Category: Politics

current affairs

Why I Won’t Be Voting For Romney

It may come as a shock to some folks, but—

No, that’s being coy.  I don’t think anyone who knows me would be shocked by my admission that I will not be voting for Mr. Romney this fall.  What always dismays me, however, is the reaction that gets from some people.  They give me a look, an attitude, a combination of disbelief and betrayal, an expression that is the epitome of an exasperated “But…why?”  As if I could not possibly have any valid reasons for such a stance.

Well.  I have to say, it’s not because I’m particularly in love with Obama.

I admit in 2008 I cast my ballot for Mr. Obama with a bit more optimism than my usual cynicism allows.  I actually thought there might have been a chance that something new would come out of this one.  I wasn’t wholly disappointed, but…

I also admit that I understand enough about how politics work that the business-as-usual parts of the last three-plus years do not dismay me.  Merely disappoint me.

Obama said he would get us out of Iraq.  I approved.  As far as I’m concerned, it was a boneheaded act of petty vengeance combined with a big dose of insider opportunism that put us in there in the first place.  It provided nothing but an opportunity for Bush to wave the flag and pretend to be Doing Something while Cheney’s cronies dipped their collective beaks in the public trough to drink of billions of still-unaccounted-for money.  Even if the nuttiness of the invasion had been handled better, it was clear what was going on when all the people in Iraq who might have made the whole thing work to the benefit of all concerned were summarily pushed aside and pissed on so KBR could get all the no-bid contracts and face absolutely no local resistance to the milking they gave both Iraq and our treasury.

Obama got us out of Iraq.  He did say he’d have us out of Afghanistan by now and that has yet to happen, but we’re drawing down.

He said he’d go after Osama bin Laden, no matter what.  He did that and got him.  He pissed off Pakistan.  Oh my.  Pakistan has been the seething pit of all this nonsense with Al Quida and the Taliban all along, so I’m not inclined to lose any sleep over their hurt feelings, but I am very irritated at our drone program and all the unnecessary and ill-advised killing that has resulted.

Obama said he would go to bat for the middle class and the working class.  He saved the American auto industry.  Bush saved the banks that caused the depression.  (Yes, I say depression, and I further say we’re not out of it yet.  Everyone else is afraid of the D word, but let us face reality.  Despite the “official” unemployment rate, actual unemployment is well north of 15%, I suspect close to 25%, but as usual we don’t count actual unemployed, only those still drawing unemployment insurance.)  Obama of course is being blamed for TARP, which was a Bush program, and I’m not sure I would not have felt a lot better if he had torpedoed it and let the damn banks flounder.  But I am not an economist, so what do I know?

I am very irritated that he kept many of the same people who put us in this economic fix for his own economic team—Summers, Geitner, et al.  (Yes, they were part of Bush’s team, too, and some were on board with Clinton for his ill-considered gutting of our regulatory laws, cheering us on into greater profits for fewer people.)

He has kept much of the Patriot Act, which I believe to be a wholly unConstitutional infringement on American rights and liberties.

Yes, he saw a health care reform through, and many of its components are pretty good, but it is not what we really need and he did not, in my opinion, really push for it, but I suppose that’s a quibble.

There are other things I’m not terribly pleased with about Mr. Obama.  But the truth is, much the same can be said by any reasonable person about any president.  Still, I would prefer certain priorities to change.

So with all that I am displeased with my president, why, it may be reasonably asked, would I vote for him again as opposed to Mr. Romney?

There are very simple reasons.

Mr. Romney is an advocate of trickle-down economics.  He may not call it that, but from everything he has said that’s his focus.

Top down policies have not worked.  We can imagine that by cutting the rich a break and giving tax breaks to large corporations might benefit us all by allowing them more money to invest, and on paper it sounds great.  But seriously, look at the last three decades.  That is not what has happened and we keep doing the same damn thing.  Deregulate, more tax cuts for the top in the hope that they will spend it on this country.  We have more unemployment, working and middle class wages have been stagnant for thirty years, our infrastructure is decaying, the bottom half is getting worse off.  It simply has not worked.  I will not vote for him because he advocates a failed policy.  Period.

Mr. Romney claims he intends to repeal “Obamacare.”  He modified this claim by saying he wants it repealed and “something that works” put in its place.

He has not said what that would be and I find the hypocrisy both unsurprising and galling.  Many of the features of the Affordable Healthcare Act are the same as those he signed into law in Massachussetts and now repudiates, including the individual mandate.  (As a minor point, I find the Republican harping on “Obamacare” annoying.  Technically, Congress wrote that law, if we will all recall, not Mr. Obama.)  But more to the point, I simply don’t believe him.  Big Pharma and Big Insurance did not want health care reform.  They’ve been making plenty of money on things as they were and had absolutely no incentive to change anything.  They fought tooth-and-nail against the Affordable Care Act, they torpedoed single payer, they will certainly be right there at the table making sure that nothing gets put in its place if repealed.  The GOP has made it clear that they want no government controls over private enterprise whatsoever.  So I don’t believe Mr. Romney that he would do anything to put a better, or even a different, law in place.  He will sign the repeal, if it happens, and we will revert to accelerating costs and insurance premiums spiraling out of control.

Mr. Romney is one of a long line of people who claim that having been businessmen makes them ideally—or at least better—suited to run the country.  He is, like all of them, wrong.  The country is not a business and bottom-line thinking is a good way to hurt, damage, and destroy people through public institutions.  Right at the moment, he cannot even give a good account of why he maintains offshore accounts.  (This is done to avoid taxes.  No matter what  else is claimed, offshore accounts that are not simply part of a globally diversified portfolio are there as tax havens. I don’t care how you feel personally about taxes, this is a cheat, and I have no respect for it.)

The other reasons I do not intend to vote for Mr. Romney have less to do with him than with his party, which I feel is broken.  They have come out four-square against compromise.  This is insane.  This is a country of 300-plus million people, all of whom have needs that are not universal.  There is overlap, but not homogeneity.  The only way to govern such a country is through compromise.  To refuse to consider it is tantamount to saying that differences don’t matter and people who don’t fit in should receive no regard.  If such a party ends up in control of Congress—which I think is likely—then I want a Democrat in the White House to at least stick his thumb in the dyke of insanity.

How can I say that?

The GOP has conducted a series of campaigns against certain institutions and ideas which I find essential to the kind of country I want to live in.  They’re union busters.  They’re economic elitists.  They’re frankly warmongers and for the worst possible reason—they’re afraid of foreigners.  And they have embraced a constraining view of public morality that I find bizarre, one which as a consequence would see gains in equality for women reversed.

Here and there, but in growing numbers (because moderate Republicans keep leaving the party), they are anti-education.  Texas, as one example, is at the forefront of revisionist history and the purging of legitimate science from classrooms.  And they are more and more stridently theocratic.

Now, many people find nothing wrong with any of that.  There are many people who cannot stand to hear America criticized, so expunging certain episodes from history books seems like patriotism to them.  Many object to the ideas of Darwin, so deleting evolution from science classrooms seems like a good idea.  In the same vein, many think our biggest problem is that we as a nation don’t pray enough.

You are all entitled to your opinion.  I happen to believe truth and fact should trump wishful thinking and “belief.”

But I wanted to explain why I will not be voting for Mr. Romney.  The reasons are very simple.  I do, in fact, wish I had a better choice who I thought had a snowball’s chance in hell of winning.  I am very tired of voting against something by voting for something less than I really want. But there it is.  Mr. Romney and the GOP have a vision for this country which I believe will be very destructive.  It will be very good for certain people, but not for all the people, and the president in particular has to represent All the People.  I don’t believe Mr. Romney will do that.

I don’t think he has any idea who all the people are.

Art

Reflections On the 4th of July: A Personal Statement

I am not given to setting out pronouncements like this very often, but in light of the last several years I thought it might be worthwhile to do so on the occasion of the 236th anniversary of our declared independence.

I don’t think in terms of demonstrating my love of country. My affection for my home is simply a given, a background hum, a constant, foundational reality that is reflexively true. This is the house in which I grew up. I know its walls, its ceiling, its floors, the steps to the attic, the verge, and every shadow that moves with the sun through all the windows. I live here; its existence contours my thinking, is the starting place of my feelings.

The house itself is an old friend, a reliable companion, a welcoming space, both mental and physical, that I can no more dislike or reject than I can stop breathing.

But some of the furniture…that’s different.

 

I am an American.

I don’t have to prove that to anyone. I carry it with me, inside, my cells are suffused with it. I do not have to wear a flag on my lapel, hang one in front of my house, or publicly pledge an oath to it for the convenience of those who question my political sentiments. Anyone who says I should or ought or have to does not understand the nature of what they request or the substance of my refusal to accommodate them. They do not understand that public affirmations like that become a fetish and serve only to divide, to make people pass a test they should—because we are free—never have to take.

I am an American.

I am not afraid of ideas. My country was born out the embrace of ideas, new ideas, ideas that challenged the right of kings to suppress ideas. Ideas are the bricks that built these halls. I claim as my birthright the freedom to think anything, entertain any notion, weigh the value of any concept or proposition, and to take refuge in the knowledge that wisdom comes from learning and the freedom to learn is among the most hallowed and sacred privileges we have inherited as a country. The greatest enemy of our republic is the fear of ideas, of education, and by extension of truth and fact. Those who see no harm in removing books from libraries or diluting fact with wishful thinking and teaching our children to accept things entirely on faith and never question will weaken the foundations, damage the walls, and corrupt every other freedom they themselves boast about and then fail to defend.

I am an American.

I do not need to demonize others to make myself feel safe or superior or even right. I do not need to pretend that I am innately “better” than anyone else to prove my own worth. America was founded on the idea that all of us are equal in potential value. I do not need to oppress, undercut, strike, or otherwise impede others so that I can claim the dubious and ultimately meaningless label of Number One.

I am an American.

Sometimes I wear my sentiment on my sleeve, display my emotions at inappropriate times. I often side with unpopular causes, cheer those who aren’t going to win, get unreasonably angry over unfairness. I believe in justice and I don’t have any trouble with the idea of making an extra effort for people who can’t afford it for themselves. Other times I am stoic, even cynical. I accommodate a world-weariness far beyond the scope of my heritage. I do not believe in providence. Things will not just “work out in the long run” and the bad are not always punished and the good too often are crushed. I know the world doesn’t care and has no interest in level playing fields or evening up odds or anything other than its own ravenous acquisitiveness. It’s an uphill battle against impossible odds, but it’s the only one worth fighting, and I have an unreasonable belief that as an American I have a responsibility to help fight it.

I am an American.

I take a childish pride in many of the attributes and details of my heritage. We build things, we invent things, we have moved mountains, changed the course of rivers, gone to the moon, created great art, changed the face of the earth, broken tyrants on the wheel, and made the world yield. At the same time I am embarrassed at many of the other details of my heritage. We have hurt people unnecessarily, killed and raped, we have damaged forests, poisoned rivers, waged war when there were other avenues. I like the idea that I can work my way out of poverty here, but I hate the idea that we idolize the rich when they put barriers in the path of those like me just because they can. It’s not the money, it’s the work that counts, but sometimes we forget that and those with less must school those with more. That we have done that and can do that is also part of my heritage and I am glad of it.

I am an American.

I am not bound by ritual. Tradition is valuable, history must never be forgotten, but as a starting point not a straitjacket. Those who wish to constrain me according to the incantations, ceremonies, and empty routines of disproven ideologies, debunked beliefs, and discredited authority are not my compatriots, nor do they understand the liberty which comes from an open mind amply armed with knowledge and fueled by a spirit of optimism and a fearless willingness to look into the new and make what is worthy in progress your own.

I am an American.

I do not need others to tell me who I am and how I should be what they think I should be. I elect my representatives. They work for me. They are employees. If I criticize them, I am not criticizing my country. If I call their judgment into question, I am not undermining America. If I am angry with the job they do, I do not hate my country. They should take their definition from me, not the other way around.

I am an American.

If my so-called leaders send soldiers in my name somewhere to do things of which I do not approve and I voice my disapproval, I am not insulting those soldiers or failing to support them. They did not send themselves to those places or tell themselves to do those things. My country has never asked one of its soldiers to kill innocents, torture people, lay waste to civilians, or otherwise perform illegal, unnecessary, or wrong deeds. Politicians do that and they are employees, they are not My Country. Greedy individuals do that, and they are not My Country. No one has the right to call me unpatriotic because I condemn politicians or businessmen for a war they make that I consider wrong, nor that I am not “supporting out troops” because I want them out of that situation and no longer misused by the narrow, blinkered, and all-too-often secret agendas of functionaries, bureaucrats, and bought stooges.

I am an American.

My success is my own, but it is impossible without the work done by my fellow Americans. I acknowledge that we make this country together or not at all and I have no reservations about crediting those whose labor has made my own possible or condemning those who seek to divide us so they can reap the plenty and pretend they made their success all by themselves.

I am an American.

Which means that by inheritance I am nearly everyone on this planet. I am not afraid of Others, or of The Other, and those who would seek to deny political and social rights to people who for whatever reason do not fit a particular box simply because they’re afraid of them do not speak for me. I reject superstition and embrace reason and as a child I learned that this is what should be the hallmark of an American, that while we never discard the lessons of the past nor do we let the fears and ignorance of the past dictate our future.

I am an American.

I accept the rule of law. This is a founding idea and I live accordingly, even if I dislike or disapprove of a given example. If so, then I embrace my right to try to change the law, but I will not break it thoughtlessly just because it inconveniences me or to simply prove my independence. My independence is likewise, like my Americanness, something I carry with me, inside. The forum of ideas is where we debate the virtues and vices of the framework of our society and I take it as given my right to participate. Cooperation is our strength, not blind commitment to standards poorly explained or half understood. Because we make the law, we determine its shape and limits. The more of us who participate, the better, otherwise we surrender majority rule to minority veto, and law becomes the playground of those who learn how to keep the rest of us out.

I am an American.

Such a thing was invented. It came out of change, it encompasses change, it uses change. Change is the only constant and too-tight a grip on that which is no longer meaningful is the beginning of stagnation and the end of that which makes us who we are. Change is annoying, inconvenient, sometimes maddening, but it is the only constant, so I welcome it and understand that the willingness to meet it and work with it defines us as much as our rivers, our mountains, our cities, our art. A fondness for particular times and places and periods is only natural—humans are nostalgic—but to try to freeze us as a people into one shape for all time is the surest way to destroy us.

I am an American.

I do not need others to be less so I can be more. I do not need others to lose so that I can win. I do not need to sabotage the success of others to guarantee my own. I do not have to take anything away from someone else in order to have more for myself.

America is for me—

My partner, my family, my friends, the books I love, the music I hear, the laughter of my neighbors, the grass and flowers of my garden, the conversations I have, the roads I travel, and the freedom I have to recognize and appreciate and enjoy all these things. I will defend it, I will fight anyone who tries to hurt it, but I will do it my own way, out of my own sentiments, for my own reasons. Others may have their reasons and sentiments, and may beat a different drum. That’s fine. That is their way and we may find common cause in some things. This, too, is America.

“All colors and blends of Americans have somewhat the same tendencies. It’s a breed — selected out by accident. And so we’re overbrave and overfearful — we’re kind and cruel as children. We’re overfriendly and at the same time frightened of strangers. We boast and are impressed. We’re oversentimental and realistic. We are mundane and materialistic — and do you know of any other nation that acts for ideals? We eat too much. We have no taste, no sense of proportion. We throw our energy about like waste. In the old lands they say of us that we go from barbarism to decadence without an intervening culture.”
John Steinbeck, East of Eden

“There’s the country of America, which you have to defend, but there’s also the idea of America. America is more than just a country, it’s an idea. An idea that’s supposed to be contagious.”
Bono

“We are not afraid to entrust the American people with unpleasant facts, foreign ideas, alien philosophies, and competitive values. For a nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people.”
John F. Kennedy

“When an American says that he loves his country, he means not only that he loves the New England hills, the prairies glistening in the sun, the wide and rising plains, the great mountains, and the sea. He means that he loves an inner air, an inner light in which freedom lives and in which a man can draw the breath of self-respect.”
Adlai Stevenson

culture

What Ails Us

Senator Bernie Sanders is a voice of conscience. When he stands on the floor to tell us what ails us, we should listen. A lot of people won’t—they’re too busy trying to prove Obama is a Muslim or not a citizen or that Obamacare is socialism run rampant or some other absurdity that does nothing but distract from the real problems. We have as a nation become obsessed with sideshows. We seem incapable of coming together to actually solve the problems that we have. It’s easier to bitch about what is unaddressable than to do the hard work to understand real problems and deal with genuine issues. Ahead of our anniversary as a nation, a bit of cold water.

Stay cool, folks.

culture

Education

We seem to have lost sight of a simple truth of late.  Not all things we do should or ought to be money-making enterprises.  Yet we should do them anyway, because, to put it simply, without them we lose everything that makes making money worth the bother.

 

A string of university decisions in the last few years—most recently the forced resignation of the president of the University of Virginia and now the announced cutting of the University of Missouri Press— underscore how far we have drifted from this truth.  None of these decisions have been about bad decision-making or scandal or anything that might impair the work of education.  They have all been about bottomlines and making money.

Basically, the president of the University of Virginia, Teresa Sullivan, was fired over a disagreement with the direction of the university with the board of directors, who wish to see more business courses and fewer liberal arts courses.  But we don’t really know because no cause was ever given.  Inadvertently, a billionaire, Peter Kiernan, admitted to orchestrating her firing behind the scenes, but still never fully explained why.  He has since resigned from the board of directors.

The elimination of the UM Press is even less explicable other than as a bottomline measure—yet the university recently received thirty million to expand its sports infrastructure.

Actually, anyone paying attention knows what is going on.  Boards of directors everywhere are trying to turn universities into money machines and anything that doesn’t turn a tidy profit is set to be axed.

If these were businesses like any other, this is perfectly understandable, even laudable if it means saving the business.  But a university is not a business like any other.  We have forgotten that.

You do not have a university press to make money.  You have it to make available the materials for learning.  You do not have a university to make money.  You have it to teach.

And you should not teach the making of money to the exclusion of all else.  Universities should teach in service to truth and knowledge and discovery and the investment of character and soul in people so that they have an idea what to do with money when they make it.  Universities should not have to be held accountable the way a bank or a factory is.  That’s ridiculous.

Some things should exist because they are beautiful, elegant, meaningful, true, inspirational.  If all of that had to rely on the ability to turn a profit, we would have a civilization of fast-food franchises, malls, comic books movies, bad music, and superficial fashion.

Oh, wait.  We do have that civilization.

Teresa Sullivan has been reinstated at the University of Virginia because of an enormous groundswell of student and alumni support.  Someone even suggested that maybe there should be fewer political appointees to university boards.  Hmm.

I have no such hopes for the survival of the UM Press.  It hasn’t been in the black for years.  In my opinion, that shouldn’t matter.  Important books often do not earn a profit, yet they remain important books.  They should exist, as should presses like UM’s, because they contribute an absolutely vital yet unquantifiable essence to our culture.  They should simply Be.

We need to get over this nonsense before we lose too much of ourselves.  We’ve been fed a line that capitalism is the essence of America.  That’s as far from true as can be.  The essence of America are the ideas that formed us.  Ideas that came out of scholarship and philosophy and education.  Ideas that have become an inconvenience to certain people who have found a good way to use our own commitment to free enterprise against us to destroy the very things that make us who we are.

It’s not the money.  It should not be about the money.  It’s about the mind and what’s in it.

 

culture

Denying Reality.

The North Carolina state legislature has adopted new guidelines to address the impact of climate change on their state.  Namely by banning the use of the term “climate change” or the term “sea level rise” unless “authorized.”  In section 2 of their House Bill 819 the prohibitions are laid out very clearly—no state agency is to use those terms when studying, commenting on, or otherwise addressing the impact of…well, you know.

Virginia is following suit.  At least there an answer as to why is offered.  Supposedly, such terms as climate change and sea level rise are “liberal code.”

Excuse me?  Code for what?

The irony astounds.  This is a Republican effort.  For years we have listened to conservatives bitch and complain over P.C. language, as if the prohibition of certain terms was some kind of absurd attempt to pretend a specific reality doesn’t exist.  P.C. has become conservative “code” for liberal bullshit.  But now, conservatives are doing the same damn thing and, I assume, thinking that the elimination from official use of certain objectionable words somehow alters reality.

The world turns, the circle comes back on itself.

The entire conservative objection to climate change science is based entirely on a constituent-driven refusal to acknowledge a reality that might require people—mainly people with interests in certain industries—to change the way they do things.  That’s it.  That’s the problem right there.  We—and believe me I do not let moderates or even some liberals off the hook—do not wish to change our lifestyles. *

The science is in.  Climate change is real.  The oceans are rising (because a lot of well-documented melting is going on in both the Arctic and the Antarctic) and the world is about to look different.  Temperature rise will cause disruption in agriculture, alterations in water table distribution, and weather patterns we are no used to.

This is a fact.  It is not a liberal plot to undermine free enterprise.

The much-vaunted pragmatism that has been a hallmark of conservative posturing for decades has apparently failed to serve them.  They seem to be trying to wish reality away instead of “manning-up” and facing the world on its own terms.  I’m sorry, I find this laughable.

The state legislature of Indiana once attempted to legislate the value of Pi, making it equal to 3 instead of 3.14 etc, claiming the actual value was an affront to nature and god.  The bill didn’t get out of committee, I believe, it never came to a vote, but somebody wrote the damn thing, spending tax-payer money on an attempt to deny reality.  They didn’t succeed.

This did.  At least, it got out of committee and became law.

I wonder what they’ll call it when their coastline is erased from “periodic flooding” that doesn’t go away?

_________________________________________________

*  I know, the “real” issue is anthropogenic climate change.  They don’t like the idea that “we” have caused this.  But damn, you can argue about where it comes from all you want.  That’s not the same as claiming it’s not happening.

Personally, while I have no problem accepting that human activity has contributed to the current conditions, I’m not sanguine about our capacity to do anything useful about it.  If we shut every polluting factory down tomorrow, stopped driving cars, and basically ended our industrial civilization, people—all seven billion of us—are still going to burn things to survive.  We have to.  I seriously doubt at this point anything we do will stop the transformations we’re seeing, at least not in time to make any difference to anyone now living.  The fact is there are too many of us and we’re making more.  The sheer consequence of biomass and its activities has an impact.  So I think we should be paying attention to how to live in the world that’s coming.

I also think we should stop sacrilizing reproduction and making more just for the sake of making more.

culture

For Those Who Think I Have No Problems With Mr. Obama

This is an article by journalist Christopher Hedges about a historic court case just recently which overturned an egregious and unconstitutional provision of the Defense Authorization Act with which I and anyone with a clue about the nature of abuse of power in this country have had a deep concern since it was initially enacted under President Bush.  I bristled when it was originally enacted, but quite frankly I was unsurprised at the time.

What offended me was Obama’s reauthorization.  Mr. Obama is a constitutional historian.  He should know better.  Section 1012 of the NDAA effectively suspends habeus corpus.  It is as unAmerican as it is possible to get and still claim rule of law.

The kicker apparently was during the hearings when the judge, Katherine Forrest, repeatedly asked the government lawyers if they could guarantee that the plaintiffs in this case would not be arrested and detained after the trial.  She asked five times and five times they refused to offer guarantees.  They could not under the act, since apparently writing or speaking in a certain way can be construed as prosecutable under this law.

The fundamental right of an American to think, read, say, or write whatever he or she wants is foundational to our freedoms.  It is stunning that a president as well-versed in constitutional law as Obama could possibly regard this right as optional.

Mr. Bush was an expert in nothing other than getting elected.  His vice president, however, should have known better, but was apparently seized by a fit of Us vs. Them McCarthyism.

I voted for Obama to see the bone-headed practices of the Bush regime overturned, not to see practices continued because, supposedly, they only concerned assumed enemies.

I will likely vote for Mr. Obama in November, but only because I have less patience with the current GOP program.  But that does not mean I think he walks on water.  Indeed, there are many aspects of Mr. Obama’s administration with which I have serious reservations.

But let me be clear—I have policy issues with him.  I don’t give a damn where he spends his Christmas vacation or where he went to school as a youngster.  I could care less that he attended a firebreathing church (christian, btw) where the black preacher unleashed anti-white venom.  Who he associated with in Chicago as an up-and-coming activist doesn’t bother me a bit—I hung out with all manner of varied intellectual bohemian as a youth and I’m fairly certain I can think for myself.  Charges that Mr. Obama is a Muslim or isn’t an American citizen I find infantile nonsense.  (Even if he were a Muslim, so what?  This is America—one’s religion is irrelevant to one’s suitability to public office.)

None of that matters.  What matters is policy.  Reauthorizing this act, especially that part of it, is not policy I can support.  I don’t understand why he did it and I am delighted it has been overturned.

I really do wish people would understand, especially people who all but worshiped Bush and Reagan: the president may be the most powerful person on the planet, leader of the free world and all that, but he is still just an employee.  The president works for me.  I judge him on the merits of the job he does, not on the mythic proportions of what I think he represents.  I am proud to be an American, I don’t need to draw my pride from an elected official.  It would have been nice if all those flag-addled lapel-pin patriots who backed W. had treated him for what he was—an employee.  I tried to fire him once, in 2004, and some folks thought I was unpatriotic for doing so.  But he wasn’t doing the job well.  He wasn’t looking out for my interests.  Or, for that matter, the country’s.

I feel the same about Mr. Obama and this particular bit of nastiness.  I hope he chooses not to appeal this decision.  He would be doing the job I elected him to do then.  Not as well as I would like—it would have pleased me better to see this nonsense excised to begin with—but at least better.

current affairs

Brief Comment About Debt and Taxes

This won’t take long.  I do not intend to put up links or post graphs and charts or cite stats (at least, not much).  This is just a short post to make what ought to be an obvious observation but seems to get no traction in the political discourse.

Washington is once more gearing up for a Debt Ceiling Showdown.  According to the president, we’re going to have to borrow some more money before year’s end, which will require raising the limit on what we may borrow—again.  Speaker of the House Boehner has once more drawn a line in the check register and declared “No further!”  What will follow we have seen before.

Yawn.

Just a couple of points:  both sides in this are correct.  The president and his financial advisers are right, we cannot afford to stop spending or the economy will stall out and things will get worse.  This is a true statement.

As far as it goes.

Boehner and the deficit hawks are also right: whether we like it or not, there does come a point at which it is absolutely true to say “We can’t afford it anymore!”  In recent years, that point has been taken as some large percentage of GDP.

The United States is in some ways like a homeowner who has mortgaged close to 100% of the equity in his house and has suddenly been told he has to take a pay cut.  Depending on the good will of friends, neighbors, and lenders, he may well keep his house and at some point start paying down on the debts, but that doesn’t change the fact that he’s gotten himself into a very fragile situation.

Now, the comparison is not precise, but we’re simplifying here.  After all, the homeowner usually doesn’t have a factory in his basement (or a contractor doing the same thing) making things the homeowner can sell—like military hardware and the like—but for our purposes, the similarity will do.

National debate over this issue has been centered on two aspects.  Spending and taxes.

One side says we’re spending too much and need to cut back.  The other says we really need to do something about all those rich people who aren’t paying their fair share of taxes.

Again, both of these points are true—and both are more or less irrelevant.

(Time out for a side comment on this tax thing.  National dialogue is a clumsy beast and the reality of situations often gets buried in the bluster.  Taxes are worse than other subjects, but not by much.  Here is a little fact: when people talk about taxes, no matter which side they’re coming from, they don’t talk about all of them.  On the one hand, the accusation that the wealthy do not pay their fair share is by and large aimed at federal taxes.  And in this the accusation is accurate—no, really, wealthy people and corporations pay very expensive tax lawyers to find loopholes and they do, or they would lose their cushy jobs.  But also, at a certain level, there is no longer such a thing as an American Corporation anymore.  They are multinationals, which means they disperse their holdings across borders, and by shifting things around they avoid taxes.  A lot of taxes, not just American taxes.  But for a lot of people who are well off but not in the 8 and 9 figure club, when they hear that they aren’t paying their “fair share” they quite correctly go ballistic because such accusations almost never take into account state and local taxes, which can in some instances add up to well over 50% of income.  But nationally we’re focused on federal taxes, not ALL taxes. )

(Oh, and the point about corporations being multinationals?  That’s not a tax problem as such.  That’s a problem of jurisdiction.  But never mind that for now.)

I say irrelevant, because, as noted before, to stop spending would be to throw a sequoia in the road to recovery.  Like it or not, federal spending is keeping a lot of business going and a lot of people employed.  When you cut spending, you fire people.  Unless there are private sector jobs that are not tied to government contracts available to rehire them, they turn into the Unemployed (which is becoming like Zombie status these days—once bitten, you’re dead but you still need to eat).  We keep forgetting that roughly half (or more) of government “spending” is payroll and related benefits.

As for taxing the rich, the simple fact is that we could tax them dry and not make up the shortfall.  Focusing on the rich, while in some ways pertinent to our sense of national betrayal and certainly a symptom of the problem, is simply a way of ducking the real problem.

The real problem?

Okay, I said I wasn’t going to cite stats, at least not much, so I beg your pardon for a moment of numbers.  We are also focused like lasers on the Unemployment Rate.

How many of you believe this reflects anything valid?

I said valid, not real.  It certainly does reflect something real, but not what most people seem to think it does, and certainly not what the government pretends it does.

All it reflects is the number of people drawing unemployment compensation as a percentage of the number of people still employed.  It says nothing at all about the people who have exhausted their benefits, fallen off the rolls, and still aren’t employed.

Which number do you think is more relevant?

Here’s where it gets sticky.  If they are no longer drawing public benefits, technically they aren’t a burden, so who cares?  We assume they have found a way to get by.  (Never mind those homeless folks over there.)  Households have increased their residents, adult children have moved back in with parents, parents have moved in with adult children, friends take in friends, etc etc.  So they cost us nothing.  Right?

No, wrong.  They cost us taxes.  If you want to know where the revenue shortfall has come from over the last three decades, it is there, in that growing number of more or less permanently un- and under-employed Americans who lost their jobs, many of them at one time good paying, and have not paid taxes since, because, well, they have no income.

The last time I checked the number was hovering just under sixty million.*

I don’t see anyone talking about that, not directly.  Everyone wants to get the unemployment rate down, as if that means anything to the problem at hand.

Reagan slashed taxes and increased spending.  Except for a brief few years under Clinton, the imbalance created by that has accumulated into the problem we now have.  It’s a thirty-year accrual of debt and hence when I say we can’t tax rich people enough to make up for it, that’s what I mean.

Cutting spending, however, will only increase the unemployment numbers and eventually add to the growing population of permanently unemployed, whose inability to pay normal tax rates has resulted in this current shortfall.  Which shortfall will remain a problem until we can do something about all those unemployed.

Now, the canard that these are lazy people who don’t want to work just won’t wash.  These are people who did work, many of them in well-paying jobs.  Why would they want to lose everything?  It’s absurd.  This is a myth.  To put it bluntly, it’s bullshit.  Have you ever considered how much work it is for someone to take a grocery cart around and fish aluminum out of trash, all day, every day, for pocket money?  But these are the people we don’t see and work we don’t credit.  As the saying goes, a ditch digger works his ass off, burns more calories, goes home worn out, and gets paid a damn sight less than someone pushing paper around a desk for other people.

So why aren’t they working?

Well, that is one of the reasons the rich are getting richer.  It’s systemic.  Jobs have gone overseas, industries have collapsed, communities have been sucked dry to make bottomlines for shareholders without regard to the people doing the actual work.  No one intends anything bad, no one purposefully plans to impoverish their fellows, but this is the way money works in this country, and any attempt to change it is met with ferocious opposition even as we see the inevitable consequences.  It is the worst sort of moral inertia.

But no one in Washington is talking about it that way.  Both sides have valid points—we cannot afford to cut spending and we cannot afford to keep going as we are—and both sides are ignoring the real issue.

You may return now to your regular illusions.

__________________________________________________________

* Lets do some quick and sloppy arithmetic over this, shall we?  Sixty million people earning on average, say, $30,000 a year.  That’s 1.8 trillion dollars.  Now, at, say, 25% taxes, that’s 162 billion a year, over 3 decades?  That’s 48.6 trillion dollars, which is six times the national debt.  Now, I grant you, these calculations are way too loose, but not so loose as to not be in the ball park and show where the “real problem” is.

Absurdity

Devaluing Fame In Missouri

”Feminism was established so as to allow unattractive women easier access to the mainstream of society. ”

”They oughta change Black History Month to Black Progress Month and start measuring it.”

”We’re not sexists, we’re chauvinists — we’re male chauvinist pigs, and we’re happy to be because we think that’s what men were destined to be. We think that’s what women want. ”

”The only way to reduce the number of nuclear weapons is to use them. ”

Anyone care to guess who said all of the above?

Yes, I’m cherry-picking, I admit it.  Still, it’s not that difficult a question.  Who said all that?

You in the middle there, yes ma’am?  Absolutely.

Rush Limbaugh.

Our most recent addition to the Missouri Hall of Fame.  In a move that ought to garner rage from any fair-minded person, Steven Tilley, the speaker of the house of the Missouri Legislature, has shoehorned the talk show host into the pantheon of famous Missourians.  Here is a fairly benign article on the ceremony.

At an event I attended last night (Sticks’n’Stones: Sluts Talk Back) Representative Stacy Newman explained to a packed audience at Left Bank Book’s downtown store how this was done in the absence of debate and in the face of an avalanche of petitions in opposition.  A cadre of state police was called in to make sure the public—as well as Democratic members of the legislature—were kept out of the ceremony.

Now, I don’t care what you think of Rush.  The way this was handled violated any definition of fair play.  I know, I know, fair play is for sissies.  “Lib’rals” bitch about fair play.  Pansy-assed social progressives worry over fairness.

Maybe.  But, minor though this may be in the greater scheme of things, this is an example of abuse of power.  Speaker Tilley is a political bully.

Just to be completely up front about this, personally, I think Rush Limbaugh is a bloviating gasbag of unparalleled bad taste and hypocrisy.  Mr. “we should imprison all drug addicts, except me, of course, because I am a staunch advocate of stricter law enforcement even if I am addicted to pain killers” Limbaugh has been given a megaphone with which to hold forth on anything he finds despicable.  The above quotes are a sample.

Back in the late 80s and early 90s, I worked for a man who practically worshiped the ground upon which Rush trod and I was required to listen to this man day after day—my boss, yes, but his deity as well, Rush—and after a few years I could not understand what there was to respect.  Rush’s entire schtick is based on derision and hate.  Logic for him is a category on Jeopardy, not something to practice, and truth is coincidental to ideology.  He wanted it both ways—he was a “tireless champion of truth” until he was caught flatfooted in misrepresentations, at which time he was “just an entertainer, folks.”  I mention this to establish that I’ve done my time listening to the mouth that roared (yeah, I know, that was supposed to be Morton Downey, Jr. but he’s gone and Rush has usurped his place) and was on hand when even G. Gordon Liddy called him on his obsession over the White House suicide of Vince Foster.

I have zero respect for Rush Limbaugh.  He made one good joke in his career, and that was on his short-lived television show where he had installed an “environmentally responsible fireplace”—a tv monitor with a video of a blazing hearth.  That was cute.  All that followed has been hateful jeremiads against people of compassion, of thoughtfulness, of moral principle, of character, and of competence.  He’s a shill for those who want nothing more than to tear things down so they can sell the scrap and buy a new chateau somewhere.

He now has a bust in our state capitol.  I am infuriated.  Yeah, I suppose technically he’s famous.  But so is Sterling Price and I don’t see him in that line-up.

I would like to see Mr. Tilley lose his seat over this—among other things.  Limbaugh is no kind of role model for anyone and to see his divisive attacks validated in this way is insulting, at least to me.  However, I won’t hold my breath.  I am very well aware that there are many who think I’m some kind of unAmerican ingrate for opinions like this.  So be it.  This is America and they are absolutely entitled to their view.  It may even be that in their view Limbaugh legitimately belongs in the Hall of Famous Missourians, along with Samuel Clemens, Josephine Baker, Harry Truman, Omar Bradley, and many others.

But if so, then his admission ought to have been done the way all the rest were, openly and with debate and the consent of the full House, not by gim-crack autocratic procedural maneuvers and then in a close-door ceremony as if Limbaugh were someone to be ashamed of.

culture

Enough Is E #$%*& Nuff

Governor Jan Brewer of Arizona has apparently signed a bill into law that allows employers to interrogate their female employees about their sex lives.

Details, as far as I’m concerned, are not as important as one overriding principle:

When I work for someone, they pay me for the work I do and THAT IS ALL. This should not be controversial in the least. If health insurance is part of my compensation for the work I do while I am engaged in work for said employer, it is none of that employer’s business what I do with it. The employer does not own any other part of my life or my time.

As an employer (and I have been in a manager position in the past, responsible for hiring and firing) I don’t care if someone goes to a Black Mass on weekends and participates in Crisco-soaked orgies, as long as when they show up on Monday to do the job I hired them to do they look presentable and do their job competently. It would be none of my business.

Just as it would be none of my business if they attended some little whacked out fringe church that preached the End Times and that Obama is the antichrist and on their own time handed out petitions to shut down Planned Parenthood. That is none of my business.

So if on Friday an employee went home, dressed in leather, and went to an S & M club, whipped people black-and-blue while masturbating with an oversized dildo, as long as she (or he) came in Monday ready to do the job for which they have been hired, IT IS NONE OF MY FUCKING BUSINESS WHAT THEY DID ON THE WEEKEND!

An employer does not own any part of his or her employees’ life and they are only leasing the 40 or so hours a week during which they are working.

WHY IS THIS SO HARD TO UNDERSTAND? WHY DOES GOVERNOR BREWER OR ANYBODY ELSE THINK THIS IS ACCEPTABLE POLICY? THIS HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH RELIGIOUS FREEDOM, BECAUSE THIS IS A BUSINESS TRANSACTION BETWEEN EMPLOYER AND EMPLOYEE, NOTHING MORE, AND THE PRIVATE LIFE OF BOTH THE EMPLOYER AND THE EMPLOYEE HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH IT UNLESS IS DIRECTLY IMPACTS THE WORK BEING DONE!

Sorry for the shouting.

But the next time some pinhead rightwing do-gooder disingenuously questions you as to “what war on women? I don’t know what you’re talking about” point to this. Among others. This is directed at women, since men, as far as I know, represent no significant part of health insurance expenditure for contraception.

And ask that man how he might feel if his boss asks him, “So, Dick, I see you only have two kids. You’ve been married 12 years, though. Aren’t you fucking your wife? I only ask because we’re a family values organization…”

culture

Bill Donahue and Lawful Bigotry

I don’t care much for Bill Donahue of the Catholic League. I find him a throwback, a kneejerk bigot who opens his mouth and everything I find insupportable about politicized religion comes out. That said, I also find him refreshing, in that he usually always says exactly what he means and does not equivocate in order make political points with tepid constituencies. For instance:

That last bit is what I find useful. He wants the law to discriminate against lifestyles with which he disagrees. He has a list. He tells it out with no frills, no conditional language, no soft-pedaling. Bravo, Mr. Donahue, and thank you. It is always best to know where you stand with your opponents.

He wants the law to discriminate not only against gay marriage, but against cohabitation, probably line marriage, multi-partner marriage, any variation on the good ol’ fashion way grandma and grandpa did that he thinks is disgusting.

To which I can only say, with deep sincerity: fuck you, Mr. Donahue. It’s not your call. These are not your lives to dictate to. This is not your choice to impose. We went through a cultural revolution—it was messy, a lot of it was stupid and ill-conceived, some of it was hurtful—to get out from under exactly that kind of puritanical myopia and take away the ability of the state or anyone else to exercise legal prejudice against people for being together in ways you look at and go “Ewww!” Fuck you. This is my life, my choice, not yours, not the state’s, no one’s. Mine. Ours.

He talks about the “gold standard” and starts citing the sociological data to back up the claim that children thrive with a traditional marriage. Here he is being a bit disingenuous. Children thrive in families predicated on such standards when several other conditions are also met, and which now social science is beginning to understand that it is those conditions that are more important than the particular arrangement of component parts. Children do not thrive in “broken” marriages, but neither do they thrive in dysfunctional marriages. It’s a simple question—which is better for a child, a “traditional” marriage in which daddy beats the shit out of mommy on a regular basis or that same child in a single parent home where it is loved, protected, and nurtured? And of course, it doesn’t even have to be that dramatic—indifference is destructive, though less measurable. Even if the preferred format is met and adhered to, if the love and nurture are withheld, is that not detrimental? It’s not one man one woman and voila the child grows up happy and well-adjusted!

He forgets that one of the most powerful mitigating factors in such equations is the community in which a marriage exists. If the community approves and grants its support, all may be well. If the community, for whatever reason, turns on that couple, they will suffer, their marriage will suffer, and the children will suffer. Intolerance is one of the strongest countervailing elements in the potential destruction of a family unit, and it doesn’t even have to be an “alternative” family to suffer it, just different.

No one should have to be reminded that it was not so long ago that it was illegal in this country for members of different races, specifically blacks and whites, to get married, even if they were of the requisite genders. Many such marriages that took place after it became legal failed because of external pressures—disapproval. There is no magic formula for a marriage.

One major ingredient, though—love. And it never ceases to amaze me how many self-professed christians seem to have no use for love that does not conform to their prejudices.

(Nor does it cease to amuse me how often I will hear apologists claim that “those aren’t real christians.” I know what they mean, but let us be honest here—real or not, the bigotry is taught in the name of the same faith. Where do they get it from? They will proudly tell you—the Bible. The tactics of exclusion fail to inoculate those who think themselves “true” christians from the taint of those who aren’t when both draw their lessons from the same well. Perhaps some interpret the lessons incorrectly, but the lesson is nevertheless there to be misinterpreted.)

But I am glad of Bill Donahue, because he does speak his mind. He is clear and unequivocal and I can point to his words and say “That is what I do not want in this country.” I don’t want to live that way. I do not live that way. We forget that America is supposed to be where you can live as you choose without fear at our peril.

But, yeah, Bill, the president did have to wriggle about this. Because there are a lot of people who think like you and lot more who sit the fence. Because people are concerned with how they might appear to their friends if they speak their hearts and a lot of people who will bully them into submission for “outrageous” opinions. Because public opinion is a fickle bitch and any politician who blithely ignores it does so at risk of career. The pragmatics of politics make liars of all of them, left or right, depending on the issue. But he’s done a bold and gutsy thing now and he may go down in flames for it. That and other things.

Marriage is two distinct things these days, in the West. It is a codification of a relationship based on traditions and community feelings. For many, it is a sacred act, between themselves and their god.

But it is also an economic arrangement, a complex comingling of estates and responsibilities made simple through the expedient conjoining of ritual and contract law. Whether people wish to admit it or not, these are separate things, and this second aspect is by far the more impactful because it determines how you will shape your future together within this community. There are combined over 1500 laws, both state and federal, defining rights, responsibilities, and benefits that accrue to marriage. It is very much a contract.

And while two people don’t have to indulge a “traditional” religious marriage in order to be legally married, churches do have to adhere to the law in order for their ceremonies to be legally binding. So let’s not kid ourselves about what’s going on here. Getting married is a gamble. Love is not always forever (nor, actually, do I think it ever was or should be in all instances) and yet we have to make our homes within a community of laws. Barring people from the protections of the law because they don’t meet a religious qualification is supposed to be wrong in this country.

Anyway, kudos to Mr. Obama. And again, thank you, Mr. Donahue—I like to know who I’m disagreeing with and exactly why.