshold is far too low; ultimately, a threshold of $50,000 or more would be better. (Chronic conditions with expected annual costs above some lower threshold would also be covered.) We might consider other mechanisms to keep total costs down: the plan could be required to pay out no more in any year than its available premiums, for instance, with premium increases limited to the general rate of inflation. But the real key would be to restrict the coverage to true catastrophes—if this approach is to work, only a minority of us should ever be beneficiaries."

Great... except that unless he is advocating the government completely subsidize medical costs below $50,000 for everyone who doesn't have fifty grand lying around in case they need life-saving surgery, I don't see how this system of insurance would help most Americans. Despite Goldhill's blithe assurance that competition will naturally lower those costs, I'm highly skeptical. My partner had life saving surgery and the bill (most of which was paid by her workplace insurance) was $56,000. Under Goldhill's system, we would have been responsible to pay for all but six grand. We are facing a certain financial burden from our health care costs as it is, but $50,000? That's an awful lot of debt for the average working American to rack up from one trip to the OR. And my partner is a fairly well-paid employee of a major corporation... but she $50,000 is a lot more than a year's wages for her. It's probably more than the sum of both our yearly incomes. I'm all in favor of the government subsidizing health care in such circumstances, but I'm not sure most of the people who might like Goldhill's plan would be.

Goldhill's solution also relies greatly on personal health care savings accounts, another favorite Republican idea. In his world, like theirs, everyone pays their health care costs out of pocket at point of service. HSAs would increasingly pay people's health care costs as they aged. Except people have a great deal of difficulty saving under current economic realities as it is. What is to make it suddently easier for them to save to pay for their health care? Goldhill is speculating that all that money spent on insurance premiums will be available to go into the bank and he is also speculating that companies, no longer paying for health insurance for their employees, will pay more money. Great... except there is no actual way to guarantee it will actually happen that way. Indeed, in today's corporate culture, the predictable outcome is that corporate employers will simply pocket the savings and reinvest them in increased corporate management costs.

Ultimately, Goldhill's final answer to 'what about those who can't pay' is that the government needs to pick up their tab. For someone who is arguing that health care should be simplified, because the system is too complex, his solution is awfully complicated. HSAs, catastrophic insurance, sliding-scale health care deductibles based on age...

If, in the end, you want everyone with money to be able to buy their own health care and the government to pay for it for everyone else then I'd have to say that single-payer, a national health care service, or the kind of everything-at-once hybrid system used in countries like Sweden makes a lot more sense. Goldhill's agruments for a free market based solution are going to be most attractive to conservatives who will see many of his arguments as echoing theirs... and who will entirely oppose the idea of the government paying any of the costs.

In Today's News: Karl Rove is a Crook...

2009-08-12T05:58:00.000-07:00

Um, yeah. Tell us something we didn't already know.

Current congressional inquiries into the firing of U.S. Attorneys in the Bush Administration are showing the challenges and difficulties of pursuing partisan investigations of one's political opponents on charges of corruption, malfeasance, or misconduct. They show just how dirty politically motivated investigations get even when the evidence is pretty cut and dried. After all, a Justice department internal inquiry already found political considerations to have categorically been a part of at least four of the firings. For those of you who can still remember last year, when everyone in both parties was upset at the Bush Administration and Karl Rove, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales resigned over the ensuing scandal when it became too difficult for him to avoid answering questions from Congress despite every ploy to invoke executive immunity. The information about just what degree the political side of the administration had been influencing the operational and bureaucratic procedures of the Justice department is already common knowledge.

John Conyers (D - Michigan), chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, has stated that documents reveal the White House's political operatives were deeply involved the decision to pursue voter fraud allegations in purple states and in the decision to fire those US Attorneys who did not do so do to the lack of significant evidence. The transcripts of testimony in the committee's hearings point to Rove as the central, responsible figure.

To quote the Associated Press:

"The documents show that staffers in Rove's office were actively seeking to have Iglesias removed after Republican figures in New Mexico complained that he was not pursuing voter fraud cases they wanted. In 2005, Rove aide Scott Jennings sent an e-mail to another Rove aide saying, "I would really like to move forward with getting rid of NM US ATTY.""

Republicans in New Mexico wanted David Iglesias fired for not pursuing the cases they wanted pursued. They complained to Rove's office. Rove's staffers were eager to fire Iglesias. Rove spoke to White House Counsel Harriet Miers on the topic. Iglesias was fired. The circumstantial evidence in question is damning enough, and Miers careful choice of the words 'I don't recall' brings to mind the quasi-senile testimony of Ronald Reagan at the Iran-Contra hearings. As it turned out, President Reagan had a legitimate medical excuse. To the best of my knowledge, Miers does not. Remember that, in a court of law, the issue is whether a charge can be proved beyond a reasonable doubt. To my mind, the Republican responses to the facts are not 'reasonable' by any stretch of the words.

Despite a Bush Justice department internal inquiry's statement to the contrary, Rove denies the facts:

"Rove issued a statement Tuesday saying the documents "show politics played no role in the Bush administration's removal of U.S. attorneys, that I never sought to influence the conduct of any prosecution, and that I played no role in deciding which U.S. attorneys were retained and which were replaced.""

For a congressional Republican's take:

"Rep. Lamar Smith of Texas, the top Republican on the Judiciary Committee, said the documents show no evidence of wrongdoing. "Democrats need to stop wasting taxpayers' time and money on political investigations that are nothing more than the politics of personal destruction," Smith said."

Now, clearly, Republican definitions of 'wrong-doing' are entirely subjective. That cannot be denied or forgotten. Does anyone remember the horrific abuse of power the Clinton family's wish to restaff the White House Travel Office was presented as, by Republicans, in 1993? The Justice department, which actually fulfills a function of national significance, would seem to be required to be even more tamper proof. Again, the Bush Justice department itself ruled that political considerations were clearly involved in at least four of the firings and that was as far as they were willing to go to fall on their swords for Rove and Miers... waffling on whether or not other considerations influenced the firing as well, and confining it to four of five cases.

All of this, of course, is the core problem with political investigations. They are political. Democrats in Congress feel pressure from their constituents to bring officials in the Bush Administration to justice for their corruption. Therefore, they are motivated to do so. It doesn't matter that the individuals in question are corrupt, it's the political necessity of satisfying angry constituents that is their primary motivation. I'm not trying to minimize the corruption of the Bush White House (without a doubt the most corrupt since Reagan's two terms) or the importance of actual justice. I am simply noting that House Democrats are impelled by politics as much as principle.

Which is the problem. Republican congressmen are then impelled by politics to support their own, because otherwise their own conduct in the Bush Administration is open to question. Which makes Congressional investigations of Bush officials a sort of kabuki opera of partisan politics instead of a genuine probe for the facts of the case, which are mostly already known to all the principles involved. After all, the very reason there is political pressure to see justice done is that the corruption in the administration has been widely and clearly exposed. The reason House Democrats are taking the lead is because the very nature of the alleged crime currently taking center stage, political influence of criminal prosecutions and political consequences when the prosecutions fail to occur, the Justice department is in a difficult situation. White House pursuit of justice might appear to be more of the same, and involvement between the political side of the White House and the DOJ would automatically come under close scrutiny by the other side. The politicians feel handcuffed by the very nature of the scandal, to avoid appearing to be guilty of the exact same thing.

Of course, since the alleged crime was committed on behalf of Republican congressmen and senators, they are forced to draw their lines tight and deny a crime was committed. Otherwise they are accessories. Of course, by impeding the investigation now, they are making themselves accessories after the fact.

This always has been and always will be the primary reason political corruption is so hard to actually punish. Political corruption is, by its very nature, political. Thus partisan politics trumps the questions of fact and wrong-doing that should be the focus. While American Congressional investigations may lack the life or death consequences of Stalin's Moscow 'show trials' or the Nuremberg and Tokyo war crimes tribunals, they carry the same basic flaw: when politics is more important than the core question of criminality being examined, it becomes impossible to address that question seriously or effectively.

A man we all believe to be a criminal is being shown to be a criminal, and it doesn't matter because it is just another political issue to those most intimately involved with the matter. That very factor will almost certainly keep Rove from ever being indicted, let alone convicted. The irony is that, in the end, the only defense against such political corruption is itself political.

The only way to prevent political corruption is at the ballot box, and can only be enacted by clear eyed voters who are themselves able to step away from partisan politics to discern the character of the candidates in question.

Yeah. Problem solved. Right.

The 0th Amendment: Liberal Democracy vs Radical Democracy

2009-08-12T00:33:00.000-07:00

If one has read the works of Isaac Asimov, one has probably encountered the 'Three Laws of Robotics.' These were first mentioned in short stories about robots that would ultimately be collected in the efficient little tome I, Robot, not to be confused with either the episode of The Outer Limits (good) or the Hollywood action movie (bad) of the same title. The Three Laws are communicated rather simply, though I am paraphrasing rather than directly quoting:

1. A robot may not cause harm to a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.

2. A robot must obey all orders from a human being unless doing so would violate the First Law.

3. A robot must preserve its own existence, unless doing so would conflict with the First or Second Laws.

Now, what does this have to do with politics, economics, or philosophy? Well, one can see Asimov's own ethical framework in the Three Laws. First, do no harm to others. Second, serve others as long as doing so does no harm to others. Third, protect one's self and one's self sufficiency while taking care to do no harm to others or prevent one's self from serving others. There are far worse ethics, though I suppose Ayn Rand would have thrown a fit at the idea that serving one's own needs would be at the bottom of the list of the three 'commandments.' If one studies it closely one can find its model in the Bible... 'Love they neighbor as thyself.'

Of course, the specifics of the Three Laws are not the point. The point is that 'I, Robot' was followed by three novels featuring the man-machine detective team of Elijah Bailey and R. Daneel Olivaw. The former was a human police detective from Earth, the latter a humanoid android from the space colony of 'Aurora.' In the third and final book, we are introduced to another robotic sidekick, the telepathic Giskard... who can read human minds.

One sequel to the 'Robot Trilogy' was written: Robots and Empire. It serves as a link between all three of Asimov's major groupings of novels the 'Robot', 'Empire', and 'Foundation' series of novels.

In Robots and Empire, Elijah Baley is long dead. The heroes are the robots, Daneel and Giskard, acting to attempt to stop a madman from Aurora who is bent on destroying Earth out of rage at the slow disintegration of the static utopia of the star spanning society of the original space colonists and the rapid expansion of the new wave of colonists into a potential galactic empire. As they move to prevent this disaster, they discuss the philosophical problems inherent in protecting humans from a human being and the startling subplot in which it is revealed an entire world was destroyed by robots who were programmed so thoroughly and minutely that they each recognized only their own masters as 'human.' In response to much of this philosophical difficulty, Giskard postulates an unwritten '0th Law of Robotics' which he believes trumps the three programmed laws. He figures it, roughly, as:

0. A robot may not harm humanity or, through inaction, allow humanity to come to harm. This supersedes the First, Second, and Third Laws.

This is, obviously, a double edged sword. It is both the justification for legitimate violence necessary to defend individuals and society and the excuse for utilitarian nightmare in defense of 'the greater good.' It requires a moral judgement of which many people are simply not capable of exercising.

Again, however, the point is not to judge the Laws of Robotics on their merits but rather to communicate the idea that an underlying, unwritten preconception of reality can create an overriding philosophical principle that trumps the actual written law. Giskard hypothesizes that those who wrote the Three Laws of Robotics were not seeking to simply prevent individual robots from killing individual people, but rather to protect humanity as a whole for potential robotic uprising. From this flows the 0th Law.

This is an important idea because our Bill of Rights has a '0th Amendment' which is not written, which is not communicated, and which exists only in the preconceptions and prejudices of the Framers. It was not written into the Constitution itself or the Bill of Rights, but it neverthless colors everything the Framers said and did... from the Revolution, to the Declaration of Independence, to the reaction to Shays' Rebellion, to the framing of the Constitution, to the bitter political fight over passing the Consitution, and even the first three American presidencies. Not to be aware of it is to be unaware of many of the real underpinnings of American political theory and our progress since the Framers... and most Americans are not as aware of it as they should be, because of the natural tendency in this country to canonize the Framers.

To understand the '0th Amendment' one must understand the underpinnings of Western liberalism. While we owe the doctrine of 'natural rights' to that liberal tradition, natural rights are secondary to economics in that tradition. It is economic rights (specifically the rights of the owners of property) that most concerned the liberal thinkers of the pre-Revolution. This is why conservatives in Spain, Italy and Japan call themselves 'Liberal Democrats.'

The fundamental right in the Western liberal tradition is the private right of an individual to own property. The second foremost right, which often trumps the first in practice, is the right of the individual to protect his property. Government, in the eyes of this tradition, exists only to guarantee the property rights and contracts of individuals and has no business meddling in anything else.

The 0th Amendment, prologuing the Bill of Rights, can then can be read very simply:

"Everything that follows applies to citizens of means, no one else really counts."

In this sense one can certainly argue that the Republicans (especially the neoconservatives) are far closer to the true beliefs of the Framers than anyone else. The question then becomes one of just how much the intent and desires of the Framers should matter to us today. Do we still believe that the protection of the property of those who own it is the chief justification for government or do we have a more educated and inclusive view of society today?

The alternative to a liberal democracy is a radical democracy. This means accepting that natural rights are of greater importance than property rights and that a citizen's rights cannot be enumerated in full in ten paragraphs. The rich man, the poor man, the wife, the single mother, the working woman, and the wage-laborer all enjoy the same basic natural rights in the same share and are entitled to the same protection and consideration under the law independent of their economic status, race, or gender. Those who do not own property are deserving of as much protection from the owners of property as those who own property are deserving of protection from them. Great concentrations of property in few hands are threats to the individual rights of the rest of society's members. Economic opportunity and property rights should be more openly 'democratic.'

I am not advocating communism or socialism in an economic sense, though I believe that certain socialist models (the workers' co-op and revenue sharing policies) work exceptionally well in a capitalist economy and Saturn (before GM bought the workers out to get a bigger share of the profits and ruined the company) and the NFL have provided us with the positive proof. The NFL is the most successful 'merchants' collective' in history and includes a tremendously successful 'workers' collective' in its operating system.

What I am proposing is that the values of the Founding Fathers, as they pertained to the role of government in society and the value and priority of individual rights, may not apply in a modern society. They were slightly ahead of their time and are far behind ours. In a perfect world, we would do what other nations have done when reaching such a divide between the philosophy of their constitutional law and the reality of their values system. They have written new constitutions and we should sincerely consider doing the same.

Of course the problem is not that universal values have advanced from the time of the Framers. While many have, many Americans believe exactly as the Founders believed on issues of wealth, property, government, and natural rights. They believe that 'equality' is a dirty word, that 'social justice' is proof of an argument's communist intent, and that wealth and freedom truly should be interlinked. They would argue that the alleged market stability created by monopolies and cartels outweighs the social and economic cost of such an imbalance of economic power... if they actually gave a straight answer. More likely they would spin a story about the 'free market' that bears no resemblance whatsoever to the facts of an unregulated business community. They defend the social and legal inequities that show the poor are treated very differently in the judicial system than the rich, and that the criminal justice system has failed to uphold the equity of justice with which it is charged.

This is not 'conservatism', which is a principle of safeguarding the good and measuring the effects of new ideas with sober seriousness. It is a blatant and reactionary support for the inherent rights of the wealthiest members of society or of concentrated business interests at the expense of the rest of society. It is a disregard for natural rights in favor of property rights and a belief that enumerated rights put on paper are of greater value than natural rights. It is a belief that the letter of the law trumps justice and mercy alike and that constitutional law prevents judges from fulfilling their constitutional role of interpreting the law in the changing world. It completely voids the idea of common law or moral law.

It is difficult to blame the Founders for many of their foibles at a time when their virtues were far greater than those of many of their contemporaries. They were a product of their time and managed, in many ways, to be ahead of it in philosophical matters. However, their time is not ours and we must operate in our world and not theirs. Many of their ideas were simply wrong, then and now.

Giskard 'died' because the 0th Law of Robotics was not compatible with his programming, and acting on it destroyed his circuits. The 0th Amendment is not compatible with the other ten. They need to apply to all of us, to have any value whatsoever.