TW: Continuing on the theme from Monday' post, the Republicans are amidst the internal soulsearching common amongst tired, out of power parties (see Dems 1968-1992). The NY 23 race promises all upside for the Dems- if the conservative wins then the Palineolithic wing will be ascendent and hopefully well on its way to marginalizing the overall party. If the Dem wins, the Dems get an extra vote until giving the seat up next year.
The Newtster endorsed the actual Republican party candidate in NY 23, hence he is now subject to abuse from the Palineolithic wing. When the Newtster has become a "RINO"/too liberal, one should know Palineolithic wing has jumped the shark.
From Taegen Goddard:
"Since former House Speaker Newt Gingrich floated the idea of running for president over the weekend, the backlash from conservatives has been breathtaking. Combined with the reaction to his endorsement of the Republican in the NY-23 special election race over the Conservative Party candidate, it's clear Gingrich -- once the firebrand of the right -- is now considered a moderate.
Michele Malkin: "The conservative base is wising up and pushing back. And constantly invoking Reagan isn't going to erase the damage Gingrich has done to his brand over the years by wavering on core issues and teaming up with some of the Left's biggest clowns."
Dan Riehl: "Unless someone got the nomination and picked Newt for VP, there's no way I see him as viable. I don't think he'd make it through a Republican Primary given some of his stances over the years."
David Keene: "The fact of the matter is -- and I happen to like Newt personally -- he's a Republican gladiator, not a conservative. He's done a lot of good for conservatives. His ideas tend to be conservative. But Newt's a Republican first."
Atlantic Wire: "The man who led the GOP to a 1994 revival is now dismissed being by some on the right as a RINO -- Republican In Name Only. "
Showing posts with label Pundits Lefties. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Pundits Lefties. Show all posts
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
Monday, October 26, 2009
Republicans=Democrats(circa 1980's)?
TW: I posted on this theme shortly after last year's elections. The Dems lost their coalition post 1964 and fought mainly amongst themselves for the next 25 years before tacking decisively towards the center with Bill Clinton et al. In the mean time but for the Watergate imbroglio bringing in Carter the party would have been out of the White House for that entire time. These shifts take time, the incumbents want to return to the good old days and the ideologues do what ideologues always do push for even more ideological purity.
The Republicans may benefit electorally over the next few years from temporary exogenous events (severe economic recessions, terror attacks etc.) but will have to re-define a more moderate positioning in order to re-gain broad power.
The kerfuffle in the upstate NY 23rd district special election is a great metaphor. The district is solid red but the Republicans have split between a centrist and an ideologue (running as a 3rd party candidate) such that the Dem may win (understanding if the Dem does win next month, the Dem will likely lose next year in the next general election when he likely faces only one Republican).
From Josh Marshall at TPM:
"Michael Smerconish, the Philly-based radio talk show host, has a column in the Inquirer today arguing that the GOP needs to seriously restructure its primary system in order to have any hope of nominating a potentially winning candidate in 2012 as opposed to one that will appeal to the party's base and ideological purists. His suggestions include regional primaries, moving up the dates of some high-population swing states, giving more of a stay to New England or key Western states, even giving more power to party bosses who have an institutional/professional interest in winning in addition to ideological aspirations.
On its face, it all makes a decent amount of sense if your angle is getting more electable Republicans. What struck me more though is how the arguments could have been lifted almost verbatim from the same conversation going on among Democrats through the 1970s and 1980s. Almost word for word, with the exception of the West and Northeast possibly playing the role of the South for the Dems in decades past. That strikes me as the most revealing thing about it.
The Republicans may benefit electorally over the next few years from temporary exogenous events (severe economic recessions, terror attacks etc.) but will have to re-define a more moderate positioning in order to re-gain broad power.
The kerfuffle in the upstate NY 23rd district special election is a great metaphor. The district is solid red but the Republicans have split between a centrist and an ideologue (running as a 3rd party candidate) such that the Dem may win (understanding if the Dem does win next month, the Dem will likely lose next year in the next general election when he likely faces only one Republican).
From Josh Marshall at TPM:
"Michael Smerconish, the Philly-based radio talk show host, has a column in the Inquirer today arguing that the GOP needs to seriously restructure its primary system in order to have any hope of nominating a potentially winning candidate in 2012 as opposed to one that will appeal to the party's base and ideological purists. His suggestions include regional primaries, moving up the dates of some high-population swing states, giving more of a stay to New England or key Western states, even giving more power to party bosses who have an institutional/professional interest in winning in addition to ideological aspirations.
On its face, it all makes a decent amount of sense if your angle is getting more electable Republicans. What struck me more though is how the arguments could have been lifted almost verbatim from the same conversation going on among Democrats through the 1970s and 1980s. Almost word for word, with the exception of the West and Northeast possibly playing the role of the South for the Dems in decades past. That strikes me as the most revealing thing about it.
Monday, August 17, 2009
Health Care Reform In Perspective
TW: The very tedious, vacuous and frustrating process by which health care reform is being contemplated can be depressing. I still think a bill will get done, it will be deeply flawed my only hope is that it will be better than nothing despite the powerful interests aligned against most of it. There are very legitimate conservative arguments which should be integrated into the bill but for the most part the Republicans are chosen to focus on fear mongering without raising them as suggestions. To suggest actually actionable measures would be to create an environment of bi-partisanship which they clearly wish to avoid in favor of cutting Obama's knees out from under him and set the stage for a 2010 comeback.
Putting all of this to the side, Begala makes some good points about where this reform effort compares to the 1930's effort to pass social security.
From Paul Begala in the WaPo:
"I think my fellow progressives ought to give Max Baucus and other members of the Senate Finance Committee a little breathing room as they labor to produce a health-care bill that can garner enough votes to pass the Senate.
Progressive politics is, in my view, a movement, not a monument. We cannot achieve perfection in this life, and if that is our goal we will always be frustrated. The right has far more modest goals: At every turn, its members seek to advance their power and protect privilege. I've never seen the Republican right oppose a tax cut for the rich because it wasn't generous enough; I've never seen them oppose a set of loopholes for corporate lobbyists because one industry or another wasn't included. The left, on the other hand, too often prefers a glorious defeat to an incremental victory.
...No self-respecting liberal today would support Franklin Roosevelt's original Social Security Act. It excluded agricultural workers -- a huge part of the economy in 1935, and one in which Latinos have traditionally worked. It excluded domestic workers, which included countless African Americans and immigrants. It did not cover the self-employed, or state and local government employees, or railroad employees, or federal employees or employees of nonprofits. It didn't even cover the clergy. FDR's Social Security Act did not have benefits for dependents or survivors. It did not have a cost-of-living increase. If you became disabled and couldn't work, you got nothing from Social Security.
If that version of Social Security were introduced today, progressives like me would call it cramped, parsimonious, mean-spirited and even racist. Perhaps it was all those things. But it was also a start. And for 74 years we have built on that start. We added more people to the winner's circle: farm workers and domestic workers and government workers. We extended benefits to the children of working men and women who died. We granted benefits to the disabled. We mandated annual cost-of-living adjustments. And today Social Security is the bedrock of our progressive vision of the common good.
Health care may follow that same trajectory. It would be a bitter disappointment if health reform did not include a public option. A public plan that keeps the insurance companies honest is, I believe, the right policy and the right politics. I believe subsidies should extend to as many Americans as need help and that the hard-earned health benefits of middle-class Americans should not be taxed. I believe insurer abuses like the preexisting-condition rule should be outlawed. The question is not whether I or other progressives will support a health-reform bill that includes everything we want but, rather, whether we will support a bill that doesn't..."
Putting all of this to the side, Begala makes some good points about where this reform effort compares to the 1930's effort to pass social security.
From Paul Begala in the WaPo:
"I think my fellow progressives ought to give Max Baucus and other members of the Senate Finance Committee a little breathing room as they labor to produce a health-care bill that can garner enough votes to pass the Senate.
Progressive politics is, in my view, a movement, not a monument. We cannot achieve perfection in this life, and if that is our goal we will always be frustrated. The right has far more modest goals: At every turn, its members seek to advance their power and protect privilege. I've never seen the Republican right oppose a tax cut for the rich because it wasn't generous enough; I've never seen them oppose a set of loopholes for corporate lobbyists because one industry or another wasn't included. The left, on the other hand, too often prefers a glorious defeat to an incremental victory.
...No self-respecting liberal today would support Franklin Roosevelt's original Social Security Act. It excluded agricultural workers -- a huge part of the economy in 1935, and one in which Latinos have traditionally worked. It excluded domestic workers, which included countless African Americans and immigrants. It did not cover the self-employed, or state and local government employees, or railroad employees, or federal employees or employees of nonprofits. It didn't even cover the clergy. FDR's Social Security Act did not have benefits for dependents or survivors. It did not have a cost-of-living increase. If you became disabled and couldn't work, you got nothing from Social Security.
If that version of Social Security were introduced today, progressives like me would call it cramped, parsimonious, mean-spirited and even racist. Perhaps it was all those things. But it was also a start. And for 74 years we have built on that start. We added more people to the winner's circle: farm workers and domestic workers and government workers. We extended benefits to the children of working men and women who died. We granted benefits to the disabled. We mandated annual cost-of-living adjustments. And today Social Security is the bedrock of our progressive vision of the common good.
Health care may follow that same trajectory. It would be a bitter disappointment if health reform did not include a public option. A public plan that keeps the insurance companies honest is, I believe, the right policy and the right politics. I believe subsidies should extend to as many Americans as need help and that the hard-earned health benefits of middle-class Americans should not be taxed. I believe insurer abuses like the preexisting-condition rule should be outlawed. The question is not whether I or other progressives will support a health-reform bill that includes everything we want but, rather, whether we will support a bill that doesn't..."
Sunday, July 26, 2009
Our Evolutionary Psychology Contributes To Political Morass
TW: I suspect at some point the human brain will be sorted out and make contemporary psychology seem utterly naive and barbaric. When they do figure some things out perhaps they will be able apply some of that knowledge to our political processes.
From Nic Kristoff at NYT:
"Our political system sometimes produces such skewed results that it’s difficult not to blame bloviating politicians. But maybe the deeper problem lies in our brains.
Evidence is accumulating that the human brain systematically misjudges certain kinds of risks. In effect, evolution has programmed us to be alert for snakes and enemies with clubs, but we aren’t well prepared to respond to dangers that require forethought.
If you come across a garter snake, nearly all of your brain will light up with activity as you process the “threat.” Yet if somebody tells you that carbon emissions will eventually destroy Earth as we know it, only the small part of the brain that focuses on the future — a portion of the prefrontal cortex — will glimmer.
...Consider America’s political response to these two recent challenges:
1. President Obama proposes moving some inmates from Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, to supermax prisons from which no one has ever escaped. This is the “enemy with club” threat that we have evolved to be alert to, so Democrats and Republicans alike erupt in outrage and kill the plan.
2. The climate warms, ice sheets melt and seas rise. The House scrounges a narrow majority to pass a feeble cap-and-trade system, but Senate passage is uncertain. The issue is complex, full of trade-offs and more cerebral than visceral — and so it doesn’t activate our warning systems.
...the kinds of dangers that are most serious today — such as climate change — sneak in under the brain’s radar.
...we respond to threats that we deem disgusting or immoral — characteristics more associated with sex, betrayal or spoiled food than with atmospheric chemistry.
“That’s why people are incensed about flag burning, or about what kind of sex people have in private, even though that doesn’t really affect the rest of us,” Professor Gilbert said. “Yet where we have a real threat to our well-being, like global warming, it doesn’t ring alarm bells.”
...threats get our attention when they are imminent, while our brain circuitry is often cavalier about the future. That’s why we are so bad at saving for retirement. Economists tear their hair out at a puzzlingly irrational behavior called hyperbolic discounting: people’s preference for money now rather than much larger payments later.
...we’re far more sensitive to changes that are instantaneous than those that are gradual. We yawn at a slow melting of the glaciers, while if they shrank overnight we might take to the streets.
In short, we’re brilliantly programmed to act on the risks that confronted us in the Pleistocene Age. We’re less adept with 21st-century challenges.
The objects of our phobias, and the things that are actually dangerous to us, are almost unrelated in the modern world, but they were related in our ancient environment,” Mr. Haidt said. “We have no ‘preparedness’ to fear a gradual rise in the Earth’s temperature.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/02/opinion/02kristof.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=nicholas%20kristof%20short%20circuitry&st=cse
From Nic Kristoff at NYT:
"Our political system sometimes produces such skewed results that it’s difficult not to blame bloviating politicians. But maybe the deeper problem lies in our brains.
Evidence is accumulating that the human brain systematically misjudges certain kinds of risks. In effect, evolution has programmed us to be alert for snakes and enemies with clubs, but we aren’t well prepared to respond to dangers that require forethought.
If you come across a garter snake, nearly all of your brain will light up with activity as you process the “threat.” Yet if somebody tells you that carbon emissions will eventually destroy Earth as we know it, only the small part of the brain that focuses on the future — a portion of the prefrontal cortex — will glimmer.
...Consider America’s political response to these two recent challenges:
1. President Obama proposes moving some inmates from Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, to supermax prisons from which no one has ever escaped. This is the “enemy with club” threat that we have evolved to be alert to, so Democrats and Republicans alike erupt in outrage and kill the plan.
2. The climate warms, ice sheets melt and seas rise. The House scrounges a narrow majority to pass a feeble cap-and-trade system, but Senate passage is uncertain. The issue is complex, full of trade-offs and more cerebral than visceral — and so it doesn’t activate our warning systems.
...the kinds of dangers that are most serious today — such as climate change — sneak in under the brain’s radar.
...we respond to threats that we deem disgusting or immoral — characteristics more associated with sex, betrayal or spoiled food than with atmospheric chemistry.
“That’s why people are incensed about flag burning, or about what kind of sex people have in private, even though that doesn’t really affect the rest of us,” Professor Gilbert said. “Yet where we have a real threat to our well-being, like global warming, it doesn’t ring alarm bells.”
...threats get our attention when they are imminent, while our brain circuitry is often cavalier about the future. That’s why we are so bad at saving for retirement. Economists tear their hair out at a puzzlingly irrational behavior called hyperbolic discounting: people’s preference for money now rather than much larger payments later.
...we’re far more sensitive to changes that are instantaneous than those that are gradual. We yawn at a slow melting of the glaciers, while if they shrank overnight we might take to the streets.
In short, we’re brilliantly programmed to act on the risks that confronted us in the Pleistocene Age. We’re less adept with 21st-century challenges.
The objects of our phobias, and the things that are actually dangerous to us, are almost unrelated in the modern world, but they were related in our ancient environment,” Mr. Haidt said. “We have no ‘preparedness’ to fear a gradual rise in the Earth’s temperature.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/02/opinion/02kristof.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=nicholas%20kristof%20short%20circuitry&st=cse
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
The Wilkins Micawber Corrosion
TW: I concur with Meacham (as usual). His point- politicians have cried wolf about fiscal deficits so many times, the resulting attitude is a Micawberian cynicism that something will come along to solve them. This dynamic is not particularly useful. It is also ripe for political demagoguery.
The Republicans have adopted a woe is the deficit attitude of late (about the same day W. Bush left office). As I have posted numerous times, fiscal contraction amidst a demand contraction is Hooverian. But this is a slightly subtle point missed by many voters, hence the demagoguery. What is VERY real is the need to address the deficits in the longer run, yet few and certainly no Republicans are willing or able to do so.
As Meacham mentions, the powerful will find a way to get along regardless of the insidious cancer of deficits, the less powerful are the ones who suffer most. We need investments in education, infrastructure etc. Without an enlightened electorate we will get less investment, more demagoguery and more deficits.
From Jon Meacham at Newsweek:
"...two troubling figures that foreshadow political problems for the president and, more important, intractable problems for all of us: 48 percent disapprove of his handling of the federal budget deficit, and 51 percent are unhappy with his control of federal spending...
Research by Bill McInturff and Peter Hart cited by the Peter G. Peterson Foundation puts the matter in even more telling perspective: 66 percent of registered voters say the deficit and debt pose a "very big threat to our country and its future," more than twice as many as say global warming does.
Such findings reflect a point conservatives have been making for months that you now hear more and more moderates echoing: that the vast projected deficits and rising national debt are not incidental issues, but central ones.
...Exhortations about deficits and debt are worthy but unglamorous. Count the clichés in the following: we are in danger of mortgaging our children's future because of the ticking entitlement time bomb that will lead us to a dark reckoning because we are living beyond our means and—did I mention we were mortgaging our children's future?...When it comes to economics, many of us tend to the thinking not of Smith or Keynes or Galbraith or Laffer but to that of Wilkins Micawber, the character in Dickens's David Copperfield who, confronted by the challenges of life, always held that "something will turn up." Given the largely mysterious workings of the economy—as in politics, clarity about events in real time comes mainly in retrospect—Micawberism is a fairly rational philosophy. But there is optimism, and then there is wishful thinking, which Eleanor Roosevelt called America's "besetting sin."
The Micawbers among us have history on their side, or at least recent history. Living beyond our means was supposed to kill us in the aftermath of the Reagan years, but the 1990 budget agreement and the technology boom led to record surpluses. We were running huge deficits as the Iraq War wore on, but still managed to find the billions upon billions to rescue the financial sector.
All of which makes it difficult for people to take red-ink apocalypticism very seriously. I would argue that the disconnect between the rhetoric of fiscal discipline and the reality of spending is important not only for the obvious economic reasons, but for less evident political ones, too.
The most familiar critique of deficits and debt is that they divert investment from new ventures and sap creativity. A country that must spend money to service its creditors has that many fewer dollars to create jobs, build schools or defend itself. That is certainly true, but the more pernicious effect of huge deficits and significant debt is that they feed cynicism, for experience tells us that there is never money for a program or an interest—except when there is.
Often something does turn up—but only for the well connected and the well organized. The politically powerful will always find the ways and means to secure their benefits and protect their interests. The losers in an economy constrained by deficits and debt will be the unconnected and the disorganized. The result is resentment and, ultimately, conflict: a dearth of money may lead to a decisively fragmented politics conducted with an intensity of passion usually reserved for issues of war and peace. Then the Micawbers will look anew for something to turn up. And they may find that Mrs. Roosevelt was right after all."
http://www.newsweek.com/id/201967
The Republicans have adopted a woe is the deficit attitude of late (about the same day W. Bush left office). As I have posted numerous times, fiscal contraction amidst a demand contraction is Hooverian. But this is a slightly subtle point missed by many voters, hence the demagoguery. What is VERY real is the need to address the deficits in the longer run, yet few and certainly no Republicans are willing or able to do so.
As Meacham mentions, the powerful will find a way to get along regardless of the insidious cancer of deficits, the less powerful are the ones who suffer most. We need investments in education, infrastructure etc. Without an enlightened electorate we will get less investment, more demagoguery and more deficits.
From Jon Meacham at Newsweek:
"...two troubling figures that foreshadow political problems for the president and, more important, intractable problems for all of us: 48 percent disapprove of his handling of the federal budget deficit, and 51 percent are unhappy with his control of federal spending...
Research by Bill McInturff and Peter Hart cited by the Peter G. Peterson Foundation puts the matter in even more telling perspective: 66 percent of registered voters say the deficit and debt pose a "very big threat to our country and its future," more than twice as many as say global warming does.
Such findings reflect a point conservatives have been making for months that you now hear more and more moderates echoing: that the vast projected deficits and rising national debt are not incidental issues, but central ones.
...Exhortations about deficits and debt are worthy but unglamorous. Count the clichés in the following: we are in danger of mortgaging our children's future because of the ticking entitlement time bomb that will lead us to a dark reckoning because we are living beyond our means and—did I mention we were mortgaging our children's future?...When it comes to economics, many of us tend to the thinking not of Smith or Keynes or Galbraith or Laffer but to that of Wilkins Micawber, the character in Dickens's David Copperfield who, confronted by the challenges of life, always held that "something will turn up." Given the largely mysterious workings of the economy—as in politics, clarity about events in real time comes mainly in retrospect—Micawberism is a fairly rational philosophy. But there is optimism, and then there is wishful thinking, which Eleanor Roosevelt called America's "besetting sin."
The Micawbers among us have history on their side, or at least recent history. Living beyond our means was supposed to kill us in the aftermath of the Reagan years, but the 1990 budget agreement and the technology boom led to record surpluses. We were running huge deficits as the Iraq War wore on, but still managed to find the billions upon billions to rescue the financial sector.
All of which makes it difficult for people to take red-ink apocalypticism very seriously. I would argue that the disconnect between the rhetoric of fiscal discipline and the reality of spending is important not only for the obvious economic reasons, but for less evident political ones, too.
The most familiar critique of deficits and debt is that they divert investment from new ventures and sap creativity. A country that must spend money to service its creditors has that many fewer dollars to create jobs, build schools or defend itself. That is certainly true, but the more pernicious effect of huge deficits and significant debt is that they feed cynicism, for experience tells us that there is never money for a program or an interest—except when there is.
Often something does turn up—but only for the well connected and the well organized. The politically powerful will always find the ways and means to secure their benefits and protect their interests. The losers in an economy constrained by deficits and debt will be the unconnected and the disorganized. The result is resentment and, ultimately, conflict: a dearth of money may lead to a decisively fragmented politics conducted with an intensity of passion usually reserved for issues of war and peace. Then the Micawbers will look anew for something to turn up. And they may find that Mrs. Roosevelt was right after all."
http://www.newsweek.com/id/201967
Tuesday, June 23, 2009
Now They Know How Islamic Groups Feel
TW: I tend to get very libertarian quickly when it comes to law enforcement and civil liberties. I feel many of the "anti-terrorist" measures taken since 9/11 are overly intrusive, paranoid and sacrificial of too much liberty in the name of security. Conservatives (the non-libertarian slanted ones at least) typically have been highly supportive though of the intrusive measures as they tend toward the security end of the "liberty/security" scale.
For this reason, the irony is considerable as conservatives get uptight about domestic security agencies probing "right-wing" groups of various ilks here in the U.S. It is uncomfortable when your "own" (understanding the vast majority of conservatives are not "extremists") are the targets. Perhaps now they will have some empathy for Islamic types of whom the vast majority of members are not extremists either.
From Washington Monthly:
"WHEN IDEOLOGY TRUMPS LAW ENFORCEMENT.... Newsweek had an item the other day...
'In February, the Missouri Information Analysis Center, one of several "fusion" centers created after 9/11 to share intelligence among local, state and federal agencies, issued a "strategic report" warning about a resurgence of the "modern militia movement." Last week, on the same day that white supremacist James von Brunn allegedly killed a guard at Washington's Holocaust Memorial Museum, Missouri's police chief informed legislators that the fusion center had suspended production of such reports. Why? Outcry from conservative activists, who felt they were being tarred too. [...]
They may talk about it less in public now, but law-enforcement and intel officials tell NEWSWEEK they're quietly scrutinizing threats from the far right just as carefully as those from Islamic extremists.'
So...Law enforcement officials decided, on purpose, to stop preparing reports on potentially dangerous radicals, because conservative activists said scrutiny of extremists made them feel put upon? Conservative activists whine about all kinds of things; shouldn't law enforcement officials ignore them and focus on real threats?"
For this reason, the irony is considerable as conservatives get uptight about domestic security agencies probing "right-wing" groups of various ilks here in the U.S. It is uncomfortable when your "own" (understanding the vast majority of conservatives are not "extremists") are the targets. Perhaps now they will have some empathy for Islamic types of whom the vast majority of members are not extremists either.
From Washington Monthly:
"WHEN IDEOLOGY TRUMPS LAW ENFORCEMENT.... Newsweek had an item the other day...
'In February, the Missouri Information Analysis Center, one of several "fusion" centers created after 9/11 to share intelligence among local, state and federal agencies, issued a "strategic report" warning about a resurgence of the "modern militia movement." Last week, on the same day that white supremacist James von Brunn allegedly killed a guard at Washington's Holocaust Memorial Museum, Missouri's police chief informed legislators that the fusion center had suspended production of such reports. Why? Outcry from conservative activists, who felt they were being tarred too. [...]
They may talk about it less in public now, but law-enforcement and intel officials tell NEWSWEEK they're quietly scrutinizing threats from the far right just as carefully as those from Islamic extremists.'
So...Law enforcement officials decided, on purpose, to stop preparing reports on potentially dangerous radicals, because conservative activists said scrutiny of extremists made them feel put upon? Conservative activists whine about all kinds of things; shouldn't law enforcement officials ignore them and focus on real threats?"
Sunday, June 21, 2009
Obama Taking Fire From the Left
TW: I post much on the righties/wrongies bitching and moaning about Obama, now for a little lefty griping. I tend to get in more furious debates with lefties than wrongies because I perceive them as ungrateful bastards given political realities. But I subscribe to the idea that if media is covering lefties griping that is better than them covering wrongies as it moves the debate to the left as opposed to the opposite direction. None of which is to say I agree much with what Taibbi says below.
From Matt Taibbi's blog:
"...Eight years of Clintonian squirming was bad enough, but now we have Barack Obama, smoking Habeas Corpus and not inhaling it.
Why is the Gitmo decision classic Democratic Party thinking? Because when certain of us said we wanted Gitmo closed, we sort of meant a change in policy - we didn’t mean just physically closing the plant, moving the prisoners elsewhere, and leaving the policies essentially unchanged.
...There’s always some sort of semantic twist involved with their policies, an asterisk, some kind of leprechaun trick to get around doing the simple right thing. They’re all for gay rights, and then once the lights come on, they’ve basically codified the closet by ushering in Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.
They campaign against the war in Iraq, promise to get us out, and say they were against it all along — and then once they get in power, they start using words like eventually and in 4-6 years and once the situation stabilizes. Later it turns out that what they meant by being against the war all along was their conviction that we should have invaded on a Thursday instead of a Tuesday, or some such bullshit.
Now there’s this Gitmo business. This, folks, just isn’t that tough a call. The prison (and the much less publicized archipelago of hard sites in foreign countries where more terror suspects are held) was a symbol of everything wrong and stupid about the Bush administration. Snatching people up by force and dumping them in rocks on the middle of the ocean without due process is the kind of thing that was last done by “civilized” cultures back in the days of the Roman Empire; since then it’s been the exclusive province of sociopathic third-world dictators like Stalin and Mobutu Sese Seko. It was absolutely imperative, from a public relations standpoint if nothing else, that Obama immediately repudiate these practices, design some kind of due process to deal with the already incarcerated prisoners, and show the world that what happened during the Bush years was an insane aberration, a result of our having accidentally elected an emotionally retarded sadist to the White House.
Instead, Obama is on his way to doing exactly the wrong thing. He’s going to make a show of closing the base, but retain the underlying idea by keeping some of the prisoners in indefinite legal purgatory. In some ways this is worse than what Bush did, because Bush at least took a clear stand — he was nuts and thought this was the right thing to do. No matter how you look at Obama’s decision, it’s weighed somewhere along the line by political calculation. Either he thinks indefinite decision is right and he’s bowing to public appeals by closing the base, or else he thinks it’s wrong and is bowing to opposition outcry by maintaining the old policy.
It’s one thing to change your mind or play both sides of the fence on matters that don’t involve human lives, on theoretical/hypothetical campaign issues, but another thing to do it with actual incarcerated human beings as the key variable in the political equation.
I still like Obama, in a lot of ways. Having a president with less ability to inspire public confidence at a time like this, with our economy in such a death spiral, would be a disaster; God knows where we’d be right now with a McCain or a Mike Huckabee at the helm. But this guy has to show some stones somewhere along the line. He has to just forget the DC game and just take a clear stand on an issue like this sometime. He’s kind of running out of time to rescue his all-important first impression."
http://trueslant.com/matttaibbi/2009/05/30/the-end-of-the-obama-honeymoon-part-ii/
From Matt Taibbi's blog:
"...Eight years of Clintonian squirming was bad enough, but now we have Barack Obama, smoking Habeas Corpus and not inhaling it.
Why is the Gitmo decision classic Democratic Party thinking? Because when certain of us said we wanted Gitmo closed, we sort of meant a change in policy - we didn’t mean just physically closing the plant, moving the prisoners elsewhere, and leaving the policies essentially unchanged.
...There’s always some sort of semantic twist involved with their policies, an asterisk, some kind of leprechaun trick to get around doing the simple right thing. They’re all for gay rights, and then once the lights come on, they’ve basically codified the closet by ushering in Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.
They campaign against the war in Iraq, promise to get us out, and say they were against it all along — and then once they get in power, they start using words like eventually and in 4-6 years and once the situation stabilizes. Later it turns out that what they meant by being against the war all along was their conviction that we should have invaded on a Thursday instead of a Tuesday, or some such bullshit.
Now there’s this Gitmo business. This, folks, just isn’t that tough a call. The prison (and the much less publicized archipelago of hard sites in foreign countries where more terror suspects are held) was a symbol of everything wrong and stupid about the Bush administration. Snatching people up by force and dumping them in rocks on the middle of the ocean without due process is the kind of thing that was last done by “civilized” cultures back in the days of the Roman Empire; since then it’s been the exclusive province of sociopathic third-world dictators like Stalin and Mobutu Sese Seko. It was absolutely imperative, from a public relations standpoint if nothing else, that Obama immediately repudiate these practices, design some kind of due process to deal with the already incarcerated prisoners, and show the world that what happened during the Bush years was an insane aberration, a result of our having accidentally elected an emotionally retarded sadist to the White House.
Instead, Obama is on his way to doing exactly the wrong thing. He’s going to make a show of closing the base, but retain the underlying idea by keeping some of the prisoners in indefinite legal purgatory. In some ways this is worse than what Bush did, because Bush at least took a clear stand — he was nuts and thought this was the right thing to do. No matter how you look at Obama’s decision, it’s weighed somewhere along the line by political calculation. Either he thinks indefinite decision is right and he’s bowing to public appeals by closing the base, or else he thinks it’s wrong and is bowing to opposition outcry by maintaining the old policy.
It’s one thing to change your mind or play both sides of the fence on matters that don’t involve human lives, on theoretical/hypothetical campaign issues, but another thing to do it with actual incarcerated human beings as the key variable in the political equation.
I still like Obama, in a lot of ways. Having a president with less ability to inspire public confidence at a time like this, with our economy in such a death spiral, would be a disaster; God knows where we’d be right now with a McCain or a Mike Huckabee at the helm. But this guy has to show some stones somewhere along the line. He has to just forget the DC game and just take a clear stand on an issue like this sometime. He’s kind of running out of time to rescue his all-important first impression."
http://trueslant.com/matttaibbi/2009/05/30/the-end-of-the-obama-honeymoon-part-ii/
Tuesday, June 9, 2009
Bitching Is Easy, Governing Not So Much
TW: Milbank makes a fair if un-original point: party activists have much more fun in opposition than in power. The progressives held their version of the CPAC conference where Rush made his infamous and very heavily covered speech a couple of months ago. The lefty activists have lost their bogeyman in Bush and no where near ready to go after Obama yet. Give them time and he will do something sufficiently moderate to raise their ire. In the mean time they meander around with little or no media coverage (no conflict to cover=no media coverage, covering more or less happy folks is booooring).
This is part of the great levelling process which occurs, the conservative complainers will get the coverage which will eventually ding Obama and the Dems which will some day help them re-gain some power. Bitching is funner after all than actually doing something, progressives have had their "fun" for eight long years (really about forty) now it is the conservative's turn.
From Dana Milbank at WaPo:
"For the past few years, liberal activists have gathered in Washington each spring for the Take Back America conference, where speaker after speaker -- Obama sometimes among them -- would give rollicking denunciations of the Bush administration before packed rooms of partisans.
But now that Obama has actually taken back America, the activists at this year's gathering feel a bit like the dog that finally caught up with the car. Organizers changed the name from Take Back America to America's Future Now, but that didn't prevent a sharp decline in participation.
...And Leo Gerard, head of the United Steelworkers, warned that if his fellow activists don't "seize the opportunity to lead with our progressive ideas," then "Rahm Emanuel will lead." And while "Rahm has the president's back," the union leader said of Obama's chief of staff, "I don't think he has our back."
But many in the audience had warmer feelings toward the Obama administration. A straw poll taken by pollster Stan Greenberg found that 90 percent of those in attendance approve of the job the president is doing, and that they have no consensus about whether to help Obama or fight him.
That ambivalence could account for the lethargy at this year's conference; as Fox News and Rush Limbaugh know, it's more fun to be an opposition bomb-thrower than a palace guard. "This place was more high-energy last year," said Roger Hickey, who co-directs the Campaign for America's Future with Borosage. "Last year people were jazzed up. . . . Now we're getting into the sausage making of legislation."
..."Radio row" was quiet, the "TV Terrace" was empty, and two people sat typing on "Blogger Boulevard."
...But defending the state isn't very exciting, and in the big ballroom for the luncheon, no television news cameras were on the risers..."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/06/03/AR2009060303173.html?nav=rss_opinion/columns
This is part of the great levelling process which occurs, the conservative complainers will get the coverage which will eventually ding Obama and the Dems which will some day help them re-gain some power. Bitching is funner after all than actually doing something, progressives have had their "fun" for eight long years (really about forty) now it is the conservative's turn.
From Dana Milbank at WaPo:
"For the past few years, liberal activists have gathered in Washington each spring for the Take Back America conference, where speaker after speaker -- Obama sometimes among them -- would give rollicking denunciations of the Bush administration before packed rooms of partisans.
But now that Obama has actually taken back America, the activists at this year's gathering feel a bit like the dog that finally caught up with the car. Organizers changed the name from Take Back America to America's Future Now, but that didn't prevent a sharp decline in participation.
...And Leo Gerard, head of the United Steelworkers, warned that if his fellow activists don't "seize the opportunity to lead with our progressive ideas," then "Rahm Emanuel will lead." And while "Rahm has the president's back," the union leader said of Obama's chief of staff, "I don't think he has our back."
But many in the audience had warmer feelings toward the Obama administration. A straw poll taken by pollster Stan Greenberg found that 90 percent of those in attendance approve of the job the president is doing, and that they have no consensus about whether to help Obama or fight him.
That ambivalence could account for the lethargy at this year's conference; as Fox News and Rush Limbaugh know, it's more fun to be an opposition bomb-thrower than a palace guard. "This place was more high-energy last year," said Roger Hickey, who co-directs the Campaign for America's Future with Borosage. "Last year people were jazzed up. . . . Now we're getting into the sausage making of legislation."
..."Radio row" was quiet, the "TV Terrace" was empty, and two people sat typing on "Blogger Boulevard."
...But defending the state isn't very exciting, and in the big ballroom for the luncheon, no television news cameras were on the risers..."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/06/03/AR2009060303173.html?nav=rss_opinion/columns
Friday, May 29, 2009
Our Proud Legal Heritage
TW: In these challenging times, we take certain American influences for granted. We also when a new SCOTUS justice is nominated get wrapped up in what ultimately almost always become trivialized discussions with little lasting impact. What has had a lasting impact though is the influence of American jurisprudence throughout the world. American judicial processes and legal predicates are not certainly the only global source of leadership but they are clearly the pre-eminent one. This is something about which to be proud but also about which to be mindful when the notion of American exceptionalism threatens to eclipse our collective good sense.
From NYT:
",,,picking a justice for the Supreme Court will have more ramifications for the republic than any cabinet secretary or ambassador.
The United States may be a comparatively young country, but its institutions have influenced the world profoundly. The constitutional ideals put forth upon its shores in the late 18th century guided the way other societies organized themselves, from the Déclaration des Droits de l’Homme et du Citoyen in France in 1789, to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights adopted by the United Nations in 1948, to the constitutions of dozens of other countries emerging from colonialism and Communism. From the earliest times, as the historian Samuel Eliot Morison wrote: Liberty to Americans meant, “first freedom under laws of their own making, and, second, the right to do anything that did not harm others.”
The U.S. Supreme Court was established in 1789, but drew on the experience of earlier state constitutions. Eighteenth century Americans had read John Locke who wrote “where law ends, tyranny begins,” and they were particularly mindful of setting up an independent judiciary, beholding to none, where abuses of power by kings and political leaders could not prevail. The early justices had robes of black and scarlet, but they agreed with Thomas Jefferson who urged that they “discard the monstrous wig which makes the English judges look like rats peeping through branches of oakum.”
For nearly 150 years the United States was practically “the only country with a written constitution enforceable as law,” according to Anthony Lewis, one of America’s most knowledgeable journalists writing about the law.
Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer says that “since W.W. II, however, there is a new interest throughout the world in written constitutions” with legal systems moving closer to the American model — “Germany, Spain, Italy, the European Union, the European Court of Human Rights” as well as countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America. Even France is moving toward a court that can review legislation similar to the U.S. model, according to Breyer.
As Israel’s Aharon Barak once put it, the tyrannies of the 30s and 40s showed that it was no longer possible to rely on the British phrase “it just isn’t done.” The law had to be enforced. Nelson Mandela called it a great day for post -apartheid South Africa when a free and impartial court reversed one of his decisions.
Even though they don’t have a written constitution, the British have created a new Supreme Court, and will be moving their law lords out of the House of Lords into the Middlesex Guildhall in Parliament Square. It is an effort to make the highest court judges more independent. Can the abandonment of judicial wigs be far behind? ..."
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/19/opinion/19iht-edgreenway.html?scp=1&sq=hds%20greenway&st=cse
From NYT:
",,,picking a justice for the Supreme Court will have more ramifications for the republic than any cabinet secretary or ambassador.
The United States may be a comparatively young country, but its institutions have influenced the world profoundly. The constitutional ideals put forth upon its shores in the late 18th century guided the way other societies organized themselves, from the Déclaration des Droits de l’Homme et du Citoyen in France in 1789, to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights adopted by the United Nations in 1948, to the constitutions of dozens of other countries emerging from colonialism and Communism. From the earliest times, as the historian Samuel Eliot Morison wrote: Liberty to Americans meant, “first freedom under laws of their own making, and, second, the right to do anything that did not harm others.”
The U.S. Supreme Court was established in 1789, but drew on the experience of earlier state constitutions. Eighteenth century Americans had read John Locke who wrote “where law ends, tyranny begins,” and they were particularly mindful of setting up an independent judiciary, beholding to none, where abuses of power by kings and political leaders could not prevail. The early justices had robes of black and scarlet, but they agreed with Thomas Jefferson who urged that they “discard the monstrous wig which makes the English judges look like rats peeping through branches of oakum.”
For nearly 150 years the United States was practically “the only country with a written constitution enforceable as law,” according to Anthony Lewis, one of America’s most knowledgeable journalists writing about the law.
Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer says that “since W.W. II, however, there is a new interest throughout the world in written constitutions” with legal systems moving closer to the American model — “Germany, Spain, Italy, the European Union, the European Court of Human Rights” as well as countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America. Even France is moving toward a court that can review legislation similar to the U.S. model, according to Breyer.
As Israel’s Aharon Barak once put it, the tyrannies of the 30s and 40s showed that it was no longer possible to rely on the British phrase “it just isn’t done.” The law had to be enforced. Nelson Mandela called it a great day for post -apartheid South Africa when a free and impartial court reversed one of his decisions.
Even though they don’t have a written constitution, the British have created a new Supreme Court, and will be moving their law lords out of the House of Lords into the Middlesex Guildhall in Parliament Square. It is an effort to make the highest court judges more independent. Can the abandonment of judicial wigs be far behind? ..."
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/19/opinion/19iht-edgreenway.html?scp=1&sq=hds%20greenway&st=cse
Tuesday, May 26, 2009
Sotomayor
TW: Am not going to get too much into the trees on this topic but two things. Sotomayor has an interesting background see below. Two, barring some skeleton in the closet the Republicans are crazy to oppose this nomination intensely. Can they raise some money with the base? Probably.
But unless Obama appoints an outright conservative that is going to be the case with any of his nominees. Sotomayor is highly qualified. The Republicans risk further pushing themselves into the toilet with women, Hispanics and moderates as Sotomayor happens to be all three. Those three groups are the same three groups Republicans will eventually need to attract should they wish to regain electoral strength.
From NYT"
"...Judge Sotomayor, 54, grew up in a Bronx housing project, a child of Puerto Rican parents. She would be the court's first Hispanic justice. Her father died when she was 9, leaving her mother to raise her and a brother. In speeches to Latino groups over the years, Judge Sotomayor has recalled how her mother worked six days a week as a nurse to send her and her brother to Catholic school, purchased the only set of encyclopedias in the neighborhood and kept a warm pot of rice and beans on the stove every day for their friends.
She loved Nancy Drew mysteries, she once said, and yearned to be a police detective. But a doctor who diagnosed her childhood diabetes suggested that would be difficult. She traded her adoration of Nancy for an allegiance to Perry -- she became a fan of Perry Mason on television, she said, and decided to become a lawyer.
She went to Princeton, which she has described as a life-changing experience. When she arrived on campus from the Bronx, she said it was like "a visitor landing in an alien country." She never raised her hand in her first year there. "I was too embarrassed and too intimidated to ask questions," Judge Sotomayor said.
In one speech, she sounded some themes similar to Mr. Obama's description of his social uncertainties as a biracial youth in a largely white society.
"I have spent my years since Princeton, while at law school and in my various professional jobs, not feeling completely a part of the worlds I inhabit," she said, adding that that despite her accomplishments, "I am always looking over my shoulder wondering if I measure up."
After graduating summa cum laude from Princeton, she went to Yale Law School, worked for Robert M. Morgenthau in the Manhattan District Attorney's Office and spent time in private practice before being named to the bench..."
From Steve Benen at Washington Monthly:
"...H.W. Bush nominated her for the district court in 1992 (she'd been recommended by Daniel Patrick Moynihan), and Clinton nominated her for the appeals court bench five years later. Senate Republicans, as is their habit, held up Sotomayor's nomination for more than a year, "because they believed that as a Hispanic appellate judge she would be a formidable candidate for the Supreme Court."
But unless Obama appoints an outright conservative that is going to be the case with any of his nominees. Sotomayor is highly qualified. The Republicans risk further pushing themselves into the toilet with women, Hispanics and moderates as Sotomayor happens to be all three. Those three groups are the same three groups Republicans will eventually need to attract should they wish to regain electoral strength.
From NYT"
"...Judge Sotomayor, 54, grew up in a Bronx housing project, a child of Puerto Rican parents. She would be the court's first Hispanic justice. Her father died when she was 9, leaving her mother to raise her and a brother. In speeches to Latino groups over the years, Judge Sotomayor has recalled how her mother worked six days a week as a nurse to send her and her brother to Catholic school, purchased the only set of encyclopedias in the neighborhood and kept a warm pot of rice and beans on the stove every day for their friends.
She loved Nancy Drew mysteries, she once said, and yearned to be a police detective. But a doctor who diagnosed her childhood diabetes suggested that would be difficult. She traded her adoration of Nancy for an allegiance to Perry -- she became a fan of Perry Mason on television, she said, and decided to become a lawyer.
She went to Princeton, which she has described as a life-changing experience. When she arrived on campus from the Bronx, she said it was like "a visitor landing in an alien country." She never raised her hand in her first year there. "I was too embarrassed and too intimidated to ask questions," Judge Sotomayor said.
In one speech, she sounded some themes similar to Mr. Obama's description of his social uncertainties as a biracial youth in a largely white society.
"I have spent my years since Princeton, while at law school and in my various professional jobs, not feeling completely a part of the worlds I inhabit," she said, adding that that despite her accomplishments, "I am always looking over my shoulder wondering if I measure up."
After graduating summa cum laude from Princeton, she went to Yale Law School, worked for Robert M. Morgenthau in the Manhattan District Attorney's Office and spent time in private practice before being named to the bench..."
From Steve Benen at Washington Monthly:
"...H.W. Bush nominated her for the district court in 1992 (she'd been recommended by Daniel Patrick Moynihan), and Clinton nominated her for the appeals court bench five years later. Senate Republicans, as is their habit, held up Sotomayor's nomination for more than a year, "because they believed that as a Hispanic appellate judge she would be a formidable candidate for the Supreme Court."
Sunday, May 24, 2009
Keeping Things In Perspective
From Kevin Drum at Mother Jones:
"...BankUnited in Florida has finally been taken into receivership. No surprise there, but the price tag might be: apparently the FDIC estimates the takeover will ultimately cost taxpayers a cool $4.9 billion-and that's for a bank with less than $15 billion in assets."
TW: Think about that one for a second. $5 billion that is a nice chunk of change. With all of financial carnage which has occurred over the past year or so, to a certain degree we have become immune to these announcements. But put that in perspective $5.0 billion could buy a lot of things: education for needy kids, meals for the undernourished, a nice cushy padded cell for Dick Cheney. Some group of executives ran that bank into the ground, the conservatives bitch and moan and whine about guvmint but at the end of the day you the taxpayer are cleaning up the turds of "capitalists" and free markets gone wild. A little good effective regulation can go a long way.
"...BankUnited in Florida has finally been taken into receivership. No surprise there, but the price tag might be: apparently the FDIC estimates the takeover will ultimately cost taxpayers a cool $4.9 billion-and that's for a bank with less than $15 billion in assets."
TW: Think about that one for a second. $5 billion that is a nice chunk of change. With all of financial carnage which has occurred over the past year or so, to a certain degree we have become immune to these announcements. But put that in perspective $5.0 billion could buy a lot of things: education for needy kids, meals for the undernourished, a nice cushy padded cell for Dick Cheney. Some group of executives ran that bank into the ground, the conservatives bitch and moan and whine about guvmint but at the end of the day you the taxpayer are cleaning up the turds of "capitalists" and free markets gone wild. A little good effective regulation can go a long way.
Thursday, May 14, 2009
Chew On It!!
TW: This is just one of those pieces of information I thought everyone needed to know.
From Kevin Drum at Mother Jones:
"The modern American diet is mostly made up of "easy calories." According to Gail Civille, a food-industry consultant and the owner of Sensory Spectrum, Americans of the past typically had to chew a mouthful of food as many as 25 times before swallowing; the average American today chews only 10 times.In part, this is because fat, which has become ubuiquitous, is a lubricant. We don't eat as much lean meat, which requires more saliva to ready it for swallowing.
"We want food that's higher in fat, marbled, so when you eat it, it melts in your mouth," says Civille. Food is easier to eat when it breaks down more quickly in the mouth.
"If I have fat in there, I just chew it up and — whoosh! — away it goes."John Haywood, a prominent restaurant concept designer, agrees. Processing, he says, creates a sort of "adult baby food." By processing, he means removing the elements in whole food — like fiber and gristle — that are harder to chew and swallow..."
http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2009/05/factlet-day-0
From Kevin Drum at Mother Jones:
"The modern American diet is mostly made up of "easy calories." According to Gail Civille, a food-industry consultant and the owner of Sensory Spectrum, Americans of the past typically had to chew a mouthful of food as many as 25 times before swallowing; the average American today chews only 10 times.In part, this is because fat, which has become ubuiquitous, is a lubricant. We don't eat as much lean meat, which requires more saliva to ready it for swallowing.
"We want food that's higher in fat, marbled, so when you eat it, it melts in your mouth," says Civille. Food is easier to eat when it breaks down more quickly in the mouth.
"If I have fat in there, I just chew it up and — whoosh! — away it goes."John Haywood, a prominent restaurant concept designer, agrees. Processing, he says, creates a sort of "adult baby food." By processing, he means removing the elements in whole food — like fiber and gristle — that are harder to chew and swallow..."
http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2009/05/factlet-day-0
Friday, May 8, 2009
So What Do Americans Think About Torture?
TW: Cilizza reviews some recent poll data regarding Americans opinion on torture. Recall I framed my view along these lines a couple of weeks ago (see "torture" posts).1) was what the U.S. did torture?
2) if so was it a potentially temporary reaction to the post 9/11 stress?
3) should the U.S. torture?
The results below seem to indicate Americans are not stupid, if it walks like a duck, it is a duck. The U.S. engaged in torture. What is unclear is whether Americans believe torture is a necessary evil to protect their own security. As I have opined previously societies generally and the U.S. is no different will swap much liberty for the prospect of security. I suspect that tendency was much higher immediately post 9-11 than it is today although some (i.e. Cheney et al.) will err on the side of security without fail.
I remain aggressively opposed to torture. As for investigating how torture became an instrument of national policy, the fact that such an investigation is a "dead political loser" speaks to me of the necessity for the investigation. America must face up to the harsh realities of how we reacted post 9/11 and address whether we would do so again in similar circumstances. Else this issue will become a partisan football which will not only harm our national security and our international reputation but a cancer that will infect our ability to operate cohesively as a nation.
I am under no illusions that Democrats are innocent relative to torture. Post 9/11 politicians of all stripes did things they would not have dreamt of doing months before. What matters most is the future without understanding how we got here it is impossible to plan where we go from here.
If the U.S. wants to condone torture in the pursuit of perceived security lets do so in the open and as a matter of public policy, not in the shadows so that some of us can B.S. ourselves into thinking we are still exceptional to those despots who did (and still do) it elsewhere.
From Cilizza at WaPo:
"60% of Americans said that the use of "harsh interrogation procedures" including waterboarding is torture (Democrats 75%/Republicans 44%/Independents 58%)
when asked whether they approve or disapprove of the use of these techniques
50% approving/46% disapproving. (Democrats 26%/Republicans 78%/Independents 53% approving)
57% of people oppose the prosecution of Bush Administration officials for their roles in the interrogations and an even higher number -- 65% -- believe that no prosecutions of military and intelligence officials should take place.
...Those twin observations go a long way to explaining why President Barack Obama and his Administration have expressed very little interest in prosecuting those involved with the interrogations despite urgings from the liberal wing of the party to do just that. "
From a purely political perspective...the prosecutions are a straight loser, forcing a divided country to re-engage with a period of time they would much rather just forget."
ps the photo above is from our days dealing with the Filipinos post the Spanish-American War when we took possession of our first colonies, we did some seriously bad stuff in that country, waterboarding being the tip of an iceberg.
Sunday, May 3, 2009
The Politics Of Souter's Replacement
TW: We will hear far too much about the Souter replacement over the coming months. So I will try to keep things to a minimum here but one prediction. The Dems will end up with more internal controversy than the Republicans. Cilizza in the piece below frames some of the risks for the Republicans.
I would add if the Republicans are smart (an admittedly dubious outcome) they will lie low. They have two plays- the high road understanding fighting a female and/or Hispanic nominee is ultimately a non-winner. Or the low road, obstruction in an ultimately unsuccessful effort to push Obama towards a more conservative nominee. While the latter might help with contributions from their base, it would only cement the Republicans as the obstructionists and further alienate the party with two constituencies they must do better with should they wish to actually start winning more elections.
The Souter slot is after all a hold for the progressives as will be the eventual replacements for Ginsberg and Stevens when they retire as they likely will over the next couple of years. Should part of the conservative bloc retire (Thomas, Scalia, Alito, Roberts, Kennedy) then all bets are off, the process will be bloody.
Conservatives care first about nominating those with well defined and strict conservative judicial tendencies (e.g. abortion, prayer, tough on crime, property rights, comfort with torture may be an emerging need btw etc.). Dems want progressive justices but worry far more about diversity for better or worse.
Should there be more than one woman on the court? Absolutely. Is it time for a Hispanic? Absolutely. But the Dems must be careful to avoid the blatant and potentially divisive pandering to interest groups which frequently characterize their nominations. Part of this is just proper handling of the nominee, i.e. regardless of the nominee's demographic, focus on the qualifications. But there is a real risk unless Obama and his folks are very adept that the Dem interest groups will fall into bickering with each other about getting their preferred demographic into the slot.
Two things should mitigate the bickering this time, one Ginsburg and Stevens will almost certainly retire within the near future providing two more slots. The second more Machiavellian reason is that fighting a well-qualified the next Hispanic/Asian and/or female should be very difficult for the Republicans. Challenging the second or third far less so. If Obama is smart he will keep some demographic chits in his pocket in case a truly pivotal nomination becomes available.
From Chris Cilizza at WaPo:
"...the national Republican party finds itself in a state of flux -- caught between an establishment wing who is seeking to re-brand it to make it more attractive to independents and a conservative base that wants a return to the roots.
Will President Obama's next nominee to the Court help unite the Republican party to oppose a common adversary or further expose the rifts that divide it?
Most party strategists we spoke to in the wake of the Souter announcement argued the former scenario is more likely...
...Another senior Republican strategist granted anonymity to speak candidly said that a Supreme Court fight will be good for fundraising -- particularly among low-dollar donors who feel passionately about judges (and judicial activism).
...Recent history suggests a disconnect between the Senate's generally open-minded approach to nominees and the party base's more ideological and confrontational stance -- and it is worth watching how that potential dissonance plays out.
...With the further elevation of conservative voices within the party -- hello Rush Limbaugh! -- it's not difficult to see a further fracturing of the GOP if Obama picks a Supreme Court nominee with whom the base is deeply unhappy but the establishment wing of the party (including a majority of Republican senators) believe is acceptable.
...A split within the GOP on the nomination, which could feature movement conservatives like Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin and South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford on one side and establishment figures like former governor Mitt Romney (Mass.) and Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty on the other, would be something close to an unmitigated disaster for a party trying to united behind a few core principles to prepare for the 2010 midterm elections and the 2012 presidential fight."
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/thefix/republican-party/souter-retirement-republican-o.html?wprss=thefix
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
Confessions Of the Advocate
TW: These ex-post facto confessionals from campaign insiders always intrigue me even if I doubt even the ex-post facto perspective is completely without agendas. Steve Schmidt, McCain's former campaign manager, has made several headlines speaking bluntly about the sorry state of the Republican party. Therefore I suspect he is burning up what limited credibility within the party he had remaining. David Plouffe, Obama's campaign manager also made some remarks. Here are some highlights from a recent roundtable:
Via Dana Milbank at WaPo:
Schmidt's comments-
"...On the Bush-Cheney drag: "The first night of our convention was President Bush and Vice President Cheney. I literally thought by the second night of our convention we could be down 25 points."
On Katie Couric's interview of Sarah Palin: "That is one of the two most consequential interviews that a candidate for national office has given, in a negative way, the other being Roger Mudd's interview of Ted Kennedy . . . when he couldn't answer the question of why he wanted to be president."
...On the Republican Party: "It is near-extinct in many ways in the Northeast, it is extinct in many ways on the West Coast, and it is endangered in the Mountain West, increasingly endangered in the Southwest . . . and if you look at the state of the party, it is a shrinking entity."
...Schmidt spoke openly of McCain's reluctant choice of Palin after hopes of running with former Democrat Joe Lieberman were scuttled by the right, which threatened a convention floor fight. "That would have had the effect of blowing up the Republican Party," he said, "and when you look at all the challenges we had during the 2008 election cycle, blowing up the party wasn't one of the menu items of things that were going to improve our situation."
...[Schmidt] joked about the GOP leadership vacuum ("this 'Lord of the Flies' period"), mocked the party's presidential strategy ("Hold the South and we'll spend $80 million trying to flip Ohio")
...He willingly accepted responsibility for denying Palin the right to speak on election night, because "if you lose, the concession speech is a singular moment" that "acknowledges the legitimacy of the victory and refreshes, if you will, the constitutional order."
...[on Obama]As a political proposition, his first 100 days have been successful," he said. "His approval rating is in the 60s, there has been dramatic improvement in the 'right track' number, he's had success . . . at passing legislation, and the Republican Party as a matter of reality in the first 100 days has not done anything to improve its political condition."
Plouffe's comments-
"I think the scoreboard of how many House Republicans voted for a certain bill is a flawed measure, because the truth is there's very few House Republicans that worry about the middle of the electorate anymore," the president's former campaign manager said.
"We've won all there is to win in the House, so these folks are worried about their primaries, and Newt Gingrich is calling all their shots and pulling out the dusty playbook from 1994 and saying, 'Just oppose the president, and maybe if things don't go well you'll profit.' "
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/04/23/AR2009042304209.html?nav=rss_opinion/columns
Via Dana Milbank at WaPo:
Schmidt's comments-
"...On the Bush-Cheney drag: "The first night of our convention was President Bush and Vice President Cheney. I literally thought by the second night of our convention we could be down 25 points."
On Katie Couric's interview of Sarah Palin: "That is one of the two most consequential interviews that a candidate for national office has given, in a negative way, the other being Roger Mudd's interview of Ted Kennedy . . . when he couldn't answer the question of why he wanted to be president."
...On the Republican Party: "It is near-extinct in many ways in the Northeast, it is extinct in many ways on the West Coast, and it is endangered in the Mountain West, increasingly endangered in the Southwest . . . and if you look at the state of the party, it is a shrinking entity."
...Schmidt spoke openly of McCain's reluctant choice of Palin after hopes of running with former Democrat Joe Lieberman were scuttled by the right, which threatened a convention floor fight. "That would have had the effect of blowing up the Republican Party," he said, "and when you look at all the challenges we had during the 2008 election cycle, blowing up the party wasn't one of the menu items of things that were going to improve our situation."
...[Schmidt] joked about the GOP leadership vacuum ("this 'Lord of the Flies' period"), mocked the party's presidential strategy ("Hold the South and we'll spend $80 million trying to flip Ohio")
...He willingly accepted responsibility for denying Palin the right to speak on election night, because "if you lose, the concession speech is a singular moment" that "acknowledges the legitimacy of the victory and refreshes, if you will, the constitutional order."
...[on Obama]As a political proposition, his first 100 days have been successful," he said. "His approval rating is in the 60s, there has been dramatic improvement in the 'right track' number, he's had success . . . at passing legislation, and the Republican Party as a matter of reality in the first 100 days has not done anything to improve its political condition."
Plouffe's comments-
"I think the scoreboard of how many House Republicans voted for a certain bill is a flawed measure, because the truth is there's very few House Republicans that worry about the middle of the electorate anymore," the president's former campaign manager said.
"We've won all there is to win in the House, so these folks are worried about their primaries, and Newt Gingrich is calling all their shots and pulling out the dusty playbook from 1994 and saying, 'Just oppose the president, and maybe if things don't go well you'll profit.' "
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/04/23/AR2009042304209.html?nav=rss_opinion/columns
Monday, April 27, 2009
Bouncing Around Our Echo Chambers
TW: MSM's revenue models are shattered, blogs and cable outlets with overt bias are the future. This evolution will facilitate the normal human tendency to self-select into groups with similar biases thereby reinforcing the original biases. Self-selection bias is pervasive and a sublte polluter of one's perception of the world on many levels.
Re-connecting with high school associates in Facebook has focused me on the reality the folks with whom I associated with in high school were more diverse than the folks with whom we hang out with today. Today we are cocooned amidst those with similar educational and demographic backgrounds, back then one interfaced with the not entirely diverse but broader group of folks from a surrounding geography (I went to public school, private schools might have been a different story).
As technology permits us to customize our intake of media it will unfortunately permit us to insert our personal biases into the nature of that media. I know I fight the tendency to focus too much on progressive sites. I force myself to crack open National Review, Red State, Drudge and even Fox on occasion to try to keep things somewhat balanced, but it is not easy.
From Nick Kristoff at NYT:
"...When we go online, each of us is our own editor, our own gatekeeper. We select the kind of news and opinions that we care most about.
Nicholas Negroponte of M.I.T. has called this emerging news product The Daily Me. And if that’s the trend, God save us from ourselves.
That’s because there’s pretty good evidence that we generally don’t truly want good information — but rather information that confirms our prejudices. We may believe intellectually in the clash of opinions, but in practice we like to embed ourselves in the reassuring womb of an echo chamber.
One classic study sent mailings to Republicans and Democrats, offering them various kinds of political research, ostensibly from a neutral source. Both groups were most eager to receive intelligent arguments that strongly corroborated their pre-existing views.
There was also modest interest in receiving manifestly silly arguments for the other party’s views (we feel good when we can caricature the other guys as dunces). But there was little interest in encountering solid arguments that might undermine one’s own position.
...The effect of The Daily Me would be to insulate us further in our own hermetically sealed political chambers. One of last year’s more fascinating books was Bill Bishop’s “The Big Sort: Why the Clustering of Like-Minded America is Tearing Us Apart.” He argues that Americans increasingly are segregating themselves into communities, clubs and churches where they are surrounded by people who think the way they do.
Almost half of Americans now live in counties that vote in landslides either for Democrats or for Republicans, he said. In the 1960s and 1970s, in similarly competitive national elections, only about one-third lived in landslide counties.
...One 12-nation study found Americans the least likely to discuss politics with people of different views, and this was particularly true of the well educated. High school dropouts had the most diverse group of discussion-mates, while college graduates managed to shelter themselves from uncomfortable perspectives.
The result is polarization and intolerance. Cass Sunstein, a Harvard law professor now working for President Obama, has conducted research showing that when liberals or conservatives discuss issues such as affirmative action or climate change with like-minded people, their views quickly become more homogeneous and more extreme than before the discussion.
...The decline of traditional news media will accelerate the rise of The Daily Me, and we’ll be irritated less by what we read and find our wisdom confirmed more often. The danger is that this self-selected “news” acts as a narcotic, lulling us into a self-confident stupor through which we will perceive in blacks and whites a world that typically unfolds in grays.
...So perhaps the only way forward is for each of us to struggle on our own to work out intellectually with sparring partners whose views we deplore. Think of it as a daily mental workout analogous to a trip to the gym; if you don’t work up a sweat, it doesn’t count."
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/19/opinion/19kristof.html?scp=1&sq=nicholas%20kristof%20daily%20me&st=cse
Re-connecting with high school associates in Facebook has focused me on the reality the folks with whom I associated with in high school were more diverse than the folks with whom we hang out with today. Today we are cocooned amidst those with similar educational and demographic backgrounds, back then one interfaced with the not entirely diverse but broader group of folks from a surrounding geography (I went to public school, private schools might have been a different story).
As technology permits us to customize our intake of media it will unfortunately permit us to insert our personal biases into the nature of that media. I know I fight the tendency to focus too much on progressive sites. I force myself to crack open National Review, Red State, Drudge and even Fox on occasion to try to keep things somewhat balanced, but it is not easy.
From Nick Kristoff at NYT:
"...When we go online, each of us is our own editor, our own gatekeeper. We select the kind of news and opinions that we care most about.
Nicholas Negroponte of M.I.T. has called this emerging news product The Daily Me. And if that’s the trend, God save us from ourselves.
That’s because there’s pretty good evidence that we generally don’t truly want good information — but rather information that confirms our prejudices. We may believe intellectually in the clash of opinions, but in practice we like to embed ourselves in the reassuring womb of an echo chamber.
One classic study sent mailings to Republicans and Democrats, offering them various kinds of political research, ostensibly from a neutral source. Both groups were most eager to receive intelligent arguments that strongly corroborated their pre-existing views.
There was also modest interest in receiving manifestly silly arguments for the other party’s views (we feel good when we can caricature the other guys as dunces). But there was little interest in encountering solid arguments that might undermine one’s own position.
...The effect of The Daily Me would be to insulate us further in our own hermetically sealed political chambers. One of last year’s more fascinating books was Bill Bishop’s “The Big Sort: Why the Clustering of Like-Minded America is Tearing Us Apart.” He argues that Americans increasingly are segregating themselves into communities, clubs and churches where they are surrounded by people who think the way they do.
Almost half of Americans now live in counties that vote in landslides either for Democrats or for Republicans, he said. In the 1960s and 1970s, in similarly competitive national elections, only about one-third lived in landslide counties.
...One 12-nation study found Americans the least likely to discuss politics with people of different views, and this was particularly true of the well educated. High school dropouts had the most diverse group of discussion-mates, while college graduates managed to shelter themselves from uncomfortable perspectives.
The result is polarization and intolerance. Cass Sunstein, a Harvard law professor now working for President Obama, has conducted research showing that when liberals or conservatives discuss issues such as affirmative action or climate change with like-minded people, their views quickly become more homogeneous and more extreme than before the discussion.
...The decline of traditional news media will accelerate the rise of The Daily Me, and we’ll be irritated less by what we read and find our wisdom confirmed more often. The danger is that this self-selected “news” acts as a narcotic, lulling us into a self-confident stupor through which we will perceive in blacks and whites a world that typically unfolds in grays.
...So perhaps the only way forward is for each of us to struggle on our own to work out intellectually with sparring partners whose views we deplore. Think of it as a daily mental workout analogous to a trip to the gym; if you don’t work up a sweat, it doesn’t count."
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/19/opinion/19kristof.html?scp=1&sq=nicholas%20kristof%20daily%20me&st=cse
Sunday, April 12, 2009
Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy
TW: Not the most civil debate (O'Donnell tends to get excited) but some good perspectives nevertheless. I always find separation of church and state issues compelling (if one is ever faced with difficulty separating the two then I would say you have a problem as they should be quite separable). And those who seek moral absolutes tend to end up pretzelly.
Friday, April 3, 2009
It Was Inevitable: Undertakers Ask For Bailout
TW: I admit once the bailouts start they are hard to stop. Monkey see, monkey do becomes the approach. If them, why not me etc. So naturally funeral directors have decided to petition for some bailout support. Luckily so far they have been thwarted, but they are suffering not because of fewer customers but because the customers are using fewer frills and extras. This, of course, is a clear example of what happens in a demand contraction, even the unavoidable consumption is impacted as consumers squeeze the spending down to only the minimum necessary to get by.
From Dana Milbank at WaPo:
"It has long been suspected that the funeral business is immune from economic cycles, that the Grim Reaper tends not to follow the stock market. But this time, funeral homes are discovering that their clients' thrift -- sheet-metal urns instead of bronze caskets, cheese-and-cracker nibbles instead of traditional funeral luncheons -- is positively killing profits.
So funeral directors did what everybody else does: They asked for a federal bailout.
"We recognized that there may be a situation where a lot of folks who were displaced or unemployed might need some help in paying for their funerals," John Fitch Jr., lobbyist for the National Funeral Directors Association, explained yesterday at the group's annual gathering, at the Mayflower Hotel. "We had some preliminary discussions about providing some stimulus payments to the states" for funerals, he added.
It was quite an undertaking, and it didn't work; apparently, funding funerals wasn't regarded as a spur to economic growth, because much of the benefit gets deep-sixed.
...(It's not that people have stopped dying. Though there's some evidence that the death rate drops during a recession (people drive less, for example, so they have fewer accidents), any such effect will soon be swamped as baby boomers prepare to shuffle off this mortal coil. When it comes to the death rate, "the statistics on this are fairly certain," funeral director Patrick Lynch explained at yesterday's news conference. "It's 100 percent."
...a trio of funeral directors, all in dark suits, lined up at a table, draped in black fabric, for the news conference. They looked much like the banking and automotive executives who came to town to ask for government help, except they attracted rather less interest: a grand total of two reporters.
The undertakers traded tales of penny-pinching mourners. Lynch, of Michigan, spoke about the "huge bowl of Bazooka bubble gum" displayed at one visitation. "Didn't cost a lot of money," he said. "That's what we see people doing."
"Instead of feeding everybody dinner or lunch, we've been throwing little, for lack of a better word, cocktail-party type things, cheese and crackers," added James Olson of Wisconsin. "Also," he said, "my cremation rate has gone up in the last two years. . . . I'm at 42 percent."
Lynch turned to the "merchandise" of the funeral. "People, rather than selecting a copper or a bronze casket, may choose a 20-gauge steel casket painted in a copper color," he said. "Instead of choosing a mahogany casket made of real mahogany, they may choose a poplar casket stained with a mahogany stain, which to most observers looks the same. Perhaps they would chose a crepe interior as opposed to a velvet interior in a casket. Perhaps they would choose a sheet-metal urn as opposed to a solid-bronze urn."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/03/31/AR2009033103477.html?nav=rss_opinion/columns
From Dana Milbank at WaPo:
"It has long been suspected that the funeral business is immune from economic cycles, that the Grim Reaper tends not to follow the stock market. But this time, funeral homes are discovering that their clients' thrift -- sheet-metal urns instead of bronze caskets, cheese-and-cracker nibbles instead of traditional funeral luncheons -- is positively killing profits.
So funeral directors did what everybody else does: They asked for a federal bailout.
"We recognized that there may be a situation where a lot of folks who were displaced or unemployed might need some help in paying for their funerals," John Fitch Jr., lobbyist for the National Funeral Directors Association, explained yesterday at the group's annual gathering, at the Mayflower Hotel. "We had some preliminary discussions about providing some stimulus payments to the states" for funerals, he added.
It was quite an undertaking, and it didn't work; apparently, funding funerals wasn't regarded as a spur to economic growth, because much of the benefit gets deep-sixed.
...(It's not that people have stopped dying. Though there's some evidence that the death rate drops during a recession (people drive less, for example, so they have fewer accidents), any such effect will soon be swamped as baby boomers prepare to shuffle off this mortal coil. When it comes to the death rate, "the statistics on this are fairly certain," funeral director Patrick Lynch explained at yesterday's news conference. "It's 100 percent."
...a trio of funeral directors, all in dark suits, lined up at a table, draped in black fabric, for the news conference. They looked much like the banking and automotive executives who came to town to ask for government help, except they attracted rather less interest: a grand total of two reporters.
The undertakers traded tales of penny-pinching mourners. Lynch, of Michigan, spoke about the "huge bowl of Bazooka bubble gum" displayed at one visitation. "Didn't cost a lot of money," he said. "That's what we see people doing."
"Instead of feeding everybody dinner or lunch, we've been throwing little, for lack of a better word, cocktail-party type things, cheese and crackers," added James Olson of Wisconsin. "Also," he said, "my cremation rate has gone up in the last two years. . . . I'm at 42 percent."
Lynch turned to the "merchandise" of the funeral. "People, rather than selecting a copper or a bronze casket, may choose a 20-gauge steel casket painted in a copper color," he said. "Instead of choosing a mahogany casket made of real mahogany, they may choose a poplar casket stained with a mahogany stain, which to most observers looks the same. Perhaps they would chose a crepe interior as opposed to a velvet interior in a casket. Perhaps they would choose a sheet-metal urn as opposed to a solid-bronze urn."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/03/31/AR2009033103477.html?nav=rss_opinion/columns
Monday, March 30, 2009
Texas Fumbles Around With Evolution
TW: Have posted on the Texas state education board's efforts to inject creationism into our nation's science curricula. The board issued a muddled ruling last week falling short of explicitly pushing creationism into science classes but leaving many doors open by which local entities can do so on their own. I especially like Hitchens final paragraph. If one is going to open things up for comparative debate why should the Christian Genesis explanation be the only alternative (personally I would insist upon the Druids getting some level of recognition).
From Chris Hitchens in Newsweek:
"...last week Texas and schoolbooks meant something else altogether when the state Board of Education, in a muddled decision, rejected a state science curriculum that required teachers to discuss the "strengths and weaknesses" of the theory of evolution. Instead, the board allowed "all sides" of scientific theories to be taught.
...let's "be honest with the kids," as Dr. Don McLeroy[chief creationist tout], the chairman of the Texas education board, wants us to be. The problem is that he is urging that the argument be taught, not in a history or in a civics class, but in a biology class. And one of his supporters on the board, Ken Mercer, has said that evolution is disproved by the absence of any transitional forms between dogs and cats. If any state in the American union gave equal time in science class to such claims, it would certainly make itself unique in the world (perhaps no shame in that). But it would also set a precedent for the sharing of the astronomy period with the teaching of astrology, or indeed of equal time as between chemistry and alchemy. Less boring perhaps, but also much less scientific and less educational.
The Texas anti-Darwin stalwarts also might want to beware of what they wish for. The last times that evangelical Protestantism won cultural/ political victories—by banning the sale of alcohol, prohibiting the teaching of evolution and restricting immigration from Catholic countries—the triumphs all turned out to be Pyrrhic. There are some successes that are simply not survivable. If by any combination of luck and coincidence any religious coalition ever did succeed in criminalizing abortion, say, or mandating school prayer, it would swiftly become the victim of a backlash that would make it rue the day. This will apply with redoubled force to any initiative that asks the United States to trade its hard-won scientific preeminence against its private and unofficial pieties. This country is so constituted that no one group, and certainly no one confessional group, is able to dictate its own standards to the others. There are days when I almost wish the fundamentalists could get their own way, just so that they would find out what would happen to them.
...It's not just that the overwhelming majority of scientists are now convinced that evolution is inscribed in the fossil record and in the lineaments of molecular biology. It is more that evolutionists will say in advance which evidence, if found, would refute them and force them to reconsider. ("Rabbit fossils in the pre-Cambrian layer" was, I seem to remember, the response of Prof. J.B.S. Haldane.) Try asking an "intelligent design" advocate to stipulate upfront what would constitute refutation of his world view and you will easily see the difference between the scientific method and the pseudoscientific one.
But that is just my opinion. And I certainly do not want it said that my side denies a hearing to the opposing one. In the spirit of compromise, then, I propose the following. First, let the school debating societies restage the wonderful set-piece real-life dramas of Oxford and Dayton, Tenn. Let time also be set aside, in our increasingly multiethnic and multicultural school system, for children to be taught the huge variety of creation stories, from the Hindu to the Muslim to the Australian Aboriginal. This is always interesting (and it can't be, can it, that the Texas board holdouts think that only Genesis ought to be so honored?). Second, we can surely demand that the principle of "strengths and weaknesses" will be applied evenly. If any church in Texas receives a tax exemption, or if any religious institution is the beneficiary of any subvention from the Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships, we must be assured that it will devote a portion of its time to laying bare the "strengths and weaknesses" of the religious world view, and also to teaching the works of Voltaire, David Hume, Benedict de Spinoza, Thomas Paine and Thomas Jefferson. This is America. Let a hundred flowers bloom, and a thousand schools of thought contend. We may one day have cause to be grateful to the Texas Board of Education for lighting a candle that cannot be put out."
http://www.newsweek.com/id/191400/page/1
From Chris Hitchens in Newsweek:
"...last week Texas and schoolbooks meant something else altogether when the state Board of Education, in a muddled decision, rejected a state science curriculum that required teachers to discuss the "strengths and weaknesses" of the theory of evolution. Instead, the board allowed "all sides" of scientific theories to be taught.
...let's "be honest with the kids," as Dr. Don McLeroy[chief creationist tout], the chairman of the Texas education board, wants us to be. The problem is that he is urging that the argument be taught, not in a history or in a civics class, but in a biology class. And one of his supporters on the board, Ken Mercer, has said that evolution is disproved by the absence of any transitional forms between dogs and cats. If any state in the American union gave equal time in science class to such claims, it would certainly make itself unique in the world (perhaps no shame in that). But it would also set a precedent for the sharing of the astronomy period with the teaching of astrology, or indeed of equal time as between chemistry and alchemy. Less boring perhaps, but also much less scientific and less educational.
The Texas anti-Darwin stalwarts also might want to beware of what they wish for. The last times that evangelical Protestantism won cultural/ political victories—by banning the sale of alcohol, prohibiting the teaching of evolution and restricting immigration from Catholic countries—the triumphs all turned out to be Pyrrhic. There are some successes that are simply not survivable. If by any combination of luck and coincidence any religious coalition ever did succeed in criminalizing abortion, say, or mandating school prayer, it would swiftly become the victim of a backlash that would make it rue the day. This will apply with redoubled force to any initiative that asks the United States to trade its hard-won scientific preeminence against its private and unofficial pieties. This country is so constituted that no one group, and certainly no one confessional group, is able to dictate its own standards to the others. There are days when I almost wish the fundamentalists could get their own way, just so that they would find out what would happen to them.
...It's not just that the overwhelming majority of scientists are now convinced that evolution is inscribed in the fossil record and in the lineaments of molecular biology. It is more that evolutionists will say in advance which evidence, if found, would refute them and force them to reconsider. ("Rabbit fossils in the pre-Cambrian layer" was, I seem to remember, the response of Prof. J.B.S. Haldane.) Try asking an "intelligent design" advocate to stipulate upfront what would constitute refutation of his world view and you will easily see the difference between the scientific method and the pseudoscientific one.
But that is just my opinion. And I certainly do not want it said that my side denies a hearing to the opposing one. In the spirit of compromise, then, I propose the following. First, let the school debating societies restage the wonderful set-piece real-life dramas of Oxford and Dayton, Tenn. Let time also be set aside, in our increasingly multiethnic and multicultural school system, for children to be taught the huge variety of creation stories, from the Hindu to the Muslim to the Australian Aboriginal. This is always interesting (and it can't be, can it, that the Texas board holdouts think that only Genesis ought to be so honored?). Second, we can surely demand that the principle of "strengths and weaknesses" will be applied evenly. If any church in Texas receives a tax exemption, or if any religious institution is the beneficiary of any subvention from the Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships, we must be assured that it will devote a portion of its time to laying bare the "strengths and weaknesses" of the religious world view, and also to teaching the works of Voltaire, David Hume, Benedict de Spinoza, Thomas Paine and Thomas Jefferson. This is America. Let a hundred flowers bloom, and a thousand schools of thought contend. We may one day have cause to be grateful to the Texas Board of Education for lighting a candle that cannot be put out."
http://www.newsweek.com/id/191400/page/1
Thursday, March 26, 2009
Get Rid Of the Mortgage Subsidies
TW: Cows will fly first but I do strongly support eliminating or reducing real estates subsidies aka the sacrosanct mortgage interest deductions. I have never seen a compelling case for the subsidies. But the deductions are now so firmly entrenched in American psyche that they are likely impossible to displace (especially amidst the current crash, although obviously the bubble might have been mitigated with less aggressive subsidies). Why should housing receive such preferential treatment? You tell me.
The Republicans want to take the subsidies to new heights (in fairness the Dems fall over themselves as well). I say if no subsidies work for Swiss then it should work for us.
From Kevin Drum at Mother Jones:
"David Freddoso lauding the House Republicans' new housing plan. You will be non-shocked to learn that it consists of a bunch of new tax breaks, including — naturally — elimination of the capital gains tax on investment property. Yawn.
But wait! It turns out that the House GOP's plan has inspired some surprising comity between right and left: they both hate it. Jerry Taylor gives the conservative rationale for opposing the plan:
So: get rid of housing subsidies and we'd have both a freer market and bigger government. It's a win-win! Except for anyone who actually voted for it, of course. But at least we get this bonus factoidish wonkery from Taylor:
The Republicans want to take the subsidies to new heights (in fairness the Dems fall over themselves as well). I say if no subsidies work for Swiss then it should work for us.
From Kevin Drum at Mother Jones:
"David Freddoso lauding the House Republicans' new housing plan. You will be non-shocked to learn that it consists of a bunch of new tax breaks, including — naturally — elimination of the capital gains tax on investment property. Yawn.
But wait! It turns out that the House GOP's plan has inspired some surprising comity between right and left: they both hate it. Jerry Taylor gives the conservative rationale for opposing the plan:
I know that there is plenty of political capital to be gained by providing handouts to middle-class homeowners and little political capital in removing the same. But a political party that ostensibly stands for free markets and limited government should not be in the business of underwriting or subsidizing private investments in anything unless we can find some plausible market failure in need of correction (and perhaps not even then).Matt Yglesias provides the lefty view of why this plan sucks:
Preferential subsidies for investment in housing lead people to, on average,consume more housing and less stuff-that-isn’t-housing than they otherwise would. In other words, bigger houses instead of fancier clothes. This, in turn,has a substantial negative impact on the economy. Larger houses cost more to heat and cool, and larger houses lead to longer commutes. We shouldn’t stop people from buying big houses if that’s what they want to do, but it’s quite harmful to be specifically encouraging them to invest their resources in this way quite independently from the financial crisis. Reduce the tax-side subsidies to homeownership and we’d have somewhat faster economic growth, somewhat more public revenue, and a somewhat cleaner environment.
So: get rid of housing subsidies and we'd have both a freer market and bigger government. It's a win-win! Except for anyone who actually voted for it, of course. But at least we get this bonus factoidish wonkery from Taylor:
For what it is worth, Switzerland is the only major country I am aware of that does not implicitly or explicitly subsidize housing in any substantial manner.Home ownership rates are somewhere around 35% as a consequence. But no one thinks of Switzerland as poor or deprived somehow because it does not receive the positive externalities allegedly associated with private home ownership."
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