In their quest to achieve the emotional intelligence of a 13 year old girl, the conservative base are now begging Chris Christie to get in the race. He's mulling it over but honestly he should just say no. His chances will be better in 2016 when the race is wide open and (hopefully) the apocalyptic cult has been returned to the right wing blogshpere and short wave radio.
They are going to be sick of him in a week anyway. He's for civil unions, gun control and thinks that climate change is man made. That's three big strikes right there. He also supported the Islamic education center that was built a few blocks from the new WTC (B to the W, this is now up and running without a peep from anyone on the right...surprise, surprise). The other thing to consider is that he is very overweight. Many people will look at him and then look at Obama and say, "I'm not voting for the fat guy."
The simple fact is that if Jesus Christ was the GOP nominee, they'd hate him in a week as well. Bill Maher noted this last Friday night.
One has to wonder why these people should be put in charge when they can't seem to make up their mind about anything.
Sunday, October 02, 2011
Saturday, October 01, 2011
They Didn't Get The Memo
I guess GOP Senator Mark Kirk of Illinois and GOP Representative Peter King of New York didn't get the memo on being against everything Obama.
On a recent trip to Libya, Senator Kirk had this to say about the president.
This is a victory for the United States military, for our British and French allies, for NATO, for the president of the United States, but most importantly for the Libyan people. Unquestioned kudos goes to the president and his team, but the challenges are not over yet.
This was a success by President Obama and his team. Any military conflict has ups or downs or things you might have done differently … but we have all the makings of a very strong U.S. ally in Libya.
And this from Representative King on the Al-Awlaki killing.
The killing of al-Awlaki is a tremendous tribute to Pres Obama & the men and women of our intelligence community.
You're damn right on both counts, boys, Kudos to both of you for daring to be "impure."
On a recent trip to Libya, Senator Kirk had this to say about the president.
This is a victory for the United States military, for our British and French allies, for NATO, for the president of the United States, but most importantly for the Libyan people. Unquestioned kudos goes to the president and his team, but the challenges are not over yet.
This was a success by President Obama and his team. Any military conflict has ups or downs or things you might have done differently … but we have all the makings of a very strong U.S. ally in Libya.
And this from Representative King on the Al-Awlaki killing.
The killing of al-Awlaki is a tremendous tribute to Pres Obama & the men and women of our intelligence community.
You're damn right on both counts, boys, Kudos to both of you for daring to be "impure."
Friday, September 30, 2011
Well Done
When it comes to the issue of national security, President Obama has proven (once again) that he has been enormously effective in eliminating threats to this nation. In a significant new blow to al-Qaida, U.S. airstrikes in Yemen on Friday killed Anwar al-Awlaki, an American militant cleric who became a prominent figure in the terror network's most dangerous branch.
Al-Awlaki was directly responsible for planning the Christmas bomb attack that was foiled in 2009. Al-Awlaki had also exchanged up to 20 emails with U.S. Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, the man behind the Ft. Hood rampage. Hasan initiated the contacts, drawn by al-Awlaki's Internet sermons, and approached him for religious advice.
This is one of the major reasons I voted for President Obama. The strategy by the Bush Administration against Al Qaeda was clearly the wrong one. This new strategy that combines intelligence gathering with surgical attacks has dealt Al Qaeda several serious blows since President Obama took office. It's ability to carry out any sort of significant attacks has been greatly marginalized and it's due the shift in policy.
Al-Awlaki was directly responsible for planning the Christmas bomb attack that was foiled in 2009. Al-Awlaki had also exchanged up to 20 emails with U.S. Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, the man behind the Ft. Hood rampage. Hasan initiated the contacts, drawn by al-Awlaki's Internet sermons, and approached him for religious advice.
This is one of the major reasons I voted for President Obama. The strategy by the Bush Administration against Al Qaeda was clearly the wrong one. This new strategy that combines intelligence gathering with surgical attacks has dealt Al Qaeda several serious blows since President Obama took office. It's ability to carry out any sort of significant attacks has been greatly marginalized and it's due the shift in policy.
Vaccines vs. Power Plants
Michele Bachmann raised a lot of questions -- mostly about her competence and judgment -- when she repeated a claim from "a woman in the crowd" who said that the HPV vaccine made her 12-year-old daughter retarded. Did Bachmann simply make this person up? She can't produce the woman, even though two scientists have offered a substantial reward for the girl's medical records.
Bachmann does voice a concern about vaccines that many people have. In 1998 a study by British doctor Andrew Wakefield et al. claimed a link between the MMR vaccine and autism. An American doctor, Mark Geier, also published several papers that claimed vaccines caused autism. Did these studies have any validity?
The preservative thimerosal, which has been used in vaccines since the 1930s, is an organic mercury compound. Mercury is known to cause birth defects and mental retardation. Mercury poisoning causes brain damage in adults as well. For this reason mercury is no longer used in dental amalgams. The phrase "mad as a hatter" has its origins in history -- hatters used mercury to cure felt. So it wasn't a stretch for Geier to propose that organic mercury could cause autism. But other scientists believed the concentration of thimerosal was too small to affect children vaccinated at that time in their development.
As it turns out, Wakefield falsified data for his paper, and the Lancet withdrew it in 2010. There was no link proved between autism and the MMR vaccine. Geier's medical license was suspended in 2011, for endangering the lives of autistic children with questionable (and expensive) treatments.
But, just to be on the safe side, the use of thimerosal in child vaccines was ended in 2001 (it's still used in some flu vaccines). It's also not used in Gardasil, the HPV vaccine used in Texas. The incidence of autism since thimerosal was removed from childhood vaccines has continued to climb since then, so it's fairly certain that it has little or nothing to do with autism.
Bachmann does voice a concern about vaccines that many people have. In 1998 a study by British doctor Andrew Wakefield et al. claimed a link between the MMR vaccine and autism. An American doctor, Mark Geier, also published several papers that claimed vaccines caused autism. Did these studies have any validity?
The preservative thimerosal, which has been used in vaccines since the 1930s, is an organic mercury compound. Mercury is known to cause birth defects and mental retardation. Mercury poisoning causes brain damage in adults as well. For this reason mercury is no longer used in dental amalgams. The phrase "mad as a hatter" has its origins in history -- hatters used mercury to cure felt. So it wasn't a stretch for Geier to propose that organic mercury could cause autism. But other scientists believed the concentration of thimerosal was too small to affect children vaccinated at that time in their development.
As it turns out, Wakefield falsified data for his paper, and the Lancet withdrew it in 2010. There was no link proved between autism and the MMR vaccine. Geier's medical license was suspended in 2011, for endangering the lives of autistic children with questionable (and expensive) treatments.
But, just to be on the safe side, the use of thimerosal in child vaccines was ended in 2001 (it's still used in some flu vaccines). It's also not used in Gardasil, the HPV vaccine used in Texas. The incidence of autism since thimerosal was removed from childhood vaccines has continued to climb since then, so it's fairly certain that it has little or nothing to do with autism.
The largest source of mercury that children are exposed to are emissions from coal-fired power plants and waste incinerators. Mercury is emitted into our air, lakes, rivers and seas, where it becomes concentrated in animals. People who eat fish and shellfish can accumulate potentially harmful levels of mercury in their bodies. That's why pregnant women, women trying to get pregnant, and nursing mothers are advised not to eat tuna, fish and shellfish, and everyone is advised to limit their intake of seafood with high concentrations of mercury.
(Interestingly, Bachmann has also campaigned against compact fluorescent light bulbs in part because they contain mercury.)
Bachmann did raise legitimate questions about Texas governor Rick Perry's financial and political ties to the pharmaceutical industry. One of his former aides was a lobbyist for the drug company that provided the vaccine to Texas, which Perry decreed all girls be vaccinated with, a decision that the Texas legislature overturned before it went into effect.
But this isn't really just about Michele Bachmann. She and the entire Republican Party are now on a tear about regulation. They oppose "costly" regulations on coal-fired power plants that limit mercury emissions by requiring smokestack scrubbers and dictate the quality of coal burned.
Why do Republicans like Bachmann so often lend credence to discredited studies like Wakefield's, and rumor and innuendo, while completely dismissing the far greater and well-documented dangers from toxins like fine particulates, ozone, mercury, lead and benzene released into the environment by energy industries? Why do Republicans so often deride recycling programs that keep toxins like lead and mercury out of the environment and reduce the need for us to mine these heavy metals?
All the other Republican candidates pounced on Perry to decry the state mandate for the vaccine, apparently objecting that children be forced to receive injections of a substance that the vaccine doesn't actually contain.
But Texas parents would have been able to opt out of the vaccine program if they chose. Sadly, the only the way the rest of us can opt out of ingesting the toxic emissions the Republicans want to prevent the EPA from regulating is to stop breathing, eating and drinking.
So, what's behind the increase in the autism rate? It's a non-trivial issue. One part is that it's simply being diagnosed more frequently: parents often lobby for an autism or ADHD diagnosis to get special treatment for their kids. Asperger's Syndrome, a mild form of autism, is sometimes called the Geek Syndrome. Some would argue that Asperger's and milder ADHD not real diagnoses, they're just personality types. Another theory is that children of older fathers are more prone to autism, and Americans are having children at an older age. But most theories posit that autism is due to some kind of environmental insult. One theory links pesticides to autism and another one links them ADHD. Others variously blame rain, unemotional mothers, lack of vitamin D, mercury, lead, excessive hygiene, and so on. Short answer: who knows?
One thing we know for certain is that even minute concentrations of chemicals and hormones can disrupt the fetus at critical stages of development. Toxins that don't hurt adults can cause tragic birth defects. If the Republican Party is really the pro-life party, how can they so cavalier about exposing those precious children to environmental toxins?
Thursday, September 29, 2011
Six Questions
I came across this piece in my local paper regarding climate change. The six questions that Lenfestey proposes we ask political candidates could really be asked of anyone. So I've decided to put these to my readers and see what kind of responses I get.
1. Do you understand the science of climate change?
Obviously, some people don't.
2. Are you aware that President George W. Bush's administration found the evidence for climate change convincing? Have you read his report, "Scientific Assessment of the Effects of Global Change on the United States," published in 2008?
Actually, I haven't. Has anyone out there read it?
3. Are you aware that in May 2011, the nation's most esteemed scientific body, the National Research Council, reaffirmed the international scientific consensus on the human causes of climate change and made clear that sustained effort must begin immediately to deal with those adverse consequences? That the question of climate change is "settled science," and the impacts are already evident around us?
Well, this has got to be the toughest nut to swallow for the deniers. What exactly do you say to these findings?
4. If you do not accept the conclusions of these careful scientific assessments, what scientists do you listen to? What reports have they issued that you find more convincing? Where do you get the information that you find more persuasive?
Yes, which ones? No right wing blogs. No oil company shills. Let's see the reputable scientists who have examined the data and reached a different conclusion.
5. Let me put this another way. Texas is on fire. Pennsylvania faces record floods. Joplin, Mo., is reeling from epic tornados. Shorelines are eroding in the Carolinas. None of these events can be directly blamed on climate change, but all are predicted by known climate-change trends.
Such events will only worsen if the climate continues to warm, as it will under business-as-usual scenarios. Do you support a business-as-usual model or do you have a plan to stem the trend toward a hotter, more volatile planet?
Well, I can answer that for those on the right. Do nothing. It's the same solution they have for health care.
6. Candidates Perry and Bachmann: Both of you have said the Environmental Protection Agency is a major problem in America, and you would seek to eliminate it if elected, particularly its mandate, affirmed by the Supreme Court, to regulate carbon emissions.
How then would you address the flaw in private markets that attaches no economic value to waste that falls as a burden on the general population -- for example, sewers that flow into waters that cross state lines, or carbon wastes that warm the atmosphere around the world? Without the EPA, how would you propose to address pollutants that cross state and international boundaries?
I'm very interested in the answers to this last one...if there are any. Honestly, I don't think there are because the right doesn't think this is a problem. Like many problems that require federal government solutions, they just turn away and pretend it doesn't exist and completely rip the left for trying to do anything.
They want them to fail because having no solution is a failure from the very beginning. And we can't let them "win" now, can we?
1. Do you understand the science of climate change?
Obviously, some people don't.
2. Are you aware that President George W. Bush's administration found the evidence for climate change convincing? Have you read his report, "Scientific Assessment of the Effects of Global Change on the United States," published in 2008?
Actually, I haven't. Has anyone out there read it?
3. Are you aware that in May 2011, the nation's most esteemed scientific body, the National Research Council, reaffirmed the international scientific consensus on the human causes of climate change and made clear that sustained effort must begin immediately to deal with those adverse consequences? That the question of climate change is "settled science," and the impacts are already evident around us?
Well, this has got to be the toughest nut to swallow for the deniers. What exactly do you say to these findings?
4. If you do not accept the conclusions of these careful scientific assessments, what scientists do you listen to? What reports have they issued that you find more convincing? Where do you get the information that you find more persuasive?
Yes, which ones? No right wing blogs. No oil company shills. Let's see the reputable scientists who have examined the data and reached a different conclusion.
5. Let me put this another way. Texas is on fire. Pennsylvania faces record floods. Joplin, Mo., is reeling from epic tornados. Shorelines are eroding in the Carolinas. None of these events can be directly blamed on climate change, but all are predicted by known climate-change trends.
Such events will only worsen if the climate continues to warm, as it will under business-as-usual scenarios. Do you support a business-as-usual model or do you have a plan to stem the trend toward a hotter, more volatile planet?
Well, I can answer that for those on the right. Do nothing. It's the same solution they have for health care.
6. Candidates Perry and Bachmann: Both of you have said the Environmental Protection Agency is a major problem in America, and you would seek to eliminate it if elected, particularly its mandate, affirmed by the Supreme Court, to regulate carbon emissions.
How then would you address the flaw in private markets that attaches no economic value to waste that falls as a burden on the general population -- for example, sewers that flow into waters that cross state lines, or carbon wastes that warm the atmosphere around the world? Without the EPA, how would you propose to address pollutants that cross state and international boundaries?
I'm very interested in the answers to this last one...if there are any. Honestly, I don't think there are because the right doesn't think this is a problem. Like many problems that require federal government solutions, they just turn away and pretend it doesn't exist and completely rip the left for trying to do anything.
They want them to fail because having no solution is a failure from the very beginning. And we can't let them "win" now, can we?
Wednesday, September 28, 2011
Obama Jobs Plan=Thumbs Up
Here is a consensus on the American Jobs Act.
President Barack Obama’s $447 billion jobs plan would help avoid a return to recession by maintaining growth and pushing down the unemployment rate next year, according to economists surveyed by Bloomberg News.
The legislation, submitted to Congress this month, would increase gross domestic product by 0.6 percent next year and add or keep 275,000 workers on payrolls, the median estimates in the survey of 34 economists showed. The program would also lower the jobless rate by 0.2 percentage point in 2012, economists said.
So, again, I must ask...which is more important: the economy or making the president a one termer?
President Barack Obama’s $447 billion jobs plan would help avoid a return to recession by maintaining growth and pushing down the unemployment rate next year, according to economists surveyed by Bloomberg News.
The legislation, submitted to Congress this month, would increase gross domestic product by 0.6 percent next year and add or keep 275,000 workers on payrolls, the median estimates in the survey of 34 economists showed. The program would also lower the jobless rate by 0.2 percentage point in 2012, economists said.
So, again, I must ask...which is more important: the economy or making the president a one termer?
Not Qualified
As we continue to witness new depths of conservative ADD in their nomination process, I think it's important to note these words.
You have to feel in your heart and in your mind that you’re ready for the presidency. And there are lots of people who will run just because the opportunity presents itself.
That’s not a reason to be president of the United States. You have to believe in your heart and in your soul and in your mind that you are ready and I don’t believe that about myself right now. So that’s why I said I won’t run and I can’t imagine that changing.
That's current Belle of the Ball, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, from last February. I'd take him at his word. He's not qualified at all.
He has also stated many times that he is not running. Yet our country, according to a woman in the audience at Christie's Reagan library speech yesterday, "can't take four more years of this" so Christie must jump in and save us. Oh, Lawdy! Four more years of what, exactly? Our country being eroded due to Republican extremism? Oops! I forgot...#3 Projection/Flipping....it's all Obama's fault!
Even if Christie does get in the race, the base would tire of him just like they have with all the rest of the candidates. Why? Because they aren't capable of putting together coherent and detailed policy. All they really have is "We have a spending problem" combined with the relentless pursuit of proving Democrats wrong in the most childishly dishonest fashion. Once Christie talks of compromise (as he has already done), they'll hate him too and then it will be on to someone else.
The simple fact that the Republican Party is behaving this way should raise some serious red flags. What exactly is their agenda?
You have to feel in your heart and in your mind that you’re ready for the presidency. And there are lots of people who will run just because the opportunity presents itself.
That’s not a reason to be president of the United States. You have to believe in your heart and in your soul and in your mind that you are ready and I don’t believe that about myself right now. So that’s why I said I won’t run and I can’t imagine that changing.
That's current Belle of the Ball, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, from last February. I'd take him at his word. He's not qualified at all.
He has also stated many times that he is not running. Yet our country, according to a woman in the audience at Christie's Reagan library speech yesterday, "can't take four more years of this" so Christie must jump in and save us. Oh, Lawdy! Four more years of what, exactly? Our country being eroded due to Republican extremism? Oops! I forgot...#3 Projection/Flipping....it's all Obama's fault!
Even if Christie does get in the race, the base would tire of him just like they have with all the rest of the candidates. Why? Because they aren't capable of putting together coherent and detailed policy. All they really have is "We have a spending problem" combined with the relentless pursuit of proving Democrats wrong in the most childishly dishonest fashion. Once Christie talks of compromise (as he has already done), they'll hate him too and then it will be on to someone else.
The simple fact that the Republican Party is behaving this way should raise some serious red flags. What exactly is their agenda?
Tuesday, September 27, 2011
Little Brother Is Watching, and Won't Stop
Chuck Schumer is on a rampage against OnStar. He's calling for an investigation into OnStar's actions after their announcement that they would continue to track former customers even after they canceled their subscriptions. From Wired:
In the United States, nothing really stops companies like Yahoo, Google or Microsoft from selling your query history, except the threat of angry customers. Facebook is about to start telling everyone you know about everything you do everywhere. How long before these companies decide to start monetizing this information? Many states already make millions of dollars selling drivers license information to insurance companies, companies screening job applicants and companies like LexisNexus and ChoicePoint Services, Inc.
ChoicePoint is a private espionage agency that become notorious when it erroneously scrubbed thousands of African-American voters from the voter rolls in Florida before the 2000 presidential election.
But it's worse than this. Pretty much any company you do business with has sensitive personal information on you, especially the banks issuing your credit cards. Law enforcement has to get a warrant to get this information, but what is really stopping the companies from selling the information to anyone who's willing to pay for it? They're supposed to tell you what they're doing in their privacy policies, but these can be written ambiguously and almost no one reads or understands those things. And even if they're not actively hawking it, how many thousands of employees at these credit card companies can browse your purchase history at their whim? How is access to this history controlled? Are these accesses logged, so they can track down employees who are getting this information on the sly and selling it to your ex-wife's lawyer?
We don't really know, because companies don't have to report the details on their activities when we ask them about it. They can claim that their business practices are protected information, and divulging them would hurt their competitiveness and put them at a disadvantage.
We can find out that states are selling our drivers license information because we run the states, and have the right to know what our government is doing. But companies? Ironically, we have no absolute right to find out what a private business is doing with our private information.
OnStar began e-mailing customers Monday about its update to the privacy policy, which grants OnStar the right to sell that GPS-derived data in an anonymized format.People are always so worried about government intrusion into their privacy, but the real threat is companies like OnStar. Nothing except their "privacy policy" actually stops them from selling non-anonymized data to your ex-wife's divorce lawyer.
In the United States, nothing really stops companies like Yahoo, Google or Microsoft from selling your query history, except the threat of angry customers. Facebook is about to start telling everyone you know about everything you do everywhere. How long before these companies decide to start monetizing this information? Many states already make millions of dollars selling drivers license information to insurance companies, companies screening job applicants and companies like LexisNexus and ChoicePoint Services, Inc.
ChoicePoint is a private espionage agency that become notorious when it erroneously scrubbed thousands of African-American voters from the voter rolls in Florida before the 2000 presidential election.
But it's worse than this. Pretty much any company you do business with has sensitive personal information on you, especially the banks issuing your credit cards. Law enforcement has to get a warrant to get this information, but what is really stopping the companies from selling the information to anyone who's willing to pay for it? They're supposed to tell you what they're doing in their privacy policies, but these can be written ambiguously and almost no one reads or understands those things. And even if they're not actively hawking it, how many thousands of employees at these credit card companies can browse your purchase history at their whim? How is access to this history controlled? Are these accesses logged, so they can track down employees who are getting this information on the sly and selling it to your ex-wife's lawyer?
We don't really know, because companies don't have to report the details on their activities when we ask them about it. They can claim that their business practices are protected information, and divulging them would hurt their competitiveness and put them at a disadvantage.
We can find out that states are selling our drivers license information because we run the states, and have the right to know what our government is doing. But companies? Ironically, we have no absolute right to find out what a private business is doing with our private information.
Monday, September 26, 2011
And The GOP Nominee Is...
After the recent butt rip of Rick Perry, I've come to the conclusion that conservatives don't want anyone to be president. Of course, this makes sense on the one hand because they'd rather have the private sector run everything.
But their continual excitement followed quickly by derision and dismissal of every candidate that jumps into the race really has me wondering...who exactly do they want? At this point, I think it's just NOT OBAMA. This makes perfect sense to me in a whole "proving the opposition wrong" and "winning the argument" kind of way.
Or maybe it's that they have this fantastical vision of their perfect candidate...a former CEO...wealthy...a "job creator"...perhaps an ex-Governor from the South...a vehement hater of all social programs...someone who wants to privatize education and increase defense spending...pro life...pro death penalty...pro gun...pro Bible...pro Wall Street...Health care repealer...and someone who will benignly neglect the population of the country.
Does such a person exist?
But their continual excitement followed quickly by derision and dismissal of every candidate that jumps into the race really has me wondering...who exactly do they want? At this point, I think it's just NOT OBAMA. This makes perfect sense to me in a whole "proving the opposition wrong" and "winning the argument" kind of way.
Or maybe it's that they have this fantastical vision of their perfect candidate...a former CEO...wealthy...a "job creator"...perhaps an ex-Governor from the South...a vehement hater of all social programs...someone who wants to privatize education and increase defense spending...pro life...pro death penalty...pro gun...pro Bible...pro Wall Street...Health care repealer...and someone who will benignly neglect the population of the country.
Does such a person exist?
Sunday, September 25, 2011
It's The Audience, Stupid
Forget about the candidates. The story so far in the race for the 2012 GOP nomination is the audience. First, we had the cheers at over 200 hundred executions. Then we had the shouts of "Yeah" to letting a man without insurance die. Now we have this.
Booing a solider who is serving our country simply because he is gay?
From now on, the networks who run these debates should just turn the cameras on the audience and let the world see the conservative base in action.
Booing a solider who is serving our country simply because he is gay?
From now on, the networks who run these debates should just turn the cameras on the audience and let the world see the conservative base in action.
Saturday, September 24, 2011
Death But No Taxes
One of the mantras of Rick Perry is that government is bureaucratic, incompetent, corrupt, unwise, foolish and self-serving. Perry, who was ghoulishly cheered at the Tea Party debate when Wolf Blitzer mentioned that he had presided over 230-odd executions, thinks we can't trust government bureaucrats to regulate carcinogenic benzene emissions from oil refineries or mercury emissions from coal plants in order to save lives.
But he thinks those same bureaucrats can be trusted to fairly administer the death penalty. Yeah, that's right. The same state and federal governments that are too incompetent to regulate slaughterhouses should be able to kill you.
On Wednesday Troy Davis was executed in Georgia for the murder of police officer Mark McPhail. Davis became a cause celebre because of the doubt surrounding his conviction. There wasn't any hard evidence and most of the eyewitnesses recanted their testimony, saying that they couldn't really tell who did the shooting, but that the cops had pressured them into fingering Davis.
And this isn't an isolated case. DNA testing techniques have improved and more than a hundred people have been proved innocent and released from death row since 1973. There are literally thousands of cases where cops have lied, coerced witnesses and planted evidence; prosecutors have knowingly used perjured testimony, hid evidence from defense attorneys and prosecuted innocent people in order to seem tough on crime; and judges have accepted bribes or knowingly allowed travesties of justice to improve their chances of reelection.
The basis of our legal system is that we are innocent until proved guilty. This tradition goes back to English common law, and Blackstone's formulation: "Better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer."
But it seems that people like Perry would rather see ten innocent persons executed than get blamed for releasing a prisoner who later commits a crime. That happened to Mike Huckabee twice: he pardoned Wayne DuMond in 1999, who later raped and killed a woman, and Maurice Clemmons in 2000, who killed four police officers in 2009. Mike Huckabee's aspirations to become present are now dead.
I don't know the legal and evidentiary details of the Huckabee cases, and whether these two men should have been released. But I do know one consideration that Huckabee should never have used: their jailhouse professions of Christian faith. Mouthing platitudes about Jesus is the easiest way to feign rehabilitation, but outward piety is no indication of peaceful intent. Osama bin Laden spouted volumes about god.
I'm no sucker for a sob story about a bad childhood, inner rage, societal injustice, too many Twinkies or God's Will. The death penalty is wrong, not because it's immoral or unethical, but because it's irrevocable. Since there's always going to be some kind of doubt, or some kind of mitigating circumstance, it just doesn't make sense to execute criminals.
I personally give no credence to the idea that crazy or mentally deficient people shouldn't be executed. If you kill people it doesn't matter if you were impaired, or crazy or sane: you kill people. You're dangerous, and if you're permanently mentally impaired you always will be dangerous. Yeah, Jared Loughner is crazy. But he killed or wounded a dozen people in front of dozens of other people and was caught red-handed. If anyone should be executed, it's him. But he's crazy and was operating under diminished capacity, so in our system he's not a candidate for the death penalty. The problem is, anyone who intentionally kills innocent people is mentally ill: by definition they're psychopaths.
Someone who gets drunks and kills someone in a bar fight, or runs over a pedestrian with their car, is far more dangerous to society at large than a woman who methodically poisons her husband for insurance money. Yet the drunk will get a few years in jail for manslaughter in Texas, while the black widow will get the needle.
Because our justice system is so fraught with human frailties -- laziness, poor judgment, prejudice, ambition, self-promotion -- the government has no business killing people. Judgments over which cases should be prosecuted as capital crimes and whether extenuating circumstances should mitigate the punishment can never be uniformly applied by thousands of different with their own prejudices and hangups. If someone is thrown in the slammer for life prosecutorial errors can be rectified, some semblance of justice can prevail and compensation can be made to the unjustly convicted. But there's no fixing dead.
Why aren't advocates of execution worried about misapplication of the death penalty? I speculate that the logic runs like this. Troy Davis might have been innocent of the killing he was executed for, but he'd had other problems with the legal system. Advocates apparently assume Davis was surely guilty of something else, so what's the big deal?
The big deal is this: when you execute the wrong person the hunt for the real killer ends. The police, prosecutors and judges involved will fight any attempts to reopen these cases because it calls into question their competence and integrity.
The death penalty is supposed to bring closure to victim's friends and relatives. But in the case of Mark McPhail's murder, there will always be lingering doubts that justice was truly done.
It also leaves the murderer free to kill again, undermining one of the core justifications of the death penalty: a deterrent to future murders.
Deterrence is the last refuge of death penalty advocates. They are convinced that the only thing stopping a plague of murder is the prospect of execution. But the numbers don't hold up: murder rates are more than four times higher in Texas than they are in Vermont, which doesn't have the death penalty. In fact, in 2010 the murder rate in death penalty states was 4.6 per 100,000 and only 2.9 in non-death penalty states. It's hard to pin down cause and effect here, but the death penalty is having very little deterrent effect in Texas and Louisiana, a death penalty state with a murder rate ten times higher than Vermont.
Which brings us to Lawrence Russell Brewer, who was also executed on Wednesday. Brewer was a white supremacist who with two buddies dragged a black man, James Byrd, Jr., to his death in East Texas. It was a particular grisly crime, in which the victim's body was first thought to be animal road kill.
Obviously Brewer was undeterred by the death penalty. He was a stupid racist who apparently thought blacks were subhuman and that he'd never get caught. And that's the problem. People who commit murder usually do so in the heat of the moment. They're drunk, high, deluded, enraged, or just stupid, and they're in no condition to consider the consequences. Or they're criminals who have in fact considered the consequences, and decided that murder was their best option: "If I leave this witness alive, he'll finger me and I'll go to jail. If I kill him he won't be able to testify and I might get away."
But I don't know. Maybe death penalty advocates really are deterred from committing crimes by the threat of punishment. Me, I don't commit murder or steal because it's wrong and it hurts people. But there are people who insist that they have the right to carry concealed and loaded weapons in public, and are more than willing to shoot anyone they fee threatened by, or steps on their lawn or knocks on their front door uninvited. Are those people so close to committing murder that the severity of the punishment is the only thing stopping them?
People like Perry should be the first in line to end the overreaching grasp of a corrupt and inept governments that have convicted so many innocent people. Forget about picayune legal technicalities and ask yourself a moral question: how can government have the power to take our lives if it doesn't even have the right to save our lives by imposing a fine if we refuse to buy health insurance?
But he thinks those same bureaucrats can be trusted to fairly administer the death penalty. Yeah, that's right. The same state and federal governments that are too incompetent to regulate slaughterhouses should be able to kill you.
On Wednesday Troy Davis was executed in Georgia for the murder of police officer Mark McPhail. Davis became a cause celebre because of the doubt surrounding his conviction. There wasn't any hard evidence and most of the eyewitnesses recanted their testimony, saying that they couldn't really tell who did the shooting, but that the cops had pressured them into fingering Davis.
And this isn't an isolated case. DNA testing techniques have improved and more than a hundred people have been proved innocent and released from death row since 1973. There are literally thousands of cases where cops have lied, coerced witnesses and planted evidence; prosecutors have knowingly used perjured testimony, hid evidence from defense attorneys and prosecuted innocent people in order to seem tough on crime; and judges have accepted bribes or knowingly allowed travesties of justice to improve their chances of reelection.
The basis of our legal system is that we are innocent until proved guilty. This tradition goes back to English common law, and Blackstone's formulation: "Better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer."
But it seems that people like Perry would rather see ten innocent persons executed than get blamed for releasing a prisoner who later commits a crime. That happened to Mike Huckabee twice: he pardoned Wayne DuMond in 1999, who later raped and killed a woman, and Maurice Clemmons in 2000, who killed four police officers in 2009. Mike Huckabee's aspirations to become present are now dead.
I don't know the legal and evidentiary details of the Huckabee cases, and whether these two men should have been released. But I do know one consideration that Huckabee should never have used: their jailhouse professions of Christian faith. Mouthing platitudes about Jesus is the easiest way to feign rehabilitation, but outward piety is no indication of peaceful intent. Osama bin Laden spouted volumes about god.
I'm no sucker for a sob story about a bad childhood, inner rage, societal injustice, too many Twinkies or God's Will. The death penalty is wrong, not because it's immoral or unethical, but because it's irrevocable. Since there's always going to be some kind of doubt, or some kind of mitigating circumstance, it just doesn't make sense to execute criminals.
I personally give no credence to the idea that crazy or mentally deficient people shouldn't be executed. If you kill people it doesn't matter if you were impaired, or crazy or sane: you kill people. You're dangerous, and if you're permanently mentally impaired you always will be dangerous. Yeah, Jared Loughner is crazy. But he killed or wounded a dozen people in front of dozens of other people and was caught red-handed. If anyone should be executed, it's him. But he's crazy and was operating under diminished capacity, so in our system he's not a candidate for the death penalty. The problem is, anyone who intentionally kills innocent people is mentally ill: by definition they're psychopaths.
Someone who gets drunks and kills someone in a bar fight, or runs over a pedestrian with their car, is far more dangerous to society at large than a woman who methodically poisons her husband for insurance money. Yet the drunk will get a few years in jail for manslaughter in Texas, while the black widow will get the needle.
Because our justice system is so fraught with human frailties -- laziness, poor judgment, prejudice, ambition, self-promotion -- the government has no business killing people. Judgments over which cases should be prosecuted as capital crimes and whether extenuating circumstances should mitigate the punishment can never be uniformly applied by thousands of different with their own prejudices and hangups. If someone is thrown in the slammer for life prosecutorial errors can be rectified, some semblance of justice can prevail and compensation can be made to the unjustly convicted. But there's no fixing dead.
Why aren't advocates of execution worried about misapplication of the death penalty? I speculate that the logic runs like this. Troy Davis might have been innocent of the killing he was executed for, but he'd had other problems with the legal system. Advocates apparently assume Davis was surely guilty of something else, so what's the big deal?
The big deal is this: when you execute the wrong person the hunt for the real killer ends. The police, prosecutors and judges involved will fight any attempts to reopen these cases because it calls into question their competence and integrity.
The death penalty is supposed to bring closure to victim's friends and relatives. But in the case of Mark McPhail's murder, there will always be lingering doubts that justice was truly done.
It also leaves the murderer free to kill again, undermining one of the core justifications of the death penalty: a deterrent to future murders.
Deterrence is the last refuge of death penalty advocates. They are convinced that the only thing stopping a plague of murder is the prospect of execution. But the numbers don't hold up: murder rates are more than four times higher in Texas than they are in Vermont, which doesn't have the death penalty. In fact, in 2010 the murder rate in death penalty states was 4.6 per 100,000 and only 2.9 in non-death penalty states. It's hard to pin down cause and effect here, but the death penalty is having very little deterrent effect in Texas and Louisiana, a death penalty state with a murder rate ten times higher than Vermont.
Which brings us to Lawrence Russell Brewer, who was also executed on Wednesday. Brewer was a white supremacist who with two buddies dragged a black man, James Byrd, Jr., to his death in East Texas. It was a particular grisly crime, in which the victim's body was first thought to be animal road kill.
Obviously Brewer was undeterred by the death penalty. He was a stupid racist who apparently thought blacks were subhuman and that he'd never get caught. And that's the problem. People who commit murder usually do so in the heat of the moment. They're drunk, high, deluded, enraged, or just stupid, and they're in no condition to consider the consequences. Or they're criminals who have in fact considered the consequences, and decided that murder was their best option: "If I leave this witness alive, he'll finger me and I'll go to jail. If I kill him he won't be able to testify and I might get away."
But I don't know. Maybe death penalty advocates really are deterred from committing crimes by the threat of punishment. Me, I don't commit murder or steal because it's wrong and it hurts people. But there are people who insist that they have the right to carry concealed and loaded weapons in public, and are more than willing to shoot anyone they fee threatened by, or steps on their lawn or knocks on their front door uninvited. Are those people so close to committing murder that the severity of the punishment is the only thing stopping them?
People like Perry should be the first in line to end the overreaching grasp of a corrupt and inept governments that have convicted so many innocent people. Forget about picayune legal technicalities and ask yourself a moral question: how can government have the power to take our lives if it doesn't even have the right to save our lives by imposing a fine if we refuse to buy health insurance?
Friday, September 23, 2011
A New Solution for Unemployment
Republicans now have three knee-jerk responses to anything President Obama says: cut spending, cut taxes, cut regulations. The problem the nation is facing, though, is unemployment.
Cutting government spending means cutting the government workforce, which puts more people out there looking for jobs. Those furloughed government workers compete with unemployed private sector employees, creating more unemployment and a glut of labor, which drives down wages, reduces our standard of living and damages the retail sector, which is the engine of our economy.
Cutting taxes has been tried, and it doesn't work. Taxes are at their lowest in 50 years, and corporations are still sending jobs overseas rather than hire Americans. Why would they build factories in the United States when they can pay Chinese workers $12 a day? Companies preferentially hire immigrants for jobs in the United States (especially in programming and engineering) because these legal immigrants will work for less. And that's not even counting the millions of illegal immigrants that thousands of companies are still employing.
Cutting regulations is the latest mantra. But what effect does it have on employment? One study examined this, and found that it's minimal. Regulations create jobs in addition to destroying them -- regulators are needed and people are needed to perform the pollution abatement. Regulations that require mining operations to clean up and restore the area create jobs in forest and landscape management and toxic waste disposal.
One thing that Republicans don't mention is that companies are always involved in writing the regulations for their industries, especially during the Bush years. Many regulations are put in place to entrench the existing players and make it more difficult for new startups to compete.
What the study didn't examine is the other savings that the regulations have. Environmental regulations, in particular, are imposed specifically to reduce the number of deaths due to cancer, respiratory disease, heart disease, as well as birth defects. Since medical costs these days are so high, and Medicare and Medicaid wind up paying the bills for the sickest people, the health consequences of environmental regulations should be explicitly considered.
EPA did exactly that for the ozone rule that Obama recently deferred:
I was at this point in this line of reasoning when I finally saw the light: the true genius of the Republican stance against regulation. Regulation saves lives. Living people need jobs. Eliminate all regulation and more people die. Bingo! Unemployment problem solved!
Follow the logic: premature deaths from pollution-induced disease, workplace injuries, poorly designed products, and tainted food are actually a three-fold blessing:
1) Dead people reduce the unemployment problem in the most direct fashion possible.
2) Sick people need medical care, increasing the number of jobs needed in health care -- the fastest growing sector of the economy. Injured people sue, providing more jobs in the legal and private eye fields.
3) Dead people increase the number of jobs required in the burgeoning fields of mortuary science, gravedigging and cemetery maintenance.
It's not all that far-fetched an argument. It's the same one Philip Morris made when they said that smoking was a net benefit for the government of the Czech Republic. Cigarettes provide immediate tobacco tax revenue and kill smokers before they can retire, allowing the government to collect payroll taxes from young smokers who would never use that money.
It's ironic that the same people who were screaming about death panels two years ago are now blithely demanding the elimination of environmental regulations that have saved literally millions of lives over the last forty years.
Cutting government spending means cutting the government workforce, which puts more people out there looking for jobs. Those furloughed government workers compete with unemployed private sector employees, creating more unemployment and a glut of labor, which drives down wages, reduces our standard of living and damages the retail sector, which is the engine of our economy.
Cutting taxes has been tried, and it doesn't work. Taxes are at their lowest in 50 years, and corporations are still sending jobs overseas rather than hire Americans. Why would they build factories in the United States when they can pay Chinese workers $12 a day? Companies preferentially hire immigrants for jobs in the United States (especially in programming and engineering) because these legal immigrants will work for less. And that's not even counting the millions of illegal immigrants that thousands of companies are still employing.
Cutting regulations is the latest mantra. But what effect does it have on employment? One study examined this, and found that it's minimal. Regulations create jobs in addition to destroying them -- regulators are needed and people are needed to perform the pollution abatement. Regulations that require mining operations to clean up and restore the area create jobs in forest and landscape management and toxic waste disposal.
One thing that Republicans don't mention is that companies are always involved in writing the regulations for their industries, especially during the Bush years. Many regulations are put in place to entrench the existing players and make it more difficult for new startups to compete.
What the study didn't examine is the other savings that the regulations have. Environmental regulations, in particular, are imposed specifically to reduce the number of deaths due to cancer, respiratory disease, heart disease, as well as birth defects. Since medical costs these days are so high, and Medicare and Medicaid wind up paying the bills for the sickest people, the health consequences of environmental regulations should be explicitly considered.
EPA did exactly that for the ozone rule that Obama recently deferred:
The EPA also noted that while compliance with the new rule would cost polluters between $19 billion and $90 billion a year by 2020, the benefits to human health will be worth between $13 billion and $100 billion every year.In other words, EPA proposed regulations that would save thousands of lives and improve the quality of life for all Americans -- breathing cleaner air -- with an additional net impact of costing between $6 billion or saving $10 billion. Now I'm going to make a Republican assumption: given the nature of health care and the fact that so much of it is under the purview of government (Medicare, Medicaid and the VA), it's a good bet that good old American ingenuity will find cheaper ways to cut ozone emissions than the EPA assumed, and that health care costs will continue to increase unabated. So emissions cuts would likely save us more money across the economy than they would cost.
I was at this point in this line of reasoning when I finally saw the light: the true genius of the Republican stance against regulation. Regulation saves lives. Living people need jobs. Eliminate all regulation and more people die. Bingo! Unemployment problem solved!
Follow the logic: premature deaths from pollution-induced disease, workplace injuries, poorly designed products, and tainted food are actually a three-fold blessing:
1) Dead people reduce the unemployment problem in the most direct fashion possible.
2) Sick people need medical care, increasing the number of jobs needed in health care -- the fastest growing sector of the economy. Injured people sue, providing more jobs in the legal and private eye fields.
3) Dead people increase the number of jobs required in the burgeoning fields of mortuary science, gravedigging and cemetery maintenance.
It's not all that far-fetched an argument. It's the same one Philip Morris made when they said that smoking was a net benefit for the government of the Czech Republic. Cigarettes provide immediate tobacco tax revenue and kill smokers before they can retire, allowing the government to collect payroll taxes from young smokers who would never use that money.
It's ironic that the same people who were screaming about death panels two years ago are now blithely demanding the elimination of environmental regulations that have saved literally millions of lives over the last forty years.
Thursday, September 22, 2011
Do Nothing
Many people are jumping on the president these days for his energy policies (or lack thereof). Politico has an interesting piece on all of this that I found to be an excellent summation.
Essentially, every time he heads down the path of towards sort of energy policy, he gets cracked in the jaw. Nearly all of this is beyond his control anyway (Libya, Tsunami, China's solar drive vs. Solyndra). At this point, I'd say he's pretty gun shy anyway so why not simply give up.
I'm serious. There's not much that he really needs to do. The world's energy market is heading towards green technology whether people (see: the right)like it or not. With the supply of oil and coal limited, the next fifty years are going to see a shift to new forms of technology. As the cost of processing these new forms of energy drops due to more investment from multinational corporations, the free market will do what it always does.
If he feels the urge to do anything, he should simply funnel it all through the Department of Defense. The strides in innovation they are taking are amazing and can easily be supported by defense dollars-something that the GOP would never dare cut.
So, the president should simply like his wounds, learn from his mistakes, and focus on jobs and the economy. Tackling energy has always been a disaster for him and his goals are going to be realized even if he does nothing.
Under pressure from Republicans, he embraced offshore drilling — just weeks before the BP oil spill. He offered support for nuclear power, only to watch a disaster unfold in Japan. Gas price hikes in the spring disrupted his economic message. Feeling the heat from Republicans again, he infuriated his green base by bailing out on a long-promised ozone standard.
Essentially, every time he heads down the path of towards sort of energy policy, he gets cracked in the jaw. Nearly all of this is beyond his control anyway (Libya, Tsunami, China's solar drive vs. Solyndra). At this point, I'd say he's pretty gun shy anyway so why not simply give up.
I'm serious. There's not much that he really needs to do. The world's energy market is heading towards green technology whether people (see: the right)like it or not. With the supply of oil and coal limited, the next fifty years are going to see a shift to new forms of technology. As the cost of processing these new forms of energy drops due to more investment from multinational corporations, the free market will do what it always does.
If he feels the urge to do anything, he should simply funnel it all through the Department of Defense. The strides in innovation they are taking are amazing and can easily be supported by defense dollars-something that the GOP would never dare cut.
So, the president should simply like his wounds, learn from his mistakes, and focus on jobs and the economy. Tackling energy has always been a disaster for him and his goals are going to be realized even if he does nothing.
Wednesday, September 21, 2011
The Choice
The way I see it, conservatives have a choice right now and its pretty clear. President Obama has now presented his jobs plan and his plan to reduce the deficit. Both plans contain items that the GOP has said are needed and will help the economy. The question is...do they pass them? Even just the parts that they support?
Because if they do and the economy improves, the president will do better in next year's election. If the economy gets better, the president will probably win. According to Mitch McConnell, their number one goal is to "make Barack Obama a one term president." I don't think you can both help the economy and make the president a one-termer.
So, I'm putting the question to all my conservative commenters: what would you do? Help the economy by passing even the parts of the plans that you support OR do nothing which will be better for your election chances next year? What matters more to you?
Liberal commenters: please feel free to prognosticate if you so desire.
Because if they do and the economy improves, the president will do better in next year's election. If the economy gets better, the president will probably win. According to Mitch McConnell, their number one goal is to "make Barack Obama a one term president." I don't think you can both help the economy and make the president a one-termer.
So, I'm putting the question to all my conservative commenters: what would you do? Help the economy by passing even the parts of the plans that you support OR do nothing which will be better for your election chances next year? What matters more to you?
Liberal commenters: please feel free to prognosticate if you so desire.
Tuesday, September 20, 2011
Turn Up That Hearing Aid
These days, it seems like the media likes to report on politics in two ways. The first is the WWE mentality which showcases inter-party squabbles based on ridiculous statements and talking points (death panels, Ponzi Schemes etc). The second is the centrist cop-out or the Cult of Both Sides (the dems have their crazies too!).
So, when something happens like the President signing the America Invents Bill which enjoyed broad bipartisan support, the media largely ignores it. Folks, this is a big deal for a couple of reasons.
The first is that this country can actually work together on important issues like this one. It's not all acrimony. The bill was proposed by a very liberal senator and a very conservative one, Patrick Leahy and Lamar Smith, respectively. This is something I need to remind myself as well:) More importantly, the America Invents Bill will help small businesses and start up entrepreneurs turn their ideas into products faster. Thousands of would be patent holders having been clogging up the courts due to the glacial pace of the now former patent system. No longer.
If we are going to seriously compete in the global marketplace, we need to address more concerns like this. We are massively over regulated in some areas. There is no denying this. It's just as much of a fact as the reality that we are under regulated in the financial sector. Passing this bill was a vital first step and it shows that bipartisanship isn't dead, folks.
So, when something happens like the President signing the America Invents Bill which enjoyed broad bipartisan support, the media largely ignores it. Folks, this is a big deal for a couple of reasons.
The first is that this country can actually work together on important issues like this one. It's not all acrimony. The bill was proposed by a very liberal senator and a very conservative one, Patrick Leahy and Lamar Smith, respectively. This is something I need to remind myself as well:) More importantly, the America Invents Bill will help small businesses and start up entrepreneurs turn their ideas into products faster. Thousands of would be patent holders having been clogging up the courts due to the glacial pace of the now former patent system. No longer.
If we are going to seriously compete in the global marketplace, we need to address more concerns like this. We are massively over regulated in some areas. There is no denying this. It's just as much of a fact as the reality that we are under regulated in the financial sector. Passing this bill was a vital first step and it shows that bipartisanship isn't dead, folks.
Monday, September 19, 2011
The Thought That Won't Go Away
The other day this idea popped into my head and it hasn't gone away, sticking with me like a hang nail that just won't drop. After sharing this idea with my wife, she thinks I'm insane (not the first this has happened:)) Yet I can't help but think that it's the best and only solution for our nation during these troubled times.
I think that all liberals, progressives, Democrats, RINOs, and anyone who isn't "pure" should completely and utterly capitulate to the right wing extremists that are currently running the show that is the conservative base in this country.
I mean it. I'm not kidding. All of us who have been trying to reason with these people should hand the keys over to the Apocalyptic Cult/20th Century Europe Authoritarian Regime (copyright: Mike Lofgren and henceforth named Lofgren's Syndrome) and let them run the show for whatever amount of time they see fit to fix this country. The way I see things, this is the only way that we are ever going to break this nonproductive statelemate. I've examined the potential outcomes and here is why I truly think this is the best course of action.
The first possible outcome (very unlikely) is that most or all of their policies and ideas will work. If so, that means a stronger country, right? So, that's a good thing. Unlike their mindset, I'm not so filled with hubris to think that there is no possible way any of what they are proposing will work. Never say never, obviously...
More likely of an outcome, however, is that a few proposals might work to a certain degree but most will fall short of fail outright. At this point, we would see some cracks in their ideological armor and some leaders would likely cave and ask for our help. This is when we would need to stay strong and refuse to help. My hope here is that they would adapt and change, thus dispensing with their intransigence forever. Some, of course, would not admit defeat (due to Lofgren's Syndrome) but this would likely result in some infighting and some sort of breakdown in power which would also result in change. Like the first outcome, this is also a good thing.
Given the fact, though, that so many suffer from severe cases of Lofgren's Syndrome, the most likely outcome, in my opinion, would be disaster. Their eternal pride would reach to a long and painful height before their massive fall. This is why my wife thinks I'm nuts because our country would likely fall apart. But, honestly, this is the only way to be rid of this mindset forever. Faced with the stark reality of a country in ruins, Lofgren's Syndrome, like polio, would be eradicated from our country forever. The rest of us would pick up the pieces and finally be able to solve the problems of reality.
Obviously, destroying something in order to save it is somewhat insane but I don't see any other recourse. Right now, we are wasting a lot of time and there really is no other logical choice. You can't reason with someone who is a true believer. The only way to do so is to do to them what Gorbachev did to us in the late 1980s...deprive them of an enemy. What ever will they do if they have no one to prove wrong and no argument to win?
They'll have to actually govern.
I think that all liberals, progressives, Democrats, RINOs, and anyone who isn't "pure" should completely and utterly capitulate to the right wing extremists that are currently running the show that is the conservative base in this country.
I mean it. I'm not kidding. All of us who have been trying to reason with these people should hand the keys over to the Apocalyptic Cult/20th Century Europe Authoritarian Regime (copyright: Mike Lofgren and henceforth named Lofgren's Syndrome) and let them run the show for whatever amount of time they see fit to fix this country. The way I see things, this is the only way that we are ever going to break this nonproductive statelemate. I've examined the potential outcomes and here is why I truly think this is the best course of action.
The first possible outcome (very unlikely) is that most or all of their policies and ideas will work. If so, that means a stronger country, right? So, that's a good thing. Unlike their mindset, I'm not so filled with hubris to think that there is no possible way any of what they are proposing will work. Never say never, obviously...
More likely of an outcome, however, is that a few proposals might work to a certain degree but most will fall short of fail outright. At this point, we would see some cracks in their ideological armor and some leaders would likely cave and ask for our help. This is when we would need to stay strong and refuse to help. My hope here is that they would adapt and change, thus dispensing with their intransigence forever. Some, of course, would not admit defeat (due to Lofgren's Syndrome) but this would likely result in some infighting and some sort of breakdown in power which would also result in change. Like the first outcome, this is also a good thing.
Given the fact, though, that so many suffer from severe cases of Lofgren's Syndrome, the most likely outcome, in my opinion, would be disaster. Their eternal pride would reach to a long and painful height before their massive fall. This is why my wife thinks I'm nuts because our country would likely fall apart. But, honestly, this is the only way to be rid of this mindset forever. Faced with the stark reality of a country in ruins, Lofgren's Syndrome, like polio, would be eradicated from our country forever. The rest of us would pick up the pieces and finally be able to solve the problems of reality.
Obviously, destroying something in order to save it is somewhat insane but I don't see any other recourse. Right now, we are wasting a lot of time and there really is no other logical choice. You can't reason with someone who is a true believer. The only way to do so is to do to them what Gorbachev did to us in the late 1980s...deprive them of an enemy. What ever will they do if they have no one to prove wrong and no argument to win?
They'll have to actually govern.
Sunday, September 18, 2011
A Sunday Lesson
Since today is Sunday, I found a great quote from the Bible to go along with the Asimov quote that I put up recently.
Out in the open wisdom calls aloud,
she raises her voice in the public square;
on top of the wall she cries out,
at the city gate she makes her speech:
“How long will you who are simple love your simple ways?
How long will mockers delight in mockery
and fools hate knowledge?
Repent at my rebuke!
Then I will pour out my thoughts to you,
I will make known to you my teachings.
But since you refuse to listen when I call
and no one pays attention when I stretch out my hand,
since you disregard all my advice
and do not accept my rebuke,
I in turn will laugh when disaster strikes you;
I will mock when calamity overtakes you—
when calamity overtakes you like a storm,
when disaster sweeps over you like a whirlwind,
when distress and trouble overwhelm you.
---Proverbs 1 V 20-27
A nice set up for a climate change post later in the week.
Out in the open wisdom calls aloud,
she raises her voice in the public square;
on top of the wall she cries out,
at the city gate she makes her speech:
“How long will you who are simple love your simple ways?
How long will mockers delight in mockery
and fools hate knowledge?
Repent at my rebuke!
Then I will pour out my thoughts to you,
I will make known to you my teachings.
But since you refuse to listen when I call
and no one pays attention when I stretch out my hand,
since you disregard all my advice
and do not accept my rebuke,
I in turn will laugh when disaster strikes you;
I will mock when calamity overtakes you—
when calamity overtakes you like a storm,
when disaster sweeps over you like a whirlwind,
when distress and trouble overwhelm you.
---Proverbs 1 V 20-27
A nice set up for a climate change post later in the week.
Saturday, September 17, 2011
Life in the Bubble
While I thought Keith and Bill didn't do the greatest acting job, this was truly amazing. It's exactly what it's like talking to the right these days.
Friday, September 16, 2011
Powerful Words
A while back, one of my colleagues had this chart in his class. I got one and put it up in mine and it has made a ton of difference in the writing skills of nearly all the students I come into contact with on a daily basis. Several other instructors have this up in their rooms now as well.One of my central goals has always been to push students past the basic knowledge and comprehension level of learning and into analysis, synthesis, and evaluation. It's small tools like this that direct students towards this goal in a more efficient manner.
Thursday, September 15, 2011
The Last Resort
A key point that needs to be made in as president attempts to get his jobs bill passed is that federal government spending is spending of the last resort. This idea will bounce off most of the right these days. Sane people (such as myself) can't hope to pry the base's irrational fear from their cold, dead minds.
But it needs to be said anyway and I'm happy that former Labor Secretary Robert Reich said it in a recent piece in my local paper. In fact, he said a great deal of things which made complete sense. Of course, this means that nearly everyone on the right will hate it immediately.
Let's take a look at a few of Reich's comments.
Tax cuts, we know, don't have a huge multiplier effect because people in times of economic stress tend to use tax cuts to pay off debt or to save, rather than to spend.
Hence the reason why tax cuts really don't work most of the time.
The main motivation for businesses to hire is customers. Consumer spending is 70 percent of the economy. If consumers are holding back because they are under water with their mortgages and they are worried about losing their jobs, they don't have the cash to spend.If you've got the private sector, businesses and consumers, unwilling to spend, where do you look? Government is the spender of last resort. ... If government can't do it, we are not going to have a recovery.
Exactly. So, it's not the panic mongering myth of "uncertainty." Businesses simply don't have customers and most of these potential customers have less and less money to spend. This is why I state continually that less people having more money is a very bad thing for the overall health of our economy. Sooner or later, the greed at the top will be their own undoing and ours as well.
We are losing ground [to other countries] on education. We're losing ground on labor unions. And we have a politics that has been quite regressive, favoring privatization and deregulation. ...The only way out of this is not only a sufficiently high stimulus, but also addressing inequality through stronger education, stronger labor unions and tax reform.
I agree with everything here except the high stimulus. I think he underestimates the effect that short term debt to GDP will have in relation to our standing in the world.
But here's the best part
This isn't a zero-sum game. A lot of wealthy people are beginning to understand that they would do better with a smaller percentage of a rapidly growing economy than with a big chunk of an economy that's dead in the water.
Yep. And his mention of the zero sum game idea made me grin from ear to ear.
But it needs to be said anyway and I'm happy that former Labor Secretary Robert Reich said it in a recent piece in my local paper. In fact, he said a great deal of things which made complete sense. Of course, this means that nearly everyone on the right will hate it immediately.
Let's take a look at a few of Reich's comments.
Tax cuts, we know, don't have a huge multiplier effect because people in times of economic stress tend to use tax cuts to pay off debt or to save, rather than to spend.
Hence the reason why tax cuts really don't work most of the time.
The main motivation for businesses to hire is customers. Consumer spending is 70 percent of the economy. If consumers are holding back because they are under water with their mortgages and they are worried about losing their jobs, they don't have the cash to spend.If you've got the private sector, businesses and consumers, unwilling to spend, where do you look? Government is the spender of last resort. ... If government can't do it, we are not going to have a recovery.
Exactly. So, it's not the panic mongering myth of "uncertainty." Businesses simply don't have customers and most of these potential customers have less and less money to spend. This is why I state continually that less people having more money is a very bad thing for the overall health of our economy. Sooner or later, the greed at the top will be their own undoing and ours as well.
We are losing ground [to other countries] on education. We're losing ground on labor unions. And we have a politics that has been quite regressive, favoring privatization and deregulation. ...The only way out of this is not only a sufficiently high stimulus, but also addressing inequality through stronger education, stronger labor unions and tax reform.
I agree with everything here except the high stimulus. I think he underestimates the effect that short term debt to GDP will have in relation to our standing in the world.
But here's the best part
This isn't a zero-sum game. A lot of wealthy people are beginning to understand that they would do better with a smaller percentage of a rapidly growing economy than with a big chunk of an economy that's dead in the water.
Yep. And his mention of the zero sum game idea made me grin from ear to ear.
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