Left of the Dial

Hoods

The two middle girls return from a long walk. “There’s someone outside who wants to speak with you,” the older one says.

I go out and see a woman standing there. “Hi,” she says. “Your girls were standing at the intersection over there, and they threw something at my car. It hit my window. There’s no damage but I thought you should know.”

I thank her and ask her to wait a moment. I pop back into the house. The girls are standing side by side, perfectly still, on the other side of the room. “Is this true?” I ask.

“Yes,” they both say.

I point towards the door. “Let’s go.”

Without waiting for further instructions, they go outside and apologize quite nicely, the 13-year-old stoic, the 11-year-old’s voice shaking. The woman accepts their apology and tells them they shouldn’t do things like that. I apologize to her again and thank her for being understanding.

I go inside and even though it’s the middle of the afternoon, I send both girls to bed, and tell them they’re not allowed to read or talk, that they just have to lay there. Without a word, they hang up their jackets and go.

I wait nearly an hour before I go in. “I am so sorry, Daddy,” the younger one says, trying and failing not to sob. The older one sits up straight, as though at her arraignment, and says, “It was my idea and I take complete and total responsibility.”

I hold up my hand. “What did you throw?” I ask.

“These little berries that were on the ground.”

I nod grimly, although inside I’m very relieved. That’s it? Just berries?

“Was that the first car you’d thrown them at?”

“No. Just the first one we hit.”

Inside I resolve to step up the number of catches we have in the backyard.

“Why did you do it? What were you thinking?”

The younger one opens her mouth to try to explain but no words will come. She just shakes her head.

The teenager also shakes her head as she says, “It just…it just seemed like a good idea at the time.”

I nod as I stand up. “I’ll be back.”

I wait another hour before returning. The 11-year-old is clearly tormented by her actions and would do just about anything to go back in time and change the past.

I sit down and say, “When your oldest and best uncle was about, I dunno, 12? He and a bunch of the neighborhood kids were playing at someone’s house on the next block. Like a lot of the houses in the New England area we grew up in, it had a gravel driveway. For some reason your uncle and some of the other boys grabbed a handful of rocks and threw them at a passing car. The car screeched to a halt. All the other kids instantly ran away, but not your uncle. He just stood there and waited for the driver. The driver made him give his name and address and then he came and talked to Grandma and Granddad. Your uncle apologized and, as I recall, was given a pretty hefty punishment. But the driver, despite being unhappy about having pebbles thrown at his car, was impressed that your uncle had stood his ground and admitted culpability, and he told your grandparents that. Grandma and Granddad, although probably not admitting it at the time, were impressed too.”

I look at them, and motion for the younger to come sit on my lap. “You guys made a mistake, a big one. But you admitted it and you apologized even without being told to. And I’m guessing you’ve learned from this and won’t be doing it again?”

The older nods seriously while the younger buries her face in my chest as she tries to stop crying.

I tell them they can have dinner in a little while, but that’s it. The rest of the evening and night they’re just going to stay in their beds without talking. And in the morning everything’ll reset.

And I leave and I stop in the hall and I look at what they’d been wearing, the hoodies they’d been wearing, now hung up neatly in the closet.

I think about what might have happened if things had just been a little, and not really all that much different. If they’d been boys instead of girls. If they’d been just a few years older, each. If the hoodies had been grey and black instead of pink and cream. If we’d lived in Florida instead of California. Most of all, of course, I think about what might have happened if they’d had dark skin and hair rather than pale skin and blonde hair. I think about how this is what kids do, they do stupid things—and this dumb little thing they did, throwing something at a passing car, is literally one of the dumbest things they’ve ever done in their entire lives and it wouldn’t have even made the Top 20 dumb things I’d done by their age, not even close.

And if those series of facts, virtually none of which they had anything to do with but which were just the luck of the draw, were each just a tiny bit different, they could very well be lying in the morgue right now and their killer free forever—because, after all, throwing something at a car is without question far more threatening an act than walking down the street with a bag of Skittles. And I think about how insanely lucky I am and how it’s just not fair. 

 

American Skin (1 Shot)

 

12 years after originally written and performed, now with the ghost of Trayvon Martin as well as Amadou Diallo hanging over it, still just as sadly applicable as ever.

 

The Blame Game

economic terrorism

It's considered impolite to post too large an excerpt of a piece. But I'm doing it anyway. Because this so perfectly captures the terrifying insanity taking over our great nation. It flies in the face of tradition, precedent, common sense and decency. The policies the hostage-takers are insisting on are foolish and contrary to ethics or morality.

The ones driving the bus are the same ones who took the largest surplus in US history, turned it into the largest deficit in US history (although the deficit really isn't all that important, as these things go, hysteria to the contrary—simply getting our economy back on track would take care of it without brutal cuts to services for the poor and the elderly), and are now holding a gun to the country's head, saying "do things which are ignorant and counter-productive way or we'll make things go from bad to horrific."

As I've pointed out time and again, I love my conservative friends and family, maybe because, in part at least, they understand that in life you have to compromise. This is something most of us learn by the time we're five years old. The current GOP believes that's a stupid idea. The result is going to be a seriously lessened nation. 

The notion of "it can't happen here" is a dangerous one.  

Josh Marshall made an interesting point in passing yesterday, asking whether conservative Republicans could achieve massive spending cuts through “old-fashioned majority votes.” Josh answered his own question: “Of course not.” The cuts on the table were only made possible by Republicans “threatening the health” of the United States.

I think this arguably one of the more important realizations to take away from the current political landscape. Republicans aren’t just radicalized, aren’t just pursuing an extreme agenda, and aren’t just allergic to compromise. The congressional GOP is also changing the very nature of governing in ways with no modern precedent.

Welcome to the normalization of extortion politics.

Consider, for example, the Republican decision to reject any and all nominees to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, regardless of merit, unless and until Democrats accepted changes to the agency’s structure. Traditionally, if the GOP wanted to alter the powers of the CFPB, it would write legislation, send it committee, bring it to the floor, send it to the other chamber, etc. But that takes time and effort, and in a divided government, this “old fashioned” approach to policymaking probably wouldn’t produce the desired result.

Instead, we see the latest in a series of extortion strategies: Republicans will force Democrats to accept changes to the agency, or Republicans won’t allow the agency to function. Jonathan Cohn wrote a good piece on this a couple of weeks ago, noting the frequency with which this strategy is utilized.

Republican threats to block nominees to the consumer board are of a piece with their opposition to Don Berwick, Obama’s first choice to run the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services; to Peter Diamond, whom Obama tapped to sit on the Federal Reserve Board; and most recently to John Bryson, Obama’s nominee to take over the Commerce Department. It’s nothing short of a power grab by the Republican Party — an effort to achieve, through the confirmation process, what they could not achieve through legislation. And it seems unprecedented, at least in modern times.

Republicans effectively tell the administration, over and over again, that the normal system of American governance can continue … just as soon as Democrats agree to policy changes the GOP can’t otherwise pass.

The traditional American model would tell Republicans to win an election. If that doesn’t work, Republicans should work with rivals to pass legislation that moves them closer to their goal. In 2011, the GOP has decided these old-school norms are of no value. Why bother with them when Republicans can force through policy changes a series of hostage strategies? Why should the legislative branch use its powers through legislative action when extortion is more effective?

It’s offensive when it comes to nominees like Cordray, but using the full faith and credit of the United States to force through desired policy changes takes this dynamic to a very different level. And since it’s working, this will be repeated and establishes a new precedent.

Indeed, it’s a reminder that of all the qualities Republicans lack — wisdom, humility, shame, integrity — it’s their nonexistent appreciation for limits that’s arguably the scariest.

 

 

Portesting Refrom

So here's the thing. It's easy to make fun of someone for a typo. Left of the Dialian DT, for instance, although an excellent writer, can rarely go more than five sentences without one, often with unintentionally hysterical results. 

But, really, who amongst us hasn't laid down a typoe or two now and again. (Other than the otherworldy Top Management, of course.) My usual email program has an autocorrect function, and it's the rare sentence I write nowadays which doesn't force the spellcheck to kick into overdrive. 

So. Living in a glass house as I do, I try not to throw stones when it comes to typoes.

Still, being human and therefore inherently flawed (again, except for the wondrous Top Management), it's a bit hard not get a chuckle when it comes to such a mistake, not in an email or a manuscript, but on an actual handprinted sign. Such as this classic. 

So when I first saw another such sign as today's 9/12 rally, along with the small smile it brought, I couldn't help but think, "hey, it happens." 

But then two things made me realize my initial thoughts were perhaps a bit off base. The first is the lettering style. I mean, I love those curly letters. Used to make them myself. I haven't since about sixth grade, and don't think I've seen anyone else use them since then either, but it really adds weight to the sign, I think. 

The best part, however, has to be this: 

Click on the photo to get a slightly larger version in a new window. Now check out the upper left hand corner. 

The sign maker misspelled the name of this great nation of ours. 

Now that is impressive.  

Bestest Friends

Following up on yesterday's post...sorta: 

Teabaggage

I've been simultaneously amused and outraged by the whole teabagging thing. On the one hand, the fact that they've glommed onto a fair filthy sexual term for it is so delightful and appropriate. On the other hand, the fact that...

...well, I'm just going to excerpt liberally from a far better writer for that part; this guy writes the way I tend to speak, so those who are offended by colorful language'll want to skip this one:

Anyway this teabag thing has really gotten out of control. It’s amazing, literally amazing to me, that it wasn’t until Obama pushed through a package containing a massive public works package and significant homeowner aid that conservatives took to the streets. In other words, it wasn’t until taxes turned into construction jobs and mortgage relief that working and middle-class Americans decided to protest. I didn’t see anyone on the street when we forked over billions of dollars to help JP Morgan Chase buy Bear Stearns. And I didn’t see anyone on the street when Hank Paulson forked over $45 more billion to help Bank of America buy Merrill Lynch, a company run at the time by one of the world’s biggest assholes, John Thain. Moreover I didn’t see any street protests when the government agreed to soak up hundreds of billions in “troubled assets” from Citigroup, a company that just months later would lend out a jet furnished with pillows upholstered with Hermes scarves to former chief Sandy Weill so that he could vacation in Mexico over Christmas.

Look, I’m a taxpayer too. And I’m no less pissed off than any of these people about the taxes I have to pay. Just today I was reading hedge-fund manager David Einhorn’s book, Fooling Some of the People All of the Time, about his battles with a company called Allied Capital. Einhorn was shorting Allied because he found accounting irregularities in Allied’s books after analyzing the firm. Among other things, he found that an Allied subsidiary called BLX was irresponsibly handling tens of millions in Small Business Association loans, shoving this SBA money out to unworthy recipients and costing the taxpayer an enormous amount of money. When Einhorn went to the SBA, they basically blew him off. “We see this all the time; what’s so special about those?” was the SBA official’s response when Einhorn presented him with evidence of loan fraud. Einhorn pointed out that one of the reasons companies like BLX got away with bilking the government was because the enforcement agencies were so understaffed: he routinely found that agencies like the SEC and the OIG could not or would not investigate fraud against the taxpayer because they had no staff to pursue the investigations.

That attitude, that complete and total I-don’t-give-a-fuck attitude about taxpayer money, that’s endemic to almost every branch of the government. We saw in the last five years how contractors in Iraq nakedly robbed money from the you and me, running phantom convoys across the desert (some companies called that transporting “sailboat fuel”), systematically risking human life and gouging the taxpayer more or less right out in the open. There was over $100 billion in sole-source, non-competitive contracts in Iraq in 2006; a House Committee identified just 50 contracts totalling more than $21 billion that require “scrutiny,” but not much has been recovered so far. Why did they get away with it? Because there is basically no serious enforcement mechanism, in the military or anywhere else, for preserving taxpayer money given to contractors. In Iraq, the military auditor, SIGIR, had about seventy men in the entire military theater at the time I was there. We just bailed out AIG to the tune of more than $160 billion; its primary auditor, the Office of Thrift Supervision, had exactly one insurance expert on its staff while AIG was falling apart. There were staff cuts at the SEC several times in the last ten years; in fact there was a crucial cut of the SEC budget in an $821 billion Omnibus spending bill at the tail end of 2003 (just in time for the housing bubble) that was packed with plenty of pork and, again, inspired no protests from Joe Sixpack.

Meanwhile the federal government has systematically expanded a whole ecosystem of contractor-handout programs, most of them with names the public has never heard of. How many people out there are aware of all the millions in grants given to fortune 500 companies over the years through the Advanced Technology Program (ATP), which basically subsidizes the R&D departments of already rich firms while allowing those same companies to keep the benefits of those innovations? How about the nearly $5 billion in loan guarantees given to Boeing over the years through the Ex-Im Bank? How about the Foreign Military Financing Program, which gives millions of dollars to dozens of foreign countries every year so that they can buy American-made weapons?

Or how about the four or five billion dollars we spent annually for the last decade or so on Federal Housing Authority subsidies? Well, actually, the teabaggers probably would get riled up about those programs, which subsidize mortgage loans to low-income homeowners. The one constant in teabagger outrage is that the whatever wasteful government program they’re freaking out about has to benefit some poor slob, or else they usually don’t give a shit. What they forget, of course, is that FHA loans ultimately benefit the banks a lot more than the poor slobs — a homeowner defaulting on his FHA loan loses his house, but the bank that irresponsibly issued the loan (without fear, knowing they are backed up by the government) is still fully compensated, with you picking up the tab.

So yeah, government waste sucks, it’s rampant at every level, and taxes are a vicious racket, and everyone should be pissed off . What’s hilarious about the teabaggers, though, is how they never squawk about waste until the spending actually has a chance of benefiting them. You will never hear of a teabagger crying about OPIC giving $50 million in free insurance to some mining company so that they can dig for silver in rural Bolivia. You won’t hear of a teabagger protesting the $2.5 billion in Ex-Im loans we gave to GE through the early part of this decade, even as GE was moving nearly a hundred thousand jobs overseas over the course of ten years. And Michelle Malkin’s readers didn’t seem to mind giving IBM millions in Ex-IM and ATP loans at the same time it was giving its former CEO, Lou Gerstner, $260 million in stock options.

In other words teabaggers don’t mind paying taxes to fund the salaries of Bolivian miners, Lou Gerstner’s stock options, deliveries of “sailboat fuel,” the Hermes scarves on Sandy Weill’s jet pillows, or even the export of their own goddamn jobs. But they do hate it when someone tries to re-asphalt their roads, or help bail their slob neighbor out of foreclosure. And God forbid someone propose a health care program, or increased financial aid for college. Hell, that’s like offering to share your turkey with the other Pilgrims! That’s not what America is all about! America is every Pilgrim for himself, dammit! Raise your own motherfucking turkey!

Oh, and there’s one other thing. I heard today from Steve Wamhoff of Citizens for Tax Justice. He had an interesting tidbit to offer on the teabagging movement. According to his research, 39% of respondents with incomes below $30,000 told the Gallup agency that they felt that federal income tax levels were “too high.” Which is interesting, because only 32% of respondents in that income category will pay any federal income taxes at all on their 2008 income. You can draw your own conclusions.

Stimulus

So. I just read this: 

"This is not a stimulus plan, it's a spending plan," Nebraska's freshman senator, Mike Johanns (R), said Wednesday in a maiden floor speech full of budget-balancing orthodoxy that would have made Herbert Hoover proud. The stimulus bill, he declared, "won't create the promised jobs. It won't activate our economy."

Senator—my God, I can't believe that's your title—Johanns? You, sir, are an absolute idiot. I can't believe, as the saying goes, you still know how to breathe. 

A stimulus plan IS a spending plan, you maroon. Seriously, this is like pointing at a Ford Escort and saying, "That's not an automobile! That's a car!" 

As Steven Pearlstein wrote: 

Johanns was too busy yesterday to explain this radical departure from standard theory and practice. Where does the senator think the $800 billion will go? Down a rabbit hole? Even if the entire sum were to be stolen by federal employees and spent entirely on fast cars, fancy homes, gambling junkets and fancy clothes, it would still be an $800 billion increase in the demand for goods and services -- a pretty good working definition for economic stimulus. The only question is whether spending it on other things would create more long-term value, which it almost certainly would. 

We're on the edge of a cliff. And there's a huge percentage of our elected officials determined to push us over, by doing the same things that brought us right up to the precipice. 

Dear 48

We're all on the same team. 

Let's do this thing. 

The Promised Land

So last night the fambly had itself an apple pie, in honor of this great nation of ours and its nutty experiment with democracy. Oh sure, there’ve been some stumbles along the way, a few of 'em not inconsiderable, but I like to think that after a couple hunnert years, we’re still doing okay.

The excitement over the election plumb wore out The Boy, so I put him to bed and was just checking email when the phone rang. And it turned out to be understandably reluctant Left o’ the Dialian Matthew, actually outside the front door, holding a bottle of fine agave-based spirits and a lime. “I’ve come to drink to America,” said he.

And so we did, left and right, red and blue, saved and heretic, tall and short, coifed and thinning, thin and thickening. And it was good.

And awaiting me this morning was an email from my first bloggety friend, Professor Steve the Llama, as far to the right as I am to the left, congratulating me on my candidate winning, and asking if I was going to be listening to “The Promised Land” on a loop today.

I was not. But I was more than happy to take his fine suggestion and run this here piece.

‘Cuz I ain’t a boy, but I do believe in a promised land. And I feel like we took one big step closer to it yesterday.

Who We Are

So in this nutty world of the internets, one of the first people to become a regular Left of the Dialian was my pal Tom, whom I still have never met. (Although Top Management and my Mess o’ Kids has met Tom’s wife and chillens.)

Tom sent me the following yesterday, and I’m posting it here with his permission.

Kareem R. Khan, an American soldier, is buried in Arlington Cemetery. 

When, on September 11, 2001, he decided to join the army, no one told him that he could not join because of his faith. Khan, an American soldier, an American Muslim, was killed in Iraq in the summer of 2007 serving his country. 

Kahn died for me and my wife and my children. And no matter how ill-advised I feel the war in Iraq is, Khan’s sacrifice and his inherent nobility (and that of all the men and women who serve) cannot be denied. Kareem R. Khan was an American soldier, a Muslim, who died for me. Kahn did not join the army, and I did not serve in the Marine Corps, so that people could shout “Muslim,” as though it were an insult. Kareem Khan and I served so that men and women would be free to practice their faith in peace and freedom. 

Kareem R. Khan was an American soldier, an American Muslim, and he died for me and my wife and my children.

Tom Edmisten

 

Portrayal of Obama As Elitist Hailed As Step Forward

Now that's progress we can believe in. 

 

The Bailout Bill

So I’m not entirely sure how I feel about the bailout bill. I know I’m not at all happy about it, but I think—I think—it’s better than nothing, if not even remotely what I’d want. Instead of tweaking the Paulson plan and adding a bunch of tax breaks, I wish they’d blown it up and started from scratch and made it something which actually made sense. But, no surprise, they didn't. And I think I think the situation is serious enough that this not-great bill is better than doing nothing, which doesn’t seem to be an option, at least not without serious repercussions. So the bill in its current incarnation wouldn’t be my druthers—hell, it wouldn’t even be in my top five list of things I’d like to see done. But then I don’t get to make these calls. Yet.

But then I ran across this list of things which could be done with the same amount of money. And just as folks point out that we’re not giving away the $700 billion, per se, but are investing it in our financial infrastructure, so would the following list be an investment that would pay enormous dividends. If the United States of America single-handedly eradicated poverty worldwide for years? The number of people worldwide wishing to do us harm, even willling to die to do so, would plummet. It would be a phenomenal boost to our national security.

And that’s without getting into nutty idear that it’s just the right thing to do.

I know, I know: whatevs.

The arguments for a bailout to avoid systemic collapse are of course genuine and persuasive, but so are the arguments for aid and against standing by and allowing a child to die every 3 seconds, or a woman to die in childbirth every minute. To put the proposed Wall Street bailout into perspective. $700bn:

· Would clear the accumulated debt of the 49 poorest countries in the world ($375bn) twice over
· Is almost 5 times the annual amount of extra aid needed to achieve all the Millennium Development Goals on poverty, health, education etc ($150bn a year)
· Is about 7 years of current global aid levels ($104bn in 2007)
· Is enough to eradicate all world poverty for over two years (UNDP  calculates it would take $300bn to get the entire world population over the $1 a day poverty line).

On the other hand it’s

· only a quarter of the cost of the Iraq war ($3 trillion on Joseph Stiglitz’ calculation )
· a half of annual global military spending ($1339 bn)

Palin Flow Chart

Well, this seems to be popping up everywhere, and with darn good reason, if I may say so. 

And for those who weren’t able to watch the entire thing, Really Small Fish has a remarkably accurish rush transcript.

I had planned to write more today about the largest welfare bill in history. For instance, did you know that President Ronald Reagan once said: 

''If you had a stack of $1,000 bills in your hand only four inches high, you'd be a millionaire. A trillion dollars would be a stack of $1,000 bills 67 miles high.''

Really takes the breath away, does it not? And that's pretty much the amount of cabbage they're debating up on the hill today. And that cash money's all coming from you and me, folks. Good times! 

I also thought about writing about the new spider web that appears in my car each morning and what a disconcerting way that is to start the day. 

And I've been meaning to write about my reappraisal of Wilco. 

But then I read this. And I think, to use a term my friends on the right enjoy using, that this goes beyond policy debates. I think the people who make these decisions have entered into the realm of Evil. 

I wish I were kidding. You read that headline and you think it must be from The Onion. 

If only. 

EPA won't limit rocket fuel in U.S. drinking water

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Environmental Protection Agency has decided there's no need to rid drinking water of a toxic rocket fuel ingredient that has fouled public water supplies around the country.

EPA reached the conclusion in a draft regulatory document not yet made public but reviewed Monday by The Associated Press.

The ingredient, perchlorate, has been found in at least 395 sites in 35 states at levels high enough to interfere with thyroid function and pose developmental health risks, particularly for babies and fetuses, according to some scientists.

The EPA document says that mandating a clean-up level for perchlorate would not result in a "meaningful opportunity for health risk reduction for persons served by public-water systems."

The conclusion, which caps years of dispute over the issue, was denounced by Democrats and environmentalists who accused EPA of caving to pressure from the Pentagon.

"This is a widespread contamination problem, and to see the Bush EPA just walk away is shocking," said Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., who chairs the Senate's environment committee.

Lenny Siegel, director of the Center for Public Environmental Oversight in Mountain View, Calif., added: "This is an unconscionable decision not based upon science or law but on concern that a more stringent standard could cost the government significantly."

The Defense Department used perchlorate for decades in testing missiles and rockets, and most perchlorate contamination is the result of defense and aerospace activities, congressional investigators said last year.

The Pentagon could face liability if EPA set a national drinking water standard that forced water agencies around the country to undertake costly clean-up efforts. Defense officials have spent years questioning EPA's conclusions about the risks posed by perchlorate.

The Pentagon objected strongly Monday to the suggestion that it sought to influence EPA's decision.

"We have not intervened in any way in EPA's determination not to regulate perchlorate. If you read their determination, that's based on criteria in the Safe Drinking Water Act," Paul Yaroschak, Pentagon deputy director for emerging contaminants, said in an interview.

Yaroschak said the Pentagon has been working for years to clean up perchlorate at its facilities. He also contended that the Pentagon wasn't the source of as much perchlorate contamination as once believed, noting that it also comes from fireworks, road flares and fertilizer.

Benjamin Grumbles, EPA's assistant administrator for water, said in a statement that "science, not the politics of fear in an election year, will drive our final decision."

"We know perchlorate in drinking water presents some degree of risk, and we're committed to working with states and scientists to ensure public health is protected and meaningful opportunities for reducing risk are fully considered," Grumbles said.

Grumbles said the EPA expected to seek comment and take final action before the end of the year. The draft document was first reported Monday by the Washington Post.

Perchlorate is particularly widespread in California and the Southwest, where it's been found in groundwater and in the Colorado River, a drinking-water source for 20 million people. It's also been found in lettuce and other foods.

In absence of federal action, states have acted on their own. In 2007, California adopted a drinking water standard of 6 parts per billion. Massachusetts has set a drinking water standard of 2 parts per billion.

Okay, this is pretty groovy—the Sarah Palin Baby Name Generator. 

I am Mangle Blue Palin. 

I find this disturbingly accurate. 

Interestingly, if I only use my first name? 

I am Beretta Hockey Palin.

I feel badass.  

I can never decide whether it's "for me but not for thee" or "for thee but not for me." 

Either way, I personally am a huge fan of double standards. As long as I'm the one who gets to set them. 

So my second-favorite Catholic had a piece last night which was great, even by his standards: 

Folks, everybody knows I’m a huge fan of market forces.  It’s always bugged me when people say you can’t put a monetary value on human life.  Of course you can!

That’s why I demand ransom for the release of my summer interns.  Pay up, mom and dad!

Well, it turns out there is an exact monetary value of human life.  It is a number calculated by government actuaries based on risk assessment and payroll figures that is used to decide whether life saving regulations are worth paying for.  For example, let’s say there’s proposed legislation that will require inspecting possibly tainted Chinese shrimp.  And, let’s further say that regulation would cost $100 million, and if you don’t inspect the shrimp, 100 people could die at a seafood restaurant.

Now, if you value…if you value those 100 people at a million dollars each, the benefit is equal to the cost, so the regulation’s worth it.  But, if you value them at less than a million dollars each, well, the cost outweighs the benefit.  Now, I happen to think—and this is just me—I happen to think tainted shrimp adds an element of danger to the appetizer course.  It’s like skydiving with cocktail sauce.

Now, the Environmental Protection Agency uses numbers like this to decide whether to regulate things like pollution.  And five years ago, they estimated that a human life was worth $7.8 million, but recently they lowered that to $6.9 million dollars.  

That’s right, under the Bush administration, human life has become a million dollars cheaper.   
 This…this is great news. Because the lower the value of human life, the less it pays to protect it with regulations.  That might be why last week the EPA chose not to regulate greenhouse gases.  It’s just not worth it with human life at such bargain basement prices.

But we can get those prices lower.

By devaluing life, they’ve made it less likely to regulate water and air quality.  And the worse the water and air quality get, the less life is worth living, which further devalues life, which makes it even less likely to regulate water and air quality.  It’s like the circle of life.  

And that’s great, that’s great.  You see, while they may have lowered the value of a person, the EPA has given us something worth a lot more.  Because a human life: $6.9 million; gaming the system to protect industry from safety regulations: Priceless.  

A very happy birthday to this great nation of ours. 

What is this land America so many travel there
I'm going now while I'm still young my darling meet me there
Wish me luck my lovely I'll send for you when I can 
And we'll make our home in the American land

Over there all the woman wear silk and satin to their knees
And children dear, the sweets, I hear, are growing on the trees
Gold comes rushing out the rivers straight into your hands
When you make your home in the American Land

There's diamonds in the sidewalk the's gutters lined in song 
Dear I hear that beer flows through the faucets all night long 
There's treasure for the taking for any hard working man 
Who will make his home in the American Land

I docked at Ellis Island in a city of light and spires 
She met me in the valley of red-hot steel and fire
We made the steel that built the cities with our sweat and two hands
And we made our home in the American Land

There's diamonds in the sidewalk the's gutters lined in song 
Dear I hear that beer flows through the faucets all night long 
There's treasure for the taking, for any hard working man 
Who will make his home in the American Land

The McNicholas, the Posalskis, the Smiths, Zerillis, too
The Blacks, the Irish, Italians, the Germans and the Jews 
Come across the water a thousand miles from home 
With nothin in their bellies but the fire down below 

They died building the railroads worked to bones and skin 
They died in the fields and factories names scattered in the wind 
They died to get here a hundred years ago they're still dyin now 
The hands that built the country we're always trying to keep down

There's diamonds in the sidewalk the gutters lined in song 
Dear I hear that beer flows through the faucets all night long 
There's treasure for the taking for any hard working man 
Who will make his home in the American Land
Who will make his home in the American Land 
Who will make his home in the American Land

So today President of the United States George W. Bush, speaking overseas, compared the Democratic nominee for president to a Nazi appeaser.

He didn’t come right out and say that, of course, possibly because he thought he was being subtle, or perhaps because he doesn’t really have a firm grasp on the actual historical events or more likely because he’s clearly a coward. In any event, anyone and everyone over the age of consent knew exactly what he was talking about.

Never mind the enormous brouhaha over what the Dixie Chicks did lo those many years ago, and the main argument of the time, which was that their sin wasn’t so much in what they said as where they said it, namely, outside the borders of this great nation.

And never mind the long-standing tradition that when a president is overseas, political opponents here at home generally refrain from criticizing him, and vice-versa. A sort of gentlemen’s agreement, if you will. Not that being a gentlemen is something this uncouth frat boy knows a damn thing about.

But when it comes to Americans doing business with the Nazis…well, now, that’s a subject with which President George W. Bush should be intimately acquainted.

President George W. Bush got where he did in life because he was born a rich white American male. And the reason he was born rich?
Because his grandfather, Prescott Bush, was more than merely a Nazi appeaser. He was more than even just a Nazi sympathizer. He was even more than a Nazi enabler.

President George W. Bush’s grandfather was a Nazi collaborator.

President George W. Bush’s grandfather was part of a failed military coup, attempting to overthrow the President of the United States, Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

Both of which means President George W. Bush’s grandfather was a traitor to the United States of America.

So before President Bush goes shooting off his mouth and accusing any Americans of a crime as heinous as…well, his own grandfather’s, he better look in the mirror. And be prepared to disavow his own family fortune.

Because it’s blood money.

President Bush is apparently not satisfied with being disliked by more Americans than any other president in history. And he’s not satisfied with being likely to go down as the worst president in American history.

Now he’s shooting for the most reprehensible and un-American ever.

Finally, something at which he’s not incompetent.

So. It’s over. We’ve got nominees from both parties now, given that what’s been factually true for a couple months now—that it was virtually impossible, mathematically, for Clinton to win the nomination—has begun to be spoken on network television by talking heads desperately hoping for a continued race on the Democratic side to be able to trumpet. But it’s done. Obama’s the nominee. It's not official yet but it's only a matter of time, and maybe as soon as today.

What I found at least as interesting, though, was that in both Indiana and North Carolina, a quarter of the Republican voters bothered to come out just to vote against John McCain. I mean, that’s amazing. He’s the nominee—there’s no one else even left in the race. And still they took a couple hours to express their displeasure with the choice of him, despite it being completely meaningless—and these are, pretty much by definition, the rank and file Republicans. That’s a pretty big story. Not that you’ll have heard it anywhere else, as far as I could tell.

Add the actual numbers up and toss in Pennsylvania, and over a half million dedicated Republicans have now voted against their own nominee in the three most recent major Republican primaries.

Going to be an intersting fall. And by “interesting,” I mean “ugly as hell.”

This is the ad John McCain and the Republican National Committee are desperate you not see.

Why? Because it uses John McCain’s own words. And because they know that what McCain believes is not what the overwhelming majority of Americans believe—it’s miles away, the complete opposite, in fact.

As Hendrik Hertzberg wrote a few months back about the very basic illogic behind McCain’s Iraq policy:

McCain's wants to stay in Iraq until no more Americans are getting killed, no matter how long it takes and how many Americans get killed achieving that goal—that is, the goal of not getting any more Americans killed. And once that goal is achieved, we'll stay.

The American people now say, overwhelmingly, that Iraq was a mistake and that we should set a timetable for the removal of our troops.

But not John McCain.

If John McCain has his way, we’ll stay in Iraq for a hundred years. No matter what the American people want.

I loves me tax day.

Well, okay, not really. I hate it just like everyone else, only even more so because, well, I’m me and I feel things more passionately than anyone else alive.

(Just like everyone else.)

I’m disorganized and hate details (unless they pertain to who played what on which song on this or that precise date). And, of course, I’m poor. But not quite poor enough (and clearly not nearly rich enough) to avoid paying taxes.

But paying taxes is simply how we invest in this great nation of ours. So when I pay my taxes, I feel good(ish) because I know I’m paying for some poor kid somewhere to have a decent breakfast and then maybe I’m the one who bought him the biology book he’s going to be using. And maybe he’ll grow up and cure cancer.

If you’re to the right of me—and there aren’t many who aren’t—be happy: when you pay your taxes today (provided you aren’t like our vice president and too rich to ever actually pay taxes, having your accounts off-shore and all), you’re buying body armor for our brave men and women fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. Well, strike that: no one apparently pays for that except their families. But your taxes are what built our newest aircraft carrier, which keeps these here United States of America safe from them who plot day and night to do ‘em harm. And how cool is that?

I don’t exactly like shelling out a lot of money to buy my kids shoes, as happens every other month it seems. But it needs to be done because, well, it turns out after careful examination, children need to wear things on their feet so’s they can run and jump and be let into stores and it seems socks alone aren’t always quite enough. So you buy the shoes. Because you need to. And because you love your kids enough to want them to do well, and children without shoes, studies have proven conclusively, don’t do as well as children with shoes. Also? After a while? Their feets get kinda bloody and raw. Or so I've heard. And you do it because appropriately shod with a good pair of shoes, who knows where or what those kids’ll be able to do? You do it because you love them and it's the right thing to do. Still not a lot of fun, maybe, but more more than worth it in the end.

So. Thanks to all of you out there for buying my country a pair of shoes today.

(Metaphorically speaking, of course. As far as I know.)

"President Bush has talked about our staying in Iraq for 50 years—"
“Make it a hundred.”
—Senator John McCain (R-AZ)
January 3, 2008

"The president carries the biggest burden, obviously.”
—Vice President Dick Cheney
March 24, 2008

Photo montage by Nico Pitney

File this under: disheartening and inexcusable.

Public Is Less Aware of Iraq Casualties, Study Finds
By Karen DeYoung
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, March 13, 2008; Page A12

Twenty-eight percent of the public is aware that nearly 4,000 U.S. personnel have died in Iraq over the past five years, while nearly half thinks the death tally is 3,000 or fewer and 23 percent think it is higher, according to an opinion survey released yesterday.

The survey, by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, found that public awareness of developments in the Iraq war has dropped precipitously since last summer, as the news media have paid less attention to the conflict. In earlier surveys, about half of those asked about the death tally responded correctly.

Related Pew surveys have found that the number of news stories devoted to the war has sharply declined this year, along with professed public interest. "Coverage of the war has been virtually absent," said Pew survey research director Scott Keeter, totaling about 1 percent of the news hole between Feb. 17 and 23.

As someone else pointed out, maybe the fact that this very story itself ran on A12 might have something to do with why the public doesn’t have a better idea of how many have died in Iraq.

Battle for our very survival, my ass. If it were, we’d know how many had fallen.

Heh. This is really...really...funny...

Diebold Accidentally Leaks Results Of 2008 Election Early

by the people, for the people.

Okay, that refers to gubmint and not armed forces. But this is still a striking graphic.

Putting money where mouths are? Or perhaps good for thee but not for me?

This is a fascinating idear.

The main reason it’s unlikely to happen, of course, is because President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s warning of the then-impending dominance of the military-industrial complex has come to pass, and that behemoth would deploy the massive financial weapons in its aresnal to fight any such movement in this direction—and those financial weapons are mighty powerful indeed.

I’m reposting the entire thing in full, with the original poster’s consent, to try to get as many people to think about it (and repost it themselves) as possible, but you should click through to be able to access all the groovy hyperlinks and whatnot.

But just imagine it: being able to have a direct say, even a small one, in how our tax dollars are spent. As I’ve written before, I suspect funding for cancer research, for example, would skyrocket.

It's hard to believe that Bush's proposed budget is what anyone wants. For example, he suggests cutting half the federal funds for public broadcasting, while he spends the same amount ($200 million) in Iraq every 12 hours.

Unfortunately, as ordinary taxpayers, we don't have that much influence over the final budget. If we want to see more money put into biomedical research or the arts we can vote every couple years, we can try to lobby Congress, or we can give to charitable groups and bypass the government entirely. Maybe there ought to be a more direct method.

Suppose we try something new. Take the budget -- Bush's proposal is over $3 trillion -- and make a 0.1% across-the-board cut, reducing every agency's funding by one penny out of every 10 dollars. Take the resulting $3 billion and put it into a Taxpayer-Directed Spending fund. And let the people decide where that money should go.

You could simply have a box you check off on your tax form, where you indicate which departments you want to receive your ~$10 share of that funding. Or, we could adapt the federal matching funds model and have a website where anyone can contribute small-dollar (or large-dollar) tax-deductible donations to an agency, and the government would match those contributions dollar for dollar out of the Taxpayer-Directed Spending fund.

The central idea is to give taxpayers a direct voice in how their dime is spent. The amount should be small, so as not to bollix up the entire budget on public whims, but large enough to make a difference. $3 billion is 1/1000th of the budget, but it's 8x what public broadcasting gets, it's 20x what the National Endowment for the Arts gets, and it's enough to increase the NIH by a hefty 10% rather than effectively cut it with sub-inflation increases, as is the current plan.

There is some precedent for this kind of direct, taxpayer-driven spending. The federal campaign matching funds operate on a similar principle, for example, using voter-driven fundraising to direct public dollars. Apparently, following the 2004 tsunami, the Canadian government sent matching funds in disaster relief for whatever its citizens raised (helpfully blogged about at this site). As that writer points out, the US government already provides a kind of 30% matching fund for charitable contributions each year by making them tax-deductible.

The motivation for this project would not only be to redirect 0.1% of the budget (although that's a start), but to use Taxpayer-Directed Spending as an indicator of where people want their money spent, kind of a national petition, that would help organizations more effectively lobby for funding. It would be the writing on the wall to tell Congress what taxpayers want.

(On that note, see also my post a year ago with a proposal for "YouBudget", which I still think is a good idea.)

Sara recently wrote about how government can still do good and do it well, from health care to education (or, in her words, from polio vaccines to the GI Bill). She also wrote about how the power of these programs lies partly in the long-lasting infrastructure they create. Those great projects were conceived at a time when Americans had been exposed to undergoing personal calamity and willingly making personal sacrifices, during the Depression and again during WWII, and doing it together as a nation. Compare that experience with today's, when as Bush said, the biggest sacrifice most Americans make for the war is to "sacrifice peace of mind when they see the terrible image of violence on TV every night."

Today, I don't feel like the public has a sense of being part of public works or public spending. It's not our government anymore. I'm not sure great public deeds can be undertaken successfully again until it is. The basic methods for people-powered politics, especially using the internet as an organizing tool, have been developed over the campaigns of 2004, 2006 and now 2008. I think that by applying these tools to policy-making -- something as simple as divvying up the budget -- we can begin to return to Americans the sense of ownership of our nation that made great national projects possible.

Wondering if there’s any possible argument in favor of granting retroactive immunity to the enormous telecommunication companies which broke crystal clear laws by wiretapping American citizens without any warrants?

Well, wonder no more. Here you go. This sums it up pretty durn well.

There is an honest way to argue in favor of telecom amnesty, and it is, of course, exactly what amnesty advocates like the WSJ, Andy McCarthy, Jay Rockefeller and the rest of them desperately avoid. This is the only honest case one can make for this radical gift to telecoms:

Yes, telecoms violated multiple federal laws by enabling government spying on Americans and turning over communications data without warrants. They broke these laws not only in the aftermath of 9/11, but for years and years. By breaking these laws, they reaped enormous financial profits, as the Government paid them huge fees for their cooperation in the illegal spying program. Despite their having broken multiple federal laws and having committed felonies -- while reaping great profits in the process -- they ought to be granted retroactive amnesty and immunized from any consequences for their lawbreaking, otherwise they may be reluctant to break our laws in the future.

The telecom amnesty debate is controversial but it is not complicated. The Government asked telecoms to break numerous federal laws in exchange for profit. Some telecoms refused to do so and others -- such as AT&T and Verizon -- agreed to break the law for years. Which behavior do we want to encourage and reward -- (a) telecoms which turned down the substantial government contracts to enable warrantless spying on Americans because doing so was illegal, or (b) the telecoms which purposely broke our laws by allowing illegal government spying on Americans? How can that even be a debatable question?

As the Senate votes on amnesty tomorrow, the only real question is whether telecoms which broke our laws should be accountable in a court of law for their illegal behavior (the way things are supposed to work in a country that lives under the rule of law) or whether Congress, lavishly funded by this industry, will pass a law that has no purpose other than to give them the retroactive license to break our country's laws with impunity.

I would only add that evidence strongly suggests they may have also broken the law before September 11th which would, of course, completely invalidate any and all even half-assed arguments in favor of retroactive telecom immunity, as they clearly didn’t do it out of patriotism in that case...and it clearly didn’t keep us from getting attacked.

What’s more, these oh so patriotic companies? They turned off the wiretaps when the government got too delinquent paying the bills.

So. Not so patriotic—just greedy. As usual.

And how important were those wiretaps if the Bush administration couldn’t even be arsed to pay for them? Clearly, either they weren't, or once again, the Bush administration doesn’t really give a rat’s ass about our security.

Everyone once in a while, I think I can’t possibly get outraged anymore, that we’ve gone so far down the rabbithole that I’m just spent.

And then I learn, to my disgust and horror and relief, that no, the capacity’s still there. I just wish I didn’t keep finding it out.

So I read a lot of blogs, many of which I’ve found through Top Management. I was checking out one of them recently and thoroughly enjoying it, as usual, when I noticed a comment another reader had left, snarling about those with “a leftist agenda.”

And I immediately was thrown into a bought of deep introspection. Did I have a leftist agenda?

Well, let’s see. I don’t believe folks that don’t have enough money to feed themselves should simply be abandoned to starve to death and I do believe that as Americans we have the right to be free from unreasonable search and seizure.

It was at this point I realized that, yes, my name is Scott and I do have a leftist agenda. ["Hello, Scott..."]

Which led me to recall that forty-three years ago there were two types of folks in this country. Those with a leftist agenda and those without. Those with a leftist agenda were called “liberals.” Those without a leftist agenda were called “people who don’t believe blacks should have the right to vote.”

So, yeah. I got a leftist agenda. Damn skippy.

Rocket Fuel in Our Drinking Water

I had planned to write more today about the largest welfare bill in history. For instance, did you know that President Ronald Reagan once said: 

''If you had a stack of $1,000 bills in your hand only four inches high, you'd be a millionaire. A trillion dollars would be a stack of $1,000 bills 67 miles high.''

Really takes the breath away, does it not? And that's pretty much the amount of cabbage they're debating up on the hill today. And that cash money's all coming from you and me, folks. Good times! 

I also thought about writing about the new spider web that appears in my car each morning and what a disconcerting way that is to start the day. 

And I've been meaning to write about my reappraisal of Wilco. 

But then I read this. And I think, to use a term my friends on the right enjoy using, that this goes beyond policy debates. I think the people who make these decisions have entered into the realm of Evil. 

I wish I were kidding. You read that headline and you think it must be from The Onion. 

If only. 

EPA won't limit rocket fuel in U.S. drinking water

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Environmental Protection Agency has decided there's no need to rid drinking water of a toxic rocket fuel ingredient that has fouled public water supplies around the country.

EPA reached the conclusion in a draft regulatory document not yet made public but reviewed Monday by The Associated Press.

The ingredient, perchlorate, has been found in at least 395 sites in 35 states at levels high enough to interfere with thyroid function and pose developmental health risks, particularly for babies and fetuses, according to some scientists.

The EPA document says that mandating a clean-up level for perchlorate would not result in a "meaningful opportunity for health risk reduction for persons served by public-water systems."

The conclusion, which caps years of dispute over the issue, was denounced by Democrats and environmentalists who accused EPA of caving to pressure from the Pentagon.

"This is a widespread contamination problem, and to see the Bush EPA just walk away is shocking," said Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., who chairs the Senate's environment committee.

Lenny Siegel, director of the Center for Public Environmental Oversight in Mountain View, Calif., added: "This is an unconscionable decision not based upon science or law but on concern that a more stringent standard could cost the government significantly."

The Defense Department used perchlorate for decades in testing missiles and rockets, and most perchlorate contamination is the result of defense and aerospace activities, congressional investigators said last year.

The Pentagon could face liability if EPA set a national drinking water standard that forced water agencies around the country to undertake costly clean-up efforts. Defense officials have spent years questioning EPA's conclusions about the risks posed by perchlorate.

The Pentagon objected strongly Monday to the suggestion that it sought to influence EPA's decision.

"We have not intervened in any way in EPA's determination not to regulate perchlorate. If you read their determination, that's based on criteria in the Safe Drinking Water Act," Paul Yaroschak, Pentagon deputy director for emerging contaminants, said in an interview.

Yaroschak said the Pentagon has been working for years to clean up perchlorate at its facilities. He also contended that the Pentagon wasn't the source of as much perchlorate contamination as once believed, noting that it also comes from fireworks, road flares and fertilizer.

Benjamin Grumbles, EPA's assistant administrator for water, said in a statement that "science, not the politics of fear in an election year, will drive our final decision."

"We know perchlorate in drinking water presents some degree of risk, and we're committed to working with states and scientists to ensure public health is protected and meaningful opportunities for reducing risk are fully considered," Grumbles said.

Grumbles said the EPA expected to seek comment and take final action before the end of the year. The draft document was first reported Monday by the Washington Post.

Perchlorate is particularly widespread in California and the Southwest, where it's been found in groundwater and in the Colorado River, a drinking-water source for 20 million people. It's also been found in lettuce and other foods.

In absence of federal action, states have acted on their own. In 2007, California adopted a drinking water standard of 6 parts per billion. Massachusetts has set a drinking water standard of 2 parts per billion.

I am Mangle Blue Palin

Okay, this is pretty groovy—the Sarah Palin Baby Name Generator. 

I am Mangle Blue Palin. 

I find this disturbingly accurate. 

Interestingly, if I only use my first name? 

I am Beretta Hockey Palin.

I feel badass.  

Double Standards

I can never decide whether it's "for me but not for thee" or "for thee but not for me." 

Either way, I personally am a huge fan of double standards. As long as I'm the one who gets to set them. 

Stephen Colbert’s The Wørd: Priceless

So my second-favorite Catholic had a piece last night which was great, even by his standards: 

Folks, everybody knows I’m a huge fan of market forces.  It’s always bugged me when people say you can’t put a monetary value on human life.  Of course you can!

That’s why I demand ransom for the release of my summer interns.  Pay up, mom and dad!

Well, it turns out there is an exact monetary value of human life.  It is a number calculated by government actuaries based on risk assessment and payroll figures that is used to decide whether life saving regulations are worth paying for.  For example, let’s say there’s proposed legislation that will require inspecting possibly tainted Chinese shrimp.  And, let’s further say that regulation would cost $100 million, and if you don’t inspect the shrimp, 100 people could die at a seafood restaurant.

Now, if you value…if you value those 100 people at a million dollars each, the benefit is equal to the cost, so the regulation’s worth it.  But, if you value them at less than a million dollars each, well, the cost outweighs the benefit.  Now, I happen to think—and this is just me—I happen to think tainted shrimp adds an element of danger to the appetizer course.  It’s like skydiving with cocktail sauce.

Now, the Environmental Protection Agency uses numbers like this to decide whether to regulate things like pollution.  And five years ago, they estimated that a human life was worth $7.8 million, but recently they lowered that to $6.9 million dollars.  

That’s right, under the Bush administration, human life has become a million dollars cheaper.   
 This…this is great news. Because the lower the value of human life, the less it pays to protect it with regulations.  That might be why last week the EPA chose not to regulate greenhouse gases.  It’s just not worth it with human life at such bargain basement prices.

But we can get those prices lower.

By devaluing life, they’ve made it less likely to regulate water and air quality.  And the worse the water and air quality get, the less life is worth living, which further devalues life, which makes it even less likely to regulate water and air quality.  It’s like the circle of life.  

And that’s great, that’s great.  You see, while they may have lowered the value of a person, the EPA has given us something worth a lot more.  Because a human life: $6.9 million; gaming the system to protect industry from safety regulations: Priceless.  

America the Beautiful

A very happy birthday to this great nation of ours. 

What is this land America so many travel there
I'm going now while I'm still young my darling meet me there
Wish me luck my lovely I'll send for you when I can 
And we'll make our home in the American land

Over there all the woman wear silk and satin to their knees
And children dear, the sweets, I hear, are growing on the trees
Gold comes rushing out the rivers straight into your hands
When you make your home in the American Land

There's diamonds in the sidewalk the's gutters lined in song 
Dear I hear that beer flows through the faucets all night long 
There's treasure for the taking for any hard working man 
Who will make his home in the American Land

I docked at Ellis Island in a city of light and spires 
She met me in the valley of red-hot steel and fire
We made the steel that built the cities with our sweat and two hands
And we made our home in the American Land

There's diamonds in the sidewalk the's gutters lined in song 
Dear I hear that beer flows through the faucets all night long 
There's treasure for the taking, for any hard working man 
Who will make his home in the American Land

The McNicholas, the Posalskis, the Smiths, Zerillis, too
The Blacks, the Irish, Italians, the Germans and the Jews 
Come across the water a thousand miles from home 
With nothin in their bellies but the fire down below 

They died building the railroads worked to bones and skin 
They died in the fields and factories names scattered in the wind 
They died to get here a hundred years ago they're still dyin now 
The hands that built the country we're always trying to keep down

There's diamonds in the sidewalk the gutters lined in song 
Dear I hear that beer flows through the faucets all night long 
There's treasure for the taking for any hard working man 
Who will make his home in the American Land
Who will make his home in the American Land 
Who will make his home in the American Land

Helpful Election Guide

Swing 'Em Home

History

Supporting the Troops

Like Grandfather, Like Grandson

So today President of the United States George W. Bush, speaking overseas, compared the Democratic nominee for president to a Nazi appeaser.

He didn’t come right out and say that, of course, possibly because he thought he was being subtle, or perhaps because he doesn’t really have a firm grasp on the actual historical events or more likely because he’s clearly a coward. In any event, anyone and everyone over the age of consent knew exactly what he was talking about.

Never mind the enormous brouhaha over what the Dixie Chicks did lo those many years ago, and the main argument of the time, which was that their sin wasn’t so much in what they said as where they said it, namely, outside the borders of this great nation.

And never mind the long-standing tradition that when a president is overseas, political opponents here at home generally refrain from criticizing him, and vice-versa. A sort of gentlemen’s agreement, if you will. Not that being a gentlemen is something this uncouth frat boy knows a damn thing about.

But when it comes to Americans doing business with the Nazis…well, now, that’s a subject with which President George W. Bush should be intimately acquainted.

President George W. Bush got where he did in life because he was born a rich white American male. And the reason he was born rich?
Because his grandfather, Prescott Bush, was more than merely a Nazi appeaser. He was more than even just a Nazi sympathizer. He was even more than a Nazi enabler.

President George W. Bush’s grandfather was a Nazi collaborator.

President George W. Bush’s grandfather was part of a failed military coup, attempting to overthrow the President of the United States, Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

Both of which means President George W. Bush’s grandfather was a traitor to the United States of America.

So before President Bush goes shooting off his mouth and accusing any Americans of a crime as heinous as…well, his own grandfather’s, he better look in the mirror. And be prepared to disavow his own family fortune.

Because it’s blood money.

President Bush is apparently not satisfied with being disliked by more Americans than any other president in history. And he’s not satisfied with being likely to go down as the worst president in American history.

Now he’s shooting for the most reprehensible and un-American ever.

Finally, something at which he’s not incompetent.

Obama v. McCain

So. It’s over. We’ve got nominees from both parties now, given that what’s been factually true for a couple months now—that it was virtually impossible, mathematically, for Clinton to win the nomination—has begun to be spoken on network television by talking heads desperately hoping for a continued race on the Democratic side to be able to trumpet. But it’s done. Obama’s the nominee. It's not official yet but it's only a matter of time, and maybe as soon as today.

What I found at least as interesting, though, was that in both Indiana and North Carolina, a quarter of the Republican voters bothered to come out just to vote against John McCain. I mean, that’s amazing. He’s the nominee—there’s no one else even left in the race. And still they took a couple hours to express their displeasure with the choice of him, despite it being completely meaningless—and these are, pretty much by definition, the rank and file Republicans. That’s a pretty big story. Not that you’ll have heard it anywhere else, as far as I could tell.

Add the actual numbers up and toss in Pennsylvania, and over a half million dedicated Republicans have now voted against their own nominee in the three most recent major Republican primaries.

Going to be an intersting fall. And by “interesting,” I mean “ugly as hell.”

100 More Years in Iraq

This is the ad John McCain and the Republican National Committee are desperate you not see.

Why? Because it uses John McCain’s own words. And because they know that what McCain believes is not what the overwhelming majority of Americans believe—it’s miles away, the complete opposite, in fact.

As Hendrik Hertzberg wrote a few months back about the very basic illogic behind McCain’s Iraq policy:

McCain's wants to stay in Iraq until no more Americans are getting killed, no matter how long it takes and how many Americans get killed achieving that goal—that is, the goal of not getting any more Americans killed. And once that goal is achieved, we'll stay.

The American people now say, overwhelmingly, that Iraq was a mistake and that we should set a timetable for the removal of our troops.

But not John McCain.

If John McCain has his way, we’ll stay in Iraq for a hundred years. No matter what the American people want.

Stuff of Life

I Love Tax Day

I loves me tax day.

Well, okay, not really. I hate it just like everyone else, only even more so because, well, I’m me and I feel things more passionately than anyone else alive.

(Just like everyone else.)

I’m disorganized and hate details (unless they pertain to who played what on which song on this or that precise date). And, of course, I’m poor. But not quite poor enough (and clearly not nearly rich enough) to avoid paying taxes.

But paying taxes is simply how we invest in this great nation of ours. So when I pay my taxes, I feel good(ish) because I know I’m paying for some poor kid somewhere to have a decent breakfast and then maybe I’m the one who bought him the biology book he’s going to be using. And maybe he’ll grow up and cure cancer.

If you’re to the right of me—and there aren’t many who aren’t—be happy: when you pay your taxes today (provided you aren’t like our vice president and too rich to ever actually pay taxes, having your accounts off-shore and all), you’re buying body armor for our brave men and women fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. Well, strike that: no one apparently pays for that except their families. But your taxes are what built our newest aircraft carrier, which keeps these here United States of America safe from them who plot day and night to do ‘em harm. And how cool is that?

I don’t exactly like shelling out a lot of money to buy my kids shoes, as happens every other month it seems. But it needs to be done because, well, it turns out after careful examination, children need to wear things on their feet so’s they can run and jump and be let into stores and it seems socks alone aren’t always quite enough. So you buy the shoes. Because you need to. And because you love your kids enough to want them to do well, and children without shoes, studies have proven conclusively, don’t do as well as children with shoes. Also? After a while? Their feets get kinda bloody and raw. Or so I've heard. And you do it because appropriately shod with a good pair of shoes, who knows where or what those kids’ll be able to do? You do it because you love them and it's the right thing to do. Still not a lot of fun, maybe, but more more than worth it in the end.

So. Thanks to all of you out there for buying my country a pair of shoes today.

(Metaphorically speaking, of course. As far as I know.)

4000

"President Bush has talked about our staying in Iraq for 50 years—"
“Make it a hundred.”
—Senator John McCain (R-AZ)
January 3, 2008

"The president carries the biggest burden, obviously.”
—Vice President Dick Cheney
March 24, 2008

Photo montage by Nico Pitney

Public Is Less Aware of Iraq Casualties,

File this under: disheartening and inexcusable.

Public Is Less Aware of Iraq Casualties, Study Finds
By Karen DeYoung
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, March 13, 2008; Page A12

Twenty-eight percent of the public is aware that nearly 4,000 U.S. personnel have died in Iraq over the past five years, while nearly half thinks the death tally is 3,000 or fewer and 23 percent think it is higher, according to an opinion survey released yesterday.

The survey, by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, found that public awareness of developments in the Iraq war has dropped precipitously since last summer, as the news media have paid less attention to the conflict. In earlier surveys, about half of those asked about the death tally responded correctly.

Related Pew surveys have found that the number of news stories devoted to the war has sharply declined this year, along with professed public interest. "Coverage of the war has been virtually absent," said Pew survey research director Scott Keeter, totaling about 1 percent of the news hole between Feb. 17 and 23.

As someone else pointed out, maybe the fact that this very story itself ran on A12 might have something to do with why the public doesn’t have a better idea of how many have died in Iraq.

Battle for our very survival, my ass. If it were, we’d know how many had fallen.

Diebold Accidentally Leaks Results of 2008 Election Early

Heh. This is really...really...funny...

Diebold Accidentally Leaks Results Of 2008 Election Early

Of the People

by the people, for the people.

Okay, that refers to gubmint and not armed forces. But this is still a striking graphic.

Putting money where mouths are? Or perhaps good for thee but not for me?

Participatory Budgeting

This is a fascinating idear.

The main reason it’s unlikely to happen, of course, is because President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s warning of the then-impending dominance of the military-industrial complex has come to pass, and that behemoth would deploy the massive financial weapons in its aresnal to fight any such movement in this direction—and those financial weapons are mighty powerful indeed.

I’m reposting the entire thing in full, with the original poster’s consent, to try to get as many people to think about it (and repost it themselves) as possible, but you should click through to be able to access all the groovy hyperlinks and whatnot.

But just imagine it: being able to have a direct say, even a small one, in how our tax dollars are spent. As I’ve written before, I suspect funding for cancer research, for example, would skyrocket.

It's hard to believe that Bush's proposed budget is what anyone wants. For example, he suggests cutting half the federal funds for public broadcasting, while he spends the same amount ($200 million) in Iraq every 12 hours.

Unfortunately, as ordinary taxpayers, we don't have that much influence over the final budget. If we want to see more money put into biomedical research or the arts we can vote every couple years, we can try to lobby Congress, or we can give to charitable groups and bypass the government entirely. Maybe there ought to be a more direct method.

Suppose we try something new. Take the budget -- Bush's proposal is over $3 trillion -- and make a 0.1% across-the-board cut, reducing every agency's funding by one penny out of every 10 dollars. Take the resulting $3 billion and put it into a Taxpayer-Directed Spending fund. And let the people decide where that money should go.

You could simply have a box you check off on your tax form, where you indicate which departments you want to receive your ~$10 share of that funding. Or, we could adapt the federal matching funds model and have a website where anyone can contribute small-dollar (or large-dollar) tax-deductible donations to an agency, and the government would match those contributions dollar for dollar out of the Taxpayer-Directed Spending fund.

The central idea is to give taxpayers a direct voice in how their dime is spent. The amount should be small, so as not to bollix up the entire budget on public whims, but large enough to make a difference. $3 billion is 1/1000th of the budget, but it's 8x what public broadcasting gets, it's 20x what the National Endowment for the Arts gets, and it's enough to increase the NIH by a hefty 10% rather than effectively cut it with sub-inflation increases, as is the current plan.

There is some precedent for this kind of direct, taxpayer-driven spending. The federal campaign matching funds operate on a similar principle, for example, using voter-driven fundraising to direct public dollars. Apparently, following the 2004 tsunami, the Canadian government sent matching funds in disaster relief for whatever its citizens raised (helpfully blogged about at this site). As that writer points out, the US government already provides a kind of 30% matching fund for charitable contributions each year by making them tax-deductible.

The motivation for this project would not only be to redirect 0.1% of the budget (although that's a start), but to use Taxpayer-Directed Spending as an indicator of where people want their money spent, kind of a national petition, that would help organizations more effectively lobby for funding. It would be the writing on the wall to tell Congress what taxpayers want.

(On that note, see also my post a year ago with a proposal for "YouBudget", which I still think is a good idea.)

Sara recently wrote about how government can still do good and do it well, from health care to education (or, in her words, from polio vaccines to the GI Bill). She also wrote about how the power of these programs lies partly in the long-lasting infrastructure they create. Those great projects were conceived at a time when Americans had been exposed to undergoing personal calamity and willingly making personal sacrifices, during the Depression and again during WWII, and doing it together as a nation. Compare that experience with today's, when as Bush said, the biggest sacrifice most Americans make for the war is to "sacrifice peace of mind when they see the terrible image of violence on TV every night."

Today, I don't feel like the public has a sense of being part of public works or public spending. It's not our government anymore. I'm not sure great public deeds can be undertaken successfully again until it is. The basic methods for people-powered politics, especially using the internet as an organizing tool, have been developed over the campaigns of 2004, 2006 and now 2008. I think that by applying these tools to policy-making -- something as simple as divvying up the budget -- we can begin to return to Americans the sense of ownership of our nation that made great national projects possible.

Fourth Amendment for Sale

Wondering if there’s any possible argument in favor of granting retroactive immunity to the enormous telecommunication companies which broke crystal clear laws by wiretapping American citizens without any warrants?

Well, wonder no more. Here you go. This sums it up pretty durn well.

There is an honest way to argue in favor of telecom amnesty, and it is, of course, exactly what amnesty advocates like the WSJ, Andy McCarthy, Jay Rockefeller and the rest of them desperately avoid. This is the only honest case one can make for this radical gift to telecoms:

Yes, telecoms violated multiple federal laws by enabling government spying on Americans and turning over communications data without warrants. They broke these laws not only in the aftermath of 9/11, but for years and years. By breaking these laws, they reaped enormous financial profits, as the Government paid them huge fees for their cooperation in the illegal spying program. Despite their having broken multiple federal laws and having committed felonies -- while reaping great profits in the process -- they ought to be granted retroactive amnesty and immunized from any consequences for their lawbreaking, otherwise they may be reluctant to break our laws in the future.

The telecom amnesty debate is controversial but it is not complicated. The Government asked telecoms to break numerous federal laws in exchange for profit. Some telecoms refused to do so and others -- such as AT&T and Verizon -- agreed to break the law for years. Which behavior do we want to encourage and reward -- (a) telecoms which turned down the substantial government contracts to enable warrantless spying on Americans because doing so was illegal, or (b) the telecoms which purposely broke our laws by allowing illegal government spying on Americans? How can that even be a debatable question?

As the Senate votes on amnesty tomorrow, the only real question is whether telecoms which broke our laws should be accountable in a court of law for their illegal behavior (the way things are supposed to work in a country that lives under the rule of law) or whether Congress, lavishly funded by this industry, will pass a law that has no purpose other than to give them the retroactive license to break our country's laws with impunity.

I would only add that evidence strongly suggests they may have also broken the law before September 11th which would, of course, completely invalidate any and all even half-assed arguments in favor of retroactive telecom immunity, as they clearly didn’t do it out of patriotism in that case...and it clearly didn’t keep us from getting attacked.

What’s more, these oh so patriotic companies? They turned off the wiretaps when the government got too delinquent paying the bills.

So. Not so patriotic—just greedy. As usual.

And how important were those wiretaps if the Bush administration couldn’t even be arsed to pay for them? Clearly, either they weren't, or once again, the Bush administration doesn’t really give a rat’s ass about our security.

Everyone once in a while, I think I can’t possibly get outraged anymore, that we’ve gone so far down the rabbithole that I’m just spent.

And then I learn, to my disgust and horror and relief, that no, the capacity’s still there. I just wish I didn’t keep finding it out.

Leftist Agenda

So I read a lot of blogs, many of which I’ve found through Top Management. I was checking out one of them recently and thoroughly enjoying it, as usual, when I noticed a comment another reader had left, snarling about those with “a leftist agenda.”

And I immediately was thrown into a bought of deep introspection. Did I have a leftist agenda?

Well, let’s see. I don’t believe folks that don’t have enough money to feed themselves should simply be abandoned to starve to death and I do believe that as Americans we have the right to be free from unreasonable search and seizure.

It was at this point I realized that, yes, my name is Scott and I do have a leftist agenda. ["Hello, Scott..."]

Which led me to recall that forty-three years ago there were two types of folks in this country. Those with a leftist agenda and those without. Those with a leftist agenda were called “liberals.” Those without a leftist agenda were called “people who don’t believe blacks should have the right to vote.”

So, yeah. I got a leftist agenda. Damn skippy.