The Fence and the Market

Remember the vaunted border fence that would protect us from Mexico? Well, it has a few problems.

Because the border between Mexico and the US is defined by a river prone to flooding, the fence actually has to be built some distance from the border. Which means some Americans wind up on the other side. And that means they have to have a way to get back and forth between their land and the rest of the United States.

The solution is to install gates:

The arrival of the gates will reveal whether the government's solution for this border fence problem will work. Can sliding panels in the fence controlled by passcodes allow isolated workers to cross when they need to while keeping intruders out?

How will the gates work?

Gates will roll open on a metal track after a passcode is punched into a panel on or near the fence. Landowners would have permanent codes and could request temporary ones for visitors. Customs and Border Protection has begun testing its first two gates and plans to install 42 more in South Texas this year at a cost of $10 million.

So, there will be hundreds if not thousands of people who will have the codes to open these gates. And they would never accept bribes for the codes, or could never be coerced on pain of death to reveal them. Brilliant.

And how does the fence work in general?

But farmers point out that there is a lot the agents can't stop. They point out dusty footprints scaling the columns and say illegal immigrants can climb the barrier in seconds flat. 

"It's the biggest waste of taxpayer money," said Leonard Loop at his produce stand east of Brownsville, where his family farms and some relatives' homes are in an area between the fence and the river.

I guess that's why Herman Cain wanted an electrified fence and a moat with gators. But unless there are guards along the entire 2000-mile length of the border, even the more severe obstacles are trivial to breach. If Cain were still in the race at this point he'd be suggesting we lay Claymores along the border.

Now, I know what you're thinking: why was Obama so stupid to build the fence on our side of the border? Why didn't he just steal land from Mexico? Well, first off: the fence was started under Bush. And second: taking land from other countries is a dandy way to start a war. Sure, we could win a war against Mexico. But we already had two wars going. And after we won the war against Mexico we'd have to build a giant embassy in Mexico City and spend a trillion dollars rebuilding their infrastructure. And then we'd have to deal with pesky Mexican terrorists for the next century.

So, why are we building the fence again? Generally there are two answers:

1) To keep out illegal aliens out who are willing to do jobs that Americans won't at the wages American employers are willing to pay.

2) To keep out evil murdering drug smugglers who fill the incessant demand of Americans for cocaine and marijuana, while smuggling weapons back into Mexico.

Both these problems seem to be within our control. Illegal aliens wouldn't come here if American employers refused to hire them. And drug traffickers wouldn't smuggle drugs here if we didn't buy them, or smuggle guns into Mexico if we didn't make it so easy to get guns.

These are issues of simple market-based supply and demand. If we eliminate the demand for illegal alien workers and illegal drugs, the supply will dry up. The magic of the marketplace will make the problem disappear.

What, you think getting Americans off illegal cocaine and marijuana is harder than putting down dozens of criminal gangs financed by billions of dollars in foreign drug money and armed by lax American gun laws? You think getting American employers to obey employment law is harder than correcting centuries of intractable poverty and illiteracy?

If we really want to solve these problems, we've got to make hard decisions that require serious tradeoffs. One of them is pretty straightforward: end the war on drugs. Let non-violent drug offenders out of prison, put them into treatment and save billions of dollars a year on prisons. That also ends most gang warfare in the United States and reduces our murder rate. It does increase the unemployment rate. Well, can't win 'em all.

The illegal alien problem is harder, but there are still options: we can more strictly enforce employment laws, which will force many farmers, slaughterhouses, restaurants, motels to either go out of business or raise their prices so that they can afford to employ Americans who need to make a living wage. That would also help reduce the unemployment rate, at the cost of more expensive food, lawn care, restaurant meals, hotel stays, etc.

Or we can reform immigration laws and open the flood gates to accommodate American businesses who want to hire cheap migrant labor while millions of Americans can't find work that pays enough for them to live on.

Or -- and I know some of you are thinking this -- we could take those non-violent drug offenders from problem one and form work camps, selling prison labor to the highest bidders in the private sector. Then we can be just like communist China, using slave labor to do the dirty jobs no one else wants to do.

Or we could let the non-violent drug offenders out of prison on work release and have them do the jobs usually reserved for illegal aliens. Even if the salary needed to be subsidized to make it a living wage, it would still be cheaper than keeping them under lock and key 24/7.

These solutions have trade-offs and winners and losers. But as it stands now, we've got both sides of these problems and none of the benefits. The winners are the drug cartels and private prison industry, while the rest of us are the losers.

Good Grief...

While I'm always sad at the passing of someone, America...please pull your head out of your overly corporate media influenced ass and get some fucking priorities. 

 And people wonder why our children don't know who holds the office of vice president.

And the 2042 Nobel Prize for Physics Goes to....

At the bottom of this post is a list of the 40 finalists in the 2012 Intel Science Talent Search. The competition is sponsored by Intel and Society for Science & the Public, the publisher of Science News. It was started in 1942 as the Westinghouse Science Talent Search. The purpose of the search is to find the scientists of the future:

The finalists “exemplify the promise of young people to bring creativity and innovation to bear to create a better world,” says Elizabeth Marincola, publisher of Science News and president of Society for Science & the Public, which has operated the Science Talent Search since 1942. “We applaud their hard work and creativity, and look forward to their continued contributions to human advancement.” 

The 40 students selected were winnowed from 300 semifinalists, who were chosen from a pool of 1,744 entrants. These math, engineering and science achievers join a select group of scientific luminaries: Past finalists have earned seven Nobel Prizes and four National Medals of Science. Physicist and Nobel laureate Sheldon Glashow was a finalist in 1950; in 1980 Harvard University string theorist Lisa Randall was selected. Actress Natalie Portman was a semi-finalist in 1999.

If you examine the names carefully, you'll immediately notice a pattern: most of them are Asian. It's hard to determine actual ethnicity by names -- especially for blacks and American Indians, whose original family names were long ago stripped by slave owners or government edict. So some of the names I've identified as European may actually belong to people who consider themselves non-white. But by my rough estimate only six of the finalists are males of European descent. Five are females of European descent. The rest are mostly Chinese, Indian or other apparent Asian ethnicity.

Thirty or forty years ago, and certainly in 1942, nearly all these finalists would have been males of European descent. Though non-Hispanic whites still comprise 64% of the population of the United States, 73% of the 2012 STS finalists appear to be Asian, who comprise only 4.7% of the population.

This says something pretty dire about white American males: they're getting less education and they're less competitive at the higher levels. Where they used to dominate the fields of science and technology, they're barely keeping ahead of white girls, who have historically shunned math, science and engineering.

Not all these kids will become Nobel prize winners, but they will hold many of the high-paying jobs in medicine, science and technology. They will be the ones developing new medical treatments, new patents and new products. The next generation of technology will be designed by Asian Americans. That means they're going to starting new companies. And running them. And making lots of money.

When we think of the the high-tech nerds who made personal computers, the Internet and mobile computing revolution possible we think of white guys like Bill Gates and Steve Jobs. (But, come to think of it, Steve Jobs was actually half Syrian, wasn't he?) Those days appear to be over.

As Charles Murray has noted, lower class whites are falling into the same trap that American blacks fell into decades ago. Conservatives like to blame government largesse, laziness and licentiousness. But we're all living in the same culture with the same access to government support, mind-numbing drugs, sex, sports, television and video games. Yet recent Asian immigrants -- who are almost certainly not very rich -- are able to ignore all that and still strive to work hard and get an education, while whites on the same rung of the economic ladder are falling behind. Why?

The culture of failure became ingrained in black America because no matter what they did, they were kept down. They weren't allowed to vote, get a decent education, hold good jobs or even sit at the same lunch counter as whites. How could anyone succeed in an environment where you're told every step of the way that you're inferior, or strung you up if you just looked at a white girl?

The culture of failure seems to have become ingrained in lower-class white America. Beginning with Henry Ford and the unionization of the work force, lower-class uneducated whites had opportunities to live well and their kids had the opportunity to move up the economic ladder. But for decades now those Americans have seen their lives fall apart. First it was steel mills to Japan, then automobile manufacturing to Japan and Mexico, then general manufacturing to China, then high-tech manufacturing to Asia. Unions have been essentially destroyed and real wages have been in decline for decades. We thought we'd be safe with the high-paying white-collar jobs in technology and finance, but with the rise of the Internet it has become trivial to outsource any job: engineering design, software development, medical imaging analysis, legal research, finance and on and on.

Two and three generations of lower-class white kids have now seen their dads sitting home with nothing to do after losing job after job to foreigners who make 31 cents an hour. How can anyone succeed in an environment where your family's entire life experience proves that no matter how many hours of overtime you put in, the bossman will take it away and give it to someone who's even more desperate than you are?

2011 Intel STS Finalists (listed by state, name, hometown and high school)

ARIZONA Scott Boisvert, Chandler, Basha High School

CALIFORNIA Amol Aggarwal, Saratoga, Saratoga High School;Xiaoyu Cao, San Diego, Torrey Pines High School; Bonnie Lei,Walnut, Walnut High School; Jonathan Li, Laguna Niguel, St. Margaret’s Episcopal School; Selena Li, Fair Oaks, Mira Loma High School; Andrew Liu, Palo Alto, Henry M. Gunn Senior High School;Rohan Mahajan, Cupertino, The Harker School; Evan O’Dorney,Danville,Venture School; Nikhil Parthasarathy, Mountain View, The Harker School; David Tang-Quan, Rancho Palos Verdes, Palos Verdes Peninsula High School; Chelsea Voss, Santa Clara, Cupertino High School

CONNECTICUT Jenny Liu, Orange, Amity Regional High School;Shubhro Saha, Avon, Choate Rosemary Hall

FLORIDA Eta Atolia, Tallahassee, Rickards High School; Elaine Zhou, Winter Park, Lake Highland Preparatory School

ILLINOIS Krystle Leung, Naperville, Naperville Central High School

MASSACHUSETTS Sung Won Cho, Lexington, Groton School

MICHIGAN Shubhangi Arora, Novi, Novi High School

MINNESOTA Prithwis Mukhopadhyay, Woodbury, Woodbury High School

NORTH CAROLINA Si-Yi Lee, Charlotte, North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics; Matthew Miller, Elon, Western Alamance High School

NEBRASKA Emily Chen, Omaha, Brownell-Talbot School

NEW JERSEY Alison Bick, Short Hills, Millburn High School; Joshua Bocarsly, Plainsboro, The Lawrenceville School; Wenyu Cao, Belle Mead, Phillips Academy

NEW YORK Jonathan Aaron Goldman, Plainview, Plainview-Old Bethpage John F. Kennedy High School; Jan Gong, Garden City, Garden City High School; Michelle Hackman, Great Neck, John L. Miller Great Neck North High School; Bryan He, Williamsville, Williamsville East High School; Matthew Lam, Old Westbury, Jericho High School; Grace Phillips, Larchmont, Mamaroneck High School;Alydaar Rangwala, Loudonville, The Albany Academies

OREGON Laurie Rumker, Portland, Oregon Episcopal School; Yushi Wang, Portland, Sunset High School

PENNSYLVANIA Benjamin Clark, Lancaster, Penn Manor High School; Keenan Monks, Hazleton, Hazleton Area High School

TEXAS Madeleine Ball, Dallas, Ursuline Academy of Dallas; Rounok Joardar, Plano, Plano West Senior High School; Sunil Pai, Houston, The Kinkaid School

Yeah...Just What I Thought

When it comes right down to it, most of the people that bitch a lot about the government are really the ones that benefit the most. Sort of like...hmmm...oh...I don't know...teenagers who bitch about their parents who pay the bills and provide them with a nice place to live?

Sunday Funnies

Here are a few cartoons that caught my eye this week that are perfect for a Sunday morinng.

Virtually no doubt in my mind that today's conservative would continually criticize Jesus.  

Hee Hee

Can anyone explain to me how guys like Paul Ryan and Steve King can claim that Christ is their savior and also espouse Ayn Rand? 

The Big Three

Thomas Friedman hit a grand slam with his recent column in the New York Times entitled, "We Need a Second Party." In so many ways, he echoes much of the analysis that I have been discussing on here for the last few years.

There’s a reason for that: Their pile is out of date. The party has let itself become the captive of conflicting ideological bases: anti-abortion advocates, anti-immigration activists, social conservatives worried about the sanctity of marriage, libertarians who want to shrink government, and anti-tax advocates who want to drown government in a bathtub. 

Sorry, but you can’t address the great challenges America faces today with that incoherent mix of hardened positions.

Damn straight.

I predicted after the president got elected that we were seeing the end of the Republican Party. I was wrong in the timing of my prediction and didn't take into account the hate, anger, and fear that would bubble up after we elected Barack Obama. Obviously, I was naive in thinking that we were (ahem) past certain things but we aren't. I also failed to consider such low voter turnout in the midterms (42 percent or less in most areas). That always means a problem for the Democrats as old people are the ones who always turn out and vote and many of them are Republican.

Yet today the writing is on the wall. We are seeing it now with their nominating process in the presidential primaries. They can't seem to settle on one candidate and are now desperately trying to spin their chaos as some sort of fight that will make them all stronger. That's not going to happen.

Instead, what we see are the very serious cracks in a coalition that is at war with itself and cannot survive. Sure, they'll always be able to have a decent showing in Congress but with the current edition garnering the lowest approval ratings ever, how long will even that last? As Friedman notes,

Because when I look at America’s three greatest challenges today, I don’t see the Republican candidates offering realistic answers to any of them.

That's right. Because they are too bent on winning the argument and proving the other side wrong. In short, they are being childish.

Friedman lays out a series of points which I am going to issue as challenges to my regular, conservative/libertarian readers. Here they are.

1. Respond to the challenges and opportunities of an era in which globalization and the information technology revolution have dramatically intensified, creating a hyperconnected world. How would you foster education, innovation in talent for our country? What would you do to be a HIE (high-imagination-enabling countries) as opposed to a LIE (low-imagination-enabling countries)? Do you agree with Friedman's answer? Why or why not?

2. Offer a realistic answer to our debt and entitlement obligations. Do you agree with Friedman's answer? Why or why not?

3. How would you power the future? Again, realistic answers not the current dogma being spewed by conservatives. Do you agree with Friedman's answer? Why or why not?

These are Big Three in a perfectly concise nutshell. What I've seen so far from the split pea soup that is the GOP these days doesn't even come close to addressing any of these issues seriously. I'm hoping that my right leaning readers are better than that and can honestly look at some real solutions.

Well?

What He Did

Not Coming Back

About a year ago,  a diner was held in Silicon Valley with many of the prominent innovators of our time gathered together. During Steve Jobs' talk, a question was raised by the special guest of the evening.

"What will it take to make iPhones in America?" President Barack Obama asked.

"Those jobs aren't coming back," Steve Jobs replied.

If I had to pin down one major criticism of the president, it's that he isn't being fully honest with the American people about jobs. Those jobs, indeed, are not coming back because we live in a global marketplace now (thanks largely to our leading the rest of the world in adopting free markets and liberal economic theory). I understand why he's not being honest. No one wants to hear that the pool of labor is so great in the world that demand is very elastic and American workers are now a small part of a larger chorus. And, with such a tenuous economic situation, even the slightest perception of negativity can have a major effect on the world markets....especially coming from the leader of the free world.

Most importantly, it's hard to explain to the millions out of work that this is better for the world in the long run.

Of course, the president is not the only one that can't admit what's going on. Paul Krugman, in his recent piece in the Times, can't seem to do so either. 

We should reject the attempt to divert the national conversation away from soaring inequality toward the alleged moral failings of those Americans being left behind. Traditional values aren’t as crucial as social conservatives would have you believe — and, in any case, the social changes taking place in America’s working class are overwhelmingly the consequence of sharply rising inequality, not its cause.

As he tries to answer Charles Murray's arguments on morals and inequality, which I commented on the other day, he completely fails to note that the main reason why there is so much rising inequality and the real reason why those jobs aren't coming back. How is it possible that a man so smart can't see the very obvious economic truths?

Instead, he proceeds to one of the things that really piss me off about liberals: make lite of certain moral arguments by those on the right that do actually have some merit.

Mr. Murray and other conservatives often seem to assume that the decline of the traditional family has terrible implications for society as a whole. . Suddenly, conservatives are telling us that it’s not really about money; it’s about morals. Never mind wage stagnation and all that, the real problem is the collapse of working-class family values, which is somehow the fault of liberals.

First of all, it's technically not the "fault of liberals." He might be able to poke several large holes in Murray's argument if the focused on how he and Niall Ferguson blame the government for every little problem we have. And making fun of the "family values" crowd is really bullshit when it comes to inequality because these are the people that do actually help the poor through their churches and communities. They might have a weird and phobic blind spot when it comes to government but that doesn't mean they are all bad.

This is why the left really needs to take Murray's arguments seriously. They have merit. I see the results in school every day. Children do better when they are raised by two, loving and committed parents who make the time to help them develop. And communities and peer groups need to also step it up and do a better job of caring for the development of our children. That's what we all mean by "morals."

No doubt, this is not an easy task and will take some time. As we work on this issue on the local level, we really need to cut the BS and just admit that those jobs aren't coming back. That needs to be the starting point because everything else is really moot if we are not accurately identifying the problem.

A Fine Piece of Fiction

It makes complete sense to me that Thomas Sowell is so beloved amongst the (ahem) intellectuals and the ones who think they are (see: right wing bloggers) on the right. Take a look at this recent paragrapah from his latest piece for Investor's Business Daily.

But a far more serious issue is ObamaCare, perhaps the most unpopular act of the Obama administration, its totalitarian implications highlighted by its recent attempt to force Catholic institutions to violate their own principles and bend the knee to the dictates of Washington bureaucrats.

Ah, nothing like playin' the hits, eh? Well, he's certainly a good merchant who knows that his audience will pay top dollar for these sorts of comments so you have to give him credit for that.

More importantly, though, this is a fine example of the "fictional Obama." First of all, health care is not the "most unpopular act" of the Obama administration. Polls show a variety of opinions, depending on how the question is asked, and the split is around 50-50. I'd say his most unpopular act (or almost) was the new EPA rules that he ended up caving on in the end.

And totalitarian? Good grief. When will the managing of paranoid fantasies cease to be a part of our political discourse? The recent flap over birth control coverage under the PPACA is completely ludicrous. To begin with, the government isn't forcing anyone to get birth control. The new law simply states that if you are an organization that offers health care, you must provide free coverage for birth control. For some reason, the mouth foamers think that translates into forced birth control for their employees. Users still have A CHOICE as to whether or not they want to use birth control and these religious organizations still have A CHOICE to tell their members that birth control is against their beliefs and they shouldn't use it.

And, in what has to be one of the finest examples of hypocrisy I've seen in awhile, DePaul University and other Catholic institutions already offer free contraception as part of their organizations. So, the screaming by the right is because the government is "forcing" them to do something they are already doing? Huh?

We're basically at the point now where these adolescent power fantasies about government are a gross impediment to progress. We all have to stop what we are doing (see: adults trying to fix real problems) and deal with this bullshit.

Any chance we can get Sowell and his true believers to maybe do some yoga or take a jog to clear their head?

Komen VP Gets Pink Slip

The big flap at Susan G. Komen for Cure, the breast cancer charity, is coming to an end with the resignation of Karen Handel. Last November Handel, the recently hired vice president for public policy, engineered a funding cut for Planned Parenthood through backdoor coordination with Republicans in Congress. Handel proposed, and Komen's board adopted, a policy that would cut off funding for organizations that were "under investigation." That included politically motivated "investigations" launched by partisan Republicans in the US House of Representatives.

As a failed candidate for governor of Georgia and a strong opponent of abortion, Handel's claims that the defunding of Planned Parenthood was apolitical were disingenuous. After a massive protest that sparked a flood of donations directly to Planned Parenthood, Komen's policy was reversed and Handel resigned.

The policy was poorly considered from the get-go. It violated due process because funding would be cut off as soon as an investigation was started, not when any convictions were made or improprieties were found. Since Handel was a former Republican gubernatorial candidate and her policy was so obviously politically motivated, what if the US Senate or the attorney general had started an investigation into the ostensibly non-profit Komen Foundation's ties to overtly political organizations? Would Komen have to stop funding itself?

I'm glad to see this over with, but it stands as stark example of the problems this country faces.

Planned Parenthood and the Komen foundation have similar goals: the improvement of women's health. Komen focuses on breast cancer, while Planned Parenthood focuses on broader women's health issues, and reproductive services in particular. Planned Parenthood is the country's primary abortion provider not because they love abortion, but because they are one of the few organizations brave enough to weather the political attacks and death threats from abortion opponents.

Planned Parenthood, by its very name, shares Karen Handel's goal to reduce the abortion rate. Not by outlawing abortion, but by preventing unwanted pregnancies. Planned Parenthood wants everyone to have free access to reliable birth control and to use it rigorously. They want emergency contraception to be freely and immediately available when condoms break, people get carried away, or rape and incest occur. All these things will reduce the need for abortion, something which everyone can agree is a good thing.

But instead of seeking common ground and working together with Planned Parenthood on shared goals, Karen Handel instead joined forces with religiously motivated ideologues who wish to sabotage and destroy Planned Parenthood.

This heightened polarization in politics and society is extremely corrosive to civil discourse and good government. By eliminating any possibility of working together, compromise that benefits all Americans becomes impossible.

The Founding Fathers were able to write the Constitution not because they agreed on everything -- they disagreed fiercely among themselves. Their genius was their ability to pull together and come to a reasonable accommodation.

Absolutist anti-abortion, anti-birth-control zealots like Karen Handel and Rick Santorum are nothing like the Founding Fathers. They more resemble Jefferson Davis and the southern secessionists who started the Civil War. With their crusade against abortion and birth control, Handel and Santorum wish to take away our hard-won freedoms and force us to be slaves to biology.

Last Night's Surprise

It was caucus night last night in my home state and I'm happy to report that my group unanimously supported President Obama in his re-election bid. We also vowed to defeat the gay marriage ban amendment in Minnesota as well as the voter ID law. Our caucus included a man who recently gained his US citizenship after moving here from Kenya (chuckle, chuckle). He was elected our associate chair of the caucus and will be going on to the Senate District convention as a delegate.

I also found out that I might be redistricted into Keith Ellison's district. Goodbye Erik Paulsen and hello someone who actually represents me and my interests. I'll find out soon if that's going to happen.

After listening to Rick Santorum's victory speech last night (and after I spent a significant amount of time scratching my head in bewilderment that people think this guy would make a competent president only to come to the conclusion that this is what happens when you believe instead of think), I'm curious, once again, about this Barack Obama of whom he spoke. Not anyone that exists in reality. Here are some of his quotes from last night, on President Obama.

But then again, I wouldn't be surprised if he isn't listening. Why would you think he would be listening now? Has he ever listened to the voice of America before? 

Yes, he does Rick, but it's the majority of the citizens of this country who live in reality. Not the ones that live in the bubble with you and the rest of the apocalyptic cult.

When it came to the problems that were being confronted on Obamacare, when the health care system in this country, did President Obama, when he was pushing forward his radical health care ideas, listen to the American people?

Radical health care ideas...that came from the Republican party.

When it comes to the environment, did the president of the United States listen to the American people, or did he push a radical cap- and-trade agenda that would crush the energy and manufacturing sector of the economy?

Yes, radical, like when he approved off shore drilling only to see it completely bite him in the ass when BP flooded the Gulf of Mexico with oil.

He did say one thing that was pretty interesting, though.

Because I do care about not 99 percent or 95 percent. I care about the very rich and the very poor. I care about 100 percent of America.

(Ahem) Narrative still not dead.

As I watched Santorum's speech, inspiration struck me! If you look down at the labels, you will see a new one called "Fictional Obama." When a GOP candidate says something about the president that is a complete lie or obviously outside of reality, I'm going to put up the quote and illustrate how completely insane it is. Obviously, I won't do this every time this happens as I only have so much time during the day:)

Yeah, Baby!

In addition to being caucus day in my home state, yesterday the 9th Circuit Federal Court in California struck down Proposition 8, stating that

Proposition 8 serves no purpose, and has no effect, other than to lessen the status and human dignity of gays and lesbians in California, and to officially reclassify their relationships and families as inferior to those of opposite-sex couples.

As long as the government ties certain rights to marriage, two consenting adults should allowed to be married. It seems very likely that this case is going to end up in the Supreme Court but the issue of gay marriage as an amendment on a ballot for everyone to vote on is illustrative of another point that I make on here continually: people don't always act in their own self interest.

As it was with voting for equal rights for blacks, the general population should not be allowed to vote on measures such as this largely because of their ignorance. Most Americans don't take the time to consider the ramifications of how these sorts of laws can affect their fellow citizens and themselves. A ban on gay marriage is clearly in violation of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution.

All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

It doesn't get any plainer than that.

So, a ban on gay marriage means that around ten percent of our population has less civil liberties than others. This, in turn, may cause them to make economic decisions like moving their business to states that don't have a ban on gay marriage. Obviously, this would have a financial impact on the state with the ban. 

It's going to be interesting to see how this affects the Gay Marriage Ban Amendment here in Minnesota that will be on the ballot in the fall.

The Family Meal

By today's standards, my family is strange and quite odd. Every night, we sit down and have a family meal. ALL of us. Occasionally some sort of activity may interfere but we seem to always be able to adjust our individual schedules to be able to all sit down together and share time together over dinner.

We go around the table and share what our favorite part of the day was and that usually ends up leading to a broader discussion. We laugh, we work out problems, and we make plans for upcoming events. When I tell people this, virtually all of them can't believe that it happens. Whether they are conservative or liberal or somewhere in between, their comments invariably lead to the same question.

"Where do you find the time?"

I thought about our family meal when I read Niall Ferguson's recent piece "Rich America, Poor America." His thoughts and comments contained therein reveal a much needed alternative to the left's explanation and protestations regarding inequality in this country.

He starts out by detailing the obvious truth.

Adjusted for inflation, the income of the average American male has essentially flatlined since the 1970s, according to figures from the Census Bureau. The income of the bottom quarter of U.S. families has actually fallen. It’s been a different story for the rich. According to recent work by Berkeley economist Emmanuel Saez, the share of total income going to the top 1 percent of families has more than doubled since 1979, from below 10 percent to a peak of nearly 24 percent in 2007. (It has since fallen, but not by much.) The share going to the super-rich—the top 0.01 percent—has risen by a factor of seven.

Americans used to be proud of their country’s reputation as a meritocracy, where anyone could aspire to get to the top with the right combination of inspiration and perspiration. It’s no longer true. Social mobility has been sliding in the United States. A poor kid in America now has about the same chance of becoming a rich grown-up as in socially rigid England. It looks like Downton Abbey has come to downtown U.S.A.

I'm very pleased that someone who identifies as a conservative can recognize this as fact. Looking at the work of Charles Murray of the American Enterprise Institute, we see further evidence of this acceptance by the right.

Murray is no apologist for Wall Street. Looking at the explosion in the value of the total compensation received by the chief executives of large corporations, he pointedly asks if “the boards of directors of corporate America—and nonprofit America, and foundation America—[have] become cozy extended families, scratching each others’ backs, happily going along with a market that has become lucrative for all of them, taking advantage of their privileged positions—rigging the game, but within the law.” There is not much in those lines that the OWS protesters would disagree with.

Rigging the game, but within the law. That's pretty much it and this simple sentence offers an area of ideological overlap between the Tea Party and the OWS movement. Sadly, I doubt that either will take advantage of it especially now that the Tea Party has been more or less co-opted by the Koch Brothers and the rest of the "cozy family" of which Murray speaks.

So, now that we have accepted the problem, how did we get here? Where Murray goes next offers a greater width of vision that I think is somewhat lacking on the left. Murray looks at two towns (Belmont and Fishtown) and compares social trends.

Marriage has declined in both, but it has declined further in Fishtown, where a much larger proportion of adults either get divorced or never marry, so that a far higher share of Fishtown children now live with a lone divorced or separated parent. Unlike Belmont, Fishtown has a sad underclass of “never-married mothers”—who also happen to be the worst-educated women in town.

I have many students in my classes that are "from Fishtown." They are the worst behaved and invariably get the worse grades. Their parents are either exhausted from work or terribly lazy. For whatever reason, they are COP (checked out parents) and the results are lower test scores and a continued feeding of the underclass. Murray speaks of this as well.

Industriousness has scarcely declined in Belmont, but it has plummeted among Fishtown white males, an amazing number of whom are unable to work because of illness or disability, or have left the workforce for some other reason, or are unemployed, or are working fewer than 40 hours a week. The big problem here is not so much a lack of jobs as a new leisure preference (“goofing off” and watching daytime TV). The work ethic has been replaced by a jerk ethic.

I'd actually take this a step further. The "jerk ethic" is there even with people that put in 40 hours of work a week or more. Rather than spend time with their family, many of these parents play video games or wank on their smart phones all night, further detaching themselves from their children's lives. Later in the article, Ferguson mentions a lack of incentive to work (due, of course, to the government but I'll get to that in a little bit) but even the folks that are working full time and providing for their families have a lack of incentive to do little else. People simply aren't active in their communities any longer.

Religiosity has declined in both towns, but much more steeply in Fishtown. Contrary to popular belief, Murray argues, it’s not the elites who have become secularized and the working class that has remained devout. In fact, church attendance is much lower in Fishtown than in Belmont.

Most of you know that I would never behave like many on the right who seek to insert themselves between an individual and the Lord, forcing Republican Jesus on the citizens of the United States. Having some sort of religious outlet, whatever faith that may be, is demonstrably vital to social cohesion. Murray's studies show that this is unequivocally true.

To put all of this simply, it's family values. And the results are plain for anyone to see.

As a consequence of these trends, the traditional bonds of civil society have entirely atrophied in lower-class America. There is less neighborliness, less trust, less political awareness, less of that vibrant civic engagement that used to impress European visitors, less of what the Harvard sociologist Robert Putnam, in Bowling Alone, called “social capital.”

And that, Murray concludes, is why poor Americans are, by their own admission, so very unhappy. Man is a social animal who can only really be happy in four social domains: family, work, local community, and faith. In poor America, all four are in a state of collapse. That is why “Fishtown” is such a wretched dump—the kind of benighted place where gangs of feral teens hang around on street corners trying to figure out what part of the local infrastructure they haven’t yet vandalized. We all drive through such places from time to time. Murray’s point is just how many Americans have to live in them.

All of this ties in to what I talked about in The Michael Jordan Generation. The four domains listed above are essentially the same as four of the five main areas of socialization which have been severely eroded by the corporate owned media. Far too many people have allowed themselves and their children to lose touch with these four pillars and have been completely overwhelmed by the fifth. This is where Murray and Ferguson lose sight of the cause of all this. Sadly, they fall back on all to predictable conservative dogma, blame liberal policies, add to the fictional Obama narrative, and offer the usual panic rip about our country becoming like Europe. In other words, it's all the fault of the government...even though it was this same governemnt that created Social Security which has reduced poverty in the elderly by over 40 percent.

One can only blame our society's institutions so much (and that includes the corporate owned media). For me, it comes down to how you answer the question posed above by nearly everyone I know.

"Where do you find the time?"

It's simple.

You make the time.

In the final analysis, it's up to us.

Fiction V. Reality

ELIZABETH B. WYDRA at Politico put a great piece up yesterday entitled, "Constitutional fairy tales and the Affordable Care Act" that really deserves as much of an audience as possible so I'm linking it here. Like they do with The Bible, conservatives yell and foam at the mouth about how they (and ONLY they) know the true meaning of the Constitution. The argument I've heard lately is "because we can read." It's as at this point I find myself waiting for a more in depth answer only to hear the sound of crickets.

Wydra makes her case quite simply.

The current nationwide health care crisis, which involves close to 20 percent of the U.S. economy, is exactly the sort of problem the founders would have wanted the federal government to solve under the powers given to Congress by the Constitution. The Affordable Care Act addresses issues of national concern — involving the states as partners but offering federal mechanisms of reform where necessary.

Yep, pretty much. I've always been struck by how many right wingers, when asked what they would do, say, "Do nothing." And their answer to rising costs is..." And their answer to inelastic demand of many health care markets is....? Crickets.

In 1783, soon after the Revolutionary War was won, Washington wrote to Hamilton, “unless Congress have powers competent to all general purposes, that the distresses we have encountered, the expences we have incurred, and the blood we have spilt in the course of an eight years’ war, will avail us nothing.” Washington elaborated on this in a 1783 circular to the states. A sufficiently energetic national government was necessary, he wrote “to regulate and govern the general concerns of the Confederated Republic, without which the union cannot be of long duration.” 

If they wanted a small, limited government with no power, than the Articles of Confederation would have been just fine. Perhaps that's what the Tea Party wants. Why, exactly?

Anyway, what does this all have to do with PPACA?

But while the grants of federal power may be “few and defined,” where such authority is given — it is substantial. For example, from these few enumerated powers come the ability to regulate interstate commerce and to tax and spend for the general welfare. Add to that the grant of constitutional authority to pass laws “necessary and proper” to carrying out these “few and defined” powers, and the Constitution’s enumerated powers add up to the energetic federal government our founders thought was necessary to govern the United States. The Affordable Care Act respects this constitutional balance of power by providing federal mechanisms for achieving national health care reform — including the minimum coverage provision and expanded Medicaid coverage. But it also maintains the states’ ability to shape key reform measures that do not need to be uniform, to achieve the act’s legitimate goals.

Exactly. To borrow from Washington, our union cannot be of long duration if we continue to ignore basic truths about health care, particularly the "expences." This is the exact reason why the federal government was created. As Wydra concludes...

The idea that the federal government does not have the power to address a national problem — like the current health care crisis — is a tea party fairy tale with no basis in the Constitution’s text and history.

Fairy tale, indeed. Will there ever be a time when those of us that want to actually solve our nation's problems (using Constitutionally mandated powers) be allowed to do so without interference from people who play dress up and make believe?

The more I think about it, the more I realize that perhaps this election is going to be about fiction versus reality.

Go Ahead, Make His Day

That's because President Obama's policies were a success.

He Said....What??!??

First of all, David, I don’t think you’ll ever find me talking about an age of austerity. I don’t think that’s the right solution. I am a pro-growth Republican. I’m a pro-growth conservative. I think the answer is to grow the economy, not to punish the American people with austerity. 

---Newt Gingrich, 5 February 2012, Meet the Press

What do you suppose he means by this?

Like!

President Obama's Job Creation Record

So, if you live in the bubble, what goes through your head when you see this data?

Download this image and save it on your desktop.The next time anyone needs an answer on Obama's policies, this should be one of your top answers.

Are Foreigners Buying the Election?

The Supreme Court's Citizens United decision allowed unlimited amounts of money to be injected into American elections. The contributions of Sheldon Adelson and his family are now raising very troubling questions about the wisdom of that decision.

Adelson gave $5 million to Gingrich's Super PAC, Winning Our Future, allowing Gingrich to pull an upset in the South Carolina primary by hitting Mitt Romney with a barrage of negative TV ads filled with every dirty trick in the book. Later Adelson's wife, Miriam, gave another $5 million. After Adelson bought the desired result in South Carolina, Romney's Wall-Street-financed Super PACs returned fire and destroyed Gingrich in Florida, outgunning his TV ads in some markets by as much as 40 to 1.

Adelson is a billionaire who made his money in Las Vegas casinos. It is somehow fitting that Gingrich, the man with the most questionable morals in the Republican party, is bankrolled by a man whose billions are just as morally questionable.

Now it turns out that of the $2 million Winning Our Future received in 2011, half came from Miriam Adelson's daughters and son-in-law, Sivan Ochshorn, Yasmin Lukatz and Oren Lukatz. The daughters are from Miriam's first marriage to a Tel Aviv physician.

Citizens United allowed American citizens and corporations to donate unlimited amounts of money. It's still illegal for foreigners and foreign corporations to give money to American elections.

But reading about Miriam Adelson's daughters makes me wonder if they're real Americans. By real I don't mean that they live in a small town, like NASCAR, and drive a pickup truck. No, I mean real Americans in the sense that they were born and raised in the USA and owe their allegiance to the United States Constitution. According to the Post article:

Little is known about Lukatz, who began making contributions to Republicans in 2007 and is listed in federal reports by campaigns as a homemaker or an executive at the Venetian. According to Haaretz.com, Yasmin Lukatz returned to Israel “to do for military service as an officer in the Israeli Air Force. Afterward she attended Tel Aviv University, studying law and business administration. 

Yasmin’s husband, Oren Lukatz, did not make any campaign contributions to federal candidates or committees until late 2010, records show. But since then, he has made nearly $400,000 in donations, including the recent PAC gift. 

His Twitter bio says that he was “born and raised in Israel, educated in Europe and in the United States.”

Oren also served as an officer in the Israeli military. Given their parentage and history, I wonder whether these people have American, Israeli, or dual American-Israeli citizenship. If it's the first, everything's fine. If the second, they're clearly violating the law. But if it's the last, are they real Americans?

Many people have dual citizenship, as it may be thrust upon them as children automatically by birth or by marriage. But by definition, anyone who has citizenship in more than one country has divided loyalties, and cannot be considered a real American.

When you're naturalized as an American you must take the following oath:

I hereby declare, on oath, that I absolutely and entirely renounce and abjure all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate, state, or sovereignty of whom or which I have heretofore been a subject or citizen; that I will support and defend the Constitution and laws of the United States of America against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I will bear arms on behalf of the United States when required by the law; that I will perform noncombatant service in the Armed Forces of the United States when required by the law; that I will perform work of national importance under civilian direction when required by the law; and that I take this obligation freely without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; so help me God.

So, are Ochshorn and the Lukatzes Americans by convenience only? Are their loyalties really to Israel, and not the United States? If so, their donations to Gingrich's Super PAC would be legal by only the thinnest of technicalities, by the legal fiction that they are Americans.

If you're going to vote or get involved with American politics your allegiance to the United States should be explicitly stated, and you should take an oath to renounce your citizenship in any other country.

I'm not just picking on Israel. The same should apply to people with dual American-Mexican, American-Canadian, American-Australian or American-British citizenship. You can't be half American.

And this exposes the real problem with Citizens United. The most obvious reason is that corporations cannot be citizens. They cannot take oaths. They cannot vote. They cannot be held responsible for their actions. They cannot hold office. They cannot be imprisoned. They cannot serve in the military. They can be bought from or sold to foreigners in a flash. And often we can't even find out who really owns or controls them.

One of the shell companies that contributed to Romney's Super PAC existed for only four months, but that was long enough to donate a million bucks. It appears this company was set up by a Romney crony at Bain (its address was listed in the same building as Bain).

Given how simple it is to form shell companies and the lax requirements for certain Super PAC disclosures, there's no way to be sure that foreign companies and governments aren't buying American elections. If we can't find out who's really donating to a Super PAC, it's impossible to eliminate the appearance of corruption, and therefore impossible to eliminate the existence of corruption.

Hmm...

Hmm...Today, Mitt Romney was hanging out in Vegas with Donald Trump while Barack (the Kenyan Muslim Socialist who wants to destroy America) Obama was at a prayer breakfast talking about Billy Graham, loving thy neighbor, and reminding us that Jesus said, ""for unto whom much is given, much shall be required."

Amen

Not What He Fucking Said!!!

This is going to be a long election year and the media is going to drive me to pull out what little hair I have left on my hair. Currently, many of the news networks are reporting that Mitt Romney said, "I don't care about the very poor." That's not at all what he said. Here is the FULL quote.

I’m in this race because I care about America. I’m not concerned about the very poor, we have a safety net there, if we need to repair, I’ll fix it. I’m not concerned about the very rich, they’re doing just fine. I’m concerned about the very heart of America, the 90-95 percent of Americans who are struggling, and I’ll continue to take that message across the country.

It's complete bullshit that they are leaving out the rest of the quote. I have no problem with criticizing Mitt for his fictional rants about President Obama, his clear lack of what to do foreign policy wise, or his ever changing position in many policies. But can we please cut him a break and not twist around every single thing he says especially if it's something reasonable like this?

In addition, he's made his point very clearly about his health care plan. It's good for a state but not good for the country. I don't agree with him but (again!) let's please cease with the twisting around of his health care plan and make believe that it's exactly like the PPACA. It isn't because it's a state level initiative.

I know this will fall on deaf ears but we simply have so much other BS to deal with that this is a serious waste of time.

A Matter of Historical Context

A recent post in comments gave me an epiphany.

If you actually bothered to read the Constitution, Federalist Papers, Anti-Federalist Papers, etc., you will find that none of the Founding Fathers supported anything even approaching the power of the Federal government from the New Deal onward. Claiming that just because they disagreed about how much power the Federal government should have relative to the States and the People, no more means that Hamilton and the other Federalists would've supported Obama's vision of Federal power than that the Anti-Federalists (and most of your commenters) wanted no government at all. That's just more of your dishonest, dick-headed, asinine Calvinball "logic". Hamilton wanted a national bank? Well then obviously he would've supported nationalized/socialized healthcare and all the other apparatus of a semi-socialist state. Riiight. If he or any others did, it should be quite easy for you find where they actually said something like that, right? Right?

Let's take a closer look at the part of the statement I bolded (Obama's vision of Federal Power) because that raises the question: what would the Founding Fathers have thought of Obama's vision of Federal Power? The answer is quite simple and it reveals, quite starkly, why sentences that begin with "The Founding Fathers would have never..." are completely full of shit and (surprise, surprise) have no place in reality.

The Founding Fathers wouldn't given an ounce of thought to Obama's vision of Federal Power because our current president, in their time, would have been three fifths of a person. Granted, this designation was largely used for political purposes but the general view of black people at the time was that they were "less than." Some of the Founding Fathers, including Thomas Jefferson, owned slaves and very likely wouldn't have even been able to get past the fact that a black man was president.

This is why discussion of what the Founding Fathers would have thought about government today are generally ridiculous. Their views on government were a product of their time and their circumstances with England. Certainly, the Constitution and the decisions made by each of them while they were leading this country are excellent foundations from which to work. But they are not intended to be so limiting that they ignore reality...reality in 2012. Health care is a great example of this. How the system currently works is not at all in the best interests or general welfare of the people. It's become a for-profit industry with out of control costs that it would seem completely alien to Josiah Bartlett, Matthew Thornton, Benjamin Rush or Elbridge Gerry. It's nearly impossible to say what they would think of Medicare and it's likely that they wouldn't have the first clue because our historical place would be completely foreign to them.

Yet, we can look to some examples of their time and compare it to our time and see if there is a precedent or similarities. We can also see how difficult it is for words to match actions at times. With health care, one need only look at An Act for the relief of sick and disabled seamen (passed in 1798 and signed by John Adams) which ordered private seamen to pay 20 cents out of their wages to pay for medical care of sick and disabled seamen. Does this translate into a nation wide system of Medicare? I don't think it's possible to answer this because the Founding Fathers would have no adequate frame of reference. They only knew what was crucial to their young country at the time and that was clearly socialized medicine. This also shows how concepts of limited government work in theory but not necessarily in action. Being products of the Age of Enlightenment, they would likely have the humility to admit that they couldn't make an judgement due to ignorance. Heck, the term "economics" wasn't even in regular use during their time! And health insurance?

Of course, if they were all around today, their thirst for knowledge and wisdom (something on which we call all agree) would propel them to eliminate that ignorance and the likely result would be continued debate with the fathers split into various factions...just as they were at the outset of our country's journey. Some would argue that the states should decide. Others would argue over the necessity of insurance and explore free market options of direct consumer to seller relationships. Some would look at the improvement of general welfare because of our social programs (from the New Deal onwards) and find it hard to argue with success.

In the final analysis, we only know what they thought of federal power during their time in history and, as I've demonstrated three times now (the first national bank, the whiskey rebellion, and mandated health care for seamen), even the people that wrote the Constitution didn't rigidly follow it. That includes ALL of their context and virtually NONE OF OURS.

No lo entiendo

On this primary election day, let's talk about one part of the voting process itself.

An article in Mother Jones claims that Newt Gin.grinch and Mitt R.money want to disenfranchise millions of voters by removing the requirement that ballots be printed in multiple languages if the population of non-English speakers is sufficiently large to warrant it.

I've got to say, I agree with R.money and Gin.grinch here. English proficiency is a requirement for citizenship when you are naturalized. Native-born Americans and foreigners marrying Americans have every chance and incentive to learn English, and have no excuse for not being able to read a ballot. It's really that simple.

If you can't speak English, you can't engage in the political conversation. You can't listen to a debate and understand what's going on. If you're dependent on a translator, you'll miss a lot of nuance. Furthermore, translators will put their own personal spin on what the speaker is saying, and may mislead listeners -- intentionally or not. Ultimately, people who can't understand English are condemned to being told what to think. Worse, they can't participate in the public conversation and make their own views known to others who aren't just like them.

As for the ballots themselves, the article says:

"Some of these ballot measures involve very complex legal language," Camila Gallardo of the Latino civil rights organization National Council of La Raza points out. "Some of the language is hard to understand even for fluent English speakers, let alone if your first language isn't English."

Exactly. How can we trust that the translation of that complex English text is accurate and unbiased? And if the translators themselves don't really grasp the original English, there's no way to ensure an accurate translation.

The legal requirement for multiple languages on ballots is discriminatory in and of itself.

Covered language minorities are limited to American Indians, Asian Americans, Alaskan Natives, and Spanish-heritage citizens - the groups that Congress found to have faced barriers in the political process.

It's an understandable sentiment. But Russian and Somali immigrants living in Miami are forced to learn English (or Spanish) if they want to read the ballot. Just because there are fewer of them doesn't mean they shouldn't get equal treatment under the law. And these days Somali Americans are facing at least as much discrimination as Latino Americans.

Then there are technical problems with multiple ballots and multilingual ballots. The more options you add to a ballot, the more confusing it gets and the more likely it is that your vote will not register as you intend it to. Remember Florida in 2000?

There are several existing solutions to this problem that would eliminate the costs and potential errors of multilingual ballots. People who have trouble reading English can register for an absentee ballot, giving them ample time to go over it and recruit an interpreter if necessary. In most places the blind and physically handicapped can bring a helper of their choice to assist them in the voting. The voter may still be relying on another person telling them what to think, but at least it will be a person of their choosing.

I think a big part of this has to do with language being such an important part of cultural identity. Many immigrant parents bemoan the fact that their kids don't learn to speak their ancestral tongue. Many feel that their culture will slip away completely if they learn to speak English. It's a common and reasonable fear, because it happens with every generation of immigrant Americans. How may proud Irish and German Americans speak Irish or German these days?

But when you come right down to it, if someone isn't comfortable with the culture of the United States and can't understand ninety-nine percent of everything going on in this country, perhaps it isn't the right place for them to live. Or vote.

Election Video Calvacade

I've been saving a few videos from the last couple of weeks and today I figured I'd put them all up at once.

On a number of levels, it's really been nauseating to watch the Republican primaries. Here's a great example of what I am talking about.


This level of ignorance, anger and hatred simply stuns me. But it's not just this kind of shit because...well...I expect this stuff from the right...the whole Barack X thing and all. What I don't expect is this.

 

A conservative audience yelling at Mitt Romney for not releasing his tax returns? Wow. Good thing the OWS narrative is dead.

This one blew me away.



Wait, huh? I thought conservatives were all about Jesus. WTF??!!? I submit that nearly all conservatives think that the Golden Rule is a bunch of pussy nonsense and that everything about "loving thy enemy" goes in one ear and out the other.

We've only been through two primaries and one caucus and there's already enough crazy for a whole year. And if you think the rest of the primary is going to be nuts, wait until the general election starts. The Barack X mouth foamers are going to go completely fucking batshit.

Somewhere In Arizona, Kevin Baker's Head Just Exploded

Narrative=Still Not Dead

A Peak Inside The Bubble

Bill Maher finally sat down and analyzed the whole Saul Alinsky obsession that the right has with the left and it was fucking brilliant. Among the points answered...

Saul Alinksy liked black people (Uh oh...:(...). He started to organize the Civil Rights movement in the 1930s which, as Newt will tell you, became a huge burden on white people. Alinksy also taught poor people to ban together, improve their lives and fight against slum lords. Oh no he di-ent! That's class warfare!!! Next thing you know we'll all be worshiping Vladimir Lenin!!!!

There's also the most concise explanation to date regarding the difference between Bush critics and Obama critics.

But the best part? Now I know who Barack X is...YES!!!!!

 

Yes

Newt's Loony Tunes

The other day Newt Gingrich announced his bold new initiative: a permanent base on the moon by the end of his second term in 2021.

This is an example of why I used to like Newt, twenty-odd years back.  It's also the perfect example of why I despise Gingrich now. Gingrich is a smart guy, and he likes a lot of the stuff that I like. I would like to see a moon base happen, but by putting it out there now Newt has given the idea the kiss of death.

George Bush killed the horse that Newt is now whipping. In 2004 Bush announced Constellation, his program to return to the moon. I was extremely skeptical. I figured it was just a gimmick to pretend that he was about more than death and destruction. At that point it had been eight months since the "cakewalk" in Iraq started, and things were starting to go very wrong. Bush apparently wanted to pull a Kennedy and look visionary.

Predictably, Bush was not serious. The deficit was rising quickly under the weight of two wars and two rounds of massive tax cuts, mostly going to the wealthy. The Constellation program was underfunded and mismanaged, and Bush ultimately wasted at least eight billions dollars on the project, getting little in return. Though the aerospace firms like Lockheed Martin got plenty of that money, and reliably Republican states like Alabama cashed in big time.

Obama canceled the Constellation program in 2010, and since then has redirected NASA to use private firms like SpaceX for space transportation. Many Republicans like Alabama's Richard Shelby hypocritically decried the move, but it's exactly the sort of thing that Republicans have been demanding government do. Gingrich's moon base plan would continue in this vein, using minimal government investment to prod private industry into space. By not mentioning Obama in his speech, Gingrich tacitly admitted that the president is on the right track.

The problem is that Gingrich, like Bush, is not serious. Newt made this promise while campaigning on Florida's space coast, which has been hit hard by cutbacks in NASA's traditional programs. By pandering to to these voters with such a grandiose notion, Gingrich has reinforced his image as a nut case and made space exploration an object of derision during the debate and the butt of jokes on late-night TV.

But the thing that most perfectly encapsulated everything about why I despise Newt was when he said, "When we have 13,000 Americans living on the moon, they can petition to become a state.” Like so many things he says (child janitors, anyone?), this idea is, in Gingrich's own words, "profoundly stupid" and a complete insult to the intelligence of the listener.

As Gingrich well knows, states have at least one representative in the House and two senators in the Senate, giving each state a minimum of three electoral votes. Nationwide the ratio of voters to electoral votes is about half a million to one. Small population states like Wyoming are drastically overrepresented, getting three times as many electoral votes per person as states like Illinois, California and Pennsylvania. It is largely for this reason that Republicans have been dominated the presidency for the past century while Democrats have dominated Congress.

Gingrich's Lunaria would get one electoral vote for each 4333 citizens, or about 125 times the national average. Is Gingrich just crazy, or is this his plan for a permanent Republican domination of Congress and the presidency? The next thing he'll suggest is that people start moving to coral reefs and oil rigs and petition for statehood.

As Jon Stewart mentioned, Gingrich opposed statehood for the Washington, DC, which has as many citizens as Wyoming. It has three electoral votes, but has no voting representatives in the House or Senate and no say over what Congress can do to them. Why is Newt talking about enfranchising people on the moon before enfranchising the people who live in our nation's capital?

And this shows Newt's real lack of vision. Just as the American colonies of the British Empire soon came to desire independence, so would any lunar colony, especially as it drew citizens from other nations. China has plans to go to the moon, and so does Japan, and Russia currently has the only reliable space transportation system. There won't just be Americans on the moon, and the rest of the would certainly have something to say about American claims to lunar territory.

Once they became self-sufficient, lunar colonies would have much more in common with each other than they would with Earth. In the long run they would either become independent nations or form a new federation among themselves, rather than carry over their anachronistic ties to a planet filled with people who have no idea what it's like wondering where you're going to get your next breath of air from.

Complete Agreement with...Ann Coulter?

Some folks on the right side of the aisle are pretty nervous after Newt's win in South Carolina. Take Ann Coulter, conservative fire brand, for example. In her recent column entitled, "RE-ELECT OBAMA: VOTE NEWT!" she opens with

To talk with Gingrich supporters is to enter a world where words have no meaning.

Well, that's certainly  true generally of conservatives:)

She goes on to discuss the circular reasoning of Newt's supporters and then explains Mitt's flip flops. This one really jumped out at me.

Romney's one great "flip-flop" is on abortion. (I thought the reason we argued with people about abortion was to try to get them to "flip-flop" on this issue. Sometimes it works!)

I actually laughed out loud at that one. No shit, isn't that the goal of pro life conservatives? Why are they complaining that Mitt's changed his mind?

She concludes with a line that is...dare I say it...Markadelphia like in its nature.

Conservatism is an electable quality. Hotheaded arrogance is neither conservative nor attractive to voters.

Finally. A conservative with which I agree on virtually nothing defining exactly what is wrong with the GOP today. Somewhere along the line, the base has allowed itself to be overtaken by virulent hubris that one normally associates with right wing bloggers. As I've been saying for the past several days, your average Joe Voter has no idea who Saul Alinksy is nor do will they respond well to another white old guy yelling at Barack Obama. If the right wants to win, Mitt is the best chance they have.

But she does raise a deeper point. Is conservatism an electable quality? It is but only in moderation as this is a center right country for the most part. I think the reason why the GOP is having such a tough time with their candidates is not they they don't like any of the above. It's because they are struggling to define who they are. Are they evangelical? Financial old guard? Libertarians? I don't think they know.

The party can't survive if one drops away so they desperately need all three. Yet they seem to be at odds with each other and don't really work and play well together. Some want to be more moderate so they can win but a very large portion want to go farther right. If the president wins re-election in the fall, this struggle will be one of the big reasons why.

Really?

Like A Puck...

Being a Minnesotan, loving hockey is simply expected. So, it's with a heavy heart that I must report that the apocalyptic cult formerly known as the conservative movement in this country has slithered into the National Hockey League like a puck shooting across the ice.

Tim Thomas, the goalie for the Boston Bruins, recently refused a trip to the White House to be congratulated for the Stanley Cup victory last season. He said, in a statement, "I believe the Federal government has grown out of control, threatening the Rights, Liberties, and Property of the People. This is being done at the Executive, Legislative, and Judicial level. This is in direct opposition to the Constitution and the Founding Fathers vision for the Federal government. Because I believe this, today I exercised my right as a Free Citizen, and did not visit the White House. This was not about politics or party, as in my opinion both parties are responsible for the situation we are in as a country. This was about a choice I had to make as an INDIVIDUAL."

Well, he's lucky that he still has that right to refuse because before you know it, men with guns will be coming to his house to force him to meet President Blackie McHitler. Sheesh... I guess you just have to roll your eyes and mourn the loss of yet another soul to the fantasy world of The Tea Party.

Oh, and according the Bruins media guide this year, the person Thomas would most likely want to have dinner with?

Glenn Beck.

SOTU Post Mortem

As he always does, President Obama gave a great speech last night to Congress. A few things struck me as interesting.

He seemed to back away from partisan attacks (odd, in an election year) using the word "American" over 80 times while making sure to say that we share certain values. That's very optimistic and, from him, I'd expect nothing less. I guess I don't really share his sunny outlook but I do appreciate his populist tone.

What I saw on display last night was the very obvious and monumentally titanic reluctance to accept that the federal government plays a key role in our society and in the world at large. The president presented a balanced and pragmatic approach to government and the private sector. Yet, anytime the government doing something was mentioned, the Republicans sat on their hands. Honestly, they looked like stubborn little children because, sadly, "key role" has somehow magically transformed itself into socialism. This was very apparent in Governor Daniels response and the commentary by folks like Ari Fleischer after the speech.

As Speaker Boehner put it, pre-speech, "The president and the GOP are from different planets." Yes, this is true. The latter resides on one that is a largely created work of fiction that does not exist in reality.

It's obvious to me that the GOP in Congress are going to do everything in their power to deny him any sort of successes this year. Fair enough, I suppose, given that this is an election year. Yet, it's also fair of him to make Congress (and that's D's and R's alike) his opponent. With approval ratings 30 points lower than his, they offer a stark contrast which he illustrated several times last night by saying, "Put it on my desk and I'll sign it." They won't, of course, and that clearly shows which of the two parties actually want to do something. I think we may see some surprises this year in the voting booth come November. Key question to consider: just how little do the American people want Congress to do? We're going to find out.

Although not directly mentioned in his speech, I was also please to hear about another SEAL team success in Somalia. I was wondering why the president told SecDef Panetta, as he was walking in, "Good job, today!" Now we know. This president has been highly skilled in the area of his many duties that fall under the mantle of "Commander in Chief."

The president set an upbeat tone for his reelection campaign and, to a much larger degree, America as a whole last night in the State of the Union. In looking at it in comparison to what Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich have been saying about America, one has to wonder if Speaker Boehner's comment could actually be broadened to two different universes.

Mitt Finally Makes Up His Mind

After dithering for months, Mitt Romney finally made up his mind and released parts of his tax returns for 2010 and 2011. He really had no choice with Gingrich's hammering.

According to the Washington Post:

Mitt Romney offered a partial snapshot of his vast personal fortune late Monday, disclosing income of $21.7 million in 2010 and $20.9 million last year — virtually all of it profits, dividends or interest from investments. ... According to his 2010 return, Romney paid about $3 million to the IRS, for an effective tax rate of 13.9 percent.

Romney took advantage of the "carried interest" exemption that allowed him to treat his Bain Capital salary as income:

The returns confirm, however, that Romney continues to benefit from his association with Bain Capital, the private-equity firm he founded in 1984 and left in 1999. His earnings through Bain have drawn controversy because they are treated as capital gains rather than wages and thus benefit from being taxed at the lower rate of 15 percent.

This is the same gimmick that hedge fund managers use to avoid paying their fair share of taxes. Yeah, it's legal, and Romney's not wrong for paying the minimum tax. But it shows how eminently unfair our tax system is. Number one on Mitt's list of campaign promises should be to get rid of crap like this in the tax code. All income should be taxed at the same rate, whether you earn it working in a coal mine or clipping coupons while you eat bon-bons.

Part of the reduction in Romney's tax liability were losses carried over from previous years. This can be a legitimate tax break, but one of the most reliable tax avoidance scams is to create phony losses in one year to reduce tax liability in later years. Are Romney's losses real or manufactured?

Returns from 2010 and 2011 are all well and good, but Romney has been running for president for the last six years, which means he's known that one day someone would be looking over his tax returns. I'm more interested in seeing his returns from 1998 and his days at Bain, through 2001 and 2004, when the Bush tax cuts kicked in, and 2007-2009 when the rest of the country got hit by the hammer of the recession. Did Romney made out like a bandit with the Bush tax cuts, and was he unscathed by the recession?

Romney's father released 12 years of returns when he ran for president. Will Mitt honor his father's example? Or does he have something to hide?

A Perfect Picture

I get a lot of people that rip me for being so tough on the right. One line I hear quite a bit is "If you are so liberal and open minded, how come you don't treat them that way?"

Well...

That's why!