Republicans--why do we even try with them?

I know, a lot of us don't. But there are those, and some who even hold high public office, who still think (I would call it delusionally so) that they can be reasoned with. Why is that? When have they shown the least inclination to bargain or argue faithfully, let alone for the good of the country? If we take a look at what they profess to believe--based on their actions over the last decade and 1/2--we can easily see that they are pursuing a singular goal, and compromising or bargaining have nothing to do with achieving that goal.
They want to destroy the New Deal and the Progressive era that preceded it, and return us to the apparently halcyon days of 1885. (I will leave it to others to argue that they actually are hardcore racists and want a return any earlier than that.) It should be obvious to all that this is the goal; what do they call for more than anything else? Lower taxes and less regulation. The income tax was established on a permanent basis in 1913, so we know they want to go back before that. Popular calls for governmental regulation of businesses stemmed mainly from the public health threats posed by pre-Pure Food and Drug Act immoral business behavior, so we know we have to date it before 1906. The Panic of 1893 created a public clamor for stronger regulation of the economy, so it has to be before that. (I put it at 1885, because one other main component of Republican ideology is the desire to completely eliminate unions, and the first union (the AFL) was formed in 1886. They've almost succeeded in that task already, so I felt it unnecessary to include it above.)
While this may just be a cute semantic exercise, I think it is instructive to see how truly radical the modern Republican Party has become. These are not conservatives trying to undo a few Administrations' worth of "missteps"--although since Republicans have controlled the White House for all but 14 of the last 42 years, I'm not sure how anyone would think that--these are revolutionaries seeking to change the foundations of the way we've lived in this country for 126 years! There is no amount of bargaining plausible that would enable one to reach that kind of goal, so it is no surprise that Republicans are totally uninterested in doing any.
No surprise, that is, except apparently for the Democrats we now have in "power." "Led" by President Obama, Democrats in Congress have repeatedly attempted to craft legislation that would garner Republican votes, only to be stymied time and time again, even for the weakest of weak sauces. Only when a bill furthers the Republican goal (like the bailout of GM and the banks, which used money directly from we the people)--or better yet, one that is in appearance anti-Republican, but in reality still works to funnel money to the business sector (like the health insurance reform act, which has done nothing to protect against rate hikes, but will mandate universal participation)--will they reluctantly allow passage. That Obama (especially) and other Dems would then praise their own efforts at "getting something done", or passing a "grand bargain", is simply too galling to stomach for long. Yet still it continues.
It seems clear to me, at least, that Obama is not stupid, nor does he appear naive (he would have to be both to have not learned how the Republicans operate this far into his tenure), so we have to conclude that either a) he has no ideology at all, and is only interested in the inside baseball of political wrangling and process regardless of outcome; or b) he has an ideology directly opposed to the Democratic Party platform, but knew he couldn't get elected/re-elected as a Republican or independent and wanted the job badly. I can't imagine that he truly feels like he is accomplishing anything but enabling the Republicans to achieve their goals at this point, unless a) is true and his only goal is to sign legislation he helped pilot through a contentious Congress. Why else would he continue to engage any Republicans in discussions of policy or legislative matters, given their stated desires to both destroy him and eliminate any vestige of governmental help for the less-than-overwhelmingly rich?
It is inconceivable to me that anyone not brain dead would deny the Republican intransigence and seek to work around it, but instead Obama and the other leading Dems (with the probable exception of the now-powerless House Minority Leader Pelosi) repeatedly include Republicans in their feeble attempts to govern. (The new "Super-Congress" is merely the latest, albeit the most ridiculous and almost certainly unConstitutional, effort to get Republicans to disregard their well-established motives.) It really is baffling, but only if one tries to square the circle of believing that Obama and his seeming lapdogs are actually trying to follow the Democratic Party platform. Once one drops that pretense and acknowledges that Obama has no desire to do so, for whatever reasons he has, one begins to understand how well and truly finished we are. So, let's ring in the New Year of 1885, now and forevermore!

Because it's too depressing

I haven't written in a long while--the longest stretch since I started this blog, iirc--because almost every single piece of national news I've received has been bad. The health care bill passed, but is weak sauce and doesn't appear to be getting stronger anytime soon. Republicans are becoming increasingly crazy, which is saying a lot. The Republican Party is institutionalizing the craziness as well: at least in Maine, the official Party platform has been rewritten by the Teabaggers. Low points: 1) Eliminate voter registration at the DMV; 2) Eliminate the pension for Congresspersons, none of whom will serve more than 12 years anyway; 3) "Reassert the principle that 'Freedom of Religion' does not mean 'freedom from religion'" (iow, create an air of harassment, at least, for anyone not espousing a religious belief); 4) Promote family values by defining marriage as heterosexual; 5) Institutionalize forced pregnancy ideology; 6) "Return to the principles of Austrian Economics" (iow, allow for an utterly unregulated free market); 7) Remove governmental regulation of energy companies (in the face of the Gulf oil spill, no less!); and the most heartless one of all, 8) "Clarify that healthcare is not a right. It is a service. . . . Only market based solutions will solve the problems."
To repeat: this is in Maine, the home of the supposedly moderate Republicans Snowe and Collins. The lesson here is that Republicans of all stripes are bound and determined to not just overturn any progressive legislation passed by the most recent Congress and Presidency, but all such laws written since the Civil War (and some from before that!) If you are a registered Republican and do not believe in some of the stuff listed above or in the Maine platform, I suggest you rethink your registration status (while you still can). The Republican Party has shown a marked reluctance over the last 16 years to do anything but destroy this country, and if you don't see that you are blind. If at worst you support this kind of thing, you are either stupid or evil. To those pantywaists who would try to get me to tone down my rhetoric because I might offend someone and prevent some sort of epiphany from the deluded, I say this: I don't care about convincing Republicans to see things my way, or even the sane way, because I honestly doubt they are capable of caring about other people at all. I've grown weary of being subjected to the cold brutality of rightwing oppression that has been slowly taking over this country ever since I became old enough to vote. During my whole adult life I have never witnessed the passage or implementation of any progressive legislation--instead I have seen the withering away of all semblance of hope for its resurgence, as the forces of sociopathic conservative rule stymie resistance at every turn. Bit by bit and law by law, our country is being run into the ground by the rich and Republican, and there aren't any levers left for the rest of us to pull that can make it any better. We no longer own the media, we no longer have effective representation in our political bodies, and we no longer can afford to do anything but work (if we're lucky enough to have jobs, that is) until we die.
To those of you who have voted for any Republicans since 1994, and especially since 1999: Fuck You. Fuck You. Fuck You. You killed the US, and you're killing my dreams for my son to have any kind of decent future here. You chose to put yourselves above the good of anyone else alive on the planet, and if you didn't realize it, fuck you for being stupid, because there were plenty of ways you could have figured that out long before now. If you voted for any Republican in that time period and are now out of work? You deserve it, you stupid worthless moron. Pull yourself up by your own bootstraps now, jackass. That's the kind of world you wanted, isn't it? Go die cold in the ditch outside somebody else's gated community, you scumbag, because those are the only people you helped with your vote, and I don't care how old you are, or how much money you donated to some cause, because you prevented millions more from getting the help they needed from the stripped-down helpless government you voted for. If you are a Republican officeholder at any level of government, I hope there is a heaven and a hell, because you will surely burn forever in a Lake of Fire for having screwed over as many people as you possibly could for as long as you possibly could for the sake of yourself and your cronies, which is the most un-Christian attitude there could possibly be. For those of you who think that Maine Republicans are just being extreme, and I'm being too harsh, it's too late for you to wake up, so enjoy your early onset retirement and death, because they've already come for you and there's already no one left to speak up.

Republican Party: hating the public since 1980!

So, is there anyone out there who doesn't think our economy is in deep trouble? (If not, you might want to read a freaking book or even a newspaper first, then.) Whether we want to admit it or not, this is the kind of systemic disaster the New Deal, and the federal government in general, was/is designed to tackle. The path to recovery might not be a straight line, but without the government's help, we are doomed to a complete meltdown not seen since the Great Depression. And we haven't seen one since then because of the New Deal and its regulatory heritage. The Republicans have tried to sell us on the dismantling of the New Deal based on such canards and propagandistic slogans like, "It's your money", or "The government is the problem", etc. etc. etc. And you know what? They got their way for the last 28 years, pretty much (even Clinton helped them out with some deregulatory moves), and our present disaster is a perfectly direct result. Greedy pigs sucked the economy dry, whether they were bankers, accountants, enabling politicians, stock speculators, or "captains of industry", to the point where one crisis (in the mortgage biz) crashed the whole system so that we are all going to suffer for it.
Help is on the way, though, now that we have a President who knows what the hell is going on and most importantly, wants to fix it. Obama and the Democrats in Congress, however, are getting no help whatsoever from the Republican Party. The House today passed a stimulus bill by a vote of 244-188, but hidden in that number is one far more remarkable: not a single Republican voted for it. Not one. Every single Republican in the House is determined to withhold help from any sector of the American public, regardless of historical evidence, common sense, or even political expediency as motive to the contrary. Do we really need any more reasons to kill the Republican Party and vote its representatives out of office? They certainly don't care about us . . .

Two kinds of "bailouts," two kinds of responses

This may sound hypocritical of me, but while I excoriated the bailout for the finance "industry", I'm all in favor of helping out the auto makers. Three real world reasons: 1) The auto industry did not facilitate (or perhaps more accurately, cause) our economic meltdown, so they shouldn't necessarily be held accountable for its effects; 2) it is one of the last actually American industries left standing, employing hundreds of thousands of Americans earning decent wages; and 3) the amount of money involved is so miniscule comparatively that it doesn't engage my natural gag reflex. There are also a couple of political/ideological reasons: 1) The people who are against it are only interested in taking down the last truly strong union--the UAW--that represents workers (there are immensely strong unions in sports and entertainment, but by and large, the main beneficiaries of those unions are fairly wealthy already); and 2) the only people voting against it are Republicans, which these days automatically makes it something any good Democrat/liberal should fight for.
As with the bailout we were forced to swallow for the financiers, I support this only with a few serious reservations. The managers of the Big 3 need to be fired. How far down the decision-making apparati this "restructuring" needs to go depends entirely on how far down we can trace the responsibilities for being stupid. I realize selling SUVs, for a prime example, was a sound business move for an industry needing to hit quarterly revenue targets, but the only reason that's even of any importance is because these companies have become useless at taking any risks whatsoever that might affect the stock prices in the short term. (By the way--all American companies, with a vanishingly small number of exceptions, are useless in those terms. I digress.) We have known for quite a while that our oil-based energy system is in decline, and none of the Big 3 pushed for alternative fuel vehicles until Toyota (and to a lesser extent, Honda) showed them that yes, Virginia, hybrids will sell here in the USA, and in eye-catching volume, with little to no hard sales pitches at all. (When's the last time you can remember seeing a TV ad for a Prius? I can't recall ever seeing one . . .)
I have no problem giving the auto industry help, as long as we the people get something in return, which we are so obviously not getting from the financiers. Whether it be equity in the companies, interest on the loan, a say in how the companies are run, or something equally valuable--perhaps a meaningful restriction on executive salaries?--I don't much care, but we need something. Otherwise, even if we get the current bosses capped, we will run into a "meet the new boss/same as the old boss" syndrome here as well.
To sum up, the finance world may have been "too big" to fail (but even at that we can't figure out how to save it properly; don't get me started!), but the auto industry is definitely too important to fail. It has been the backbone of our workforce as a country for nearly a hundred years, and its salience in that regard has only increased given the evaporation of all our other homegrown manufacturing and knowledge-based businesses since the Reagan era began. We can save it, and we should. It's not that difficult a call, really.

Election recap--or, what's gone wrong with Arkansas?

Here's a fun toy that shows how almost everywhere in the country--even in parts of the deep south--turned more Democratic in the election. Quite obviously, the Ozark Plateau and some of the southern Appalachians haven't gotten some messages over time. Is it that they're still rabid racists who haven't yet joined the 20th Century, let alone the 21st? Is it that they're still Rebels who haven't yet given up the fight against those damn Yankees? Is it that their backwoods religious dogma clouds their vision of how immensely Republicans have screwed us up?
Who can tell?

Reason #12,362 why conservatives and the Republicans are evil

The Supreme Court narrowly decided last week that the right of habeas corpus still exists and needs to be enforced, even by the US government. Yes, there was a question about that among the craziest fringe groups ever to exist: the Republican Party and its appointed justices on the Court. You see, the vote was only 5-4. There are 4 justices on our current Supreme Court that believe habeas corpus--a basic human right encoded over 750 years ago in the Magna Carta--should be discarded. One vote is all that stands between our country and complete disavowal of any claim to modern civilization, and there isn't much we can do about that for a long time.
Even if Obama wins in November he won't be able to affect the balance of ideology on the Court. Barring some physical calamity, none of the wretched 4 (Roberts, Alito, Thomas, or Scalia) judges are going anywhere for many years to come, because they are all fairly young. (Selling one's heart and soul to Beezelbub has its benefits, clearly.) We can only hope/pray that the other 5 retire during the tenure of someone sane, and that is something we can do something about: stop voting for Republicans at all levels, until even one demonstrates the mental acuity and character demanded of a squirrel. The current crop certainly doesn't qualify under those stringent conditions . . .

John McCain: Republican garbage

I know the media likes telling the story that John McCain is "a maverick" and "a moderate", but anyone with 1/2 a brain can see that this is utter bullshit. He has been just as much an enabler of Smirky's brand of Republicanism as anyone you can find way out on the right wing. The latest evidence? McCain is brilliantly pandering to the worst instincts of the electorate by proposing a "summer break" in gas taxes. In how many ways is this dishonest? Let's see:
1) The taxes on gasoline go directly to upkeep on our highways and other transportation infrastructure; eliminating them hastens the complete destruction of our network of roads and bridges (remember Minnesota's collapsing bridge?). Heck, the gas taxes aren't high enough to pay for what needs doing as it is! (And here's a start.) But it sure sounds like he cares about us, doesn't it?
2) The likelihood that the oil companies would actually pass on the tax savings to the consumer approaches zero--seriously, does anyone trust them to ever do the right thing for anyone other than their biggest stockholders? The tax on a gallon of gas is 18.4 cents--I'll eat all of my hats if we see a reduction larger than 10 cents, and I would be hugely surprised if we see any reduction at all. When's the last time you remember a change in gas prices at the pump having anything to do with the price of a barrel of oil? So this is really about increasing profitability for the oil companies and reducing the income of the federal government--win/win (if you're a complete right wing rich asshole, that is)!
3) McCain's proposal actively hurts the conservation/green movement by appearing as if high prices are the issue, not our addiction to oil in the first place. Of course, that's because the Republicans are getting absolutely killed on both environmental grounds and charges of being in the pockets of the oil companies.
4) By making this kind of wholly disingenuous proposal, McCain demonstrates that he is just like Smirky, Dick, and the rest of the scumbags who will say/do anything to con the public into voting for them. If McCain truly cared about how much I pay for gas, why didn't he propose this, oh, say, 6 years ago, when prices began to rise precipitously? Or at any other time in his career? Answer: Because it wouldn't have helped him get elected to anything until now.

The problem is that the Republican Party has so successfully tarnished the concept of good government and what it can do to help the country, that few see the benefit in the concept of taxation. We must relearn that taxation is not the cause of any of our problems--it is what the government does with its income that has value (or not). Advocating for the elimination of taxes on April 15 is demagoguery, plain and simple. Anyone thinking that lowering taxes does anything positive clearly hasn't been paying attention, or simply doesn't care about our country. Our economy is staggering on the brink of total collapse thanks to 3 decades of economic irresponsibility, during which the Republicans have held the majority of the reins of power, and it's only getting worse. This is not a coincidence, for chrissakes! It is intentional, and they have been succeeding exactly through this kind of pandering. McCain is nothing but a typical Republican thug; believing anything else betrays the height of ignorance.

House: 1 step in the right direction

Let's hear it for the Democrats in the House of Reps! They took a stand against telecom immunity, rejecting the Senate bill including it and sending their own FISA bill back to that body. And then they went on their scheduled 2 week break! Well played, indeed. Even if the Senate Dems roll over yet again for Smirky--the Republicans are well past being a lost cause--nothing happens for 2 more weeks anyway.
The longer we keep this issue front and center, the more the general public will see that the Republican Party as a whole cares not one whit for their rights, but instead wants to insure that their corporate buddies/funders are kept well fed and quiet. This is all about making sure the telecoms are safe from prosecution, and therefore safe from being forced to turn state's evidence against this Administration's coercive and unconstitutional practices.
If you are in the habit of emailing or calling your Rep to berate them, please remember to email/call them to thank them as well when they do something responsible--I would bet those pleasant congratulatory messages go a lot further than the angry ones!

Deja vu

Tell me if you've heard this one before:
Major financial institutions, encouraged by a lawless Administration's lax enforcement of gutted regulatory statutes, make horrible investments and other fiscally questionable practices common enough for insiders to reap windfall profits, leaving taxpayers to foot the bill when the whole industry crashes.
Right! The S & L scandal of the mid-1980s!
Oh, wait, did you think I was talking about the current hedge fund/mortgage lending crisis? Well, I might as well have, given the parallels, and even some of the players involved.
Wake up, people! This is not a case of incompetence; rich Republicans have been gaming the system at the middle and lower classes expense for decades now, and non-wealthy voters have been enabling them to do so by voting against their economic interests ever since St. Reagan conned them into thinking it was somebody else (remember the fictitious "welfare queens driving Cadillacs"?) stealing from them.
Deregulation and stripping the government of its enforcement powers has done nothing except enrich the wealthy and erode the economy as a whole, and the Republican Party stands for nothing less than a continuation, if not an acceleration, of these destructive policies. The resultant slaughter of middle class financial security and near elimination of the possibility of true upward mobility represents a war against the non-rich, and it has been going on since Jan. 20, 1981. You can tell, because when anyone awake attempts to correct the imbalances these policies have created, invariably the right wing accuses them of fomenting "class warfare". This is classic right wing Republican rhetoric--accuse your opponents of that which you are practicing in a neat verbal sleight-of-hand. And that has been working since 1994.
More and better Democrats. Now.

Why I'm for Edwards

Anyone reading the blogs on the liberal/Democratic side of things is awash in posts and "diaries" about why their candidate is the only one to save us and about why everyone else's candidate is a total loser who will destroy the country if s/he wins the primaries. (To be more accurate, they usually portray the voters as total losers or fools; the nominee gets the blame for ruining our future lives.) I'd like to avoid that hyperventilated rhetoric, for one simple reason: every single one of the Democratic Party candidates--even (or especially, in some cases) the ones who've dropped out--would make a saner, safer, and more palatable President than any of the Republicans who are running. That hasn't been the case for a long time, if ever, imho. So let's not tear each other apart over who gets the chance to keep our country from destroying itself.
That being said, I do have a strong affinity for John Edwards, and since Al Gore stubbornly refused to answer my pleas, I'm going to vote for him in our primary. I think Edwards is the only liberal left in the field, and he's the only one with concrete plans in place that speak to the issues I care about most--the role of government, tax policy, national trade and our growing division of wealth, and the costs of health care. He's definitely the only one interested in fighting the corporate powers that have taken over the nation (and its politicians, which makes this a vital stance to take), he's the only candidate talking specifically about the tanking economy, and he's the only one that seems to care about the base of the Democratic Party. He has apologized--I think quite sincerely--for his foolish and highly misguided vote to authorize Smirky's wars, he has experience in speaking truth to power based on his legal background suing corporations on behalf of injured customers or citizens, and he has demonstrated the most consistently positive national appeal in head-head polling against the Republican candidates. (In fact, he's the only one of the top 3 Dems that can be shown to potentially defeat all of the Repubs in any state you might choose to pick--even those in which he polls behind the Repub he still outdistances the other Dems.)
He's got two major problems, though, which will most likely cost him the nomination. 1) Because he is the scariest (from a Republican point of view) Democrat running, the right-wing media has chosen the most effective method of killing his chances--they are completely ignoring him. How many stories did you see that omitted any mention of the fact that Edwards came in second in Iowa? How many stories in the traditional media have you seen detailing his campaign or his appeal? I bet nowhere near as many as you saw telling us about Clinton's tears, or Obama's roller coaster ride from Iowa to New Hampshire, or even Richardson's "will he/won't he" retirement from the race.
2) He's a white man. Not to put too fine a point on it, but I imagine a lot of Democrats/liberals are genuinely excited (and for good reason) to vote for a credible African-American or woman in a Presidential race. The problem with that is that these are not the most liberal of A-As or women. Obama is actually boasting that he will work with Republicans--completely ignoring the demonstrably vituperative and caustic policies of that entire Party that have wrenched our country so far off the rails of democracy. Clinton's "centrism" is well-known; she is following in her husband's footsteps of trying to position herself squarely in the middle of the political spectrum--without realizing that by doing so, she allows the nutjobs on the right to continually shift without resistance even further rightward on most issues. She still proudly refers to herself as a "Goldwater Girl", after all; it's an extremely sad commentary on what has happened to our political landscape that a Goldwaterite can now be appropriately considered a Democrat!
To repeat: I will fairly happily vote for any of these three in November, because all of them recognize that we have taken almost too many steps down a perilous path and we are in danger of permanently "breaking" our country--at least in comparison to what any of the Republicans are saying. I just happen to think that of these three, only John Edwards "gets" the severity of our crisis and is angered by it. Just like me.

200!

According to the handy dandy post numberer on Blogger, this is my 200th post on Surly Librarian. I know the odds are against my even reaching 300, given my incredible slowdown over the last year, so I thought I'd give a little extra for this milestone.
The reason for my declining writing pace should have been in exultation (is there another time of year anyone ever uses that word?) after last November's stunning Democratic "takeovers" of the House and Senate, but let's face facts, the massively underwhelming amount of activity in Congress pretty much shoots that theory out of the water, eh? I suppose the truth is that I was hoping that the 2006 election would mean more than it does; my overall feeling of depression for the sake of our country's future has dampened my enthusiasm for pointing out Smirky and the gang's sins. I mean, there are so many of them, right? And nobody in a position of power seems to care. The simple fact is, most Congresspeople are so out of touch with what they've been put there to do, those of us paying attention are losing faith. Are we any closer to getting out of the Middle East? Nope. Are we any closer to getting off our addiction to oil? No. Are we retrieving any of our lost civil liberties? No. Have we even begun any investigations that might lead to impeaching the felonious members of the Administration? Not since Pat Fitzgerald's hollow conviction of Scooter, and that was done before 11/06.
The obvious question in response to all of these is: why? Why haven't the Democrats moved on any of these (or any others even more intrinsic to modern Democracy, such as reauthorizing the Fairness Doctrine for media, reregulating industries to guard against their misbehavior, tossing out restrictions on legal awards for the winners of civil lawsuits, and so many more)? Why are we squandering the good will earned with the public over the last few years by not being incompetent, corrupt, and vindictively screwing over everyone except the super-rich (i.e., by not being Republican)?
The cynical answer is that the majority of Democrats in office are no different than the Republicans; let's call this the "Naderite" position, since this was Ralph Nader's stated raison d'etre for running for President in 2000--thereby helping to saddle the world with Smirky, by the way. Is it true? The more time goes by without any substantive changes being made, the more likely it is, although it is still really hard to argue that we'd even be talking about this kind of stuff if we were in the 6th year of a Gore Administration (even a Gore-Lieberman one!). (In other words, while the parties themselves may be 2 sides of the same coin, I hardly think that President Gore could have been in any conceivable way similar to Smirky the solipsist.)
Those still retaining faith in the Democratic Party as a whole claim that the reason nothing is being done is that their majorities simply aren't big enough to accomplish what needs to be done, but the truth is that nothing should be "getting done" that follows any similar path the previous Congresses were pursuing. If the Democrats do indeed possess an ideology that runs counter to the Republicans, they would be passing bills left and right for the betterment of the country (if not the world at large) regardless of whether they become laws. Taking a stand for something usually means not compromising or "doing the nation's business", at least until enough opponents begin making serious concessions of their own, especially when your stances are supported by big majorities of the public. I have yet to see much evidence of that from this Congress, let alone even a shred of self-respecting insistence on following the laws of the country. (Remember the subpoenas issued to Karl Rove, Harriet Miers and Joshua Bolten? None of those three are in jail for refusing to respond, and that was over 5 months ago . . .)
For some reason, the Democrats think that they should be doing something, meaning that they should be getting bills passed that will receive Smirky's signature. They think that the public wants "bipartisanship", or "compromise", or new laws to be created regardless of their actual effects. This is nuts, of course, because any bill they pass that Smirky would sign is, ipso facto, not a bill that any Democrat--really, any thinking human being--should want to get signed by that wretched scumbag! How hard is that to understand? Smirky and the rest of the felons with an "R" next to their name do not compromise, they do not barter, they do not behave rationally, and they don't care about you or anyone else but themselves, get it? Stop behaving as if there is going to be some magic enlightenment on the other side of the aisle or at the other end of Pennsylvania Ave. at some point if you play nice, ok? Haven't the last 13 years given you enough proof of their character? For chrissakes, all you have to do is pay attention to your own polling; the American public is telling you what we want, and more pillaging by the Republicans ain't it. What part of STOP ROLLING OVER don't you get?
(Clearly, the "STOP" part, but I digress.)
*sigh*

Book review: The Conscience of a Liberal

Paul Krugman is a columnist for the New York Times who has been blasting Smirky and the Gang ever since the felons took office. Originally hired as an economics writer, Krugman has been forced into the role of esteemed political writer almost by default, given the Old Gray Lady's penchant for allowing its political scribes to rot into Administration henchmen/transcribers. His latest book details a history of liberal thinking from the (first) Gilded Age to the present. Lest that sound dry and oppressively historianesque, let me assure you that Krugman's writing is clear and concise; this is a quick and fun (really!) romp through the decades--although I must also point out that the treatment of the topic is actually deadly serious. The book's main thesis is twofold: 1) Republicans are destroying this country by attempting to "repeal" the 20th century and return us to the status quo circa 1880, as far as economic thinking, governmental activity, and fiscal/taxation policies; and 2) universal health care can and should be this generation's political/social legacy.
Krugman explores the various political moves the Republican Party has undertaken through the years, noting the initial opposition to the New Deal posed by the party in the 1930s and 1940s, as well as their Eisenhower-era acquiescence. The modern Republican Party, however, was gradually taken over by what he terms "movement conservatives" in the 2 decades following William F. Buckley's establishment of The National Review in 1955. Movement conservatives, according to Krugman, include Buckley and his intellectual heirs, who contribute ideas of anti-communism and white backlash against the civil rights movement (perhaps updated to include strains of anti-immigration), combined with the larger cadre of neoconservatives following on Milton Friedman's economic and Irving Kristol's sociological theories. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, members of this new conservative movement convinced wealthy individuals and corporate donors such as Richard Mellon Scaife and Joseph Coors to finance an entire infrastructure of think tanks, magazines and other media outlets, and eventually political action committees so that these groups could pursue political means to their intellectual ends. The end result of this activity has been the growing economic inequality of society, as well as the corruption of our political processes by the right wing.
Krugman's book, though, points to a way we can fight back against these dark forces of privilege and exclusion. By pushing for universal health care (which is supported by an impressive, and growing majority of the populace), liberals can not only regain the ground lost in the political arena over the last 30 years, but more importantly, provide a vital service to the people living in this country. The beauty of universal health care as an issue, Krugman explains, is that workable solutions already exist (in many countries throughout Western Europe and in Canada), funding options are plentiful--even without raising taxes on the middle and lower classes, and we have the lessons learned from the Clinton-era efforts to institute healthcare reform to help combat the movement conservatives.
Krugman tackles many side topics confronting liberals these days as well, offering at least better definitions of our situations, if not outright solutions. He saves the best mini-discussion for the end of the book, where he describes the differences between what a "liberals" and "progressives". Essentially, Krugman defines liberals as those who believe in social equity and fairness, while progressives are people actively engaged in political means to achieve those ends.The lack of cooperation movement conservatives show for any ideas not their own, however, means that progressives have only one political outlet to pursue their objectives (the Democratic Party), and that the stigma of "partisanship" will have to be ignored. "For now, being an active liberal means being a progressive, and being a progressive means being partisan. But the goal isn't one-party rule. It's the reestablishment of a truly vital, competitive democracy. Because in the end, democracy is what being a liberal is all about." (pg. 273)
Amen, brother.

Immigration, schmimmigration

I now know why "illegal immigration" has never resonated with me as a political issue. It's because it is solely a political issue, with very little bearing on what happens outside of some state houses and Washington DC. In the abstract, I suppose, one could claim that illegal immigrants are costing "real" Americans jobs or somehow using up resources (say, ER time, um, or public school monies, er--heck, I can't even think of any others!) that would otherwise go to "legal" Americans.
The age-old argument against punishing illegal immigrants for the former is that they are "doing the jobs that we don't want to do." In many ways that is true, but doesn't that have more to do with 1) the employer who is escaping paying his/her due payroll taxes; and 2) the employer paying so little that no one other than some poor desperate soul would do the job?
As far as the latter, I would say that if we had universal health care and fully funded school systems, there wouldn't be any scarcity of resources to complain about in the first place!
So what is this really about, then? The fact that the Republican Party found another issue to stir up antagonism against "Them" as a means of creating the false sense of unity among their quite disparate factions. Hatred and fear of non-whites and foreign-looking/sounding people has a long and ugly history in this country, and slavery was merely the first instance of it. Whole political parties have arisen to service this whites only mentality, most obviously the "Nativists" (originally comprising the American Republican Party, then renamed the American party, finally to be absorbed by the Know Nothing Party) of the mid-1800s. And even though the Democratic Party was the home to the vast majority of slaveholders, the Nativists found their permanent political home in the Republican Party, albeit one that was far different than the one we have today.
Apparently, the modern Republican Party wants to recreate the halcyon days of the 1850s, since their arguments against immigration are really coded arguments against immigrants. Subtle (and not-so-subtle--a freaking concrete wall built on our southern border? Shades of the Soviet Union in Berlin!) appeals to nativism, I believe, are simply calls to institutionalize the racism in which some of our citizens still hold dear. That the racists have convinced a large portion of the populace, and possibly a majority of the Republican party, that this kind of racism is just fine, is sick, but the frustrating part of this is that the coding of their public appeals and legislation are such that many good people are drawn into the discussion even though they themselves are neither racists nor nativists!
The non-issue of "illegal immigration", if stated straightforwardly by those seeking to convince others that there is a problem--we either don't like or fear brown, black, or yellow people, and we want them to leave--would be laughed out of the public fora, and those who proposed the discussion would be voted out of office posthaste. (Remember what happened to George "Macaca" Allen?) Republicans have seized on "illegal immigration" as a wedge issue designed to split the base of political opponents who attempt to address the issue on Republican terms while simultaneously help forestall the inevitable disintegration of their own base. That it also helps diffuse efforts to end the occupation of Iraq, ferret out corruption in government, and sidetrack or derail the legislative process by which the Democrats hope to restore our country's political sanity, are all big bonus side effects.
It's simply not that big a deal, in the scheme of things, that we have people coming to our country illegally. Think about it this way: if the Republican Party got its way, and our country's economy were destroyed (further), nobody would want to come here in the first place. Helping them do so by keeping "illegal immigration" on the agenda is seriously perverse, isn't it?

Cloture votes

Yeah, right, like you thought they would get even a simple "no-confidence" vote to the floor? It's not as if Gonzales has done anything worth impeaching, right? I mean, dismissing employees of the Justice Department for political reasons isn't a violation of their civil service rights, is it? Or colluding with the rest of Smirky's cabal and wiretapping the whole country illegally? How about the simple fact that he has repeatedly lied to Congress while testifying before committees?
There really is no excuse for anyone supporting this moral waste of oxygen, but hey, there are at least 38 Senators who voted yesterday who did just that.
You see, in the Senate, a vote to end debate is necessary before any action itself gets to be voted on, and cloture requires 60 Senators' approval. This is what's known as the "cloture" vote, and is the official term for the filibuster process. Voting for cloture means that the Senator wants to bring the matter at hand to the floor for the final pass/no pass vote. This past week we saw two instances where this came up; the first was the immigration bill, which also failed its cloture vote; and the second on Gonzales's wrist slap. The vast majority of those not voting for cloture were Republicans (naturally, since they have no interest in doing the people's business, but instead only seek to gum up the works at every opportunity), and since they have far more than the 41 Senators required to deny cloture (100-60+1), we can expect to see a lot of these kinds of votes over the next year and 1/2.
Why didn't the Democrats do this when they were in the minority, even though there were more than 41 Democrats in the Senate, even at their lowest ebb? Good question. Part of the answer lies in the fact that some Dems (I'm looking at you, Joe Lieberman) seem to want to appear as if they really aren't "partisan" when in fact, their lack of party loyalty simply enables the Republican agenda to continue to advance. That's not being non-partisan, Joe, that's being Republican. Jackass. Other Dems seem not to understand that our government is teetering on the brink of dissolution, in effect, as the Executive Branch under Bush runs wild over the Constitution. Those seeking to "keep their powder dry" for something really important can't ever quite pull the trigger on anything, which again simply enables the Republicans to rule, even while they are in the minority. Filibuster the nominations of Alito? Roberts? Bolton? Rice? Gonzales himself? Filibuster the Bankruptcy Bill? The extension of the Patriot Act? Vote to cut off funding for the Occupation of Iraq? Nah, we'll wait and use our "power" when it matters.
The problem with that attitude, of course, is that all of these nominations and bills (and hundreds of others unmentioned) have mattered. Greatly. And by not exercising the power of the filibuster and/or party discipline--as Republicans have been doing for the last 13 years quite extensively and successfully--the Democrats have failed in their duty to represent their constituents, let alone the country's best interests and future.

Jiu-Jitsu idea?

Political insiders and now bloggers paying attention like to think up ways to use an opponents strengths (or ideologies) against them. This strategy, referred to as "jiu-jitsu" after the martial art that utilizes this concept wholly, is attractive mainly because it usually involves little risk but promises huge rewards, as the politicos at the head of a movement struggle to maintain control not only of their adherents, but also the message that they alone hold the key to future success.
A real world example of political jiu-jitsu occurred when Richard Nixon (and Ronald Reagan even more completely) convinced the working classes that they, and not the Democratic Party traditionally thought to be in their corner, had their best interests at heart. Republicans discovered that Americans near the bottom of the economic ladder voted according to their social values rather than their fiscal self-interests (or if the latter, according to their hopeful dream of one day belonging to a higher class). Nixon captured the mythical "Silent Majority", while Reagan and the rest of the far right ever since have pandered--which I think is the right word, since they rarely follow through on promises made to this constituency--to the "Moral Majority."
While taking my daily walk with TBO last night I had a moment of inspiration along these lines (but directed against the Republicans and/or the far right, of course). One of the long-standing bulwarks of Republican ideology has been the unwavering support of a strong military, to the extent that they simply don't even care if it gets used properly. Our armed forces are filled to the brim with many men and women who serve their country honestly and faithfully; asking for any reduction in their numbers has never been looked upon too fondly by our electorate, and those in favor of a strong military have always successfully destroyed any candidate seeking to curb the defense budget openly.
What our military men and women do, on the other hand, has rarely been addressed as a political question unless we are embroiled in hostile action. I have never heard a major candidate running for office suggest that our troops stationed around the world on permanent bases might be more usefully employed doing something else, even on a short-term basis. Since questioning the very existence of our bloated military or the presence of these foreign bases is a sure-fire recipe for political suicide, what if we instead proposed using the troops in a different manner?
My idea is a simple one: we employ the men and women in uniform as workers on public works projects, helping to maintain/rebuild our national infrastructure. We don't call for a reduction in budget, military effectiveness, force numbers, or even the number of foreign bases, we simply rotate the troops home on a regular schedule to rebuild our interstate freeways, bridges, streets, dams, power plants etc., build new mass transit lines, and any other projects we can think of. These days, we can fly anyone anywhere within 24 hours (at most), so this can't be seen as a "weakening" of our forces at all, and reducing the number of wo/men actively on duty in other countries would reduce, if not eliminate the friction we cause by their presence. At the same time, we boost our own economy, strengthen our communication, power, and transportation systems (at least). And the beauty of this idea is that the only people who can argue against it fully are those who a) don't think the government should be used to improve our lives at all; b) don't understand the resentment we provoke anywhere we have a military base; c) don't think the troops would like being used as construction workers; or d) think that private enterprise will take care of all of these problems.
The first group, composed mainly of severely right-wing near anarchists or hard-core libertarians, number so few as to be politically inconsequential. The second group is composed of men and women who need to be educated about how our country is really seen by others.
The third group would have a legitimate point--it is likely that a significant portion of our current armed wo/men don't want to pour concrete or string fiber optic lines for a living. If we find out that this number is too high to provide for a reasonable accommodation--which could be something as simple as allowing those people the opportunity to be permanently stationed elsewhere, which is what they do now anyway--we could simply discharge the hard-liners and recruit wo/men willing to serve their country in this new manner. I imagine there are a great number of people who would be more willing to volunteer for stints in the military if they knew that they would be paid to improve our country instead of merely representing a loaded gun pointed at someone's head. The fourth group is also quite few in number, and falling out of favor rapidly (witness Smirky's disastrous attempt to repeal, er, "privatize", Social Security).
One thing all 4 groups have in common is that they are all presently residing in the Republican Party, for the most part, and it is here that the jiu-jitsu portion of my proposal comes in to play. Supporters of "a strong military" in the abstract have no solid ideological basis on which to ground an argument against this idea (making them the natural Republicans that would offer at least minimal resistance and possibly even support), imho, but members of these 4 groups that have successfully hidden their true agendas behind that abstraction are faced with a real problem. It's a pretty safe bet that not all people in all 4 groups can be persuaded that this is a good idea, but I would wager that at least some of them would be, thereby hiving off even more Republican factions and splintering their base.
What do you all think?