No One Asked Me...

Dr. Jekyl and Mr. Crime

2010-08-01T11:59:00.002-04:00

In the wake of the injunction against provisions of Arizona's new immigration law, the debate about immigration policy in the United States is heating up again. Immigration is shaping up to be the fashionable new wedge issue in politics, and it's being express-mailed into America's living rooms once again just in time for mid-term elections.

I'm finding a really curious aspect to this debate, which is what I want to focus on. That is the arguments around the concept of crime. It's been put forth that high rates of (illegal) immigrant crime is a reason for enforcement. This is silly on the face, because it logically suggests that if crime among (illegal) immigrants were to fall drastically, there would be no need to supervise immigration into this country. Obviously, if that were the case, we wouldn't require anything but a criminal background check before handing them a social security card and a passport.

Ultimately this suggestion leads to an argument about how high crime among (and against) (undocumented) immigrants really is. I've listened to minutes long debates in the media about property crimes, kidnapping, rape, robbery, assault, etc. The pro-enforcement crowd is almost always ignored or shouted down when they try to point out that fact of outstaying a visa is, by definition, a crime.

Just because someone has made positive contributions to society (as many undocumented resident aliens have) or have gotten away with that crime for decades does not mean it is any less of a violation of the law. Just ask any American cited for tax evasion, or any Nazi war criminal being prosecuted in his/her sunset years. Would you really want to have forgiven Dahmer or Manson just because they "worked hard and paid their taxes" all those years?

Granted, a visa overstay is not an equivalent crime to mass murder, but the notion that it is a victimless crime is fallacious. And this is where America's split personality really shows. The once-lauded mayor of New York City -- Rudy Giuliani -- built his political reputation on the "broken windows" theory of policing. He insisted that we focus on the small crimes, as a way of preventing the larger ones. We seem to accept this theory, even applaud it, except when it comes to "racist" immigration policies.

We have the most liberal immigration policy in the world. Almost anyone can come here to visit, for almost any reason, for six months, without any sort of restrictions on their activities, any monitoring, or any requirement to check in and prove that they are here doing what they said they were going to do. We seem to forget that most of the world does not extend this same sort of courtesy.

In addition, there are dozens of valid reasons available to apply for permanent citizenship, provided you go through the proper channels. Nobody is suggesting that it is easy--we are all aware of the red tape, high costs and long waits involved--but nonetheless, there is a process in place for it that gets used by thousands every year to obtain legitimacy. Are we really to accept the "shop-lifter's" argument that not having the ability to "purchase" the item entitles them to take it?

I agree with those folks who get riled when undocumented aliens are called "illegal". It is true that people cannot be illegal. Their actions, however, are another matter. As much as a visa overstay might seem to be a minor crime and the act of a "petty criminal", they have significant effects on Americans overall, and over time the theft of goods adds up. Multiplied by millions, the takings have enormous impact, which we no longer can afford to absorb.

It is time to acknowledge that an individual who chooses to ignore the very first law that is applicable to them upon crossing over into the United States has committed a crime. Does that indicate a general lack of regard not worthy of citizenship? Until we acknowledge the disingenuousness involved in our use of the word "crime", nobody is going to be able to answer that question.

The Case for Superdelegate Independence - March 24, 2008

2008-03-24T11:59:00.003-04:00

The Case for Superdelegate Independence (or "The Voters Couldn't Decide, So Somebody Has To")

I have been hearing a really annoying argument making the rounds ever since it became clear that neither Hillary nor Obama is going to take the nomination on pledged delegates.

It seems that some of the luminaries of our great Democratic Party (hey, right-wing radio, there is an IC on the end of our party name--it's the democrat-ic party, not the democrat party--deal with it) and various lefty-liberal radio personalities (sorry Rachel Maddow) are insisting that the superdelegates should follow the popular vote and go as the pledged delegates go for their state/county/whatever. Intuitively, this sounds like a very democratic notion, right? If you got more votes, you should win, yes?

No. Under the existing rules for the primary process, asking the superdelegates to follow the pledges is very undemocratic and runs counter to their purpose. Here's why:

1. IT DISTORTS PROPORTIONALITY. It is the electoral college writ local. The Democratic nominating process allocates pledged delegates according to proportionality. If you require that the superdelegates vote, en masse, for whoever got the majority of the popular vote, then it is no longer proportional voting, it is proportional voting with a "winner takes all" bonus round. It gives the voters who happen to be part of the majority in their district a bigger say in the nationwide delegate tally than those who happened to be in the minority. The Democratic party rules calls for proportional voting to avoid just this sort of distortion and the "cherry-picking" of states that goes on in the electoral college in the general election.

2. Caucuses. (Can you ask for a more unrepresentative voting mechanism?) This magnifies the proportionality distortion problem, from planet-sized to galaxy-sized. It is a smaller voter sample, with even greater distortion of voting power.

3. Delegate independence. Though it's considered poor form to change a vote, pledged delegates are under no obligation to vote as they are pledged, only to make a best effort to represent the wishes of their state. Why should superdelegates not have the same perogative?

4. Endorsements. Superdelegates are often party VIPs, whose endorsements arguably have some sway. Why are we making the case that these folks can endorse one candidate, and be forced to vote for a different one during convention?

5. Having the "most" votes does not mean having "enough" votes. Whether you are ten votes from the "magic number" or 1,000 votes away, you still haven't "finished the foot-race". If there is a mile-long race, and nobody crosses the finish line by running the entire mile, you don't hand the gold medal to the person who came closest. Neither Hillary, nor Obama has reached the "magic number", so neither one is more entitled to be the nominee than Dennis Kucinich. Superdelegates were meant for exactly this purpose--to represent the interests of the entire party, especially if the voters don't settle on a nominee. (Imagine for a moment that Huckabee had managed to secure a near-draw with McCain like this on the Republican side. Do you think for a moment that the spotlight would be on McCain? No, it would be on the guy breathing down his neck.)

6. Voice of the Voters is Sancrosanct, except when it's not. If the voice of the popular vote is so important, why deny any delegates (FL, MI) seating at the convention? And why did those states lose their superdelegates too? And why would we permit the pledged delegates of a candidate who has dropped out (John Edwards) to vote for someone else at the convention?

7. Voter multipliers. You get to vote more than once. Superdelegates multiply your voting power, but fairly, because they are elected too. Unlike the proportionality distortion issue, these "S" voters multiply the majority voting power of all registered Democratic voters, not just the people who picked the winning side in the primary (or the teeny, tiny group that caucused).

8. Dump the "free-riders". Again, because they are elected by Democratic voters (and others with similar interests), the superdelegates help magnify the voting power of Democratic party voters. If your state happens to have a Democratic governor, and two Democratic senators, for example, and you voted for these fine politicians, then presumably they are more likely to vote the way you would in the primary. This adds voting power to you as a DEMOCRATIC PARTY voter, and helps dilute the voting power of those Republican, Libertarian, Conservative, Working Party, Green Party and Independent Party voters who switched party affiliation just to tamper with YOUR party primary. Take that, you party-poopers!

The Democratic Party is not a small-d democratic organization. It is not there to serve the interests of all voters, only the political interests of registered party members. The superdelegates are there to magnify the influence of Democrats. Therefore they must take responsibility not only for the majority interest in the primary, but for the interests of those Democrats (and others with Democratic preferences) who voted for them, as well as the long-term and political objectives of the party.

(Full Disclosure: I am a Hillary Clinton supporter, a life-long registered Democrat, a supporter of superdelegate independence, a supporter of the electoral college, and have worked on one Democratic Congressional Campaign in New York whose candidate did not make the ballot due to technical challenges. I support a single national primary election date, or rotating regional primaries, and same-day registration. By my calculation, less than 50% of my primary vote will count in New York under current rules without superdelegate influence).

Rudy’s Protection Racket – December 9, 2007

2007-12-09T11:59:00.000-05:00

As we try to separate the wheat from the chaff in this extended Presidential election season, chock-a-block with candidates on both sides, it is a time-consuming exercise to parse all of the allegations made in the media and the candidates explanations of same.

I am extremely grateful to Tim Russert and Meet the Press for running a full-hour interview with every candidate who will accept his invitation to be on the show. Russert distills many of the charges leveled by the press (or in some cases, government reports) and gives the candidate an opportunity to respond that cannot compare with the fox-hole crouching that takes place in the debates.

As a New Yorker who lived under his regime, up to and including his so-called “heroism” on September 11, 2001, I am not a fan and was loathe to have to sit through another hour of his sanctimonious, ego-maniacal posturing. However, I consider it extremely important to understand the positions, personality and intelligence of each of the candidates, so when high-profile disputes arise in the one-on-one that is the main election event, it is far easier to place it all in context. For example, watching how W. dealt with McCain during the primaries in South Carolina put the “Swift-Boat” attacks on John Kerry in perspective. You can always learn something new, even about someone you already think you know very well.

Giuliani’s “security” consulting firm has done work for some clients with questionable ties to regimes that we might consider undemocratic. There have been calls for Giuliani to expose his client lists (both at Giuliani Partners and at the law firm he joined, Bracewell and Giuliani) so that the voting public may factor in any influence his high-paying clients may have on him. Of particular interest are the clients who arguably have connections to the very disaster that escalated Giuliani to national political status.

Giuliani Partners, which Rudy casually refers to as GP does unspecified “security and training” for an unspecified department of the government of Qatar. A Wall Street Journal article cited by Russert alleges that in 1996, the FBI sought to apprehend Khalid Sheik Mohammed (perpetrator of the destruction of the World Trade Center) within Qatar for his participation in a plot to blow up as many as a dozen airliners, only to lose him because he was tipped off by an Al Qaeda sympathizer within the government itself.

Russert additionally cited an article by Joe Conason of Salon.com, that alleges that the Emir of Qatar appointed as Minister of the Interior, Abdullah al-Thani, a strict Wahhabist, who has been identified by government reports and by the media as a protector of Khalid Sheik Mohammed.

The icing on this particular conflict-of-interest cupcake is the accusation of a CIA officer that Giuliani Partners (and by extension Giuliani) is taking money from the same accounts as people who protected Khalid Sheik Mohammed.

Giuliani’s defense, aside from outright laughter at similar allegations that he has done business with close associates of Kim Jong-Il and with a company run by Hugo Chavez, was to say that Qatar was an ally, who we should be cultivating. He denies working for the Interior Ministry, but declines to say which department he is working for. He denies any contact with al-Thani, but provides no guidance on who in the Qatari government did sign the contract.

He insists his work revolves around security and teaching the government of Qatar how to prevent terrorist (his word, not mine—I don’t believe in using this word in this context) attacks from Islamic Fundamentalists. He asserts that American companies, and particularly his, are being sought out on these matters because: a) Qatar was bombed “once, a while back”, and b) his firm employs many of the ex-FBI agents who tracked down and imprisoned the bad guys like KSM the first time around. He insists we should be partnering with anyone on the idea of security from terrorism, and that this provided his firm with good experience on this.

Setting aside the irony of Giuliani’s claim to be an expert at preventing acts of terrorism attacks when the SAME building in New York was successfully attacked TWICE by the same radical group, you have to wonder at the gall of someone who serves up this additional irony: we are selling you the expertise of the FBI who failed to catch the bad guy who masterminded the attack on my city, and was hiding out in your country, because a member of your government managed to outsmart my FBI and help the bad guy give them the slip. I mean really, how can anybody pitch this with a straight face? This is like Clyde helping Bonnie evade the sheriff and then asking the sheriff to teach him how to protect himself from getting shot by Bonnie.

This isn’t even a successful “protection” racket. This isn’t about Giuliani’s boys going in and trashing the store and then showing up later to charge the store owner to keep it from happening again. Why would Qatar need to pay GP to protect them, when they are busy doing “favors” for members of the Al Qaeda mobsters like KSM. They’re already earning their protection. It’s an insane logical proposition, unless you consider it an attempt to influence a future American President with a chip on his shoulder for Islamic Fundamental “terrorist” supporters and harborers to keep them out of it once the shooting starts.

So, I did learn something new about Giuliani after all. In addition to his fascist tendencies, his unsympathetic social policies (as evidenced by his actions, not his public support), his amoral private behavior (Bernie Kerik and Judith Nathan), and his desire to take credit for things he has not done (protecting the city from crime and terrorism), he is clearly fully experienced in the fine art of quid pro quo in politics. I’m so glad he is willing to turn his cheek for a third time to the radicals that struck New York. The only question is, what will they bomb this time, since there is nothing left of the World Trade Center?

The Stupidest and Second Stupidest Arguments – December 2, 2007

2007-12-02T11:59:00.000-05:00

There is something about Hillary Rodham Clinton’s candidacy that brings out the rage in some people, like tension brings out the Hulk. And, like the Hulk, when these people get enraged, they get stupid.

Two of the stupidest arguments I’ve ever heard in politics are currently being made in connection with Hillary.

The stupidest argument is the “alternating Bush-Clinton dynasties” argument, which says that we shouldn’t elect Hillary Clinton because that would mean either 24 or 28 years with either a Bush or a Clinton in the White House.

Why this should matter is never explained, and I suspect it is not explained because its nonsensical on its face. The administrations of the Bushes, senior and junior, and that of William Clinton represented different political parties, traditions and methods. Bill Clinton was no more a continuation of Poppy Bush’s reign than W’s was of the Teflon President’s. If you were making the argument that the two came from the same family, party or even political approach, cooperating in an attempt to pervert the institutions of democracy, or resulting in declining effectiveness, or increasing scandal and corruption, then the argument makes sense. But that is not the case here.

Clinton, a work-aholic, studious and thoughtful, if dysfunctional man, presided over a stellar economy (fueled by an internet stock bubble and fraudulent stock-option profiteering accounting practices at public companies), declining unemployment, and democratic “big” government proposals, like NAFTA and universal healthcare (with varying degrees of success). He also presided over multiple scandals (Whitewater, Lewinsky), distracting legal disputes (Paula Jones suit) and front page peace initiatives (Northern Ireland and Israel).

Leaving aside the first Bush presidency because it was only four years long, Bush, a lazy, uncurious and judgmental, if dysfunctional man, presided over a tanking economy (fueled by an real estate bubble and fraudulent accounting practices by war-profiteering private contractors), escalating unemployment, and undemocratic “big” government proposals, like pulling out of treaties and privatizing social security (with varying degrees of success). He also presided over multiple scandals (Abu Graib, Alberto Gonzales), distracting legal disputes (Scooter Libby suit) and front page peace initiatives (Syria and Israel).

It is clear that neither of these administrations needed the continuity of following the other to make mistakes, and that the country had no problem switching to a diametrically different leader when the time came. It is unclear how electing Bush after Clinton represents a preference for a dynasty, or electing Hillary after W for that matter.

It would have made far more sense to raise this argument about W, who represented not a continuation of his father’s four-year reign, but arguably a continuation of the 12 year Reagan term that Poppy was a part of. At the time that W. was running, something like 1 in 9 Americans was already being governed by a Bush at the state level. There is a far clearer case to be made for a Bush dynasty than for that of the Clintons (unless Chelsea starts making trips to New Hampshire and Iowa next year).

In addition, if you are worried about continuity of a political dynasty, then it makes more sense to argue against the common practice of having the Vice President of a two-term President become the presumptive nominee of the party.

That last leads me to the second stupidest argument ever made about Hillary, which is that she has no experience to be President, because she was First Lady, not President, and she’s never run anything on her own.

For starters, she is a U.S. Congressperson (a seat she was all but assured of winning, when after being opposed by the ever-so-popular Giuliani, he withdrew from the race with a medical excuse known as tail between legs), which is the same “experience” brought to the table by McCain, Obama, Thompson, Edwards, Gravel and Kucinich, to name a few.

Also in the race, with no more experience at holding a national executive office than the handful of legislative office-holders, are a couple of governors (Romney, Huckabee, Richardson and a couple of ex-mayors (Kucinich and Giuliani).

Throw in all the “experience” that I think makes a person uniquely unqualified to be President—that of the military, and religious training (McCain, Romney, Huckabee). Military and religious training require you to subdue critical thinking faculties to obedience—producing excellent followers, but very few leaders.

What should we make of this argument that a spouse does not obtain training by watching? I think the same exact argument can be made for the Vice President. This is a job that can be as ceremonial and uninvolved as the President chooses it to be—like that of First Lady.

I would argue that “watch me” experience can count for a lot. We used to require all of our trade training to be of the “watch me” variety in the form of apprenticeships. Who would you rather have cutting your diamonds: a stone-cutter, a wood-cutter or the apprentice who spends all day watching the diamond cutter?

If you accept that a highly involved political spouse can be learning the ropes just as a Vice President does, then Hillary, along with having been a governor’s spouse, a legislator and a member of the Board of Directors of a major corporation, is the only candidate in the race who does have White House experience. All this should be turning the other candidates green with envy, instead of being green and stupid like the Hulk.

Wrong Side of the Advertising Tracks

2006-03-19T11:59:00.000-05:00

I am a reader of many of the liberal opinion magazines, listener of liberal talk and news radio and general partaker of media to keep abreast of current events in the United States. I do not have cable, so my television exposure is limited to the Sunday morning political shows, which are increasingly slanting right. I occasionally tune in to the other side, by dialing up O'Reilly, Hannity, Rush and their ilk, or by picking up a conservative paper. I suscribe to a weekly news magazine that does a fairly balanced job of culling both sides of the major issues by surveying many papers across the nation and around the world.

For this column, I do a fair amount of research, mostly on the internet, which is another medium for obtaining information. I even pay attention to the news headlines that stream into the elevator that I ride up to my day job each day.

I think most Americans pay attention to some form of the news every day, even if it's bite-sized teasers for the evening news, or just scanning the headlines as they pass the news stand on their way to work.

I also like to pay attention to the advertising though. I do this because the balkanization of advertising is as important as anything else in determining the depth, quality and immediacy of the news we are getting, and because I believe the advertising environment plays a significant factor in our subjective judgments on the accompanying news (let's pretend for a moment that entertainment and sporting news aren't actually treated as real news).

Advertisements run the gamut from flogging shady vitamin supplements, weight loss pills, miracle cures, and semi-interesting but unnecessary gadgets, to medical advances, automobiles, mainstream technology, brand-name consumer products, and mass-market entertainment. There's also everybody's quadri-perennial favorite, the paid political ad seen and heard only around election time.

Beyond the product itself, advertising needs to focus on a target audience. An ad will implicitly (if well-conceived) try to motivate a particular sub-group of consumer; whether retail or mail order, young or old, alternative or mainstream, by gender or by race, brand-loyalist or impulse buyer, or the seeker of quality vs the price-conscious shopper.

Most of modern advertising contributes to the financial health of a program or publisher, and all of it, to some degree, provides either an aura of authenticity or a sheen of disreputable intent. How does the media consumer's perception of the included advertising (to the extent that it is perceived) reflect on the quality of the media itself? Can low-brow advertising depress the perceived quality of well-researched, well-written, fact-based reporting or well-informed opinion? Will the presence of ads for "house-hold names" add respectibility? If advertising seeks the largest and most appropriate audience, and media cannot obtain critical mass without advertising, then how does one graduate to the big-time to adopt that veneer of authority? What does one do in a fledgling enterprise?

I recently took three full-page ads from one of my favorite opinion magazines and spent five minutes researching the miracle cures (or the books about same) noted in the articles. It took no more than a quick internet search to find that the individuals touting these miracles (presented as brave innovators being suppressed by authority) had been censured by their peers, debunked by other scientists, restricted by (or in some cases, criminally prosecuted by) government and were promoting cure rates or studies that could not be verified or duplicated.

So why would a reputable magazine accept such an ad? Wouldn't the appearance of such an ad undermine the overall respectability of the magazine's editorial content?

The same is true of radio. Talk radio, from left to right, is a awash in a sea of ads for vitamin supplements, weight loss pills, baldness cures, dubious credit counseling services and medical advertising for non-essential procedures. Can you really take that criticism of foreign policy seriously after listening to a ersatz 70 year old tell you he now has a fuller head of hair than when he was in his 20s?

It's hard to criticize an enterprise that may be fighting for survival, and particularly in this instance, because there has to be a presumption on the part of the publisher or broadcaster that their consumer is smart enough to discern the difference between the advertising and the vehicle. Making that argument is a lot like defending a library inside a brothel--it's bound to suffer a readership decline due to the surroundings despite the fact that readers should be able to ignore them.

There's no easy answer to the advertising conundrum. Advertising supported media provides cheap, broadly accessible information. To the extent that it cheapens the content itself, we may just have to ignore it.

Cheney Channels Clinton

2006-02-19T11:59:00.000-05:00

It's ironic, really. Vice President Dick Cheney, arguably the most secretive man in the U.S. government (he has had the google satellite map of his home classified), is asserting his right to reveal secrets.

During a recent Fox News interview (transcript from CNN), Cheney asserted that he has the right to declassify information, while refusing to specify whether he had done so. When asked whether he thought the Veep had the right to declassify, he referred to an executive order that permits it. He would cop to having "advocated declassification and participated in declassification decisions", but not to having done so "unilaterally".

The subject came up in a short exchange regarding court filings in the trial of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby's, which suggested that Libby's superiors had authorized him to release classified information. Libby is being prosecuted for perjury and obstruction of justice by Patrick Fitzgerald, the federal prosecutor investigating the Plame leak.

It was an impressive display of Clintonian parsing because he managed to convey three separate false impressions with one technically correct assertion (that the EO permits the Vice President to declassify information). By invoking his power to declassify in response to a question about whether Libby's superiors may have authorized the leak, he implied that he:

1) had the right to selectively declassify Plame's identity;
2) had the right to delegate that privilege to Libby; and
3) may have already done so, rendering Libby's disclosure legal.

It was a very neat bit of misdirection, because Cheney's authority under the EO is irrelevant to Libby's claim. Here's why:

The executive order that Cheney is referring to is Executive Order 12958, implemented by President Clinton in 1995, which was intended to safely and automatically declassify as much government information as possible. It was amended by Executive Order of President Bush in March of 2003 (EO 13292) in order to add anti-terrorism information to the categories of information that are protected from automatic declassification, and to make some procedure changes. (Full text of the amended EO)

While Section 1.3 of the EO does technically grant the VP the authority to classify (and to declassify) information, it is a qualified authority, exercisable only within the context of his executive duties (a distinction not made for the President, by the way). I doubt that the disclosure of a NOC's name, or the information about a classified National Intelligence Briefing to the press can be taken to be a function of the VP's executive duties.

Section 3.1 specifically relates to declassifying authority. It says that information that no longer meets the criteria for classification gets declassified, but information that meets the criteria is presumed to need protection. Protected information could then be declassified only when "the need to protect such information may be outweighed by the public interest in disclosure of the information...[w]hen such questions arise, they shall be referred to the agency head or the senior agency official. That official will determine, as an exercise of discretion, whether the public interest in disclosure outweighs the damage to the national security that might reasonably be expected from disclosure." Section 3.1 also defines "Declassification authority" as "the official who authorized the original classification, if that official is still serving in the same position" or "the originator's current successor in function". Taken together, this means that Plame's identity and the NIE would have to have been classifed by Cheney (or a preceding VP) in the first place in order for him to have discretion in this matter.

Even if you assume that he did, his authority did not extend to Scooter Libby. Section 1.3 also provides for some redelegation of classification authority, but:

1) it is "limited to the minimum required to administer this order";
2) delegators "are responsible for ensuring that designated subordinate officials have a demonstrable and continuing need to exercise this authority"; and
3) "[e]ach delegation of original classification authority shall be in writing and...shall identify the official by name or position title".

Clearly, Libby's need to disclose Plame's identity to the press does not further the effective execution of the EO, so the delegation would not be legal. Had written delegation to Libby existed, surely it would have been provided to head off the trial to begin with.

Finally, it is clear that he had not already declassified the information in question, because then Libby's defense would not be that he was authorized to release classified information. It instead would have been that the information wasn't classified in the first place.

The only question left unanswered now is how long it will take Cheney to get around to classifying this post.

Honoring Labor's Sacrifices - Sept 4, 2005

2005-09-04T11:59:00.003-04:00

As we fire up the barbecues and ready for our labor day celebrations, I'd like everyone to stop for a moment and think about another reason for honoring labor - how it creates community through sacrifice.

In the wake of hurricane Katrina and the failure of the New Orleans levees and pumps, hundreds of thousand of our fellow Americans have faced disaster of epic proportions.

There are people in dire need of those things all of us need--water, food, clothing, shelter and medicine. It is the labor of other ordinary Americans that is filling the void. Whether it is the preparation of food in Baton Rouge churches, or volunteers from the NYPD piling into police cars and making the long trip to New Orleans. It is the volunteers of the Red Cross and the Salvation Army and neighbors rescuing neighbors with boats. It is the families in Houston adopting evacuees.

It is the labor and sacrifice of these individuals big and small, that is helping to improve the survival and conditions for all of those affected.

That, as much as anything, has always been the function of labor. Through shared sacrifice and effort the American Labor force continues to lift the prospects of all Americans. Whether it is reaching out to the under-compensated sectors of the work force to set the standards across all workplaces, or the determination to take the hit for everyone by striking.

It is the unity of that determination, even in the face of continued pressure from big business, the abandonment of pension plans, or the splitting of the national labor movement. It is that unity--that shared effort--that is the strength of America. So, take a moment today, to say thank you to American Labor, and then go fire up those coals.

Conspiracy of Cool - August 14, 2005

2005-08-14T11:59:00.000-04:00

Once upon a time, there was a debate about global warming.

On one side of the debate, many climatologists believed that temperatures were rising on the earth's surface, in our oceans and in the atmosphere. Computer models predicted significant changes in weather patterns over time that could subject the planet's people and animals to catastrophic weather events.

On the other side of the debate were others who argued that the data demonstrating warming was inconclusive. They frequently cited reports by a pair of scientists who have been publishing reports on the temperature of the troposphere (which is the layer of the atmosphere that ends about five miles from the earth's surface). These reports have diverged from the computerized climate models and surface temperature trends, showing no warming of the troposphere.

The existence of these reports have buttressed the arguments of anyone who wanted to argue against global warming by suggesting that the science was uncertain. It has allowed the U.S. to delay taking mitigating actions which are viewed to be harmful to business, especially under this administration.

On August 12th, the NY Times (Errors Cited in Assessing Climate Data) reported that the calculations of air temperatures used in formulating those reports have been wrong all along. When the errors are adjusted for, the results not only show an increase in air temperatures--the increase is consistent with the surface temperature trends and the computer models.

That deafening click you just heard was the last piece of the puzzle snapping into place. We no longer have an excuse to fiddle while Rome sizzles.

So why isn't the sky falling? The Times article appeared in the National Section on page A12. Why not the front page like the travails of the recent space shuttle mission? Why isn't this being presented with the same urgency as other policy emergencies with far less empirical support, such as the social security deficit, or say, WMD in Iraq? Why haven't we lifted the ecological warning alert to code red?

The time has come for us to recognize the seriousness of this issue and do something about it. We cannot hope for that to happen unless our leaders and the press raise the profile of the problem and push for real solutions.

Unscientific Method

2005-06-26T14:00:00.000-04:00

Thomas Friedman has got it right. The world is getting flatter, but not because of globalization. The erosion of the wall separating church and state is threatening to take us back to a time when common belief was in a flat earth.

The assault on government by the religious has escalated in the last few years, essentially because this administration is viewed as supportive of religion's role in government--a necessary position for a Republican trying to get through a bitter primary against a war hero.

The decades old battle over the teaching of evolution in the schools is being refought, at the very moment in history that our Supreme Court is mulling over the constitutionality of displays of the Ten Commandments in government venues. Creationism has received a reality TV makeover and has been repackaged as Intelligent Design.

Some may view this as benign acquiescence to the majority religion in the country, but it is extremely important that we understand what we are giving up when we give dogmatic belief and scientific theory equal footing.

The discipline of science requires replicatable proof, derived from experiment and observation, before we are permitted to accept any theory as a basis for further scientific inquiry. Religion requires faith in laws that have not been proven. Unproven scientific theory is modified over time, with the introduction of new information. Religious belief requires that people modify their premises to conform with doctrine.

Science applies the same rules to everyone, and everybody can participate, as long as the rules remain intact. When you devalue a scientific theory like evolution, which has not yet been conclusively proven, by equating it with a religious "theory" like creationism, which can never be proven, you create two separate sets of rules. For a democracy, there is nothing more dangerous than that, because the only thing left to settle the argument is force.

This is what came to mind when I read the recent New York Times article On Autism's Cause, It's Parents vs. Research.

Here, we clearly have a subset of the population that has taken on faith the idea that thimerisol preservative in childhood vaccinations is the cause of autism. These parents, based upon their own observations, which suggest a causal link because of the timing of the development of the disorder, believe in the face of all scientific evidence to the contrary.

If policy is altered to conform with their beliefs, we will be taking a great step backwards in modern health. However, if someone should undertake a true scientific study to determine the cause of autism, perhaps, we will take a great step forward with development of treatment or even a cure.

Will we walk a flat earth, or sail over the horizon to a yet-unseen future? Believe or explore?

It Ain't Easy Being Green

2005-04-09T14:00:00.000-04:00

Are you ready for the new definition of "green"? No, it's not the new black. It's nuclear power.

That's not the punch line to some obscure joke. In the latest Orwellian repackaging of an unpopular initiative, the right is attempting to recast nuclear power as the greenest alternative available to the evil-doer-supporting oil industry.

In an eerie replay that is reminiscent of the run-up before the Iraq war, the passing of No Child Left Behind and the Medicare Drug Benefit, suddenly the opinion pages are littered with commentary that is critical of other alternative power sources, claims that conservation efforts will be too little-too late and downplaying the dangers of nuclear power.

My favorite bolstering claim is the one that suggests that imposing an $X per ton tax on carbon emissions renders nuclear power's costs competitive. Tack that sentence onto any energy analysis and substitute another number for X and anything can be made to look cost-competitive, even using the ambient heat from your television set.

To understand why nuclear energy isn't green (and all those conservation groups that are allegedly forging alliances over this issue ought be ashamed of themselves), the nuclear advocates have to be sent back to the dictionary to re-learn the definition of another important word--pollution. The pollution that causes global warming is not the only kind of pollution, and some kinds are far worse than others.

Truly green solutions view the earth as a living organism with systems that are vital to it's survival (not our survival, but survival of the organism as a whole). Viewed through that lens the costs of nuclear power are infinitely expensive because the polluting by-products of nuclear power are impossible to ameliorate. We must necessarily pick sections of the earth (mostly underground) to permanently poison, and hope they remain isolated. Yes, carbon emissions are bad, but with enough determination, they are reversible, and not immediately toxic. It is the difference between drinking alcohol and drinking arsenic.

The true cost of each power source in this country will never be clear to the consumer until the costs of ameliorating the pollutive by-products are integrated into the supply cost. Nuclear energy, in particular, has never been subject to true market costs in this country, because it has always been highly-subsidized by this government, and clean-up costs invariably get shifted to someone else. And, if the government's cost to attempt to restore New York after 9/11 were $20 billion, what will the cost of a terrorist attack on a nuclear facility be?

And, all of those costs assume that everybody is playing by the rules. Past human behavior suggests that there is bound to be cheating and cutting corners as these plants seek to maximize profits--either by illegally disposing of wastes, or by skimping on maintenance or security, which means untold health costs down the line for invisible exposures. When the victims of those cancer clusters seven, eight, ten, twenty years down the line decide to sue, the government will surely have to step in and rescue a "necessary" industry, considered vital to our nations security because it reduced our reliance on foreign oil. By then, switching back to oil won't even be an option, because there will be such a small supply left that it will be too expensive for mass consumption.

We need a new paradigm that stops forcing these trade-offs and allows the consumer to weigh the real costs of their energy choices. Only then, can the market truly tell us what we feel comfortable living with (or dying with). Just as consumers have increasingly shown a preference for healthy, sustainable food production through higher prices for organic food, and a disdain for polluting, wasteful practices by putting pressure on tuna producers, milk producers, chicken factories, hog factories and veal factories, so they will weigh in on nuclear energy.

In the meantime, scientists, environmentalists and greens need to speak up now, before this nonsense picks up steam and overwhelms the public with misinformation. Democrats are going to need to provide a united front, even though they are overwhelmed in Congress.

Otherwise, we can go back to the old definition of green--it's what you get when you mix blue with yellow.

Voters Get It...They Just Don't Like It

2005-03-19T14:00:00.000-05:00

A recent Op-Ed piece by David Brooks in the New York Times (A Requiem For Reform), suggests that the failure of the Republicans to secure so-called 'Social Security reform' represents a textbook case of politics gone awry.

In this view, the Republicans have played a tone-deaf tune to the American public, who would surely follow the Piper's tune, if only the dissonance were removed. He seems to think that better presentation would also have solved the cross-party issues in Congress.

In the same vein, Democrats are equally at fault for failing to look forward and fearing to cross the "Howard Dean hotheads" in the party. He indicts an unwillingness to compromise, or even to make a counteroffer.

Finally, he takes a slap at the American voter, who, according to Brooks, has apparently been racking up high entitlement spending and low taxes for thirty years, and charged the tab to their grandchildren.

I take issue with the idea that the failure of Social Security 'reform' is a failure of politics.

First of all, the whole issue isn't dead yet. Look for a repackaging of the whole program, bundled with a tax cut, or tacked onto a military-spending appropriation to be floated shortly. Failing that, I expect we will see a number of executive directives with the force of law that effectively force changes to the system without a vote.

Secondly, just because someone suggests something, doesn't mean it is a failure if it is not enacted. It is one of the great strengths of this system that vigorous offense and defense blend together to form a sieve that filters out the worst ideas. Sometimes the best thing we can do is take no action, or 'do no harm'.

The suggestion that Republicans have somehow failed to get their message out, or have somehow flubbed, it is patently ridiculous when entire government agencies have been turned into propaganda machines, and public relations firms and reporters alike are being hired to preach to the masses. It is far more likely that Americans have chosen not to drink the kool-aid on reform just yet.

To complain about Democratic intransigence willfully ignores the three trends which have made it politically impossible for them to do otherwise (and none of the three has anything to do with Howard Dean).

The first trend was set into motion by Republicans when they decided that the only way to keep the country from drifting leftward was to refuse to compromise with the moderates and liberals in Congress. This strategy, once the party got its members in line, has been so effective as to permit both the Executive and the Legislative branches to be controlled by Republicans, even though Americans tend to favor a divided government. Democrats have little choice but to dig their feet in if they wish to pull the country back to the center.

The second trend falls into the 'once-bitten, twice-shy' category, and the blame falls squarely on this President, the standard-bearer for the new "Reagan Republicans". Every time a moderate Democrat has reached across the aisle to co-sponsor favored administration legislation, he or she has been burned politically. Even moderates within his own government have been undercut, ousted or sent into the political wilderness.

The third trend is procedural within the Congress itself. House Democrats have been hamstrung by procedural changes that prevent them from proposing bills or participating in law-making in any meaningful way. (For an excellent read on the subject, see Michael Crowley's "Oppressed Minority" in the New Republic). Being the minority in the Senate presents a similar problem. It has grown so bad that Republicans are seeking to rewrite the rules on breaking a filibuster (the so-called 'Nuclear Option') because the Democrats have had to threaten it so often to gain any leverage at all. So its a bit disingenuous to suggest that a counterproposal could have been made.

As for the blame allocated to the American people, this amounts to indicting the victim instead of the mugger. The last time the American voter actually went to the polls to vote over an economic issue, they put Reagan in office (think "oil crisis"). The politicians in this country have spent the last twenty five years exploiting culturally divisive class, race and religious issues for the express purpose of diverting attention from economic issues. The growth in corporate welfare, unnecessary and wasteful military spending and the huge disparities in return on federal tax dollars between red and blue states are just a few of the "entitlements" we have apparently been "demanding".

Meanwhile, schools are in scandalous disrepair, pensions have been replaced by 401K plans, families have gone from one job to four to make ends meet, homeownership is out of reach for huge swathes of the population, health care has been priced out of reach, pollution is on the upswing, traffic has made everyday tasks herculean and there are virtually epidemic breakouts of asthma and autism with no apparent cause. Please, please congressman! Raise my taxes back up to pay for these "entitlements". I can't live without them.

The truth of the matter is that most Americans are too busy trying to keep afloat to have the time to pay attention to politics the way the boomers did. Therefore, they feel more comfortable voting on issues for which opinion (or well-settled belief) is the only requirement for making a judgement. We shouldn't be blamed for using the cliff notes provided by politicians and (increasingly) ineffective media.

Politics should be about representing everyone, not blind obeisance to the dominant political party. On that score, politics may be failing...but on Social Security it's working just fine.

But Ma, Everyone's Doing It!

2004-10-16T11:59:00.000-04:00

I wanted to take a moment today away from a serious fact-based analysis of various issues and just rant for a minute. As I've watched the various post-debate discussions, I've repeatedly heard an assertion which has gone unchallenged, and it's really starting to frost me.

Commentators, campaign managers and even Senator Kerry have said that before we went to war in Iraq, that they believed that the evidence of weapons of mass destruction existed in Iraq -- we all did [emphasis mine].

Not ALL of us did. I didn't. The tens of leaks coming out of the CIA on a weekly basis to the contrary indicate that there were intelligence people who didn't. The diligent op-ed columnists who questioned the sudden "drum-beat" for war in Iraq didn't. Obviously, Valerie Plame's husband had questions. The UN inspectors hadn't yet called the game, but were arguing for more time--an indicator that they weren't persuaded either.

So, I challenge those who are examining the issue of whether Iraq is a mistake to stop letting this remark pass as accepted gospel, and to stop letting Kerry and other take themselves off the hook by making it sound as if nobody could have walked away from these discussions with another position on the issue.

Whether the questioners and dissenters were simply a minority, or just a group without an effective channel to communicate their concerns, they still deserve to be acknowledged, not rhetorically "disappeared" after the fact. Those that truly believe that "we all did" were not paying attention. As a nation, we should be mortified that this conversation did not take place before the war, and we should be ashamed that we still cannot have it afterwards.

The Truman Show, the Sequel

2004-10-09T14:00:00.000-04:00

In the 1998 Peter Weir film, The Truman Show, we were treated to an idealistic vision in which Truman Burbank's human spirit somehow intuitively understood the truth beyond a completely artificial universe concocted solely for him. His soulful yearning helped him conquer an implanted phobia, avoid meddling friends and family and ultimately find the door to what was real.

Here in 2004, I worry that life is imitating art in the comfy cocoon that is being erected around President Bush. More importantly, I worry that life will not imitate art enough to protect the electorate.

In a carefully stage-managed media bubble that rivals the carefully stage-managed town that was erected for Truman, our President gets to wander the highways and by-ways of this country fully convinced of the absolute righteousness of his regime, and the certainty that everyone agrees with him.

One would want to believe that it is all about the image he is projecting for the the rest of us, and an attempt to keep "on message", but more and more I'm coming to believe that, like the producers of the fictional Truman show, Bush's media managers are needing to remake reality internally for W, so that the finished product will look as they want it to.

The extraordinary measures being taken resemble more the kind of censorship and oppression found in totalitarian regimes: loyalty oaths, pre-screening of rally attendees, the segregation (and imprisonment) of dissenters and willful disregard of international protests. All seemed designed to keep W insulated from that pesky "real world" that might ruin his good mood, and all resemble those endlessly circling bicycles, cars and people in the film that dictated the rhythms of Truman's life.

W, too, has a father-related phobia implanted in him early in his political life, which is being used to keep him inside the well-defined borders of his pseudo-world. Like Truman's fear of water that keeps him isolated on his little island, Bush lives in fear of repeating what he views as his father's political failures, and leaving office without a legacy. This fear has led to a stubbornness that will take him over the edge of a cliff, rather than admit he'd misread the map.

What remains to be seen, is whether W will be human like Truman--whether his inner sense will push him to reach beyond the illusion and find out what's on the other side.

Making the Rounds

2004-07-18T11:02:00.000-04:00

Good day everyone. I would like to add another feature to this column, called "Makin' the Rounds". I receive a fair amount of anonymously authored, but strikingly on-point political humor via email circulation. I would like to highlight some of the best stuff here. Forewarning: I am an unapologetic liberal progressive and make no claims to being "fair and balanced" with regard to editorial humor. I also take no responsibility for the truthfulness of the comments contained within--I am merely reprinting items that find their way into my inbox (though I do not intend to reprint anything that defames or libels anyone).

Links to existing material on the internet will be added to the permanent link list on the right. I realize that some "anonymous" pieces are often lifted off of other sites and circulated without attribution. If that happens to your material, and you see it here, please don't call your lawyer, or take offense--just let me know, and if I can verify your site as the source, I'll be happy to credit you and link to your site, or take it down if you prefer.

So, without further ado, here is the first edition of "Making the Rounds", sent to me by a fellow blogger and campaign volunteer via email:

Things you have to believe to be a Republican today:

Saddam was a good guy when Reagan armed him, a bad guy when Bush's daddy made war on him, a good guy when Cheney did business with him and a bad guy when Bush needed a "we can't find Bin Laden" diversion

Trade with Cuba is wrong because the country is communist, but trade with China and Vietnam is vital to a spirit of international harmony.

The United States should get out of the United Nations, and our highest national priority is enforcing U.N. resolutions against Iraq.

A woman can't be trusted with decisions about her own body, but multi-national corporations can make decisions affecting all mankind without regulation

The best way to improve military morale is to praise the troops in speeches while slashing veterans' benefits and combat pay.

If condoms are kept out of schools, adolescents won't have sex.

A good way to fight terrorism is to belittle our long-time allies, then demand their cooperation and money.

Providing health care to all Iraqis is sound policy. Providing health care to all Americans is socialism.

Installing elections is vital to Iraq’s national security and promotes democracy. Postponing elections here in America is vital to our own.national security and protects our own democracy.

Global warming and tobacco's link to cancer are junk science, but creationism should be taught in schools.

A president lying about an extramarital affair is a impeachable offense. A president lying to enlist support for a war in which thousands die is solid defense policy.

Government should limit itself to the powers named in the Constitution, which include banning gay marriages and censoring the Internet.

The public has a right to know about Hillary's cattle trades, but George Bush's driving record is none of our business.

Being a drug addict is a moral failing and a crime, unless you're a conservative radio host. Then it's an illness, and you need our prayers for your recovery.

You support states' rights, which means Attorney General John Ashcroft can tell states what local voter initiatives they have the right to adopt.

What Bill Clinton did in the 1960s is of vital national interest, but what Bush did in the '80s is irrelevant.

Lowered Expectations

2004-07-03T12:05:00.000-04:00

Maybe being from New York City, I somehow perceive the economy differently from everyone else in the country—but I doubt it. The race seems to be on to lower expectations for this President prior to his re-election campaign, and we seem to be falling for it all over again.

How hard was it to see that this President presided over the worst job loss record in American history since Herbert Hoover? This while arm-twisting through tax cuts for the wealthy that drained the last vestiges of health from dozens of essential support programs for the needy.

Now that the economy is turning around—according to the Labor Department, the net job loss figure is down from 2.6 million to 1.1 million jobs—Bush wants to take credit for turning a corner that never should have been there in the first place.

Personally, I don’t see this improvement in the economy. My perception is that my neighbors suffered an increase of 25% to their cost of living almost overnight and wages and salaries are stagnating. Everything basic to living here has gone up drastically, subway fares, property taxes, insurance, food, clothing, electricity, health care—and that doesn’t include the recent flirtation with the $3 gallon of gas. So, even if you aren’t one of those 1.1 million who lost a job without a replacement, you are still hurting.

If you happen to be one of the other 1.5 million who lost a job and found another, chances are, you are making $9,000 less a year than you were before. Break out those party hats, folks. Aren’t you glad you got that $300 rebate to tide you over during those two years you were unemployed?

And the Bush team is arguing that this is good news. Why does he get to throw away two and a half years of bad economic news, while simultaneously using it as a baseline for measuring success? 1.1 million lost jobs ain’t chicken feed, and without the social support programs that the government used to pay for, those unemployed folks are leaning on their families, their churches, shelters, whomever, just to survive. That’s a drag on everyone else’s economy too.

Even if the job numbers even out tomorrow, I still think that this is the wrong measure to be using here. If you spent two months, or two years out of work, you know that it’s going to take you another two to get back to where you were before—assuming you are making a salary that’s on par with what you had before. To get to the growing economy we had shortly before the Bushies started talking down the economy (yes, that’s right, they started talking it down, BEFORE they got into office, knowing that the wealth distribution that was about to take place would displace jobs, they wanted to be able to blame Clinton for the downturn), we are going to need another two and a half years of forward growth. Can we really afford to wait for Bush to make it happen?

Spitzer’s Bad Medicine

2004-06-19T13:00:00.000-04:00

Being from New York, Eliot Spitzer is one of my heroes. He is to this generation what Ralph Nader was to Ford Pinto-owners in the seventies or what Geraldo was to the warehoused disabled with his “Willowbrook” expose.

His lawsuits on behalf of the powerless to prevent predation by spammers, the insurance industry, the pharmaceutical industry, the tobacco industry, the consumer lending industry (+) and efforts to protect the environment and investors (+) are proof that you can make a difference within the system—even in a state as politically hide-bound as New York.

However, Spitzer’s latest adventure with the pharmaceutical industry, as well-intentioned as it is, will worsen the problem he is intending to correct. Spitzer wants to address the quasi-unethical practice by pharma, in which a company pays for studies of the effects of it’s drugs, but releases the results only from the studies that fovor the company.

He has initiated a lawsuit against the international pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline. The company, in what is a very common practice in the industry, had chosen not to release the results of a study of Paxil’s effects on children. Spitzer’s suit claims that by not releasing ALL available study data on a drug, consumers are harmed. In this case, the drug was actively prescribed to children, even though test results collectively (and this particular study) do not show that they derive any benefit from it, or that it is safe. However, it is not unreasonable for doctors to have concluded that it was safe, since another similar drug from a competitor—Prozac—had conducted tests and received approval for children.

While Spitzer’s consumer-protectionist heart is in the right place, he stands to create a bigger problem than he is out to solve. (Full disclosure here: I formerly worked for a firm that specialized in consulting for the pharmaceutical industry.) This is because it assumes that all clinical studies are equal in validity.

The pharmaceutical companies pay for these studies because they are required to show safety and efficacy by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), who holds approval over whether the drugs can be marketed, and how. The FDA makes best efforts to look at the studies, and then to determine: if they are scientifically valid, if the benefits are as presented, which patient group actually benefits (if any), whether there are safety issues, and so on. The FDA can explicitly exclude companies from marketing a drug for a particular use, or to a particular age group. But there is such a thing as off-label use, which can be fed by word-of-mouth understanding of a drug’s effect that hasn’t formally been addressed by the FDA. Once a drug is perceived as safe for one use, doctors feel more comfortable prescribing for other uses, if there appears to be data to support that use.

The companies will naturally try to present all the scientific evidence in the most favorable light, or in a way that will not lead to the outright exclusion of certain markets. So what will happen if you require them to release all of the studies they conduct? They will have a strong incentive to produce studies that won’t really tell you much one way or the other, and to bury everyone with data. The resulting confusion will mean that there will be ten studies to sift through, without any outside measure of which ones are scientifically sound. The noise will produce a huge consumer pressure on doctors to continue to prescribe for off-label uses, based upon “results” that have no sound backing.

In the meantime, the FDA will slow to an even slower crawl than it is operating at currently, stalling truly innovative cures from coming to market.

I realize that pharma is this year’s tobacco as the big villain, and therefore, would be a politically popular target, but if Spitzer continues to pursue this course, it’s going to be bad medicine.

(Full Disclosure: I spent several years working for a consulting firm that exclusively serviced clients from the pharmaceutical industry.)

The Disabled vs. The Rest of Us

2004-05-08T15:00:00.000-04:00

The tension over paper-trail verification of ballots is pitting the rights of ordinary citizens against the rights of the disabled, and the fight is starting to get ugly.

The rush to put in place electronic, touch-screen voting machines is creating a (wholly justified, in my view) backlash from people who are concerned that the machines are vulnerable to a whole host of manipulation problems and mechanical errors. These range from the possibility of hacking to machines that record fantasy vote totals (like the mysterious deduction of 16,000 votes for Al Gore in Volusia County, Florida in the 2000 election from a county with only 600 registered voters). Groups like Electronic Privacy Information Center have issued white papers outlining the problems and the range of possible solutions. Douglas W. Jones of the University of Iowa Department of Computer Science has also done a wonderful job of comparing the various current voting systems. For more information, have a look at the hearings held by the Science Committee in the House of Representatives on this issue.

Many now believe that further introduction of these machines should be halted until some form of voter-verified paper record can be produced, much like your ATM currently produces a record of your bank transaction.

It sounds reasonable to wait until the machines actually work, doesn’t it? It does if you are not already disenfranchised or having your privacy compromised by old-fashioned voting equipment that does not accommodate the blind, severely-disabled or non-English speaking voter.

There are a number of advocate groups like the American Council of the Blind that are opposing any delay in upgrading the equipment because the benefits to their constituencies are enormous. To get an idea of this, imagine for a moment that you are blind and need to have a poll attendant who is an absolute stranger assist you in casting your vote. How can you possibly be sure that your vote was cast accurately?

Ordinarily I am strongly in favor of any and all reasonable accommodation that can be made for the handicapped, even if it results in greater inconvenience or expense. In this case, however, the arguments in favor of moving ahead are severely flawed and pose a huge danger to democracy.

Under the current system, the votes of a select group of people are possibly being compromised, while the great bulk of the voters are reasonably assured of casting a private, secure and accurate vote. Under the new system, that same group would gain a perceived benefit of being able to participate on par with the rest of the population, while the entire voting population runs the risk of being compromised in the other direction.

If the disabled are to be re-enfranchised with the rest of the voters, this is not the way to go about it. If they are willing to assume the risks for themselves, for no other benefit than a perceived gain, then perhaps the newer voting machines should be made available only for disabled voters, until the system can be secured for the rest of us. It would be undemocratic to ask everyone to assume that risk on behalf of the few.

Is Bush Drinking Again?

2004-05-01T14:06:00.000-04:00

It’s come to this. I’m seeing a pattern here and I can’t keep it to myself any longer. I think our President may be drinking again. Either that, or he’s the clumsiest President in history, save Gerald Ford.

Despite being classified as being in the top 2% in cardiovascular health for men his age when he was examined in 2001, our Commander-in-Chief has managed a couple of plainly embarrassing accidents over the years.

On January 14th, 2002, he was sitting and watching a football game and managed to get himself knocked unconscious by an improperly swallowed pretzel. From a seated position he managed to fall in such a way as to bruise his face. Perhaps the whack against the table jarred the pretzel loose?

In June of 2003, photographers famously managed to capture the President taking a rather clumsy fall off of a Segway device. No facial injuries this time, thank goodness!

In December of the same year, President Bush reportedly injured the meniscus in his leg and had to cut back on his near-fanatical exercise routine. It was not reported exactly how the damage came about. Could another fall be the culprit?

Finally, just a few days ago, on May 22, 2004, our President took a spill off his bicycle. Once again, the cuts and scrapes are on his face. Fortunately, Bush just happened to have his doctor along on a seventeen-mile bike ride for just such an emergency. Never mind house calls, this doctor definitely goes above and beyond.

Though not strictly in the same category with the others, there are also the red marks on his face. On at least one occasion, the President has made a public appearance in which he had these bright red marks on his face. This was later explained to be a result of having some lesions removed. If that were the case, why not advise the press before the procedure?

I realize that a couple of accidents do not a drunk make, but couple these incidents with the President’s decided aversion to making speeches, his reported disinterest in reading and his passion for extended vacations away from the public view, and I really am starting to wonder. What exactly is he doing when nobody is looking?

Is he really as clumsy and unlucky as all of that? Or, is it just possible, that he keeps falling down under the influence and all of these silly explanations are being cooked up to cover a problem? In the past, we’ve had alcoholics in the oval office, but none of them staked their political base upon a born-again conversion to sobriety.

Interestingly enough, Katherine Wormer has suggested that, in fact, Bush may be sober, but still suffering from a form of addiction-related brain damage called “dry drunk” syndrome. Is it possible that these are physical manifestations of that damage?

Lack of Imagination, Part II

2004-04-24T20:05:00.000-04:00

This article will be re-posted shortly. We are experiencing technical difficulties.

Lack of Imagination, Part I

2004-04-17T18:18:00.001-04:00

What do I think of this administration’s handling of the Qaeda threat prior to the bombing of the World Trade Center on September 11th, 2004? To borrow (and mangle) the words of Strother Martin in the classic movie, Cool Hand Luke, “What we have here, is a failure to imaginate.”

That’s right. Unlike those testifying before the commission, I do not think that the failure is one of communication. It’s a failure of imagination. In January of 2001, a group of very smart, experienced people took control of policy for the United States. They retained just about all of the intelligence apparatus that belonged to the previous administration.

They were briefed in transition meetings about the threat of Al Qaeda. In late January, they were given a list of actions, some might dare call it a plan, to protect Americans from these fundamentalists who had issued a fatwa against Americans everywhere. These were people who had attempted to bomb the World Trade Center, had successfully bombed embassies and the U.S.S. Cole.

Do you remember what the White House media coverage was obsessed with at the time this plan was pressed into Condi Rice’s capable hands? I do. They were busy smearing the departing Clinton staff with a since-discredited story about vandalized keyboards, stolen furniture and porn bombs. Revelations from un-named sources were coming out seemingly hourly with ever more outlandish accusations. When that story started losing legs, the focus shifted to the outgoing Clinton pardon of Marc Rich.

Now imagine the tone of those reports had the leaks involved items about Osama Bin Laden. Just imagine.

During his Inauguration speech in January, Bush said, “We will build our defenses beyond challenge, lest weakness invite challenge. We will confront weapons of mass destruction, so that a new century is spared new horrors. The enemies of liberty and our country should make no mistake: America remains engaged in the world by history and by choice, shaping a balance of power that favors freedom. We will defend our allies and our interests. We will show purpose without arrogance. We will meet aggression and bad faith with resolve and strength. And to all nations, we will speak for the values that gave our nation birth.”

It would appear that he was aware of the need to defend the homeland, but throughout the coming months, his administration would focus on tax cuts, an education plan, faith-based initiatives and a plan to weaken immigration rules to favor Mexican immigrants.

What is clear is that over the coming months, there was plenty of communication. The so-called wall between the various departments was not preventing information from reaching the White House. Everyone admits to knowing about intense “chatter”. Clarke was drafting memos to Condi. Tenet was running around with his hair on fire. There was the August 6th PDB. There was the arrest of Zacharias Moussaoui.

What we didn’t have was imagination. At no point did anyone sit down with that August 6th PDB and ask themselves what this could mean. The decision-making was limited to asking themselves whether there was anything actionable in it. It is inexcusable that they did not call a meeting to brainstorm possible targets, means of securing commercial airplanes and ways to infiltrate the family of plotters. Nobody developed insomnia imagining scenarios and checking whether we had a plan to disrupt those scenarios. Our leaders could not imagine an attack on American soil, until it actually happened.

Even after September 11th, it wasn’t until a huge momentum built behind the idea of a Department of Homeland Security that the administration announced it would be reorganizing the government. That idea was foisted upon the Bush administration from outside. After a brief stint in Afghanistan, they reverted again to an enemy of choice, rather than imagine ways to go after Osama Bin Laden.

Today the risk stands as great as it ever was. President Bush is still demonstrating a remarkable lack of imagination when it comes to terrorism and defense. Every major security effort that you could imagine as a risk is underfunded, from nuclear power plants to shipping containers, while the White House contemplates adding another layer of bureacracy to the reporting structure. Now I wonder where that idea came from…

In part II of "Lack of Imagination", the target will be Iraq. stay tuned. send comments to "thederrywitch@yahoo.com"

Welcome!

2004-04-16T12:42:00.000-04:00

Welcome to the inaugural entry of "No One Asked Me", a featured commentary of the Guttersnipes blog. It is here that you will find political and cultural commentary with all the entertainment value of professional wrestling and modern politics. It is my intention to focus in on issues with laser-like intensity from an angle that can only be described as "through the looking glass". Rose-colored glasses will not protect your eyes, as we shed light on the more hidden corners of today's issues.

Join us here in the coming weeks, where we will ask you to sweep out those unused corners in the attic of your brain, shine a light on those wriggling unmentionables hiding there, and send them scurrying out into the world to frighten those who would ask you to blindly follow the herd. They are your ideas and they deserve a place in the world.