richoid.com: Politics

Politics as Unusual

Oct 26, 09:08 PM by Rich Webster

Only a few weeks to the election and things are spinning in the right direction. Conservatives are even sick of Republicans. They’re all claiming it was just the Neocons all along. Funny.

Can John Doolittle and Richard Pombo be defenestrated? Tough district, but we can hope.

In the meantime, I’ve gotten busier and busier, which is great, but I haven’t been posting… just as it’s getting down to the wire, I don’t have time to comment on it. Go figure.

Comment

Further proof conservative economics only work for the rich

Aug 29, 03:31 PM by Rich Webster

Statistics from the census bureau:

– In 2005, 46.6 million people were without health insurance coverage, up from 45.3 million people in 2004.

– The percentage of people without health insurance coverage increased from 15.6 percent in 2004 to 15.9 percent in 2005.

– The median earnings of men declined 1.8 percent to $41,386. The median earnings of women declined 1.3 percent to $31,858.

– In 2005, 37.0 million people were in poverty, not statistically different from 2004.

From another source:
The heads of America’s 500 biggest companies received an aggregate 54% pay raise last year. As a group, their total compensation amounted to $5.1 billion, versus $3.3 billion in fiscal 2003.

If you take this, combine it with the price of a home, and the price of gas, and the staggering healthcare inflation, and the average working citizen is clearly screwed by “trickle down economics.” This should suprise no one.

I really don’t have a problem with successful CEO’s getting paid well, I don’t even have a real problem with in increasing gap between the earnings of the rich vs. the poor… UNLESS, the poor and middle class net earnings decline. During the Clinton years, the gap increased but EVERY income category did substantially better than historical norms. This was progress.

It was so much progress during the ‘90s, in fact, that even today we are better off than 20 years ago. However, the trends reversed over the last 10 years, and those trends are accelerating. So all the gains will be gone shortly. What’s changed? Republicans are in charge. That’s all it takes.

Combine this with morale and execution problems throughout government bureaucracies, lack of oversight and enforcement of consumer and worker issues, massive corporate acquisition of votes, the widespread closure of small, independent commercial enterprises in cities (replaced by huge chains) and we have serious social problems in our immediate future.

I like business. I like enterprise unencumbered by red tape. I like low taxes. But we’ve turned a corner here towards banana republic corruption and the end of government of, by and for the people. Clearly, regulation and enforcement should be optimized, not minimized. Clearly government should be responsive to business, but not at the cost of the lives and health of customers and employees. Clearly taxes should be kept at a minimum: The minimum necessary to pay the bills keep the government running. Not the minimum that runs up debt and cripples the government’s ability to execute (a la FEMA).

Republicans live in a fantasy world and they can’t be trusted with our government. So, I made a bumper sticker/mug/t-shirt design, available via CafePress:

Comment

U.S. Caught in a Web of Self-Deception

Jun 2, 07:36 PM by Rich Webster

Once in a while, I listen to MSNBC, CNBC, or CNN. I gave up on Fox long ago, because it’s just not funny anymore. I just couldn’t stomach it after the last election, when it became clear that substantial numbers of Americans really share their ideas.

Like most thinking people, I take refuge in the last place you can find television news reporting, the News Hour on PBS. I also get some info firsthand on C-SPAN but lately, it’s been a bit like Fox. Their unfiltered coverage of a Repugnican-dominated congress is so far from real-world issues, simply because Republicans drown out any sounds of reality with their crazy world view.

And, of course, any press conference from the White House is a Fox News report, with Tony Snow speaking with forked toungue.

Is it me, or is MSNBC, CNBC and CNN pretty far from reality too? There’s the “Who’s the pretty white girl of the week?” who’s turned up missing or dead or raped? These narrow windows on our criminal justice system do us no good. Then there’s the “Republicans are in trouble because of Iraq.” Well that’s partly true, but without Bush’s appalling record of dealing with domestic issues, he might have a measure of trust in some quarters.

Now, many are starting to long for Clinton. A smart man who was working for us, not for big money. And what WOULD have happened if Gore had won? Would he have been able to create good environmental and energy policy? We know he knows the issues… but of course he would have been cut to shreds by Republicans.

Is there a chance now? I don’t think so. I think America is still out of touch with reality, as are our cable and network news organizations. We, the people, don’t want the truth.

The truth is that we want—we require—government. And we must pay for it. If you vote for people who promise tax cuts every election cycle, you need to know that:

a: You won’t get the cuts, someone else will.
b: The results will be endless deficits.

The track record is clear. This is what the agenda has been since Reagan was president.

So what’s wrong with deficits, and don’t those cuts stimulate the economy?

NO. They haven’t, they won’t, and if they ever do… it is unsustainable. It’s like drinking a Coke instead of eating lunch… you get a short term boost, and then you sag.

And every man, woman and child in the U.S. now owe $150,000 in federal debt. And, we’re paying interest on that. So now, we have “tax freedom day” and we should also have “interest paid day”. Then we’ll see that a big percentage of our taxes are doing nothing for us; they’re supporting foreign investors, instead.

And, by know we should know: Republicans economic policy is not the only problem… there’s also (among other things) the end of open government.

When the Soviets decided to open up, we learned a new word: Glasnost. Who’d have thought that the U.S. government would get so secretive, we’d need American Glasnost.

How can we have a country of, by and for the people when the people don’t have access to government? We can’t.

This, ladies and gentlemen, is why we can’t trust Republicans with our democracy. So, being a CafePress kinda guy… I’ve created a bumper sticker, saying that very thing. Because it’s not just Bush, it’s the whole Republican system, and approach.

If you agree, you can get your own.

There are bumper stickers, mugs, and shirts. This is how they look:

Interestingly, we now have one of the lowest life expectancies, and infant mortality, in the developed world. If we paid the deficit, and reorganized our public health system, we could afford national health care. In fact, those who can afford health care in the U.S. already pay over 15% more for health care overall, than those citizens of countries with public health care systems. And those systems clearly work better.

Simple fact: In the years of “Republican leadership,” we are no longer #1 in the world in ANYTHING, other than consumption and military spending.

This is what I call “The Great American Stupid” when we elected people who are incompetent and disinterested in good government. We elected Republicans. We passed on the “earnest, boring” politicians like Gore and Kerry. And we passed on the opportunity to have good government instead choosing lies, fear, bigotry, and anger.

Can Democrats do better? Simple answer: They always have.

Not perfect, but that’s democracy for you.

Comment

Musings on an Imperial Presidency, Prompted by Jon Carrol

Apr 12, 12:32 PM by Rich Webster

Jon Carrol, columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle produced a great column today. This is a frequent occurance, BTW.

Here’s a small excerpt:

“Let us review. According to several sources, most notably Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez, the president has the right to arrest and hold anyone he chooses, without charge, for as long as he wants, without access to a lawyer and without any kind of public judicial proceeding—or, in a pinch, without even a private judicial proceeding. He has the right to tap the telephone, read the e-mail and examine the financial records of anyone he chooses.

It now appears that he also has the right to selectively declassify intelligence documents to obtain political goals, even if (or perhaps particularly if) the intelligence in question is suspect. He has the right to lie to the American people in order to enter into a war of unknown intensity and duration.”

...And then he goes on to make a number of observations, concluding with:

“When I was 18 when I first heard the famous quote from Martin Niemoeller. I was gobsmacked. There are several versions; this one’s from Bartlett’s: “In Germany they came first for the Communists, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a trade unionist. Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn’t speak up because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me, and by that time no one was left to speak up.”

Now, Jon is going to get all kinds of CRAP from folks who will be outraged that Bush is being compared to Hitler. Wrongly so.

Here’s my observation on that phenomenon:

Hitler, and Nazi Germany were not unique in history. They constitute a standard pattern of human behavior:

Aggressive leader drives passions of far right and left wing by aggressively attacking the character of some cultural/racial subset.
Far right or left wing swells in numbers because of economic pressure.
Growth of the sector is further driven by perception of external forces attacking and/or undermining, and identification of internal racial/cultural scapegoats as assisting in that.
Identification of cultural decay in music, art, behavior, (particularly youth behavior and influencers of same) and economic trends as being caused by these forces.

The next thing that happens, is other voices join the chant, in media and politics. Moderates and liberals fail to counter these voices.
- Moderates are moderate. Liberals are forgiving. It’s unlikely that they can counter chants of hatred with conversations about reflection, consideration, forgiveness, kindness, civility, and love.
- Moderates moderate between the extreme and the middle position, leaving the conversation “framed” to the right or left of the previous middle. The middle therefore moves right or left.

Examples abound: Milosevic and Bosnia; Chavez and Nicaragua; European Americans led by numerous leaders against Native Americans in the 17th and 18th and 19th centuries; The government of Sudan in Darfur; Rwanda.

The result can be genocide.

In all these cases, the government gained power and specific powers by their actions, by their call to war, that allowed the genocide to happen. The leaders of these governments earned the right, through declaring a war (formally or not) to make decisions to imprison without trial, to lie to, and keep secrets from the public, to make anyone a criminal based on their actions or words, or simply by being there.

In the U.S. we’re in the earliest phases of that transition. So, no, George Bush hasn’t become Hitler or Milosevic. Only after the crimes are committed at that scale will he rise to that level of revulsion. But yes, the Republicans, and their die-hard supporters are now, officially, against democracy, against our constitution, behaving like Nazis behaved when they were simply anti-communist, anti-gay, anti-democracy.

Why should we be concerned? This is America, after all. We don’t do things like that… right?

Evil is as evil does.

And we do. We are doing these things. And if we don’t act to preserve our democracy by using it to remove the Republicans, wherever possible, from power… Then we are endorsing their actions, reinforcing the direction, and things will get worse.

I think Americans are waking up. But we are not fully awake. Many Republicans who are deeply upset by these actions will still vote to re-elect the very people who support these actions and this president. In my area, that’s John Doolittle. Further south, it’s Richard Pombo. Arnold Schwarzenegger campaigned for Bush, and though he appears more moderate, he will swing right, just as Wilson did before him, given half a chance.

We really need to keep the Republicans as only a minority party. They are too far to the right to be trusted with our democracy. Never mind that they’re also incompetent at running it. Can the Republicans be brought back to the middle? Not until they’re given a clear message: We are not a right-wing extreme country!

Or, maybe we are.

The next election will tell all.

Comment

Weird is good

Nov 26, 12:57 PM by admin

I really liked the 90’s. It was the decade of “weird is good.”
The 80’s was “greed is good”.
The ‘00’s is the “delusional and greedy is good”.

But I’ll stay weird, thanks.

What a great word: “Weird” It breaks the “i before e, except after c” rule…

“Write I before E
Except after C
Or when it sounds like an A
As in ‘neighbor’ and ‘weigh”

Except if you’re weird.

Of course, even if weird people (nonconforming, freethinking) are now persona non grata, the times are weirder than ever. We (collectively) know more about the universe than ever before… but politically, we know only what’s convenient to our ideology.

I once said to a gay friend when he complained about feeling like a minority anywhere but San Francisco that I knew what he meant: “As an atheist and a Mac user,” I replied, “I feel like a minority anywhere. If I were gay, I’d be part of the world’s smallest minority”. It was a joke, obviously not true, there are smaller minorities. Although lately, being willing to call my self “liberal” I feel like my group has gotten smaller still. Lots of liberals have adopted “Progressive”. Progressive is good, but it isn’t enough.

Here’s the thing: You can’t just embrace the future but also must seek to make it more fair and inclusive. Progress can be defined a number of different ways. I’m sure neoconservatives feel very strongly that big “progress” is being made, today. In Canada, there is the “Progressive Conservative Party.” Progress means movement toward a goal, but it doesn’t define the goal. The goal of the aforementioned party is to “advocate economic nationalism and close ties with the United Kingdom and the Commonwealth of Nations.” Which is hardly liberal.

I think “Liberal” defines the goal: “economic freedom, greater individual participation in government, and constitutional, political, and administrative reforms designed to secure these objectives…”

Conservative means: “
tending or disposed to maintain existing views, conditions, or institutions” and politically tends towards religion, nationalism, isolationism, and protectionism.

Neoconservatives seem less isolationist, free market, more anti-government. Some would say free-spending as well… however, you would never catch a neoconservative admitting that. They just do it, but say the opposite. But they tend to key on things like Reagan’s statement that “Government is Evil” and they all read “Atlas Shrugged” and like “The New Republic”. Which could be defined as Progressive, in a sense. Given that Republicans are now fully in power, it will be interesting to see if there is a split between traditional conservatives and neos. The traditionals tend to intrude on civil liberties. Libertarian conservatives shouldn’t go along with that. It requires Big Government. You can’t enforce social conservatism without Big Government. Or Big Religion. Churches could start enforcing laws… maybe that would work for both groups. Bring back both the crusades and the inquisition.

Hopefully, this will tip the scales back to Liberals. But we’re prone to disagree on basics as well.

Despite saying “Freedom” about a million times in his speech, Bush is SOME form of conservative. Libertarians claim to be pro-freedom… but conservatives have historically resisted personal freedom. Honestly, how can anyone believe that weakening government, and thereby weakening government’s ability to protect individual freedom and safety (quality of food, environmental protection, water supply, defense, consumer protection) is going to increase freedom. In lieu of the power of government, “corporate” power increases and individuals are defenseless. Only by working collectively can individuals have power against corporations. The only way we know to do that is representative government.

The theory of libertarians is that markets are enough. But if that were true, why would we need laws requiring things like listing ingredients in foods, protecting the definition of “organic,” and restaurant inspections? Industries sometimes do set standards for quality, but there is no enforcement mechanism for cheaters without government. When we have weak investigation and enforcement, we end up with things like the California power scandal, Enron, etc. Remember the Savings and Loan scandal of the 80’s? When Reagan signed the law that deregulated S&Ls, he said “It’s about time.” It wasn’t long before people lost all their savings. All the laws that big corporations are trying to remove, through the use of the libertarian neoconservative smokescreen, are laws that were put into place after massive abuses led to public outcry. This goes all the way back to the anti-trust laws and the stock market crash and subsequent depression of the 20’s and 30’s.

After the WWII all the laws for the social safety net, free, cheap and subsidized education, anti-trust, and civil liberties took hold and started pissing off conservatives while building our middle class, tax base, economic freedoms, science and markets. Now there is a massive backlash against what made us successful. Interestingly, both Japan and Germany’s economies have outperformed the U.S. over that period. They have higher taxes, and more socialism than us. Whereas those who have been more conservative and libertarian (like Mexico)... need I say more?

Another interesting thing. A number of new constitutions have been written in the last 10 years. In Europe, Africa, South and Central America… no one has copied the U.S. system… instead they’ve opted for Euro style parliaments.

US Nationalists constantly claim we are unique and special and the best in the world. We’re not in terrible shape yet, but what made us successful is under attack. And others are doing better. They may not have the geographic size, the natural resources, or the sheer power. But they have better educated people, better health care, fewer people in prison, longer vacations, and are generally happier. All while retaining a very high level of personal freedom vis-a-vis government intervention in their lives. The CEOs may complain, and certainly there are problems. But if we want to make “progress” we need to be “liberal.”

And we need to embrace weird. Experimentation, creativity, variety is the essence of “liberal,” and “progressive.” It churns up our lives and gives us new ideas. Some stick, some fall away, but only through social experimentation and cultural inclusion can we get better. Let’s get crazy, risky, imaginative and liberal. Let’s get on with life.

Bush “Deranged”

Nov 26, 12:56 PM by

“Cuban leader Fidel Castro said President Bush appeared “deranged” during his inauguration speech, and he expressed little enthusiasm for renewed diplomatic ties with the European Union.” Link

I agree. Which is not to say I’m a big fan of Fidel. Interesting, though. U.S. Healthcare is rated 37th in the world (according to the W.H.O... Columbia, Chile and Costa Rica beat us with Cuba just a little behind at 39th. So I guess at least, by Republican standards, Cuba also has ” [almost] the greatest healthcare system in the world” since they always say the U.S. has “the greatest health care system in the world”. So Fidel’s doing all right, by the standard “if you don’t have your health, you have nothing.”

Really, we do have a great system… but not everyone is “in the system”. 44 million of us simply don’t have access. Again, this is OK with Republicans. Disenfranchisement is their reason for being. Now they’re doing it with Social Security. Bush blatantly lied when he said, in a major speach, that SS is going to be bankrupt in 20 years. BS. The U.S. may be bankrupt in 10 years, with his gawdawful fiscal policies, but Social Security is down the list of threatened critical programs. He lied, it was reported, and no one is upset because this is just another day in Bush Country. Sick!

Of course, we are a severely sick country. Not just our physical health, but our mental health. We’re looking for loopholes in the definition of torture. Gonzales is up for nomination as AG. People are protesting because he participated in a process to determine what constitutes torture.

This is not the problem. The problem is that he, and John Yoo, and others have said things are NOT torture that clearly are. They simply define those actions out of the definition of torture. So if he says he’s opposed to torture, he’s O.K. because activities like waterboarding and stripping people naked, denying them sleep or food… those things have been defined as outside the definition of torture.

Again, crazy liberals that we are, we oppose these actions because we can see ourselves being treated that way, and we can recognize that it’s torture. Crazy conservatives, on the other hand, simply can’t relate. “They’re terrorists, so it is OK.” Well, no. First of all, they haven’t had a trial, they are not, by definition, guilty. The people who jailed them are not above suspicion. In fact, the US has release numerous Gitmo detainees after years of being locked up, and possibly being “not tortured” saying simply “They are not a threat to the United States.” Sick!

Yoo restated his position, even again saying that the Geneva Convention is obsolete, because, he says, it was based on “nation-states at war” and now we have decentralized war. Well, no. Torturing people for information is still the wrong thing to do by any standard. Yoo is sick!

Simply compare this activity to my previous post about being “good”. Maybe everyone in government needs to take the Hippocratic Oath, not just doctors.

At this time, we do know the military has clear guidelines that are fairly acceptable, if followed. There is no such clarity regarding the CIA. And the FBI and Red Cross have reported widespread torture, abuse and murder beyond the known Abu Ghraib abuses.

We live in a society where at least half the voting population have endorsed this BS by voting for Bush.

Many of these voters are among the “religious right.” I imagine them sitting in their pews finding loopholes in the 10 Commandments.

How to be good

Nov 26, 12:55 PM by

I ran across a blog asking about the right place to be on the scale between selfish and selfless.

It made me feel a need to reply:

First, good question.

Second…
The answer is not a scale, but a scatter chart.

Start with this, from the Hippocratic Oath: First, do no harm. This takes awareness, and forethought, and you won’t always succeed.

Second, take care of your own needs and the needs of those closest. If you aren’t healthy, you can’t help others be healthy (although sometimes helping others can help us heal!)

Third, look for opportunities to help others. Little things DO count.

Fourth, when the opportunities come to help, determine your ability to contribute, and do everything you can, for a period of time. Don’t drop the ball, but you can bow out if it becomes too much.

The simple fact is our lives vary in complexity, our energies vary, our health varies, and our finances vary. If you’re broke, and you’re asked to contribute money, no good comes from contributing beyond your means. But if you come into money, or are making enough to set some aside for others, do so.

But mostly, look for opportunities to do good things in the context of energy you would spend anyway. Invest thoughtfully, consume thoughtfully, and treat people positively. Just treating people well makes things better all around.

And if you look at the scatter chart of life, and see you’ve done little harm and a lot of good, even in little ways, the world is a better place for you having been in it.