Charlie's Notes

Just a story

2006-08-02T14:50:00.000-07:00

Nothing political - just a story.

Last night I was cleaning the bathroom of our house because we listed our home for sale. We actually listed it yesterday, and the same day someone expressed interest in seeing the house, so I was doing some last-minute scrubbing of the shower. Wendy, Maxine and Huck were taking a walk. It was around 7 p.m. or so.

As I was scrubbing, I heard Isabella, our African Grey parrot making a racket. She has a particular highly-agitated call she makes that expresses fear or excitement. Normally she does it when she gets a toenail stuck in her rope swing or something. So I went to check on her, and sitting on the floor of our kitchen right below Isabella's cage was a hawk. A big(ish) hawk just standing there. It had just landed on the floor after dropping off Isabella's cage when I walked in. She (I have no idea if it was male or female, but I'm calling her a girl) just turned and calmly looked at me. I was stunned. Not what you expect to see in your kitchen. I actually said out-loud, "What the hell are you doing here?" She was totally calm and unperturbed by me.

I leapt into action - closing the door to Maxine's room, closing the door to our bedroom, grabbed a broom, and taped a towel over the opening to the living room (as there is no door there to close.) This limited where she could go and left only the door outside open. If you've been to my house, you know there is a little jog to get from the back door to the kitchen, so she had to have flown in the back door (that was standing open) and around the corner and into the kitchen. She must have heard Isabella and thought there was an easy snack available.

Luckily, Isabella's cage doors were closed, so the hawk couldn't get in. She was scared, but not overly freaked out. Obviously when Isabella had been screaming, the hawk was grabbing at the cage.

So once I got the hawk limited to the kitchen, I put on some leather work gloves and grabbed the broom, and started to shoo her toward the back door. She fluttered around the cage, freaking out Isabella again, then flew to the back door. After a little confusion with the mirror, she flew outside and sat on our gate.

By this time I could tell she was young. Probably just a few months old. She was gorgeous, and still not scared of me. Big clear bluish-yellow eyes, and bright yellow feet with three toes in the front with one in back. Long, thin, black talons. Long yellow beak tipped in black. Brown feathers with striped tail feathers like a turkey. White chest with brown spots. Her feathers were ruffled, but like a baby bird, not like she was dirty or sick. She was just sitting on our fence, and I walked over and stood right next to her. I mean inches from her. She just looked at me expectantly. So I went inside and got her a piece of smoked turkey sandwich meat. I dropped it on the ground OUTSIDE the gate into the driveway, and she dropped down on top of it like it was prey. She covered it with her wings and stepped on it to protect it, and then stood there eating it. I opened the gate and squatted next to her and watched her. I was within inches of her the whole time.

Eventually, I picked up some of the bigger pieces of turkey she had missed, and invited her over. She jumped up on my hand and ate the turkey from my hand! I actually held her for a few minutes. I fully expected to get cut by her obviously sharp claws, or bit, but she was very gentle, relatively speaking. Not a scratch. She got a little excited when I picked her up and her claw got hooked in my glove, but she got free quickly and settled back down on the ground next to me.

She hung out for a long time - Wendy came home and had to walk around the block again to keep Huck and the baby away. She settled on the neighbor's roof for a while. Wendy had seen her earlier on her walk in the next block and remarked about how close the bird let her get.

So I looked it up online, and she is a Cooper's Hawk. That's what the picture is of. She looked just like that. I got some pictures of her on the roof, and I'll post those later.

I've been saying I wanted to get closer to nature, and it came closer to me.

Censorship versus Free Speech

2006-04-20T14:59:00.000-07:00

Okay, it has been way too long.

Having not exercised my right to free speech on this blog in a while, I thought I'd take the opportunity to share my thoughts on free speech and censorship.

In a nutshell, I like the First Amendment. I've said it before, a framed copy hangs on my wall (along with the rest of the Bill of Rights). The First Amendment provides that "Congress shall pass no law . . . Abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press." It's very simple. The United States Congress has no power to pass any law telling me what to say or what not to say.

According to the Tenth Amendment, the Constitution reserves to the states or the people those rights not delegated to the federal government and not prohibited to the states. In other words, if the Constitution doesn't give the power to the federal government, and doesn't specifically say the states can't regulate it, it is fair game for the states to regulate. So according to the original bill of rights, the states - our state legislatures - had the power to abridge our free speech. If we didn't want our states to abridge our right to free speech, we had to pass state constitutions reserving that right to ourselves.

The 14th Amendment as interpreted by the Supreme Court changed that by including in the rights preserved to the people the first amendment rights. In other words, the 14th Amendment effectively prohibited state governments from abridging our freedom of speech.

So now, no government in the U.S. can abridge our right to free speech. Within limits. Government retains to power to regulate non-speech and to preserve the peace (hence, you can't yell fire in a crowded theater. Unless there's a fire.)

All this boils down to a simple rule: the GOVERNMENT cannot tell me what I can or can't say. But OTHER PEOPLE can.

So when I say I like the First Amendment, that's what I mean. We should be free from government censorship. We should also be subjected to private censorship. That's what keeps our society civil and sane. You can say what you want, but the rest of us have the right to put pressure on you to shut up if we don't like it. Your boss can fire you for what you say. The newspaper has the right to refuse to run your letter. We can exert peer pressure to make you straighten up and act right. That's what our Constitution protects. It protects us from an overly powerful government, and it relies on a powerful civil society to police itself to preserve order and tranquility.

The web and TV and the papers are awash in cries of attacks on our right to free speech. Papers refuse to run the Danish cartoons of Muhammed and people complain that this is censorship. Comedy Central refuses to air an image of Muhammed on South Park, and people cry foul and say our rights are being eroded. But these are not instances of first amendment rights being attacked. These are instances of private censorship that are now and have always been protected by the First Amendment, not prohibited by it.

Private censorship is fine. True, it raises another concern, which is corporate censorship. That's the concern that access to the media is held by the few and withheld from the rest. But it does not help to confuse that concern with First Amendment rights.

So here's my take. I like non-governmental censorship because it is protected by the First Amendment as free speech. Non-governmental censorship is free speech to the person doing the censoring. If it is my paper, or my network, and I censor the content, I am exercising my right to say what I want and to refuse to say what I don't want. That's free speech.

Death Penalty-2, Life-0

2006-01-16T15:37:00.000-08:00

Its been a pretty bad couple of weeks for death penalty opponents. First, reports last week that Roger Keith Coleman, who was executed in Virginia in 1992, was in fact guilty. Despite his insistence he was innocent, and a TIME magazine cover story questioning his conviction, DNA evidence confirmed he did it. Governor Mark Warner of Virginia ordered the DNA test to set the record straight, and it confirmed his guilt.

As a death penalty opponent, I don't want to see anyone killed by the state. One of the reasons for abolishing the death penalty is the possibility that an innocent person will be killed. If you jail an innocent person, you can't give the time back, but you can free him or her. If you kill an innocent person, you can give nothing back. So in a weird "I-don't-really-want-this" kind of way, death penalty opponents were kind of hoping that Coleman was innocent. The death of one innocent man could have increased opposition to the death penalty. Now that we know he was innocent, his death was meaningless. It did nothing to deter crime, and it did nothing to deter future executions.

In fact, it did the opposite. For the first time, I heard a death-penalty-supporter-politician try to use all the recent exonerations of convicted death-row inmates as justification for the death penalty. He argued that all the exonerations show that the system works. (Pure BS - it takes extraordinary effort to even get the courts to consider looking at new evidence when there is a conviction. In Coleman's case, all the courts said no to reviewing the DNA evidence, and the governor had to order the test.)

Anyway, bad news number two is the execution of Clarence Ray Allen scheduled for tonight. Allen is 76, blind, confined to a wheelchair, and has diabetes. You'd think he'd be a poster-child for anti-death-penalty activists. Except for the fact that he is on death row after being convicted of ordering the executions of three people who were going to be witnesses against him. And the kicker - he ordered these deaths from behind bars. He is a perfect counter to the anti-death-penalty argument that life without parole ("LWOP") is a good alternative to death. In Allen's case, he remained a menace to society even from behind bars. Arguably, death is the only thing that can keep this guy from killing again.

Neither of these two things shake my convictions that the death penalty is an abomination. I oppose the death penalty on fundamental grounds - it is wrong to kill. But these two guys took away two arguments that are easy sells to those who favor the death penalty. And that's a shame.

How do you feel about torture?

2006-01-04T14:05:00.000-08:00

Here's how I feel about torture: don't do it.

Simple, huh?

Is this a great country? Seriously. What makes a country great? Personally, I think the things embodied in the U.S. Constitution are a pretty good start. The preamble says that we the people established the Constitution in order to "secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity." That is something that makes a country pretty great - that the very document establishing the government acknowledges that one of the primary motivating factors is to ensure liberty will be enjoyed by those founding the country as well as all future generations.

The Bill of Rights contains some things that are pretty great, too. Freedom of speech. Freedom of religion. Freedom to assemble. Freedom to petition the government for redress of our grievances. Freedom from unreasonable searches and seizures.

Those things could make a country great. What else? How about shying away from torturing people? Sure, avoiding something evil doesn't make you a great person. You don't get any points in my book just because you managed to get through the day without killing anyone. But when applied to a government, it is pretty important to know that the government will not engage in evil acts - no matter how noble the intentions. Those are reasons we used to justify invading Iraq, after all. After his WMD argument dried up, Bush claimed another good reason for invading was to end the torture and rape and killings Saddam inflicted on his people. So if those things are justification for invading another country, avoiding those things sounds like something a great country ought to do.

There are some things we must avoid. Torture is one of them. Nothing, not even preventing another 9/11, justifies torture. We are better than that. We value some things too highly to allow them to occur, even if we think lives might be saved if we allowed them.

Is it possible we could uncover a terrorist plot to kill Americans if we tortured a suspect? Some people argue the effectiveness of torture, but it probably works in some cases. Torture might save lives. What about rape? Could we convince a suspect to talk if we used rape as a tool? Maybe a terrorist doesn't care about his personal well-being. Maybe he would care about seeing his mother raped. Or his children. Maybe a terrorist would talk if we raped his kids in front of him. Or tortured them. Or killed them. Maybe genocide could prevent a terrorist attack. Maybe they would stop killing us if we just killed them all off first. If torture is okay to save lives, why not rape? Why not murder of innocents? Why not genocide? Why not every evil thing we can think of?

How do you feel knowing we, you and me through our duly-elected president, are laying the foundation for a legal justification for torture? What else are we doing we don't know about?

How do you feel about torture?

Torture Away!

2006-01-04T13:52:00.000-08:00

Bush said his wiretapping of people in the U.S. without warrants was legal because of his inherent Constitutional powers as commander in chief. He said he was allowed to violate federal law that specifically prohibits wiretapping people in the U.S. without warrants because the Constitution gives him that power. Maybe you were thinking that wiretapping isn't so bad. Maybe a few people get their privacy invaded and the government listens in on their personal phone conversations, but that's not so bad in the grand scheme of things. Isn't fighting terror worth it? Maybe you think these things. I don't, but that's just me. I think our personal liberties are worth protecting from terrorists as well as from the government.

But maybe you disagree with me and can't get too worked up about a little "harmless" snooping. Well, on December 30, the president signed the law containing the McCain Anti-torture provision. This is the law that says, "No individual in the custody or under the physical control of the United States Government, regardless of nationality or physical location, shall be subject to cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment." When Bush signed this law, his official signing statement says he will "construe Title X in Division A of the Act [the anti-torture section], relating to detainees, in a manner consistent with the constitutional authority of the President to supervise the unitary executive branch and as Commander in Chief and consistent with the constitutional limitations on the judicial power, which will assist in achieving the shared objective of the Congress and the President, evidenced in Title X, of protecting the American people from further terrorist attacks." So Bush claims the same power that lets him completely ignore the anti-wiretapping law also applies to this anti-torture law. He is saying in no uncertain terms that he is free to ignore the anti-torture law.

Bush is saying in no uncertain terms that he is going to allow torture.

Notice he also says he will construe the law in a manner consistent with the constitutional limitations on the judicial power." What does this mean? The same thing it means with regard to the anti-wiretapping law. He isn't going to allow anyone to challenge his actions in court. He is saying we, the American people through our executive branch, will torture people and we will not allow them access to any court to challenge our actions.

So maybe a little wiretapping is okay. How do you feel about torture?

Impeach! v. 2.0

2005-12-22T09:37:00.000-08:00

After driving in to work the other day listening to Bush admit to having authorized wiretaps of people in the U.S. without obtaining warrants over 30 times - and promising to keep doing it, I suggested he should be impeached. I have since had some time to cool down, reflect, and do some research. Bush claims what he did was legal under the Constitution and under Congress's authorization of use of force in Afghanistan. So I re-read Articles 1 and 2 of the Constitution regarding the President's powers (Article 2) and Congress's powers (Article 1). I read the authorization of the use of force. I also read the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) found at 50 U.S.C. 1801-11.

Now that I've had a chance to think about it, I'm even more frustrated and disgusted. Bush has to be impeached.

I've already discussed the "Commander-in-Chief" clause of Article 2 and the use-of-force authorization, and explained why they do not give the president the legal right to wiretap people in the U.S. without a warrant. (Even if they did, they would be superceded by the 4th Amendment, which prohibits warrantless searches.) So the next question is, did Bush commit a crime when he exceeeded his authority?

FISA is the federal law enacted in 1978 to help address abuses of the NSA. FISA prohibits wiretapping without a warrant when at least one of the parties is in the U.S. FISA specifically applies to terrorist suspects. FISA allows wiretaps to be placed before a warrant is obtained in emergencies. That way, there is no fear that the process of getting a warrant will take too long. But warrants have to be obtained eventually. FISA even sets up secret "FISA Courts" with judges selected by the Chief Justice of the United States who will handle these warrant requests so that national security is protected. In other words, FISA is designed to handle EXACTLY the situation that is going on now. And most importantly for any discussion of impeachment, FISA makes it a crime punishable by up to 5 years in prison for anyone to intentionally authorize wiretaps in violation of the procedures established by FISA. The president admits to intentionally authorizing wiretaps in violation of the FISA requirements. He admits he committed a felony.

There is one more part of FISA that doesn't apply here, but that speaks volumes about what Bush did: FISA has a special section dedicated exclusively to the issue of the the president authorizing wiretaps without a warrant. 50 U.S.C. 1811 specificly allows the president to authorize wiretaps in the U.S. without obtaining a warrant - but only for 15 days after a declaration of war by congress. Just to be 100% clear, Bush has been doing it for more than 2 years and congress has not declared war.

When Clinton was impeached, Republicans claimed they were not doing it for political reasons. They claimed to be doing it to vindicate the rule of law - to show that no one is above the law. We are about to get our proof positive that Republicans in the House and Senate are liars and hypocrites with no dignity, morality, or shame. Because they will not impeach Bush. They will show us that they care nothing about the law, the citizens of the U.S., or anything else besides power.

I have never been so ashamed of my country.

Impeach!

2005-12-19T08:08:00.000-08:00

Why is our president not currently being impeached? That is a rhetorical question, but the answer is simple: politics. A Republican House of Representatives will never vote articles of impeachment against a Republican president.

Bush gave a speech yesterday and this morning in which he admitted to personally authorizing the NSA to intercept telephone conversations in the U.S. The president's own Attorney General just this morning admitted that this violates the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 ("FISA"). Congress debated in 1978 what the process should be for intercepting foreign conversations and made it clear - the NSA is free to spy on foreigners overseas, but if any of the people involved in the conversation are in the U.S, the government must get a warrant.

Bush clearly violated the law. He claims he is justified to do so by the Constitution and Congress's authorization for him to use force against Afghanistan.

Let's look at the Constitution. I have a framed copy on my wall. Article 2 says, Section 2 says, "The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States, when called into the actual Service of the United States." Being Commander in Chief does not mean having free rein to conduct war in any manner conceivable. Article 2 makes the president the person who will act as Commander in Chief - but it does not allow him to ignore the rule of law. Article 2 is not the most powerful portion of the Constitution. We know it is limited by any amendments that were enacted after it. The 4th Amendment in our Bill of Rights says, "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."

Next, it almost goes without saying, but when Congress authorized use of foce against Afghanistan after 9/11, it never said anything about intercepting telephone conversations in the U.S. Congress never gave the president this power. Even if it had, such an act would be unconstitutional as a violation of the 4th Amendment. In fact, FISA makes pretty clear that Congress expressly chose not to give the president this power. YOU NEED A WARRANT TO LISTEN TO PEOPLE'S PRIVATE CONVERSATIONS IN THE U.S.!

The president's only two bases for claiming he acted within the law are completly inapplicable. He broke the law. He committed a high crime. He admits it. What does the Constitution say about the president committing high crimes? Article 2, Section 4: "The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors." Article 1, Section 2 gives the House "the sole Power of Impeachment," and Article 1, Section 3 gives the Senate "the sole Power to try all Impeachments." Notice it says "shall be removed." Not "may" or "should" or "if it is politically attractive."

What are we waiting for? Why is the House not voting articles of impeachment this very second? I have never been so angry with my own country. We impeach Clinton for perjury when he lied to an independent prosecutor about getting a blowjob, but we won't impeach Bush for illegally ordering wiretaps in the U.S. in clear violation of both FISA and the 4th Amendment.

Despite all the things Bush has done - despite how much I disagreed with him - I have never called for his impeachment until now. He has been stupid and wrong and evil throughout his presidency. Now he is also a criminal. Now, our Constiution requires that he be impeached.

Clemency and guilt and innocence

2005-12-12T14:57:00.000-08:00

Stanley Tookie Williams is scheduled to be executed tonight and his bid for clemency was denied by Governor Schwarzenneger. Williams claims he founded the Crips, but he didn't. He was responsible for the Crips spreading to the westside of L.A. He was convicted of four murders - a convenience store clerk named Albert Owens, and a family of three, Tsai-Shai Yang, Yen-I Yang, and Yee Chen Lin a couple of weeks later. There was testimony of his accomplices that after he shot Owens, Williams made fun of the gurgling sound Owens made as he died.

Williams was convicted of these crimes. All his appeals were rejected. In the eyes of the law, he is guilty. Williams has always maintained his innocence. His defense counsel said that his clemency bid would go better if he admitted his guilt, but Williams insisted he was innocent and would not admit guilt.

A major reason cited by the governor in denying clemency was the fact that Williams refused to take responsibility for the murders. This is the same argument you hear from judge's all the time in sentencing hearings. Convicted persons are sentenced more harshly because they maintain their innocence.

Those who know me well know that my opposition to the death penalty is one of my most deeply-held beliefs. I mention this because I am sure my feelings about the death penalty are coloring my feelings regarding this case - I don't claim to be without bias. It sickens me that we - the people of the U.S., the people of the state of California, we, all of us, me - are going to kill someone tonight. I feel helpless in the face of this. If this were a movie, we would mount a daring rescue. We wouldn't let this happen. But if this were a movie, Williams would be innocent. And it's not a movie. And we don't know if he is innocent.

But the reason I am writing this is to address the issue that people who claim they are innocent are punished more harshly because of it. How can that be right? Is it just the religious principle of redemption being a necessary prerequisite for forgiveness? Can that be right? We judge you harshly - and we judge you even more harshly if you don't repent your wicked ways. Is that what this is about? How can it be? Have we not progressed at all from the Salem witch trials? We know for a fact we convict innocent people. We know for a fact we have executed more than a dozen innocent people since the death penalty was reinstated 30 years ago. DNA evidence has exonerated hundreds - including 14 people who were already executed. We know this. We know that the "truth" isn't always clear, even though it might appear so at the time. We know all this, but we justify increasing the punishment for those who claim, despite the evidence and despite the verdict, that they are innocent? Is our hubris that boundless? We know we are imperfect, but we act as if we were flawless.

I'm not god. I don't know the ultimate truth. And I want to live in a society that feels the same way. But I don't. I live in a country where the people like to pretend we are god. We pretend to know the truth, and we punish harshly those who dare contradict us. It's not Williams' murders that guarantee his lack of clemency. It's his refusal to acede to what we know in our infinite wisdom to be true.

Roe v. Wade is not a case about abortion

2005-10-19T11:02:00.000-07:00

We just went through the nomination and confirmation of U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice Roberts. Now, we are in the midst of the pre-confirmation hearing media frenzy surrounding nominee Harriet Miers. As with too much of politics in this country today, the nominations of both candidates centered largely on the issue of abortion.

Something that has been bothering me is the way the media and the politicians on both sides of the debate have been oversimplifying the abortion issue. It is far too easy to paint the abortion issue as black and white with no room for any other opinions. You either favor abortion rights, or you oppose them.

But as with everything else, abortion is not that simple an issue. Even on the fundamental question of abortion rights, Americans are not so stupid or divided that we only hold one of two opinions. We hold as wide a spectrum of opinions on the abortion issue as we are a diverse people. True, there are those who see the issue in stark terms: that abortion is always wrong, or that it should be available on demand at any point in the pregnancy.

But the vast majority of us fall elsewhere on the spectrum of opinions. We think abortion is wrong, but that there should be exceptions in cases of rape or incest. Or when the woman's life is in danger. Or if the woman's life or health are in danger. Or that late-term abortions should be illegal. Or that only abortions pre-viability should be legal. Or that there should be parental notification or waiting periods imposed. You get the picture. We hold a lot of opinions and most of us do not see abortion as a black or white issue. We see a lot of grey. We know the issue is important, and we struggle with it.

Beyond our differences about abortion itself, the nomination of a new Supreme Court Justice raises issues of the Constitutionality of abortion. When we debate the merits of a new justice, we have to concern ourselves with different issues than those we face personally. Supreme Court Justices really don't ever have to decide whether abortion is good or bad, or when it should be legal or not. Rather, what Supreme Court Justices have to decide are issues involving the Constitutionality of abortion. Issues like whether the Constitution recognizes a fundamental right to privacy that encompasses a woman's right to abort. Or, if there is such a right in the Constitution, whether and to what extent it must be balanced against other competing rights. In other words, the Supreme Court decides whether the Constitution already protects abortion, not whether it should.

We shouldn't have to care about a Supreme Court Justice's views on whether abortion is right or wrong or under what circumstances abortion should be legal. When it comes to the substance of abortion rights, a Supreme Court Justice should be no more important than any other American. Their vote on the matter should count just as much as yours and mine. We have opinions and we elect legislators who share, as much as possible, our opinions, and they, in turn enact laws to bring our opinions into force.

What has been happening, though, is we have allowed politicians and the media to oversimply the abortion issue to the point of making any discussion of Miers' views meaningless. All we hear asked is whether she is pro-life or pro-choice. If she is pro-life, then she must vote to overturn Roe v. Wade. If she is pro-choice, then she must vote to uphold Roe v. Wade. But that is not a complete discussion. It is not even a real discussion. It is entirely possible for any American, particulalry a lawyer trained in the complexities of our federal system, to hold views the media and the politicians would consider contradictory. You can be a far-left leaning liberal who thinks abortions should be available on demand in every town in the country and still believe that the Constitution does not create or protect such a right. Or conversely, you could be a far-right leaning conservative who believes abortion is a morally repugnant act prohibited by God that should be illegal everywhere in the world but still also believe that the Constitution's protection of individual liberty encompasses a woman's right to choose.

We have allowed the abortion issue to become so polarized, however, that there is no room for any such complicated debate. No politicial hopeful can afford to state a complicated view on abortion because we have spent too long allowing ourselves to be fooled into believing that the abortion issue has only two sides - right and wrong.

Sexual Predators get all the breaks

2005-05-18T10:39:00.000-07:00

The House of Representatives recently passed a bill called the "Child Interstate Abortion Notification Act." The act basically is a pro-life law that would impose federal penalties on anyone who transported a minor across state lines to avoid a state's parental notification law. Let me draw a graphic example to illustrate. Suppose a 16-year-old girl is being raped by her father. Mom doesn't know it's going on. Daughter gets pregnant and wants an abortion. Her home state requires her or her doctor to notify her parents before she gets an abortion. She is afraid of destroying her family and doesn't want to tell mom and dad. She also doesn't want to have to delay by going through a judicial proceeding to get court approval. So she asks her cousin to take her to the next state where there isn't a notification law. The house bill would make the cousin a federal criminal.

House Democrats, knowing they were going to lose if they tried to defeat passage, sought to make the bill a little more reasonable by carving out some exceptions for grandparents, aunts, uncles, clergy, cousins, or god-parents. Democrats introduced this amendment in committee, where it was defeated on a party-line vote. The Congressional record reads something like this: "An amendment was offered by Ms. Jackson-Lee to exclude grandparents from the prohibitions of this bill. The amendment was defeated by an 8-16 rollcall vote." So far, nothing is all that out of the ordinary.

The fun started when the summary of the committee's activity was prepared and distributed to the full house. The summary prepared by the judiciary committee read as follows: "Ms. Jackson-Lee offered an amendment that would have exempted sexual predators from prosecution under the bill if they were clergy, godparents, aunts, uncles, or first cousins of a minor, and would require a study by the Government Accounting Office. By a roll call vote of 13 yeas to 20 nays, the amendment was defeated."

An exemption for grandparents and aunts and uncles is reported as an exemption for sexual predators! The Republican chair of the judiciary committtee, James Sensenbrenner defended the committee's actions. The Republicans said the summary was appropriate because it was accurate.

This is the tone of political debate in our nation's highest chambers. The Republicans has won. The Democrats lost. The amendment tempering the harsh effects of the Republican bill was defeated. But even in victory, the Republicans chose to mischaracterize the amendment as being an exemption for sexual predators.

Makes you sick doesn't it?

I suggest that from now on, every exemption in every law be listed as exempting sexual predators unless they are specifically excluded. Social Security payroll taxes, for example, don't apply to income above $90,000 a year. So let's say, "Sexual predators are exempted from paying Social Security taxes if they are rich enough."

Or, generally employers have to pay all employees overtime, but there are white-collar exemptions, like for doctors and lawyers. So let's say, "Hospitals don't have to pay overtime wages to sexual predator doctors."

Or how about, this one, it is generally considered defamation if you lie about someone else and injure that person's reputation - but there is an exemption for members of congress speaking on the house or senate floor. So let's say "Sexual predators in congress are free to lie about anyone they want to without fear or punishment!"

How to get intelligent people to agree to stupid things

2005-04-06T14:36:00.000-07:00

Robert Reich, former Secretary of Labor under Clinton, has been making commenataries on NPR. The more I hear from him, the more I admire him. He said something the other day I found fascinating. He rattled off a few facts in support of his proposition that the correct path for dealing with our huge deficit is to roll-back the Bush tax cuts on the wealthy.

Here's an excerpt: "as a percentage of the total economy, federal spending is not high by historic standards. Even if you include the current expense of going to war, federal outlays as a proportion of the gross national product are now slightly below their average over the past two decades. It's not federal spending that's out of whack. What's really responsible for the giant deficits is found on the revenue side of the ledger. As a percentage of the total economy, tax revenues are plunging. We haven't seen revenues this low, as measured against the total economy, in half a century.

"Here's where things get really interesting. Take a close look at government revenues. Payments coming into government from payroll taxes -- which are paid mostly by America's huge middle class -- are at an historic high. But look at what's being collected from income and corporate taxes, and measured against the economy as a whole you get the smallest take in over sixty years. And, of course, income taxes and corporate taxes come mainly from people earning over $200,000 a year.

"In other words, the federal deficit has gone up mainly because wealthier Americans are paying less in taxes. If they paid at the same rate they paid even five years ago, we wouldn't be in this pickle. We wouldn't have such a huge federal deficit and we wouldn't be in such deep hock to foreigners."

So in a nutshell, he's saying that taxes on the wealthy and corporations are extremely low, while taxes on the middle class are extremely high.

Quite aside from the proposition that the responsible way of handling our deficits is to get rid of those tax cuts for the wealthy, I think these facts Reich mentioned lead to another conclusion. I think these facts tend to show Bush WANTS and NEEDS taxes on the middle class to be high. How on earth can he get a majority of Americans to back his proposals to cut taxes for the wealthy while also cutting extremely popular social programs? By keeping the middle class in pain. By keeping taxes on the middle class high, most Americans will logically assume that taxes are too high across the board. People in the middle class will have a gut reaction against any talk of raising taxes on anyone. "I am already paying too much, so don't raise taxes any more." So we are lead to the the conclusion, which now seems inevitable, that we HAVE to cut social programs. We think taxes are too high, and we have a modicum of love for our children and grandchildren and don't want to burden them with our deficits, so we think the only alternative is to cut programs.

Fixing Your Way Around a Problem

2005-02-17T14:05:00.000-08:00

Here's what I think: If there is a problem you care enough about to devote time and attention and maybe even money to fix, then make sure your solution actually fixes the problem. That's not too complicated, is it? You'd think that this concept would be an easy one to embrace.

Well, it's not. Take social security reform, for example. Bush says there is a problem coming in that our Social Security system where current employees pay for the benefits of current retirees (sometimes referred to by the silly sounding name, "Pay-Go"). Because of the coming retirement of the Baby Boomers and the ever-expanding life expectancies of Americans, it is getting harder and harder for the dwindling current employees to pay for the increasing number of retirees. Accept for a moment that this is a real problem. (Some claim it is not.) What solutions jump to mind? If you are logical, you'll think of three. First, increase taxes to cover the shortfall. Second, decrease benefits for retirees. Third, (understanding that the ratio of workers to retirees is subject to periodic fluctuations) create a trust fund for years in which there is a Social Security surplus so that when there are more workers than retirees, we save the extra contributions to cover the times when there are more retirees than workers.

The first and second solutions should sound familiar because they are the two bad alternatives currently being bandied about. Bush has promised not to raise taxes, ruling out the first. (But wait! He is in favor of increasing the amount of wages subject to taxation, thereby increasing taxes. He just isn't in favor of calling a tax hike a tax hike.) Democrats on the Hill frequently mention the second because if Bush won't raise taxes (ahem) the only other option, they say, is decreasing benefits. Neither of these two solutions are very appealing.

The third option should be familiar to anyone who paid attention to the 2000 Presidential election - or even to Saturday Night Live jokes about the 2000 Presidential election. Remember Al Gore's "lockbox?" Of course you do. Well it wasn't just a punchline to an SNL joke. Gore's lockbox idea was solution number three. Gore understood that there is already a Social Security trust fund where surplus revenues are invested in Treasury Bonds to cover the lean years. Gore also understood that Congress kept raiding and emptying the trust fund for other purposes. He suggested making the trust fund more secure. Had we elected Gore (oh wait! The majority of Americans did elect Gore!) we wouldn't be in this Social Security "crisis."

Whether you like them or not, solutions 1, 2, and 3 all address the problem we identified. You might be asking yourself, where's Bush's "personal accounts" idea? Well, I didn't include it on the list because it doesn't address the problem. The idea of "personal accounts" changes the Social Security structure, and it might even create an "ownership" society as Bush seems to want. But it does not address the problem of a gap between funding and benefits. It does the opposite. It creates a larger gap by diverting more money from current workers away from current retirees. It makes the problem worse! We'd have to borrow more money to plug a bigger hole.

This is an example of coming up with a "solution" that doesn't address the problem you've identified. So if the "solution" actually makes the problem worse, what is the "solution" really designed to do? Well, the "solution" would divert billions of dollars from treasury bonds and social security payments to private business stocks. Money now going to fund government programs would instead be invested in private businesses. Who benefits? Big business!

Here's another example. Many in the business and insurance industries (and the Republicans beholden to them) complain about the problem of frivolous lawsuits. Lawyers file claims that they know are without merit. Defendants know it would be more expensive to defend the suit than to pay a quick settlement, so the defendants pay. Then defendants have to raise prices and insurance companies have to raise premiums. Bad for all.

So what is the solution the business and insurance industries propose to solve this problem? Cap attorney contingent fee recoveries at 20% instead of the standard 33%. The reasoning goes that if plaintiff attorneys make less money, they'll be less inclined to bring frivolous lawsuits.

Does the logic track? No! If a plaintiff attorney makes less per case, he/she will file more lawsuits to maintain the same standard of living. What's worse, with lower recoveries, plaintiff lawyers will have more incentive to file frivolous lawsuits because they tend to be cheap and easy. The kinds of lawsuits they will be less inclined to bring are hard lawsuits. If plaintiff attorneys are earning substantially less, they won't want to file cases that are complicated and cost a lot of money to prosecute. So severely injured plaintiffs will suffer while little frivolous cases will thrive. Again, the solution does not address the problem, it makes it worse.

So again, let's ask what a logical solution to the problem would be (again, making the big assumption that the problem actually exists). How about capping the rate defense attorneys can bill? If it is currently cheaper to pay a plaintiff than to defend a frivolous lawsuit, let's even the field. Let's make it cheaper to defend by lowering the rates defense attorney's can charge. If defendants can actually defend themselves, plaintiff attorneys won't be inclined to file frivolous suits because they know a quick easy settlement won't be forthcoming.

And to finish this little exercise, let's ask what the business and insurance industries really want to achieve with their "solution." Again, let's think this through logically. They want to lower the amount of money plaintiff attorneys make. Plaintiff attorneys (commonly called "trial lawyers") contribute lots of money to Democrats. If plaintiff attorneys make less money, they will probably donate less to Democrats. So maybe the real aim behind the "solution" is to help insure a permanent Republican majority. Do Republicans really want to create a permanent majority? Well, here's a link to an article entitled, "The Permanent Republican Majority: The GOP's agenda for America's future," by House Majority Leader Tom DeLay.

Republicans and the special interests they represent have a real problem saying what they mean. So we have to be very careful to find out just what their solutions are really intended to fix.

Eating what you kill

2004-12-30T09:09:00.000-08:00

I haven't posted much lately. My life is going great right now. I passed the bar, I have a great job, I love my wife, I have a great family. It's pretty hard to get angry about anything when everything is conspiring to make you happy.

But that's not to say I don't have a few gripes. Some are small. Like Bush giving the highest civilian honors to the worst screw-ups so far this millenium. Like Bush's housecleaning where any voice of dissent is asked to leave his cabinet. Like Congress passing that corporate welfare bill giving tax breaks to manufacturers (not bad in and of itself) but then defining manufacturing so broadly that a Starbuck's barista qualifies. No joke. Making coffee is now a manufacturing job.

But a recent comment really pissed me off. Gerald Reynolds is the Bush-appointed chairperson of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. This is the executive-branch organization that is supposed to help fight discrimination by identifying problems and making policy suggestions. What a great job! Identifying racism and finding ways of fighting it. But Mr. Reynolds has a serious problem because he doesn't understand the most basic principle of racism in this country - that past official discrimination has ramifications still being felt. He was on a local public radio show in Kansas City, where he is from, and was asked by a caller to address the issue of economic inequality among the races. The caller's point was that the racial divide is largely the continuing product of economic disparities between whites and blacks. The caller seemed to be suggesting that some sort of redistribution of wealth is in order.

Redistribution of wealth is what government is all about. We tax based on income and use that money to fund programs and projects. We take money from some people and give it to others. The government takes money from me and gives it to poor people in the form of welfare. It taxes you and gives that money to rich people in the form of incentives. So it shouldn't be shocking to hear someone suggest that redistribution of wealth might be an appropriate mechanism to consider in dealing with discrimination problems.

But Reynolds would hear nothing of it. In denying that redistribution of wealth is even worthy of consideration, he suggested that anti-discrimination policy should focus on levelling the playing field to give blacks an equal opportunity to compete with whites. Overt discrimination is the problem. Once overt discrimination is eliminated, blacks can compete based on their own merits. The analogy he used was: in this world, you eat what you kill.

Here's why he is wrong. In this country, we allow for the inheritance of wealth. We let parents leave the fruits of their labor to their children. We generally agree that this is a good system. But for 400 years, that system didn't apply to blacks in this country. Black people were the property of whites and the fruits of their labor didn't go to thier children; it went to their owners and their owners' children. For a very long time whites accumulated more wealth than their fair share. And since that time, whites have been able to pass that unfairly accumulated wealth along to their children. Even after slavery's end, official discrimination in the form of Jim Crow laws kept blacks from gaining power and accumulating wealth. We had a system that redistributed wealth from blacks to whites.

Levelling the playing field can't fix that. It doesn't fix the inherent inequality to resurface the playing field if one team hasn't been allowed to play for 3/4 of the game. If the Cowboys are allowed to rack up 100 points before the Packers are allowed to take the field, it won't do much good to make sure the football field is nice and smoothe. The Packers are going to lose.

Eating what you kill doesn't fix that. Whites didn't let blacks hunt for so long, all the good game is gone. There might be prairie dogs out there to shoot, but the bison are dead.

These trite cliches and analogies people use to justify eliminating affirmative action programs fall apart when you look at them square.

So my life is good. But Gerald Reynolds bugs me. How can he fix the problem if he doesn't see it?

I am an attorney.

2004-12-01T15:33:00.000-08:00

I got sworn in today, so I am now an attorney. I can practice in any California state court, and I'm admitted to the United States District Court for the Central District of California.

How'd that get in there?

2004-11-22T11:50:00.000-08:00

This is infuriating.

Over the weekend, it was reported that a small rider got into an omnibus spending bill in the Senate that would have given the House and Senate appropriations committee chairs or their agents the right to inspect anyone's income tax returns. Think about that. Some staffer for a committee chair could look up how much money you, or anyone, reported to the IRS. This, by itself is incredible - that the Senate would give away so much of our privacy for no reason.

But it gets worse. Apparently, no one in the Senate knew they voted for the rider. Well, almost no one.

Just so we are clear, Congress puts together what are called omnibus bills. These huge pieces of legislation - often well over a thousand pages - combine a whole bunch of committee recommendations on all kinds of related subjects so that the Congress can vote on lots of little things all at once. Omnibus spending bills allow our representatives to vote for pork without looking stupid. Instead of thousands of individual allocations coming up for a yes or no vote, they vote for all of them at once. They are the work of lots of compromise and infighting. Small allocations for one representative's constitutents are included in exchange for support for another representative's pet projects. "I''ll support the bill if you include a million dollars to fund a submarine for Colorado." Omnibus bills are nefarious, but probably necessary because of how huge our country is.

Riders are small amendments that are attached to bills without going through committees. Riders often have no relationship to the bill being voted on. An omnibus spending bill that includes all the funding for our entire governent, the failure of which would mean world-wide economic collapse, might include a rider making it illegal to skateboard on D.C. sidewalks. Riders escape scrutiny.

Well someone snuck this particular rider onto the omnibus spending bill, and now Senate Majority leader Bill Frist claims he doesn't know who did it. On "Face the Nation" on Sunday, Frist said, "I have no earthly idea how it got in there." The Republican Senate Majority leader doesn't know how a rider got into a bill in the Republican-controlled Senate that would have given incredible new power to two Republican committee chairs? Excuse me. And what is worse, this bill passed. A majority of senators supported this bill. Afterwards, of course, they all claimed not to have read the rider.

A majority of our senators passed a law that none of them read. Or even skimmed.

This is insane.

We need reform of the way our Congress does business. We need a Constitutional amendment prohibiting riders. We need to give serious consideration to prohibting omnibus bills. Let them vote for every single piece of spending. Let's see how much pork they approve if they are on record voting for it individually. These omnibus bills and riders allow stupid campaign charges like the ones levelled in this past campaign where Bush accused Kerry of voting against military spending "X" number of times. Kerry might have voted against an omnibus bill for literally a thousand different reasons, but because that bill also included military spending provisions, he is accused of voting against military spending.

This is insane.

Bar Exam

2004-11-19T19:03:00.000-08:00

I passed the July 2004 California Bar Exam!

Published!

2004-11-12T16:49:00.000-08:00

My November 9 posting, "Swing and a Miss" was based on a letter I wrote to Salon. Well, it got published. Check it out here:
http://www.salon.com/opinion/letters/2004/11/12/raze/index.html

America's Worst College, according to Slate.com

2004-11-11T10:22:00.000-08:00

Timothy Noah writes the "Chatterbox" collumn for Slate.com. He has written a series of articles called, "America's Worst College," in which he argues against the Electoral College system of electing our president. His articles are great. Usually his analysis is very tight. Often, he answers other writers defending the system. They are worth a read. The title of this post is a link to the latest, number 5 in the series. There are links to the previous 4 articles at the bottom of the article.

I have one gripe with his latest argument. He finishes his piece with the following: "Grant's argument [in favor of the Electoral College] is a pretty good example of one key distortion in our thinking brought about by the Electoral College. It makes imaginary victories look real. Who cares who won in a given state if the popular-vote difference was statistically insignificant? In reality, nobody won. But under the Electoral College system, somebody always has to win at the state level, or else you can't award state electors. Under a popular-vote system, we wouldn't have to play that game. We'd just count up the ballots and see who got the most votes."

What Noah misses here is that to some, state victories are not imaginary. Much as I dislike the electoral system and favor a popular vote instant-run-off system, I think it is a mistake to discount the feelings of those who favor strong state's rights. There are people, I have no idea how many, for whom the concept of individual state sovereignty is important. As with the individual nations that make up the Eurpoean Union, many in this country beleive that individual states need to retain, or regain, some independence. I don't mean secede, they just want to make sure their states are not lost in a national government. Strong individual states help prevent the tyranny of a powerful federal government. That was the concern of the founders. It remains a concern today.

So while I favor doing away with the particular states' rights anachronism of the Electoral College, I think it is important to understand and give credit to the fears and concerns of those who want to keep it. They do care about who wins individual states, and to convince them to make the change, we have to address those concerns, not dismiss them.

Swing and a Miss

2004-11-09T13:46:00.000-08:00

Salon.com runs a regular feature called "Right Hook," in which Mark Follman compiles conservative commentary. In today's article, Follman described various Republicans' reactions to the election as "nasty rhetoric and full-throated gloating." While much of the round-up did demonstrate the nastiness that seems to permeate the blogosphere, some comments of Grover Nordquist were thrown in there that didn't deserve to be.

Nordquist's comments were positive, optimistic statements of Republican values and policy objectives. Mr. Nordquist is quoted by Follman as writing: "The next four years are a wonderful opportunity for the GOP. They're a chance for the party to see what its governors and senators can achieve in lowering and simplifying taxes, offering parents school choice, ending abusive lawsuits, protecting gun rights and other liberties, and furthering decent, limited government. The next Republican candidates for President will have to make their case not through 'shoulda, coulda, woulda' speeches, but rather by enacting real legislation and pointing to concrete results. And all eyes will be on this virtuous competition within the Republican Party. Why would anyone pay attention to the Democratic Party nomination process? Hillary Clinton cannot be defeated for the nomination, and she can't win the Presidency. Boring."

Now, as a liberal Democrat, I don't agree with most of those policy goals. (Or more accurately, I DO agree with most of those goals as stated, but I don't agree with how I know they will be enacted to favor the rich at the expense of the poor, minorities and the environment. It is hard to be opposed to "decent, limited government." It is easy to be opposed to gutting the EPA.) But there is nothing mean-spirited about suggesting the party in power should pursue its agenda. We'd be clamoring for the same thing from the left had we won. We'd want to see real movement on issues important to us.

The Republican primary process in 2007 WILL be virtuous. They are smarter and better than us at campaigning - and they keep getting better. They WILL send up a raft of primary contenders who have experience and who have gotten results. There is no shortage of Republicans in positions to achieve a lot in the next four years. And they WILL rally behind one candidate early in the process to keep the in-fighting to a minimum. They are already setting the tone of the next election by suggesting Hillary Clinton is our inevitable candidate. And we are doing nothing to dissuade them.

So disagree with Mr. Nordquist all you want. But even if you disagree with his objectives, give the guy credit for speaking reasonably and sensibly about what the future holds for Republicans. If we on the left are going to make gains politically, we have to stop treating all Republicans as the enemy. Elections are about choices, and Mr. Nordquist was able to sum up in 22 words what his party stands for: “lowering and simplifying taxes, offering parents school choice, ending abusive lawsuits, protecting gun rights and other liberties, and furthering decent, limited government.” In clear, concise language, he laid out the most important issues in the Republican party’s platform. Can we do the same? Until we can, how can we hope to offer a viable alternative?

Liberal Semantics

2004-11-04T08:37:00.000-08:00

We need to reclaim the word "liberal." It has been politicized to such an extent that it is beginning to lose its meaning. It has been used for too long as an epithet. To many people, the word "liberal" means "bad," or "naive," or "wrong," or "communist," or even "evil." In its most generous usage, it simply means "Democrat." What I'm trying to get at is that in our common vernacular, "liberal" means whatever we want it to mean.

The American Heritage Dictionary has the following definitions relevant to a political context: "(a) Not limited to or by established, traditional, orthodox, or authoritarian attitudes, views, or dogmas; free from bigotry. (b) Favoring proposals for reform, open to new ideas for progress, and tolerant of the ideas and behavior of others; broad-minded." Here's how Webster's defines it: "Not bound by orthodox tenets or established forms in political or religious philosophy; independent in opinion; not conservative; friendly to great freedom in the constitution or administration of government; having tendency toward democratic or republican, as distinguished from monarchical or aristocratic, forms."

Nice, huh? What's not to like about being a liberal once you know what it means? I think almost all Americans are liberal. I think most Americans would define themselves as liberal if the stigma were removed from the word. If we were to take out the word "liberal" and just ask people, "Are you open to new ideas for progress? Are you tolerant of ideas of others? Do you consider yourself to be limited to established traditional attitudes?" I think they'd line right up and identify themselves as having all the traits of a liberal. Who wants to say that they are bound by authoritarian attitudes? Or that they aren't open to new ideas for progress? Everyone want to be independent in thought. The one definition up there that isn't particularly helpful is "not conservative." Well, duh.

I know the debates were a lousy forum to really talk about things with any real substance, so I shouldn't be complaining that they weren't better used to argue semantics. But it bothered me a little that John Kerry just sat there and took it when Bush called him a liberal. Both Bush and Kerry acted like Bush just called him a dirty word. Bush said Kerry was the most liberal member of the Senate like he was saying Kerry was the ugliest member, or the stupidest member. And Kerry responded the same way. His statement that it isn't helpful to sling labels around was like saying "sticks and stones may break my bones."

So here are a few things I particularly like about being liberal. First, it means I also get to be conservative. I am open to new ideas. I believe in reform, and I am not closed minded about considering the best ideas to get there. Which means I am open to considering conservative ideas. Note the definition - I am not limited to conservative ideas. I consider them among other ideas. My job is to look at all the options and find the ones that I think will work the best. By definition, being a liberal means I am willing to sit down with conservatives person and listen to them, and that I might just accept their ideas as being right. Tradition and orthodoxy persist often because they work. So as a liberal, I have to give those ideas their fair weight.

Second, being liberal means I must stay optimistic. Being liberal literally means I favor proposals for reform and am open to new ideas for progress. In order to favor reform and be open to progress you have to believe that the world is capable of being made better. No matter whether you think things are currently great or lousy, being liberal means you know things can always be made better. That, to me, is the definition of optimism.

Being a liberal is a wonderful thing. We need to start treating that word like the compliment it truly is. "You're the most liberal member of the Senate," needs to be greeted with, "Thank you. I don't know if that's true or not, but I sure try to be."

The Day After

2004-11-03T09:01:00.000-08:00

I read a few minutes ago that Kerry called Bush to concede the election. Bush leads by more than 100,000 votes in Ohio, with just under 200,000 provisional ballots uncounted. Statistically, this makes a Kerry victory highly unlikely. He did the right thing by accepting his likely fate in advance. Waiting until after he officially lost would have appeared desperate. So like Nixon before him, Kerry has chosen to place American unity before his own interests.

But I don't like that Kerry - or any candidate - should have to concede before the counting is over, or more accurately, before an outcome is certain. It is our Electoral College that places Kerry in this position. Bush clearly won the popular vote. With no electoral college, there would be no conundrum of waiting for the counting of what should be statistically insignificant provisional ballots. We would all know without a doubt that Kerry lost, and he could concede with honor. Instead, he is doing what is right, and at the same time breaking his promise that every vote would be counted. That's a shame.

(Actually, taking a step back here, we can't really predict what would have happened had there been no Electoral College for this election. Every strategy for winning would have been different. Different issues would have been discussed, advertising would have been different. It is very likely the candidates would have been different. So we can't really say what would have happened.)

It was nice to have our election come off relatively free from mishaps, and it is nice to have a clear victor emerge, even if it isn't my chosen candidate. But in addition to being a little trepidatious about what the next four years will hold, I'm also a little saddened that two issues I think are important will dry up and fade from the nation's attention. First, with the victor in the popular vote winning the Electoral College vote, there won't be any pressure to change the system. Second, with no third-party candidate having any appreciable effect on the outcome of the election, there will be no real interest in an instant run-off process.

Maybe that's not so bad. If we can make progress on these issues now, we might be able to do so in a more bi-partisan way. Now, it won't seem like sour grapes on the part of Democrats in seeking to make these changes.

So as we move into a new administration, I want to keep dreaming of a presidential campaign where strategies are not designed around winning key swing states like Ohio and Florida. I hope to see the day when strategies are designed around appealing to a majority of all Americans, including supporters of other candidates.

Vote

2004-11-02T09:03:00.000-08:00

I voted for John Kerry this morning. My decision was based on a two-step process. First, I had to determine if he is fit to lead. He is smart, ambitious, and has a distinguished record of service both in the military and in the Senate. So he passes the threshold test. Second, and most importantly, I did what every voter should. I took an internal inventory of the issues that are important to me and examined my positions on those issues. I then compared my stances to his and President Bush's. Kerry is the candidate with whom I am more closely aligned. I don't agree with every position he holds. But I doubt I could find another human being on Earth with whom I agree on every issue. And of the two candidates, I am more closely aligned with Kerry. So he got my vote.

I don't think Bush could pass my threshold test. He is not smart. He is ambitious - but in a way I can't quite put my finger on. Almost like he has something to prove. His record of leadership is weak. He had no sense of civic duty as a younger man. He got a cushy assignment in the National Guard to avoid Vietnam, and he can't even say he fulfilled that responsibility. He seemed to develop all of his moral positions sometime in his forties. He can't answer simple questions like whether he has ever done cocaine or how many times has he been arrested. He ascended to governor of Texas where he had very little power or authority. His one skill is being likeable. His first real position of power was President, and he showed how weak he was after 9/11. (And no, I'm not just talking about the 7 minutes after he was informed of the attacks when he just sat there dumbfounded listening to school kids read about a goat.) When the whole world united behind the U.S., and he had a rare opportunity to truly lead the world in an historic way, he blew it. His ultra-nationalistic chest thumping and opportunism in seeking an unnecessary war in Iraq created the fastest 180 in world opinion I can imagine. The world went from believing that we are all Americans to hating Americans in a matter of months. Simply put, Bush isn't fit to lead.

Even if Bush were fit to lead, the next step in a good voter's process should be considering how the candidate lines up with your own positions. Like a majority of Democrats and Republicans, I disagree with Bush on most issues. (See my earlier post on How to Like Bush.) The difference between me and most Republicans is I am aware that I disagree with Bush. So Bush fails step two, too. He is not the candidate with whom I am most closely aligned on major issues, so he doesn't get my vote.

Kerry should win by a landslide if all voters were rational and followed this simple two-step process. There will be some disagreement about whether the candidates are fit to lead. Some think Kerry isn't because of his war protesting activities and his relative anonymity in the Senate. Those are legitimate concerns. Some think Bush is fit for a variety of reasons. So there is room of reasonable disagreement there. But moving past the first step - and assuming both men are capabale of doing the job, the next step has to be to compare the candidates' positions to your own. And for most Americans, Kerry wins. Not all, but most.

Let's hope the majority of Americans get what they want today.

A College That's Hard to Defend

2004-10-27T10:44:00.000-07:00

The LA Times ran a commentary today defending the Electoral College by Benjamin Zycher of the conservative think tank, the Pacific Research Institute for Public Policy. Zycher offers two arguments in favor of the Electoral College. First, by forcing candidates to focus on battleground states, the Electoral College pushes candidates to broaden their geographic base. Second, the Electoral College fosters the two-party system, which in turn forces candidates toward the center of the political spectrum. Zycher dismisses alternatives one by one as follows: “A direct popular election under a plurality rule would tend to yield candidacies (and parties) with strong regional and ideological loyalties, with a goal of simply piling up more raw votes than anyone else. A runoff system would give disproportionate bargaining power to regional and ideological fringes. A system of allocating electoral college votes in proportion to the popular vote (now proposed for Colorado) would induce candidates to shift their efforts and resources to uncompetitive states, where there are large numbers of electoral college votes to be had.”

Zycher’s arguments are seriously flawed. First, there is no basis for the assertion that the current system of creating battleground states encourages candidates to seek a broader form of geographic support. Rather, it tends to create smaller localized regional bases, just as the primary system creates odd patterns of local power. For example, issues of ethanol production are given disproportionate discussion and support in national politics, not because ethanol is such a good idea. It’s not. We’ve been investing in ethanol for years and it still costs more to produce than the energy it yields. Ethanol gets such support because of the unique power of Iowa, a corn-producing state, over the primary system. Candidates are well-advised to devise highly regionalized policy positions that mean very little to most of the country to appease Iowa – and to better their chances of winning the primaries.

Similarly, the Electoral College process requires candidates to focus on the highly regional issues of battleground states. For example, voters in New York and California are concerned about very important issues of special concern to their high-population densities - chief among them is security. And while the concerns of these behemoth states are local in nature, they have enormous impact on national life. Consider the effects on the national economy after the attacks in New York. But these issues are not fully discussed in the current process because New York and California are not battleground states. There is no need to talk about their issues.

So instead of talking about these vastly important issues, candidates are forced to focus on issues of particular concern to smaller battleground states like New Mexico, Ohio, and yes, Iowa. The presidency could be decided based on a candidate’s stance on ethanol - or any number of highly localized issues. The Electoral College process, by creating the concept of battleground states and red/blue states, forces candidates to be more localized in unimportant ways. Broad geographic support is important, but it is important to get right.

Second, as I’ve discussed before, the two-party system is fine, but it does not push candidates toward the center of the ideological spectrum. Rather, it pushes candidates to the center of their particular party’s ideological spectrum. We get Republicans in the mainstream of Republican values and Democrats in the mainstream of Democratic values. We do not get candidates in the mainstream of American values. No candidate on the extreme edge of either party is likely to get elected because our country is so evenly split right now.

Voters, as rational beings, are more likely to vote for the candidate who is closer to them in terms of ideology. They are also more likely to vote within their party if given a choice. But there are breaking points. If a Democratic candidate falls too far to the right, a fair portion of Democrats on the left either won’t vote (seeing no difference between Democrats and Republicans), or will vote for a third-party candidate with no chance of winning (who is closer ideologically to the voter), thus “giving” their vote to the Republicans. If a Democrat is too far to the left, a fair number of Democrats on the right will either not vote (seeing no point) or will vote for a Republican (who is now closer to the voter ideologically). The same, in reverse, is true of Republicans. Either way, it behooves candidates to fall within the middle spectrum of their own party's ideology. If you want MORE extreme elected officials who are further from the national mainstream, the two-party system is great.

Once you understand the flaws in Zycher’s arguments in favor of the Electoral college, his arguments against alternative methods fall apart. To achive the goals Zycher purports to extol – broad geographic support without too much regionalism and more mainstream candidates - the only method that actually achives both goals is the instant run-off election process.

One last thing about Zycher. He is a senior analyst for an organization committed to coming up with free-market solutions to problems. Nothing wrong with that. But in endorsing the Electoral College, Zycher is supporting a system that is the opposite of free market. Direct democracy is a simple and pure example of free market principles. The Electoral College is more akin to a highly regulated and subsidized market where people in certain battleground states are given a competitive leg-up through governmental interference. By endorsing the Electoral College, Zycher has revealed that supporting George Bush (who is only president because of the Electoral College) is more important to him than the basic principles of his organization. This is the same kind of fuzzy logic and lack of principles our conservative states-rights Supreme Court Justices displayed when they used the power of their federal government positions to interfere with Florida's right to conduct its recount according to its own procedures in 2000. I don't mind partisan opinions. I do mind when partisan opinions are disguised as principles.

How to support Bush

2004-10-21T17:02:00.000-07:00

Ever ask yourself how anyone could support Bush? I've been saying all throughout this blog that Bush knows he'll lose if the campaign is based on facts. The majority of Americans simply do not support the positions President Bush supports. If the central debate of this election had been about the facts - an open and honest debate about the state of the world, our place in the world, and the candidates plans for dealing with it - Bush wouldn't stand a chance. So Bush's strategy has been to lie and distort at every turn.

Guess what? It works! The following is lifted and slightly edited from a new report by PIPA ( Program on International Policy Issues.) According to their website, PIPA is a joint program of the Center on Policy Attitudes and the Center for International and Security Studies at Maryland School of Public Affairs, University of Maryland. I thought this information was so great, I'm posting most of it here. You can also read it yourself if you want. Here's a link.

Here's what the PIPA surveys found:

72% of Bush supporters continue to believe that Iraq had actual WMD or a major program for developing them. (There were none according to the 9/11 Commission report and the Duelfer report.)
56% assume that most experts believe Iraq had actual WMD. (They don't.)
57% assume Duelfer concluded Iraq had at least a major WMD program. (He didn't.)
75% of Bush supporters continue to believe that Iraq was providing substantial support to al Qaeda. (It wasn't.) 63% believe that clear evidence of this support has been found. (None has.)
60% of Bush supporters assume that this is also the conclusion of most experts, and 55% assume, incorrectly, that this was the conclusion of the 9/11 Commission. (The Commission and experts have all concluded there is no evidence of any support.)

In all of the above, Kerry supporters overwhelmingly and correctly believe the exact opposite.

Only 31% of Bush supporters recognize that the majority of people in the world oppose the US having gone to war with Iraq. Among Kerry supporters, 74% assume that the majority of the world is opposed. What are the facts? Polls conducted by Gallup International in 38 countries, and more recently by a consortium of leading newspapers in 10 major countries show the overwhelming majority of the rest of the world oppose the US having gone to war with Iraq.

Here are a a few more things Bush supporters believe:

69% believe Bush supports the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (He doesn't. Kerry voted to adopt the treaty.)
72% think he supports the treaty banning land mines (He doesn't, Kerry does.)
51% incorrectly assume he favors US participation in the Kyoto treaty. (He doesn't, Kerry does.) 53% believe Bush supports the International Criminal Court. Note, this is after he criticized this very treaty and court so vociferously in the debates! (Before the debates, 66% believed he supported it. Kerry supports it, by the way.)
74% assume he favors including labor and environmental standards in trade agreements. (He doesn't, Kerry does.)

In all these cases, majorities of Bush supporters favor the positions they impute to Bush. To make this perfectly clear, a majority of Bush supporters favor positions Kerry holds and Bush does not.

Here's what the Steven Kull, the director of PIPA had to say in analyzing this data:

"The roots of the Bush supporters' resistance to information very likely lie in the traumatic experience of 9/11 and equally in the near pitch-perfect leadership that President Bush showed in its immediate wake. This appears to have created a powerful bond between Bush and his supporters--and an idealized image of the President that makes it difficult for his supporters to imagine that he could have made incorrect judgments before the war, that world public opinion could be critical of his policies or that the President could hold foreign policy positions that are at odds with his supporters."

Wait, you might cry, it isn't fair to just look at Bush supporters. How do Kerry supporters stack up on their candidate's positions? Fair enough:

Kerry supporters were much more accurate in assessing their candidate’s positions on all these issues. Majorities knew that Kerry favors including labor and environmental standards in trade agreements (90%); the US being part of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (77%); the International Criminal Court (59%); the land mines treaty (79%); and the Kyoto Treaty on climate change (74%). They also knew that he favors continuing research on missile defense without deploying a system now (68%), and wants the UN, not the US, to take the stronger role in developing Iraq’s new government (80%). A plurality of 43% was correct that Kerry favors keeping defense spending the same, with 35% assuming he wants to cut it and 18% to expand it.
Fascinating!

Speaking of the Court

2004-10-20T16:53:00.000-07:00

In his Sunday article in the New York Times, Pulitzer prize winning reporter and author Ron Suskind, who also wrote for the Wall Street Journal, reported on a rally of sorts Bush had in September. Bush was meeting with the RNC Regents, a group of ardent supporters. At that meeting, in addition to saying he would come out strong to privatize Social Security after the election, Bush talked about the Supreme Court appointments he anticipates. He said he anticipates he'll have the opportunity to make 4 appointments in his second term.

Here's what I find chilling. Bush said he will make one of the 4 Supreme Court appointments shortly after being inaugurated.

How could he know that unless he has spoken with a Supreme Court Justice who told him? One of the Justices had to have told Bush that he will retire shortly after the inauguration if Bush is re-elected. We know Justices are friendly with the President and Vice President. Remember Cheney, Scalia, and the ducks? It bothers me that a Justice would do this. I can understand that a Justice might want to retire. I can understand that a Justice might not want to retire right before a presidential election to help make sure that the election doesn't turn into a debate on nothing but abortion. But I do not condone a Justice making a private announcement to one of the candidates. Justices are supposed to be above politics. By telling Bush, one of the Justices (and my money is on Rehnquist) took sides in a blatantly political way. Why would this conversation happen? Why would the justice tell this to Bush? There is no legitimate reason. Well, there are, but all the legitimate reasons would require the justice to also tell Kerry. That didn't happen.

Nothing's perfect

2004-10-19T16:19:00.001-07:00

Instead of talking about politics, I'd like to post a few ideas for improving our government. This list focuses on the federal government, and specifically, on changing the Constitution. I revere the Constitution as one of the most important documents in history. It is inspiring to me. I keep a framed copy in my office, along with the original Bill of Rights.

But that is not to say it is perfect. We as a people continue to change and grow, and our governing documents have to keep pace or become obsolete. Courts must interpret the Constitution in light of the times we live in, but we do not want our courts to be overly involved in creating our laws. That is what our elected representatives are for. So we owe it to the courts to provide them with a constitution that reflects what we want. Let's not ask them to read too much into it.

So here are a few changes I'd like to see.

First, direct election of President and Vice-President by popular vote. The president represents the people as our executive. So let the people elect him or her.

Second, require an instant run-off election process for all Congressional and Presidential elections. We complain that our elected representatives cater too much to their own political parties, but our election process makes this inevitable. Assume that the major parties act rationally and select candidates in the primary process to represent the party on the presidential ballot who fall somewhere near the middle of the spectrum in that party's ideology. Each party makes rational compromises and selects a candidate who is not too far to any extreme within that party's basic platform. If one party is generally to the left and one party is generally to the right, each party will select a candidate who is, at best, on the fringe of the mainstream. One possible solution is open primaries where the top vote-getters, regardless of party, end up on the ballot. The problem with this is it violates the Constitutional freedom of association - Democrats or Republicans should not be forced by the state to let non-members vote in their selection process. It is also problematic because as a practical matter, the major parties will simply institute pre-primary primaries to make sure that there is only one of them in the main primary, and we'll end up where we started. Instead, I favor instant run-offs. This enfranchises third-parties and makes them viable. Now, I'm not a fan of any of the third parties currently out there. But I do believe that if we made third-party votes meaningful as more than mere spoilers, we will see better parties all around.

Third, establish a right of privacy. There isn't one. There ought to be. Some courts have read one into the Constitution. There is currently a little debate among Constitutional scholars about whether under current interpretation the Supreme Court has read a right of privacy into the Constitution. Past cases have held there is a right of privacy implicit in the Constitution - the "penumbra" theory. This theory holds (or held) that the rights enumerated in the Bill of Rights and the Civil Rights Amendments all fall within the penumbra cast by an implicit right to privacy. Roe v. Wade expressed this theory and based much of its holding on it. Later courts have backed away from the penumbra theory, and some have held there is no right of privacy. Again, my thinking is, let's not ask the courts to do more than is fair. It is not fair to ask the Court to try to sift the tea leaves of the Constitution to find a right of privacy in there. Most people believe they already have one, and I think most people want one. So let's make it official. Something simple: "The right of the people to privacy in their homes and personal affairs shall not be abridged."

Fourth, repeal and replace the 2nd Amendment. Is there an individual right to keep and bear arms? The Supreme Court has repeatedly said no. The NRA, and a lot of rational people tend to think that's exactly what the 2nd Amendment does. The framers came up with the ridiculous language of the 2nd Amendment as a compromise to avoid confronting the issue. Did they really want to make sure that if the people got fed up with what they perceived to be a tyrannical government, they could legally take up arms against it? Some did. Some didn't. We hope the Constitution itself makes unnecessary such an eventuality by providing plenty of checks and balances and room for change. And modern reality is, even an armed populace could not stand up against a tyrannical government backed by our military. In Revolutionary times, an armed citizen was no different than an armed soldier. The army might have cannons, but that was the extent of their advantage. Today, with tanks and jet fighters and black hawk helicopters and all kinds of incredibly expensive equipment, there is no way an armed populace could face an army. The historical reason for arming ourselves is dead. But most Americans still want to be able to own guns. And most Americans want to see some sort of regulation of gun ownership. We might accept our neighbors owning a pistol or a hunting rifle, but we balk at the thought that our neighbor might be stockpiling AK-47s in this basement. So instead of giving the courts an impossible to interpret sentence and then railing at them for being "activist" when they interpret it, let's give the courts something they can work with. Here's what I propose. "The people have a right to keep and bear arms, and hereby delegate the power to regulate their right to keep and bear arms exclusively to the respective states. Laws of general applicability passed pursuant to an enumerated power of Congress that have an incidental and unintended effect on the people's right to keep and bear arms do not offend this provision."

And fifth, prohibit political redistricting. Natural communities of people who have chosen to live together should select their representatives. Not fake communities created by gerrymandering to keep 97% of Congressional seats safe for incumbents. Some proposed language: "Congressional districts shall be based purely on geographic distribution of the people, without any regard for political, racial, ethnic, religious or any other distinguishing characteristics, and Congressional districts shall as closely as possible conform to local geography or simple geometric shapes."

Missed Opportunity - Part 2

2004-10-11T10:26:00.000-07:00

At the second debate on Friday night, Kerry blew a few easy opportunities to clarify his own positions and debunk the president's.

First, he was short on specifics. At this point, I think most undecided voters are screaming for specifics. They are undecided because they have grave doubts about president Bush. They know his plans, and they aren't sure they like them. They are undecided because they aren't sure they can back Kerry. They have heard him say he has a plan hundreds of times, but they haven't heard very much about what those plans are. So my first piece of advice to Kerry would be to start hammering home the talking point summary of his major foreign and domestic policy agendas. Close the sale. You've got the undecideds checking you out, they want to like you. Now seal the deal.

Second, he let Bush slide on his answer to the "name three mistakes" question. Bush couldn't name even one. He admitted there might be some mistakes in strategy that historians might be able to discover in the future. Kind of like his answer to pollution. Pollute all you want and let scientists of the future fix it. Kind of like his answer to spending. Spend all you want and let our children and grandchildren pay it off for generations to come. He also said he might have made some mistakes in his appointments, but he can't name names because he doesn't want to hurt anyone's feelings. Bullshit! Donald Trump on a television game show every week publicly fires someone in front of a national television audience. If a blow-dried blow-hard billionaire can find the guts to fire someone in public, the president of the United States ought to be able to as well. The real problem is, he doesn't blame the people who have truly failed in their jobs. He doesn't blame Rumsfeld for his faulty war plan that has turned Iraq into such a disaster. He doesn't blame Condeleeza Rice for failing to pay attention to the terrorist threat before 9/11. He doesn't blame Ashcroft for his illegal application of the PATRIOT Act. We all know who his "mistakes" would be if he named them. He would only name those who quit in protest. Like Clarke. But he didn't even have the guts to do that, and Kerry let him get away with it. You can't ask a president to improve if the president can't see his mistakes.

But the biggest missed opportunity at the debate was letting Bush get by with this comment about WMDs in Iraq. Here's what Bush said, "We all thought there was weapons there, Robin. My opponent thought there was weapons there. That's why he called him a grave threat.
I wasn't happy when we found out there wasn't weapons, and we've got an intelligence group together to figure out why." Okay, bad grammar aside, I know I'm not the only one troubled by this comment. Saddam Hussein, someone widely considered to be an evil madman, did not have any weapons that he could have used to kill us or have given to his neighbors or to terrorists. We were safe from him. He wasn't a threat. Our troops did not have to face chemical or biological attack. There was no threat of a mushroom cloud. But Bush wasn't happy? Bush would rather Saddam Hussein had WMDs. Bush admitted on public television in a debate that he is more concerned about his own credibility than about the safety and welfare of the entire planet. "I wasn't happy when we found out there wasn't weapons." I would have thought you'd have been thrilled! That sentence alone is reason enough to elect anyone else besides Bush to the White House.

No Respect

2004-10-07T11:48:00.000-07:00

Yesterday on the floor of the U.S. Senate, Democratic Senator Richard Durbin of Illinois remarked on the newly published report by CIA weapons Inspector Duelfer. The Duelfer report is the one Cheney requested that says there were no WMDs in Iraq, Saddam lacked the capacity to make any, and his nuclear program at the start of the war was less developed than during the 1991 war.

Senator Durbin commented on the obvious - that Bush is in denial about the truth and that he misled us into an unnecessary war that diverted us away from the real threat. Well, Republican Senator Ted Stevens, the senior Republican in the Senate, didn't much cotton to those kinds of remarks. After Durbin gave some of his time on the floor to Stevens so the two could engage in a discussion, Stevens said, "This idea that somehow the president has lied - I'm tired of hearing this disrespect for the presidency and vice-presidency of the United States." You can listen to the exchange at NPR.org. I don't think I'm being unfair by saying Stevens sounded angry in his comments.

I agree with Stevens. I, too, am sick and tired of hearing all this disrespect for the presidency and vice-presidency of the United States. I'm sick and tired and frustrated and it drives me nuts sometimes.

We need to do something to stop all this disrespect for what should be our nation's most respected offices. My suggestion: elect people to those offices who are worthy of our respect and who won't conduct themselves in such a way as to bring disrespect to their offices.

Cheney and Bush are doing serious and lasting harm to their offices through their constant lies and distortions. I think they are also doing real harm to their own credibility and legacies, but that is their own concern. As an American, I object to the harm they are doing to their offices. We deserve the truth. And the next president who follows Bush, whether it is Kerry in a few months, or someone else in a few years, deserves to inherit a White House with some shred of decency and integrity left.

Lying all the time is hard work

2004-10-05T09:33:00.000-07:00

The problem with lying all the time, is it's hard. For most of us, we know from personal experience that when you try to sneak by with a little white lie, the danger is in remembering what the lie was. The truth we know. With the lie, well, we tend to forget what we said. Did I say I was late because my car broke down or because I had a doctor's appointment? How am I going to keep my stories straight?

But the Bush administrations problems aren't that simple. They know exactly what their lies are. The big one is the easiest to remember: that there is a connection between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda. We all know there was not. Every piece of evidence says there was not. The 9/11 Commisssion said there was not. There is no link. Never was. Of course, the Bush administration still insists on pushing that lie. Watch the debate between Edwards and Cheney tonight. Cheney is one of the worst of the bunch. Betcha he pushes that doozy again tonight.

No, the Bush administration's problem is not in keeping their lie straight in their heads. Their problem is the much deeper one when it comes to lying. Their problem is that lying is such a soul-crushing thing to keep up. Lying for a long time about important things eats you from the inside. As human beings, we really want to be honest people and tell the truth.

Rumsfeld had that problem this week. On Monday, Rumsfeld said to the Council on Foreign Relations, "To my knowledge, I have not seen any strong, hard evidence that links the two [al Qaeda and Saddam]." That little piece of truth squeaked out. I bet it had been bottled up for so long, it was just about killing him. He had to say it.

But it wasn't the company line. So today, he backed down and went back to the lie. Today he said, " I have acknowledged since September 2002 that there were ties between Al Qaeda and Iraq." What is the evidence he cited? He said in a statement on the Defense Department website, "We do have solid evidence of the presence in Iraq of al Qaeda members, including some that have been in Baghdad." Okay. We also have even stronger evidence of the presence in the U.S of al Qaeda members. They crashed 4 airplanes a few years ago. Do we really believe the presence of al Qaeda in a country is evidence of a link to that country's government? What else did he say? More of the same. Try this: "We have what we consider to be credible evidence that al Qaeda leaders have sought contacts in Iraq who could help them acquire weapons of mass destruction capabilities." What are contacts in Iraq? I think Mohammed Atta sought and actually made contacts in the U.S. Again, are we supposed to believe this is evidence of a link?

Feel sorry for Rumsfeld. It is hard work keeping this up.

Day After Zingers

2004-10-04T16:25:00.000-07:00

Ever had one of those moments where you think of a witty rejoinder to some snappy one-liner, but not until the next day when you are in the shower? Of course you have. We all have. There was a whole Seinfeld episode devoted to the phenomenon. Well, that's exactly what Bush's post-debate campaigning has been like.

At the debate, we stared amazed as time after time Bush demanded time for a rebuttal then stood dumbfounded with nothing to say. "Can I respond to that?"

Well, apparently after some time to reflect, and after having his crack team of speech writers script some remarks, and when he wasn't on stage faced with his opponent who could correct him, and when not faced with a moderator, and when before an audience of applauding sworn-supporters instead of quiet mixed-audience - you get the picture - he came up with something to say.

Bush has spent all week harping on Kerry's "global test" remark. Here's what Bush said in a speech, and in a White House press release:

THE PRESIDENT: In the debate -- in the debate, Senator Kerry also said something revealing when he laid out the Kerry doctrine. He said -- he said that America has to pass a global test before we can use American troops to defend ourselves.
AUDIENCE: Booo!
THE PRESIDENT: That's what he said. (Laughter.) Think about this, Senator Kerry's approach to foreign policy would give foreign governments veto power over our national security decisions. I have a different view. (Applause.) "

Is that really what Kerry said? Let's compare. Here's Kerry's quotes. In response to the first question: "I'll never give a veto to any country over our security." Then later: "No president, through all of American history, has ever ceded, and nor would I, the right to preempt in any way necessary to protect the United States of America. But if and when you do it, Jim, you've got to do in a way that passes the test—that passes the global test—where your countrymen, your people understand fully why you're doing what you're doing, and you can prove to the world that you did it for legitimate reasons."

Crazy, huh? If Kerry said the sky is blue, Bush would accuse him of saying the sky was green.

Once again, Bush lied. Once again, Bush has shown that he doesn't want this election to be a choice. He doesn't want the American people to arm themselves with the facts about the candidate's positions and then make an informed decision based on those facts. Bush knows he'll lose an election based on facts. The facts are all stacked against him. Sure, there are a certain number of votes he can count on no matter what he does. He could eat a live baby kitten on national TV and still get the anti-abortion, gun rights, and hard-core Republican votes. That's a given. And the same is true for Kerry and the pro-choice vote. But in the middle is a huge swath of people who vote for the candidate as a whole - based on all their policies and not just a few bell-weather issues. That is the group Bush is so scared of. That is the group he is trying so desperately to hide the truth from.

Wouldn't you like to see some news stories on the front page of your paper, or on the evening network news, where they call our candidates on their garbage? Instead of all the campaign strategy coverage and who thinks which candidate won the debate, or what the debates did to the poll numbers, wouldn't you rather read some straight-forward fact checking. "President Bush lied to a crowd of supporters in Ohio today." That's an accurate headline. (Or was on October 2nd.) Until we start seeing headlines like that, we are going to continue to get lies from our candidates.

Missed Opportunity

2004-10-01T10:02:00.000-07:00

In the first presidential debate last night, Jim Lehrer asked Kerry to give examples of George Bush misleading the American people about Iraq. Kerry then very clearly laid out some of Bush's failures in the decision to go to war - telling us there were nuclear materials when there was no credible evidence there were; telling us he would build a strong coalition and he didn't; telling us he would exhaust diplomancy and go to war as a last resort and then cutting short all diplomatic efforts. (Interestingly, Kerry shied away from the truly egregious examples of Bush's misleading the public about the condition of Iraq after the war.) Bush responded with a rambling answer in which he tried to imply Kerry would allow Bin Laden to dictate American policy and then went into a string of statements Kerry had made in the past that Bush apparently agrees with in order to intimate that by criticizing Bush now, Kerry has changed his positions. Bush said, "I think what is misleading is to say you can lead and succeed in Iraq if you keep changing your positions on this war. And he has. As the politics change, his positions change. And that's not how a commander in chief acts."

Very shortly after this Kerry had an opportunity to respond for 30 seconds. That's not much time, but Bush gave him the perfect opportunity to end once and for all the charges of flip-flopping and at the same time nail down Bush as a liar. I think Kerry missed a great opportunity with his answer. Kerry started his comments by saying he tried not to use the word "liar" when referring to Bush, and here was an opportunity to take the response even further. The question was about Bush misleading America on Iraq, and now, because of Bush's attack on Kerry's consistency, Kerry had an opportunity to broaden the criticism to include Bush misleading America about Kerry's record.

Here's how Kerry responded to Bush's charge that he changes his positions: "I wasn't misleading when I said he [Hussein] was a threat. Nor was I misleading on the day that the president decided to go to war when I said that he had made a mistake in not building strong alliances and that I would have preferred that he did more diplomacy. I've had one position, one consistent position, that Saddam Hussein was a threat. There was a right way to disarm him and a wrong way. And the president chose the wrong way."

That's a pretty good answer, but he had made those points already, and was able to make those points again. Here's how I think he response should have gone:

"Jim, you asked me to explain how Bush misled the American people, but in his response, he has done it for me. He knows my position on Iraq has been consistent from day one. He knows I have been consistent in saying Hussien was a threat and that the President has made the wrong choice at every turn in the way he has chosen to deal with that threat. He knows I have been consistent in supporting our troops by voting to provide them with all the funding they would need and at the same time voting to make sure we didn't pass the cost of that support on to our children through massive deficits. The president knows I have been consistent, but he still makes these baseless accusations. I want to put a stop to that kind of nonsense right now. My conviction is firm. The president knows it. And it's time he stops misleading the public about it."

I know I harp about how the media should cover the issues and not strategy. But in this instance, strategy and the issues intersect. Kerry has two goals he needs to achieve strategically. He needs to find a way to deal with the flip-flopper accusations simply and quickly, and he needs to inform the American people about Bush's lies. My answer is do both at once. Kerry needs to say that the charge of being a flip-flopper is just another of Bush's lies. Bush is afraid to give the American people a choice. He is afraid that if the American people see the truth about where the candidates stand on the issues, they will choose Kerry. So Bush's only strategy is to hide the truth behind lies. This election campaign has been about a Bush lie - whether Kerry is a flip-flopper. It is time to give light to the lie and call it what it is.

Welfare Capitalism

2004-09-24T11:10:00.000-07:00

Employees are not paid in just wages. The days of earning an honest day’s wage for an honest day’s work are long gone. Can any of us answer the simple question, how much do you earn per hour? Salaried employees might start digging out a calculator and dividing their annual salary by 52 and then again by 40, but before you get too far into the math, let me reveal that I’m an hourly employee, and even I can’t say with any precision how much I earn per hour. Why? Because of welfare capitalism. In America over the course of the 20th century, we have switched from a system where employees are paid a wage to a system where employees are paid a mixture of wages and benefits in exchange for their efforts. I don’t earn x dollars per hour. I earn x dollars plus the value of my employer’s contributions to my health insurance, dental and vision plan, 401k retirement plan, and the value of my vacation package. How much does my employer pay for all of that? I have no idea. I am a little chagrined to say I don’t even have a very solid grasp of how much my contributions to my health and dental plans are.

Slate had an interesting article on welfare capitalism today that goes into the history in more detail and foretells the decline. The Slate article recounts the recent spate of companies in bankruptcy that have decided to stop paying pensions and to drop retirement insurance plans for currently retired people. The article posits that as companies either decide or are forced to abandon their welfare capitalist policies because of market pressure, the government will have to step in to fill the gaps. Note the use of the phrase “have to.” That’s Slate’s usage, not mine. I doubt the current Republican administration or majority Republican Congress would agree that the government “has to” provide social programs. I can imagine Dick Cheney and Dennis Hastert bristling at the idea of being told the government will have to fill in where private enterprise has failed.

Now, as you may have guessed, I’m a liberal and a social progressive. Being liberal simply means I am open to new ideas. Being socially progressive means I favor improving our society through universal access to necessary social institutions such as education, healthcare, utilities, and childcare. That does not mean I necessarily think the government is the best answer to providing these things. As a liberal, it means I favor considering all the options to figure out which are the best ones for making sure we provide life’s necessities to everyone who needs them.

California has a proposition on the ballot that we will be voting on in November that would require pretty much every employer, no matter how small, to provide health coverage to every employee. As a social progressive, I like the idea of making sure everyone has health coverage. But as a liberal, I have to be open to other ideas and consider the alternatives. As a liberal, I can’t accept at face value the idea that forcing employers to bear the burden of healthcare is the best idea. We have to consider just how much weight business can bear. How many of our social needs can we pile onto the backs of businesses? Making employers pay for the solutions to our problems might sound easy, but it really isn’t fair. Sure, in some cases it might be fair – when there is a large corporation with deep assets sufficient to provide a decent return on investment to shareholders, it is fair to redistribute some of that wealth to the employees in the form of health insurance coverage. We know it is fair because that is the system the free market has worked out for itself to everyone’s mutual benefit. Large employers pretty much universally provide health care. But there are plenty of small employers where the difference in wealth between the employees and the owners is so small that it hardly seems fair to ask them to redistribute that scant wealth.

So I get back to my initial question: how much do you earn per hour? What we are learning is that even if you were to find out exactly how much your employer pays for all your benefits and did all the math, you still might not know because some of what you are being “paid” now for your work is deferred compensation that may never materialize. That pension your employer is paying into as part of your compensation package might not be around when you retire. You might be working now in exchange for the promise that your employer will provide health care coverage when you retire, only to discover that when you retire your employer has changed its mind or gone belly up. We don’t know how much we earn because we don’t know that our “pay” is going to be there when it’s due.

Maybe it’s time that we started thinking about getting back to a system of asking employers to just pay its employees their wages - and that's all. Maybe we should stop asking our employers to provide for all our social needs. Maybe its time to start looking for other institutions to provide some of our necessities. As individuals, do we really care whether our insurance is provided by our employer? After all, we don't look to our employers to provide us with car or homeowner's insurance. I think most of us just want to know that if we get hit by a car, we don’t have to worry that going to the hospital is going to ruin us and jeopardize everything else in our lives. A European model of state-sponsored health care is one model we can look to. But I’m open to other ideas. I have to be. I'm a liberal.

Where Kerry Stands on Iraq

2004-09-20T15:46:00.000-07:00

I feel like I'm getting lazy, but I'm going to do it again. I'm devoting most of this blog entry to other people's writing. First, John Kerry came out with his best speech yet. The full text of that speech is available here: http://www.johnkerry.com/pressroom/speeches/spc_2004_0920.html.
I'm a big proponent of listening to what the candidates have to say in their own words. I believe, as Kerry says in the opening of his speech, that elections are about choices. And one of the easiest ways to learn about what our choices are is to listen to what the candidates have to say about themselves and each other. (I have also long held that the worst ways of informing ourselves about our choices are following polls and coverage of election strategy. Those are nothing but examples of lazy journalism and a waste of time. Never respond to election polls.) So read Kerry's speech. It hits on most of the big points Kerry's been skipping up to now. Bush as pathological liar. Bush as inept war president. How Kerry is different.

Now, we know we can't trust politicians to tell us the truth about themselves or each other. Not the whole truth anyway. That is where the media comes in. We need the media to call the candidates on their statements. That is the beauty of freedom of speech. Crackpots like Zell Miller can rant away about how Kerry voted against pretty much every weapons system our military uses, but we can count on the media to expose those misrepresentations for the garbage they are. So after reading Kerry's speech on Iraq, we are correct to question whether Kerry has told us the whole truth. Is that really what he means? Well, William Saletan, Slate's chief political correspondent, has written an excellent piece parsing Kerry's speech. Click on the title of this entry to read the Slate story. Saleltan does a great job distilling Kerry's long-winded and obtuse style into simple statements, and does an equally great job pointing out where Kerry hasn't been specific enough.

I just love it when election coverage rises to the occasion.

Couldn't have said it better

2004-09-16T16:25:00.000-07:00

I disagree with Bush's handling of the problem of global terrorism. I am convinced he has made our world more dangerous rather than safer. While I give him full credit for his successes, such as the destruction of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, his failures far outpace any successes. I wanted to talk about why I think Bush has failed in his war on "terra," but Stephen Holmes, a law professor at New York University, wrote an article that appeared in Salon.com today that more eloquently and more completely made the case than anything I could have written. So instead of rehashing everything he said, I am just going to post the link. Just click on the title of this post, and it will take you to the his article, "Why Republicans Can't Fight Terror."

The issue of how we are going to fight terrorism is an important one in this election. It is perhaps the most important issue. So if you are considering voting for Bush, take the time to read this article. Maybe you'll disagree and still vote for Bush. But for an issue as important as this, it is worth it to take the time to get informed.

How would we react part 2

2004-09-14T09:16:00.000-07:00

It looks like we found out that our reaction to terrorists is pretty much the same as the Russian reaction.

Here's the pattern in outline form:
1. Horrible, indescribable terrorist attack happens.
2. National and international feeling of unity around the tragedy builds.
3. National leader in country where the attack occurred uses national sense of unity to push a policy that that has nothing to do with terrorism by saying the policy is necessary to fight terrorism.

Valdmir Putin has announced his plan for making Russia safer from the Chechen terrorists and for preventing another school hostage taking. He has proposed changing how local governors and parliamentary representatives are selected. Now, local governors are elected by the local populace. Putin wants to change that system - he will appoint local governors who will then be approved by local councils. In other words, no one could be a regional governor in Russia unless Putin selected him or her. He would also change the parliamentary election system. Now, half the seats in the lower house of parliament in Russia are directly elected in local elections - like our House of Representatives. Putin would change that to eliminate all local elections of parliamentary members. Local people could only vote for a party, not a person. Then the party would select who the representatives would be.

Now you might be reading this and wondering what these changes would do to stop terrorists from taking a school hostage. You are probably thinking, "I see how they will make Putin more powerful by eliminating any regional opposition to his political party. But how does that make Russia safer?" And of course, it doesn't. Putin claims it will strengthen the country by consolidating control. Does that make sense to you? Do you think the Chechen separatist extremists will now throw down their arms and forsake violence because the local governor in the town where they intended to kill schoolkids was selected by Putin directly instead of being locally elected?

Where did he get such a crazy plan, and what makes him think it will work? Well, it worked in the U.S. of A. for good ole Dubya. In the aftermath of 9/11, Bush pushed through his plan of invading Iraq. Iraq, one of the few countries in the middle east where none of the hijackers were from, and which had no ties to any terrorist organizations. Now, I'm not trying to argue Saddam Hussein is a great guy, but his government was a target of al Quaida because it was secular. There is no connection between Iraq and terrorism. (As a sidenote, I heard administration officials make the claim that there is a terrorist connection because there was an al Quiada cell in one of the cities in Iraq before the war that is giving us so much trouble now. There were also al Quaida terrorists cells operating in San Diego before 9/11. Does that make the U.S. a partner in terror? Or just California?) But Bush claimed then and still claims his war in Iraq is part of the global war or terrorism. Just like Putin claims his power grab is part of his country's war on terrorism.

How would we react?

2004-09-07T14:35:00.000-07:00

The Chechen rebels in Beslan attacked a school and took more than 1000 people, many of them children, hostage using guns and simple explosives. Apparently, when some of the explosives accidentally went off in the gymansium where the hostages were being held, a melee ensued resulting in 326 dead hostages, 9 dead bystanders and police, and 30 dead terrorists. I saw reports of over 700 injured. Do the math. 700 injured and 326 dead hostages is more than a thousand dead or injured of approximately 1300 total hostage. That's about 76% dead or injured.

What was the Russian plan for dealing with terrorists in such a situation? And more importantly, what is our plan? There is a presidential campaign waging right now. Isn't that the kind of question we should be asking our candidates? Of George Bush, we have the right to ask what the current administration's response to such an attack would be. What is our current plan for dealing with terrorists taking a school hostage? Of John Kerry, we should be asking what his plan would be. I want to know.

I don't know whether these deaths could have been prevented. I think it would be impossible to prevent all such attacks. We can't turn all of our public spaces into fortresses. So given the possibility of terrorists mounting such an attack in the U.S., how would we respond? Do we leave negotiations up to local law enforcement? Does the Pentagon already have a strategy? Do we take a hard-nosed no-negotiations approach?

And I think just as importantly, why hasn't our media asked these questions already? I thought of them as soon as I heard of the hostage taking. The first thing I thought when I heard that Putin has a strict no-negotiation policy is, "What is our policy?"

What is our policy?

Issue Oriented Campaigning

2004-09-03T09:22:00.000-07:00

I am amazed at how effectively the Republicans have painted John Kerry as a flip flopper. That's a serious accusation and it matters in a presidential election. If a candidate regularly changes his or her stance on an issue, it reflects poorly on leadership skills. Some changes are necessary and to be expected - we want our leaders to learn and grow. But too many changes, or changes that are not justified or explained by anything other than polling show a lack of vision and principles.

So it is troubling to me when John Kerry is painted as a flip flopper. I try to give people the benefit of the doubt, and I know that in an election we can usually count on the opponent to provide us with information about a candidate's bad side. So when Republicans say Kerry waivers and falters and changes his mind all the time, I try to look into those accusations. The frustrating thing is, the accusations aren't justified. I won't spend too much time refuting the allegations of flip-flopping because there are so many great resources on the web for doing that. (Check out Salon.com for a partisan approach, or Slate.com for a more neutral approach to dissecting campaign charges.)

But there is one charge of flip-flopping from Bush's acceptance speech last night that is just too egregious to let pass - because it accuses Kerry of flip-flopping while at the same time suggesting he doesn't support providing our troops in Iraq with sufficient gear. Bush used an actual Kerry quote: "I actually did vote for the 87 billion before I voted against it." Now, that 87 billion refers to the additional money Bush asked Congress for to fight the war in Iraq and Afghanistan. So what did that comment mean in context? Well, Kerry voted for the 87 billion in an amendment he proposed that would have also temporarily suspended the Bush tax cuts on those who make more than $400,000 per year. He then voted against the measure that passed, which made no provisions for paying for that additional 87 billion in spending. Some could argue that after his own amendment failed he should have gotten on board and voted for the money anyway - but no additional funds were needed for at least four more months. There was no reason to hurry through an inrresponsible bill. There was still plenty of time to find a way to support our troops while not sending us deeper into debt. So Kerry took one position on the issue: support the troops, but do so in a fiscally responsible manner. For taking one position that was smart, well-reasoned, and responsible, he was labeled as a flip-flopper who doesn't want our troops to have body armor.

There is a substantive difference between Bush and Kerry on the 87 billion dollar issue. Bush favored deficit spending (borrowing from our kids) to cover the cost while Kerry favored paying for the additional spending with additional revenue (reinstating taxes on the wealthiest.) There are sound policy reasons for taking either approach. Those two approaches reflect real differences between the candidates. Why not campaign on this actual issue instead of on demonstrably false name-calling? If Bush should be re-elected, shouldn't it be for his policy positions and not for his superior ability to lie and disparage? Of course, if Bush campaigned on his positions, he couldn't be re-elected.

Introduction

2004-09-02T13:20:00.000-07:00

I have always thought I should keep a journal, but I have never been able to get motivated to start. This blog is going to be my attempt to keep track of some thoughts.