He's Friends With THEM!?!? (In Politics, Everyone Is Guilty By Association)

John F. Kennedy began his presidential campaign with the support of a coalition of corrupt politicians and mobsters with whom his father had done business in the 1920s, when he illegally imported whiskey into the United States from Ireland and Scotland and sold it to people like Al Capone and Carlo Gambino.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt held together his huge liberal coalition of Democrats and Roosevelt Republicans by pandering to the racist leadership of the southern wing of the Democratic Party. When Harry Truman took mild civil rights steps like desegregating the Armed Forces, the Democratic Party began to fall apart.

Richard Nixon (and Republican leadership since) associated with the likes of Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell, who have approved of terrorist acts against gays and abortion clinics. Ditto Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush. George H.W. Bush could be lauded for keeping his distance from them during his first run for president... if he hadn't jumped into bed with them in his run for reelection.

Far right mouthpieces will tell you that Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell are different from
Jeremiah Wright and Bill Ayers. I don't see how. If Jeremiah Wright were a white evangelical fundamentalist instead of a black evangelical fundamentalist, he'd fit right in with Robertson, Falwell, and John Hagee. Some of the things he has said about gays and Jews are very close to the Republicans' favorite preachers. The sticking point is twofold. 1.) He is black. 2.) He believes the American government has failed black Americans.

He is wrong in his prejudices against gays and Jews, but that isn't where Republicans disagree with him. No, they disagree with the area in which he is right: he correctly believes the American government has failed black Americans. Some of the things he has preached are basically true even where not literally true. I've written about that before. I still stand by what I said. In fact, my foremost criticism of Obama on the Wright issue is that he didn't stand by the man. It is true that political expedience dictated this decision, but Obama's willingness to disavow his supporters (Wesley Clark is another good example) is still disappointing. I admire the man as a politician, however. He certainly isn't mismanaging the things that Gore, Kerry, and Clinton idol George McGovern mismanaged on the political side.

The difference between Ayers and the zealots of the religious right is only that Ayers' zealotry was humanist rather than religious. Even as the Robertsons and Falwells of the world sponsor and incite 'domestic terrorism' to bring the rule of God, so Ayers did to bring what he believed was a truer democracy. As the Republicans would never speak of Robertson or Falwell as terrorists, because of their influence and affluence, so Democrats often associate with former radicals who have influence or affluence themselves. Politics require this. As above examples have shown, it is nearly impossible to succeed in American politics without unsavory associations of some kind and all politicians are equally guilty.

Charles Krauthammer brought up Tony Rezko again. Discussion of Tony Rezko is as meaningless or meaningful, take your pick, as discussion of Charles Keating. If you haven't watched the film, you should. If you are for McCain in these times of economic difficulty, then you should definitely watch the film. Find it online, it's easy. Google the Keating 5.

If you are disgusted by the political associations of the candidates, than even third party hopefuls will disappoint you. Some of Ralph Nader's friends and supporters have belonged to far left environmental groups with agendas like enforced population control, including mandatory abortions and sterilizations or licenses in order to get pregnant. The Libertarian Party draws heavy support from the membership of the Hell's Angels, Bob Barr may have been to a biker rally on occasion. Define irony: Alan Keyes is running on the segregationist AIP ticket. Which means he has to know some people lurking around nasty outfits like the John Birch Society and various cultural purity kooks.

The gist of all this is that if you are an independent or undecided voter and you believe that you can only vote for a candidate who is pure and unsullied by questionable allies, there is no one for you to vote for. Everyone has been sullied by someone you may not approve of, whether by Hagee and Parsley and Keating or by Rezko and Ayers and Wright. If you truly wish to vote, then do so knowing that the candidate for whom you vote will have friends you don't like.

Dollars and Sense: Fixing Health Care

Being extremely liberal, it should come to no surprise that I have strong opinions in support of an effective and meaningful system of national health care. I understand the arguments against single payer, though I disagree with most of them. I believe that every administration in history has shown that it is willing to spend a fortune on its projects, so the argument that we simply cannot afford meaningful national health care is ridiculous. We can afford to fight two wars at once and send advisors to countries like the Phillipines and Colombia in the name of the 'Global War on Terror.' Perhaps if we eliminated the 'GWOT' as a major budget expenditure all of that money could be spent on health care. It's certainly worth thinking about.

Terrorism is bred by poverty, ignorance, lack of economic opportunity, and basic geopolitical conflicts between states and ideas. As such, it is not a problem to be directly solved itself but rather a symptom of the larger problems of the world. Terrorism is another form of international crime and it should be dealt with in that manner, rather than the wasteful use of military force. I do believe that nation building is required in Iraq and Afghanistan, but the best way to build a nation is to help the people build it themselves. If we build a nation in our own image, as we tried to do in Vietnam and Laos, the local citizenry will not embrace it. It will be ours, not theirs. So we need to reform our foreign policy and spend much of the money we are currently wasting on military operations at home.

Even the Republicans are talking about health care in this election, and John McCain's plan would sound good in the abstract if it were not for the fact that the two fundamental problems with our current system are not addressed. Costs are addressed, a $5,000 tax credit to buy private health care is great. It even has a chance of passing because it's the kind of pro-market move that Republicans like, and it means a tax cut of sorts, which Republicans also like. The problem is that, while costs are the biggest barrier to many people receiving health insurance, they are not even close to the biggest problem with the system.

The first problem with the current health care system is that the way the costs are shared. The employer-employee system of cost sharing puts an undue strain on business and only benefits the employees of businesses that can afford to match health care costs. I'm hardly the biggest fan of Corporate America, but business is necessary for our capitalist economic system. Even should we ever find the political will to step beyond liberal economics to a more Keynesian or Radical system, we will still need business and capital. A single payer system that eliminated the 'taxes' imposed on businesses by the current system would save American business more money than any corporate tax cuts the Republicans have to offer. It would also allow small business owners and employees to receive health care. Even a modified cost-sharing system with the government matching the contributions of both employer and employee would ease this burden and allow more employers to offer health care. At the very least, a program specifically set up for the government to match employee contributions for small businesses would relive the system of strain. Naturally, I favor more radical solutions and advocate single payer as the ideal. Single payer is the best system for solving the real problem of American health care.

The real problem is that we do not have a health care system, he have a health insurance system. Healthy people are required to pay for insurance, while healthy, to avoid onerous health care costs when they need health care. This means one pays every month whether one sees the doctor that month or not, to pay for the emergency room or urgent care visit three months in the future. The problem is that not all insurance is equal and that your emergency room visit may still carry a three hundred dollar co-payment, despite the fact that you have been paying for that visit for three months without ever visiting the emergency room. This is ridiculous. Many procedures and illnesses are not covered, under a variety of loopholes. Deductibles make the patient responsible for significant shares of the cost of a hospital stay of one week despite the patient never having stayed in the hospital before and yet paying for it every month. Out of pocket costs are frequently burdensome even with insurance. The system exists so that insurance companies can make money, and if the companies have to actually pay for too much medical care then their profits shrink. So high premiums, high deductibles, and a slough of co-payments are the defining marks of the system.

We have seen a significant financial crisis that has badly damaged our financial system, including massive insurance companies that chose to make extra money insuring mortgages. Keeping that in mind, can you see our current system continuing to work without large increases in premiums, deductibles, and co-payments with the insurance companies in such financial hardship and needing every dollar?

Dr. Arthur Garson Jr, MD, of the University of Virginia wrote a piece today that correctly defines many of the problems of health care that have resulted from our current system. Unfortunately, the solution offered is the same sort of political pap we have been spoon-fed by Washington for years. Dr. Garson recommends a multi-lateral commission in which doctors, insurance companies, and both political parties wrangle for five years (the number given is his) to try to find new ways to control health care costs. This is somewhat counter-intuitive, as a massive commission of this sort would generate its own costs for Dr. Garson's five years. During those five years, nothing would actually be done about the problem.

The insurance companies need to be removed from the health care management equation. Even if some version of our current system remains, a government definition of 'health care' needs to formulated and regulated. All companies wishing to provide health care must meet these standards. HMOs must be made to cover out-of-system care and PPOs must be made to cover necessary care of any kind when it becomes necessary. Bureaucratic costs must be controlled to lower premiums. Deductibles should either be disallowed or carefully controlled and co-payments should be reasonable. The Secretary of Health and Human Services, the Surgeon General, and senior aides from the Department of Health and Human Services and the White House should be able to handle such a project far more quickly and efficiently than any blue-ribbon commission. Certainly, the insurance companies should not be made part of the regulation process. We have seen in other areas just what damage can be done by industry insider regulators.

The best solution is still single payer, and ultimately I believe it to be the desired solution. If pragmatism requires smaller steps, however, there are things we can do right away to address the problem. Waiting five years for meaningful health care reform is ridiculous if a more streamlined process can provide it in two or three.

In case the right waves the red flag of 'socialized medicine' in front of the centrist bull, keep this in mind: socialism is the idea that a society should care for its members and its members should care for one another. This philosophy is voiced by nearly every religion and denomination on the right wing of American politics. The simple fact is that the government is the embodiment of society's power and is responsible to society. The 'law and order' that the right wing is fond of advocating can only be enforced by the government.

The biggest problem American health care faces is crime and anarchy. Law and order will not be imposed from within, it must be imposed from without. If this leads to socialized medicine, good. If it doesn't, it can still lead to specific improvements. American health care needs a systemic policy, not a financial crutch or meaningless 'reform' of the existing system. Real health care reform must change the current system radically, or it will not succeed.

Define Irony: The Traditional Party of Racism, Segregation, and the KKK's Nominee!

This is not exactly cutting edge news, but it is more than worthy of comment.

The American Independent Party was formed of segregationist Southern Democrats opposed to civil rights and equating anti-Semitism to anti-Communism. Their first presidential ticket was the dramatic one-two punch of racist Alabama Governor George Wallace and infamous advocate of the nuclear first strike General Curtis LeMay. Their agenda was so far to the right that it made Barry Goldwater look like Ted Kennedy.

The nominee of the AIP this election year is Alan Keyes.

I understand that homophobia is the new racism and abortion is the new communism, and that the bigots of the nation are more decidedly fixed on these issues than on racist agendas, but is their anything more cynical than a black clergyman (I don't care how conservative he is) running for the office of president on a KKK ticket?

Remember Kids, Sex is Bad: Sarah Palin and the Reinjection of the Abortion Issue

I have tried very hard, since opening this blog, to avoid writing about the issue of abortion. This is not because I do not have strong opinions on the subject, but rather because I believe it (along with gay rights) has become a litmus test issue which is more important to the two sides of America's ideological fence than many more important issues.

It is not that I believe the issue of abortion is not, itself, important, but rather that it (like many other social ills) is a side effect of problems of economics and education that cannot be addressed except by directly dealing with the problems of economics and education. The discussion of the abortion issue, divorced from issues of economics, education, and sociology, is like a church meeting in which half the members yell their point of view, half the members yell back with their own, and the final result is a deadlock which only serves to anger both sides.

However, John McCain has seriously returned the issue to the presidential table with the naming of Governor Sarah Palin of Alaska as his running mate. Since Senator McCain says he knew about the family situation of the Palins before making his choice, I am forced to assume that McCain has done so deliberately. Abortion is a divisive, wedge issue which will have very little effect on the real problems of America as a whole but which will win votes.

I am not going to write about Governor Palin's family situation. There are plenty of places you can read about it online. Instead, I am going to write about my own feelings on life and how it informs my ideology.

I am Pro-Life in the broadest sense of the term, the original meaning intended before the anti-abortion movement took it as their badge of honor: I believe that the taking of a human life is a moral wrong. Abortion after the fetus is scientifically 'a person', murder, capital punishment, assisted suicide, and war are all morally objectionable actions. I do not subscribe to the 'Just War' theory of many Christians (though I do believe there are necessary wars, necessity is not the same as justice) and I would never kill myself nor ask another to help me do it. Were I to be left in a coma by accident or illness, my living will would say in bold letters: Don't pull the plug, period!

However, the issues of abortion, war, and suicide are not simple. World War II was necessary to prevent people who could casually massacre millions of their fellow human beings from ruling most of the modern, industrial world. Suicide is a personal moral choice and must be the most difficult moral choice in the world, and some religions have a very different view of suicide than the Western Judeao-Christian interpretation. Abortions are going to happen whether they are legal or not, and horrible things can happen with illegal abortions.

With the possible exception of hard-line feminists who believe that a woman's right to absolute control over her reproduction is more important than a potential child (and I believe, deep down, most of them have qualms), not one liberal who supports reproductive rights and the right to choose thinks abortions are a good thing or a desirable thing. The entire point of the majority of the advocates of reproductive freedom is that a woman should have access to all necessary tools and knowledge to avoid an unwanted pregnancy in the first place. The true agenda of the Pro-Choice movement is not the right to abortion, but the right for a woman to choose whether or not to become pregnant. Abortion is not a substitute for, or a means of, birth control. It is a last resort when birth control fails (which does not happen as often as the right would like you to think, and is usually the result of human error) or when no other options were allowed in the first place.

The issue of reproductive freedom, of 'A Woman's Right to Choose,' is not abortion. It is the plain and simple fact that motherhood can be, has been, and continues to be used as a tool to prevent women from enjoying the freedom of choice enjoyed by men. The notion that a woman needs a child to be fulfilled and that she needs a husband to take care of her and her children is not one easily escaped. A co-worker of mine, a nineteen year old girl with a clear view of her desired life and career, will frequently say such things as 'eventually I have to get married.' When she describes her life goals, she talks of her desire to go to school and to become a pharmacist, not the desire to be a housewife or even to marry at all. Yet her upbringing in the border South has preconditioned her to believe that she 'must' get married, and she believes that she will. This is a cultural trap, one which the feminist movement wishes to escape. This is a not a desire to escape responsibility, as there is no choice which carries more responsibility than that of an abortion, but rather the desire to choose one's responsibilities to the same degree as men are allowed in our society.

As a believer in equal human rights, the simple fact is that only a pregnant woman can make this choice and it is wrong for men to make that decision for her or to make the government punish her or restrain her from making her own decision. The government cannot prevent abortion, it can only make them more difficult and dangerous.

Being Pro-Life, I therefore have to side against the criminalization of abortion: it leads to more death, not more life.

A Well Armed Lamb

"Democracy is a lamb and two wolves voting on what to have for dinner. Liberty is a well armed lamb."
-Benjamin Franklin

While I'm not going to go into deep detail about various Supreme Court decisions of late (I've already written about one of the three really controversial decisions of the last couple months, in my last entry and I agree with the striking down of the DC gun ban and the Guantanamo decision as well), I am going to comment on them: it is a staple of American politics to trumpet democracy when you've won more popular votes than your political opponent and to trumpet the constitutional process when you've won a disputed election. In the same fashion, it is a staple of American politics to trumpet judicial activism when you like a Supreme Court decision and to trumpet the 'will of the people' and popular democracy when you don't.

'The will of the people' is an interesting and very abstract concept. It was the idea of political philosopher Jean Jacques Rousseau and it was one of the guiding principles of the French Revolution. It was later expounded upon by such widely differing thinkers as Lenin and Trotsky (the intellectual disciples of socialist Karl Marx and rationalist Rene Descartes and the creators of 20th Century political communism) on the one hand and by Fichte and Hegel (the fathers of the German muscular Romanticism that led first to Nietzsche and then to Hitler) on the other. Rousseau's definition is the one that concerns us, as we live in much the kind of political society that Rousseau imagined.

In Rousseau's nation state, elections are not merely head counts of popular opinion with the majority getting its way. In his view, the election is a spiritual-metaphysical process in which the moral spirit of the nation expresses itself in the voting process. The results of the democratic election signify the will of the entire nation, of all the people, even the minority voters whose idea or candidate was defeated. Thus every election result should be considered to be a unanimous result, regardless of how narrow a margin decided the matter, and opposition to the decisions of the majority are treason against the nation and attempts to undermine the rights of the people. This theory led directly to the worst horrors of the French Revolution, eventually collapsing on itself when the people elected Napoleon Bonaparte military dictator. The result was an absolute terror of liberal ideas in Europe that came to define the post-Napoleonic era.

Democracy is, as Benjamin Franklin said in another famous moment (only to have his line swiped by Winston Churchill), the worst form of government... except for all the others. This is why the United States has a constitutional democracy intended to define the powers of the government and protect the rights of the minority.

In this modern era (and indeed for much of the history the United States) the defining political arguments have all been about what our Constitution truly means. Even though the victory of the Hamiltonian interpretation of the 'necessary and proper' clause was sealed when Jefferson used it to justify the Louisiana Purchase, strict construction and liberal interpretation remain locked in an apparent struggle to the death. Even though the Constitution's 'absolute' nature was put to rest when the first ten amendments were tacked on to ensure ratification, and many of them have followed since, we still face a struggle over the question of whether the Constitution is truly a living document.

The United States Constitution was intended for two purposes: firstly, to integrate thirteen squabbling pseudo-nations into one real country under a national government strong enough to be able to protect those states from the rest of the world and, secondly, to protect the citizens of those states... from the governments of their states. Freedom of speech and the press was guaranteed not because of British colonial policy (if you read the newspaper polemics and published pamphlets of the day, not to mention the speeches, you will find that the British colonies enjoyed a Hell of a lot of freedom of expression and by God they used it!) but because of the laws passed in some states restricting such expression. The fundamental reason freedom of religion was guaranteed was because of the powerful state churches in Massachusetts (Congregational) and Virginia (Episcopal) and their treatment of dissenters.

The purpose of the constitution was thus two-fold: to establish a democratic form of government, and to protect the people from the disasters of democracy run amok. Majority tyranny is no less tyrannical because it is popular. Slavery was either supported in some form or else not actively opposed by the majority of Americans until the Civil War. The fact that slavery was politically protected by the majority did not make it any less tyrannical.

All of this brings me back to the Supreme Court. There have been bad justices and bad courts. Disasters like Plessy v. Ferguson and the Dredd Scott decision cannot be excused and the Court is not infallible.

These serious errors do not make the Court less important, though they do make the issue of judicial appointments even more serious than their political impact on voting blocs already makes them. The Supreme Court is meant to defend us from our government. In a neighborhood where the gangbangers all have guns, citizens should be able to protect themselves. In a society built on the recognition of fundamental human rights, denying those rights to others is fundamentally unacceptable. Excessive punishment is cruel and unusual whether or not is popular and its opposition controversial.

Democracy is the best form of government that we have available, but its maintenance requires that the minority be able to protect itself from the majority.

The Supreme Court is meant to be our arsenal.

5-4 Against: The Supreme Court Strikes Down Capital Punishment In ALL Rape Cases

Rather than attempt to copy the journalistic aspect of this news, I will simply state that today the United States Supreme Court ruled that capital punishment for rape, regardless of the age of the victim, is cruel and unusual unless the victim is killed by the rapist.

This ruling is bound to be controversial, despite the fact that only five states had laws permitting capital punishment in cases of child rape and only Louisiana allowed such a sentence to be given on the first offense, because of the despicable nature of crimes against children and the moral outrage such crimes engender in the public. This moral outrage is the justification for the slippery slope sexual predator legislation that deprives sex offenders of many of their constitutional rights, which one could claim laid the mental justification for the battery of civil rights abuses in the 'Patriot Act' and the conduct of the Justice Department during this administration.

Despite the controversy, this ruling was the right one. Capital punishment is a slippery slope of its own, and every instance in which the government is allowed to kill people creates one more justification for the next instance. If one is morally opposed to capital punishment, one should be against capital punishment. Every horrible, vicious, disgusting crime which serves as an exception justifies judicial murder.

The author of the specific Louisiana law under scrutiny in this case said that even opponents of the death penalty would kill anyone who raped their own children. This is the natural parental impulse, yes. Parents defend their children or avenge them if they fail to protect them. Despite not being a parent, I can safely say that if I had a daughter and she was raped then I would want to kill the rapist myself.

This argument for judicial murder fails on two levels. First and foremost, people want to kill other people all the time. Violence is part of the package of instinctive responses to anger. Yet we, as sentient human beings, do not simply kill someone every time we want to kill someone. When we do, we are arrested and tried for murder. Parents may want to kill the rapist of their child, but the expression of that desire in the statement, "I would kill anyone who raped my child," is not proof that they would actually commit the deed under the circumstances. It is an expression of the natural emotional and instinctive reaction they experience at the mere thought of such a thing. If people truly killed people every time they wanted to do so, the murder rate would be far higher than it is even in our relatively murderous nation.

This leads directly into the second failure of the 'you'd do it if it was your kid' argument: people who know right from wrong know that murdering your child's rapist is not morally justified in a modern society of law. That doesn't mean that they would not choose to do so anyway, but it is no more morally justified to kill a child rapist because 'any parent would do it.' Despite the genuine and justified admiration for democratic input into the legal system, morality is not democratic. Something is right or it is wrong, and its popularity does not make it morally acceptable. Nor, as all our parents told us from a young age (whether they believed it or not) do two wrongs make a right.

The ancient Romans believed that there were only three appropriate legal punishments: punitive fines, exile (always accompanied by extremely harsh punitive fines unless undertaken voluntarily in lieu of trial), and execution. That's the moral ground that the slippery slope of acceptable capital punishment finally reaches if taken to its fullest measure.

If that's what you believe, then you are entitled to your opinion.

That doesn't mean that we should allow the government to be ruled by your standard.

'Major Blunders': Another View of Obama's Recent 'Mistakes'

CNN chose to make a big deal of what a terrible political mistake it was for Obama to announce that the chief of staff for his running mate would be a fired Clinton campaign manager. While the Democratic strategists they had on to discuss the issue did their best to legitimately explain the decision, they made no attempts to strongly communicate its clear and important message or the strengths of the decision. Wolf Blitzer, Lou Dobbs, and the various Republican strategists (of course) were negative and very heavy-handedly so. The words 'blunder', 'error', 'insult', etc. were spoken quite bit. Dobbs, a man whose economic populism suggests strongly that he should be backing Obama loudly, was the most abusive in tone.

Was it really a mistake? I don't think so. The decision to hire Hillary Clinton's fired campaign manager as the chief of staff for the vice presidential campaign sent a clear message that Hillary would not be the running mate. It sent this message without a big speech by Obama about why Hillary wasn't going to be his running mate or revealing what his other thoughts on his choice might be. When Obama announces his choice and it is not Hillary, the angry shock that would have inevitably followed without this announcement will have been diluted by the foreknowledge created by the hiring being criticized. It's better to take a small hit in the short term and to move on strong than it is to take a big hit when you can least afford it. So far, to me, it appears that Obama and his campaign staff have been operating in full understanding of this principle and have been unafraid to take the jabs to slip the right crosses. I can only praise a political toughness seldom seen in Democratic nominees, even if Obama isn't my nominee of choice.

Obama has also received a slough of criticism for his decision to opt out of the campaign finance system. I can understand this criticism, as there is a strong belief in the need for political campaigns in which corporate and PAC bribe money plays a smaller role. However, the loopholes in McCain-Feingold allow for massive amounts of soft money to be used in elections. Just bribe the party instead of the candidate, the candidate will know where the money came from.

I applaud Obama's decision to opt out of the public finance system. Yes, that's right, I applaud it. Vigorously. The Republican Party traditionally outspends the Democratic Party on soft money 'issue ads' that amount to the most vicious kind of attack ads. Small, private PACs like 'Swift Boat Veterans For Truth' have been added to the mix in good measure and no one knows where their money comes from. With all due respect to the necessary process of reform, you do not enter into a fistfight with one hand tied behind your back when your opponent has a knife in his pocket. Gore and Kerry both did this, and it ended badly for both of them.

When someone pulls a knife, you pull a gun. Obama doesn't intend to be passively knifed. He intends to fight back and win.